Title: Do-Over
Author: roseveare
Rating: PG13
Length: 1000 words approx
Summary: Mara kills them all and loves them all. Post season 4.
Notes: I was taken by an irresistible urge to kill everyone off. From the comment meme - Crickets: "mara/everyone; when i am king you'll be first against the wall".
Comment meme is at .com(slash) and still open for prompts and fills if you want to join in. (Anon posting is allowed.)
Do-Over
Nathan Wuornos does the one thing she doesn't expect and says, "No." Roughly, with his eyes red-rimmed and his fists clenched at his sides, he refuses her, and as Mara stares at him in disbelief, he qualifies as if she could have misunderstood, "I won't let you hold Duke's life hostage... or Jennifer's... or anyone else's. They risked themselves to send William away." They've been here before, his face says. "He stays away." He looks so hopeless, so sad, and it makes her want to laugh in spite of his words.
Mara licks her lips. "What makes you think I'm any better without him?"
"Basic math," he grates back, leaving her to contemplate being herself, finally, after so many years... and alone.
Her body isn't any stronger for the fact she's in control of her own mind again, but she has the memories of FBI training and he isn't expecting a physical reprisal. Nathan goes down, hitting the rock floor with a solid thump.
"Hey, now, Audrey-" Vince quavers.
The name incenses her further. "Shut. Up." Mara is trembling. She takes the source of her power back from Duke. She could do it slowly and he might survive - it's the only thing now that might save him. She doesn't. Duke becomes bloody rags of flesh on the cave floor. The dark fragments of the power she drew from him swarm on the air around her. She takes Nathan's along with them, just because she can. He chokes and squirms as it's ripped from him. Jennifer's sticks, held in place by other forces. Mara doesn't even realise until she hears Dwight gasp that she's drawn his along, too.
"Audrey!" Nathan shouts from his knees, as though there's something left inside her he can reach. It lacks conviction, most of all because his eyes are fixed wide on the remains of Duke. "No. Don't do this."
He has so little idea what she is.
Mara takes his Trouble in the palm of her hand, coaxing it out from the rest; whispers to it and pours in her hate and bile at the memory of their time together. They have known each other so well, his body and hers entwined in every kind of way, and none of it was by her consent.
She sends his Trouble back to him, distorted to ensure the one thing it will not do is spare him from pain. She watches it rip him apart. Duke was lucky by comparison. Nathan dies screaming in agony.
"My God..." Dave. She's known him, too, and his brother. Maybe not quite so intrusively, but it's forced affection, nonetheless, that she never would have agreed to waste upon these flies. The cloud of orbs isn't big enough to form a monster of the order William sent against Haven, but she focuses them into half a dozen dark, diving birds with long beaks like knives, and sends them at both Teagues, again and again, until their blood spatters the chamber.
Mara turns to Dwight. He clamps his jaw shut and merely watches her, his eyes wide and wild, and stays hunched against the wall. Because she doesn't know him so well as the rest, via Audrey or any other of her enforced selves, and because he is wise enough to keep his mouth shut, she will allow him to keep breathing a measure of time longer. At her sufferance.
Blood has stained her clothes. She wants William.
Recovering him is even less likely now, with so many of the resources she needed to bring him back mangled around her.
Such loss of control sickens her and is no longer pleasing.
No, it's worse than that.
Nathan. Oh, no, Nathan... Suddenly it hits her in a wave and she can't bear to look at the body she knows so well, almost unrecognisable now. Mara closes her eyes tightly and sees him intact behind her eyelids, imagines the heat of him against her skin. She feels a different heat in her eyes now, overspilling onto her cheeks. She's not crying. Or if she is, it's because every second of that memory was a violation.
She remembers Duke, all the times they laughed together, a hundred free drinks slid from his hand to hers across his bar and the comfort and warmth of their friendship. Vince and Dave, as Sarah and then later as Lucy, who loved her like fools across different lifetimes even while they tried to hoard their secrets. Even Jennifer, who made Duke happy while Audrey still knew he would rather she had chosen differently herself. She didn't know Jennifer so well either, and Mara didn't kill her, but she didn't try to save her and she could have.
They all deserve everything they got, and in her memory, they are still her dearest friends.
"You." Mara points at Dwight and speaks savagely, palming the black sphere that was once his as the birds break up again on the air.
"I-" He gulps and then remembers the better part of valour. She has no illusions that it's anything but valour, though. He is merely waiting for his chance to take her down. Dwight is far subtler than Nathan, capable of swallowing his pride and biding his time. She is very lucky that he is.
She is lucky he's here at all.
Endless potential for new Troubles awaits her out there, ripe to explore now that she is freed, but she is limited only by what can be wed to personality. Of all the people that were in this room to begin with, maybe of everyone she knows in Haven right now, there is only one she could imagine grafting into their soul the power to restore life.
She crushes the orb and steps forward. He flinches under her touch as she covers his face with her palm.
"Now, Dwight," she orders, pulling her hand away and watching her mark twist on his expression. "Bring them back."
And this way, Mara realises delightedly, when she feels the anger return later, she can destroy them all over again.
END