A/N: Part II of AU series: Dana. This is continuous from that, probably doesn't make any sense without it. All of my fics are the same 'verse, so references to 'Risky Business' and/or 'Ricochet' may occur without warning.

Done, done and done. Complete. Took a lot longer than I thought, and completed a lot less than I hoped. I hope you enjoy. Without further ado...

Dana II:

Chapter 1 Audrey

Nathan watched the closed circuit feed from the station's holding cells on his computer screen. Duke paced back and forth like one of those caged animals, driven crazy by confinement and lack of stimulation. Back and forth and back and forth – he'd been doing it for hours now, with no sign of wearing out or calming down.

The rest of the station was utter chaos; victims, former hostages, his officers trying to take statements, handle press inquiries – even now that it was all over. Or nearly over, the cover-up operations barely begun. Too goddamn many questions about why Shawn Wright was dead and Duke Crocker was in custody for Nathan to show his face out there.

Nathan forced his eyes closed. He was not strong enough to watch any longer, or to watch Audrey, sitting on the floor with her back to him, leaning up against the bars.

Audrey.

Nathan looked again. She was still there.

*.*.*

Audrey looked up at him from her position on the floor when he came in – flinched as Duke flung himself against the bars at the sight of him.

"Let me OUT of here!"

Nathan ignored him –

"Nathan," she started. He didn't let her finish. Duke's insanity, Duke's crime, were all way down on some list he should make about what he should be doing. Right now – he held a hand out her. If she didn't respond he was perfectly willing to drag her out.

She took his hand.

*.*.*

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

That much she knew. Nathan pretty much dragged her out of the holding cell area, closed in on her until she backed up against a wall, and he crowded in too close. He didn't touch her, except that his looked raked over her again. They were out of the range of the CCTV cameras, but any one of the other officers could walk in at any time, probably with a perfectly reasonable excuse about checking on the prisoner. They were naturally curious and excited about her walking back into the station with Nathan.

Two years after she'd disappeared.

Ordinarily she would have said something pithy and disarming, made a crack – something to re-establish a professional and personal distance between them. But 1) she couldn't think of anything, 2) she didn't want any more distance between them and 3) she was more afraid of Nathan right now than Duke – who was himself certifiable.

She'd just barely been able to hold onto the idea that she'd been different people in the past. That she came and went with the Troubles, didn't age, and didn't remember. That she was also a different person in the present, right now, that some other woman had been wearing her body, walking around and living her life –

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

She felt like she'd been dropped into the middle of a bomb going off in slow motion, like in movie. She could see the shockwave spread out around her but she could do nothing about it. It was still propagating outwards faster than the speed of sound. You couldn't even hear it coming. It was taking out her whole world as she stood still and watched it happen.

Two years.

It was unimaginable.

No, that wasn't true. There were coma patients who woke up after years of being asleep. There were kidnappings and abductions that lasted much longer.

Most of them didn't have someone else using their body while they were away though.

Only in Haven.

Duke crashed against the bars again, yelling to be set free and calling Nathan a tumbling slurry of awful names.

"Let me go back," she said, putting a hand to Nathan's chest, collarbone. Didn't touch skin to skin, deliberately.

Nathan made a wounded noise, uncontrolled, then shifted deliberately so that her fingers touched his neck just above the collar. Whined again at that, and her hand went around his neck, combed up through his hair, "Audrey." Temple to temple.

It wasn't supposed to be like this either. She couldn't bear that she'd hurt him so, that he was so hurt by her. For whatever reason – no one's fault. No one that they could find to blame at least, for the impossible situation they – the three of them – found themselves in. "Let me go back in. He's calmer when I'm there."

"He thinks -"

"No, he doesn't. He knows." She was not who she was. Had been. Dana Bellamy. "Why do you think he's so –" Human body vs. steel in the other room, again, and Audrey was not willing to bet one way or the other which would give in first.

"Crazy." Nathan took no joy in the verdict.

"Upset," she modified.

"He killed my prisoner. My in custody prisoner."

She knew. She'd been there for when Nathan had removed the cuffs from Shawn Wright's body and put them on Duke. One moment in her apartment getting ready for their first date, then next moment getting up off the floor in the middle of a nightmare. Or, the messy fallout of a nightmare, situation normal in Haven – except for the missing two years and ghost rider in her body.

Bile rose. Not ready to think about that yet. She shoved it back down.

It was a professional thing. An honor thing. As police they put a man in cuffs for their own safety, took him into custody, but in doing so they took on the responsibility of taking care of that prisoner. That meant that a prisoner's safety went squarely on the arresting officer's shoulders. Nathan's. He'd been safely restrained, the hostages freed, and posed no imminent threat. Duke had betrayed Nathan in killing Shawn Wright.

Four dead, hostages taken at the school, dangerous Troubled kid; she grasped that much.

It was Duke as contract assassin she had trouble with.

"Let me help him," she said, her thumb rubbing along Nathan's neck. They had time for them, later, but right now – Duke was in trouble, Troubled, and needed her. This is what she did, who she was, and if there was nothing else in her life that was certain, she could – would – cling to that.

"You'll get your turn," Audrey told Nathan. She had questions for him, too.

"He stays inside. And you stay outside."

He said that, but didn't move. Didn't let her move. "Nathan?"

"I'm trying," he muttered, with a cutting smile.

Nathan. Her breath left her as she met his eyes. A day for her, and two years for him, and she didn't know which of them felt it more. He'd suffered more, obviously. Painfully thin, eyes dulled and hidden from her.

He pushed himself off the wall behind her, then held his hands up in surrender.

*.*.*

Duke took one look at her, walking back into the passageway beside the cell, and moved back to the far wall. Paced there, but at least stopped shouting to be released.

She propped the chair she'd brought with her with the back facing the bars, straddled it. If you got bucked off, you got right back on that horse again. No fear. She wondered briefly if that was Audrey Parker's wisdom – or something older, something from when she'd actually ridden horses.

She shook her head; focus, Audrey.

Duke had taken up his father's curse and run with it.

Oh god no. That was the worse place to start.

Duke had absorbed different Troubles from people he hadn't killed, adding them to his own.

Worse.

Duke and –Dana– had slept together – fucked –

Oh fuck no. Not that.

Duke had died, and come back to life.

She looked up at him, pressed up against the far wall. There was that. They had that in common. "I feel like I should apologize. I gather I'm the last person you want to see right now." He only stared at her.

To her it was less than twenty-four hours since they'd been on his boat, opening up that god-forsaken box of weapons, discovering the diary. Twelve hours since she'd blown him off in the street, a well-meant but meaningless 'we'll figure it out.' Less than six since she'd watched Kyle Hopkins sacrifice himself, but using Duke to do it. Using him, and putting that blood guilt on him.

Skip ahead two years and this is what the Crocker curse looked like.

"No."

She looked up again, startled that he'd spoken – to her, apparently – and had to back track to connect what he meant. No, she wasn't the last person he wanted to see. "Duke…" she smiled, a little watery. The first time he'd acknowledged her at all. "Nathan told me a little about her. I want –" She didn't know what she wanted. She wanted to cheer and congratulate him, she wanted to know all about his girlfriend, his new life, what had happened in his life while she'd been away. She wanted to be friends, like they had been, all of half a day ago.

Then again, she really didn't want to talk about Dana.

She didn't want to think about a two year hole in her life, and how she'd gone away – somehow, somewhere – and come back to find her life had a new tenant. It was way worse than finding out she'd been copied, somehow. She'd been replaced. That she – even the facsimile version of Audrey Parker that she was – wasn't good enough, a part that malfunctioned, and she'd been pulled and replaced.

"Help me out here, Duke, please," she whispered, rocking forward on the chair, arms wrapped around it because there was nothing, no one else, to hang on to. "I'm trying to figure this out."

That was what she'd promised him. Start with that. "What happened with Shawn Wright?"

Duke shook his head. "I don't remember."

"What do you remember?"

The wrong question. He stepped backward – hard to manage when he was already against the wall, but he moved away, physically and mentally. "I don't remember anything either," she tried. "I was making pancakes, and then I was waking up on the floor of that gym. I got knocked out once – taking down this guy Florida – actually right before I came to Haven. But this time instead of a couple minutes, it's two years later."

There was literally no safe way out of this conversation.

No fear. Just get him to talk, somehow. What she wanted or did not want was not the point, not right now.

"I'm glad it was you." Their eyes met, sudden understanding. She was glad it was Duke this other woman had chosen. Or that it was Duke who chose Dana, or both. Anyone else and she'd be busy trying to change her skin right now.

"She was made for me." Rattlesnake warning, don't touch. Audrey didn't understand, and Duke came up to the bars – as if that would make his meaning clearer. "You were made for Nathan, Dana was designed for me." Clearer, but phrased as a threat.

It was not a new thought for her; she'd had it herself on a few of those long nights lying awake wondering who she was. What she was. It was a little appalling to know that Duke – and presumably Nathan – had realized the same thing. Being a cop, an ex- FBI agent, was too convenient to getting close to the Troubles that she could take it as a coincidence. It wasn't a great leap to imagine that of all the FBI agents that 'they' could have copied, Audrey Parker was the most suitable match for the one cop she'd be working with most.

It was a lot more horrific to realize that they'd done it again, this time finding someone who- "Why?" She got up off the chair, went to him. Why him? She'd come to understand her mission in her strange life was to help the Troubled. Dana, too? What did that have to do with staying close to – even up to loving and being in love with – Duke?

Why take her away – and then replace her with this other woman, so quickly? Relatively quickly, two years as opposed to twenty-seven, but still. Two years! Why replace her with someone who would naturally choose Duke over Nathan? Choose a smuggler over a cop? Someone who had to start all over again and… make those different choices…

So – somewhere along the line Audrey had made the wrong choice. And whoever (!) brought her here, whoever 'they' were; they'd decided to wipe the slate clean and start again.

He didn't back down, or back away, as she approached. A connection, a start. Something that he wanted from her; her approval and understanding. He would only open up to her when she did the same for him.

"Evi – one of the last things she said was that – I was important. That the Rev had told her that I was important. I thought it was just because he wanted to use me to murder Troubled people. Now, I wonder. She never told the simple truth in her adult life – and probably not before that – but, I wonder." He looked at his own arms, his hands. "You don't know, Audrey. You weren't here. You don't know what I can do."

"I think you're important," Audrey said. And not because of his Trouble. Troubles.

She slid down to the floor again, right back where she'd been when Nathan had come in. This time, Duke came with her, sat beside her so that their shoulders touched through the bars.

"You're supposed to ask what I can do."

She shook her head. She didn't care what he could do. No, not quite true. Whatever he could do, it was killing him. It was changing him, which was probably worse.

She hadn't been here, and she hadn't had any choice about it, but she still felt like it was her fault somehow. He was her responsibility. They all were. And now – from what little Nathan had told her – things were even worse in Haven. Duke was certainly worse. She remembered the sickened horror on his face as they picked up Kyle Hopkins – rubbing at his hands like Lady Macbeth. Not his fault either – she only half understood what had happened there, conversations with ghosts she couldn't see – but she fully understood that guilt.

There was no hand wringing now.

She'd killed, accidentally and deliberately. Legally, for all that mattered. Not a lot. Justifiably, for the greater good. People she'd failed to save. But still, every soul weighed on her, her failures. She should have had a better answer.

Audrey put her hand over Duke's, now clenched around a bar of his cage. He allowed it. "Did she help? You, or other people?"

"Yes. She was just starting, but yes."

She was glad. Relieved. "This murdering other Troubled people has to stop though." Whether it was the Rev or – unbelievably – Nathan wanting him to do it, it had to stop. "Just, don't. I don't care who says, or what you think you can save or accomplish. Don't. You're important, Duke, but not for that. And it isn't worth it."

She could feel the resistance in him, saw it in the blinked look away from her. "Duke, I mean it. If I –" She couldn't say it, admit that, not so soon. If I ever go away again. Because of course she would. She always did. "If our friendship means anything to you. Don't do it."

She clearly remembered, like it was this afternoon, Duke – tormented by ghosts – settling a look on her like an anchorage in a storm. No, she's my friend. She needed him to trust her like that again.

"I'm glad it was you," she repeated in a whisper.

"Nathan came after me, when he found you gone." Duke said.

She looked at him, trying to decipher the question hidden in that. She sensed his hurt, but she couldn't actually read minds. "And?"

"Why did he do that?"

"Why are you asking me?" Why not ask Nathan? Why, after two years apparently, was this still bothering him? On the street, this morning. I don't want to joke about this. We'll figure it out. And then Nathan's bizarre attempt to tell her not to trust him. "Duke, I told him about the diary, but I never, ever thought or said – I know that's not you."

A couple hours ago she would have sworn Duke could never kill anyone. Not even to save them. Now… that certainty was gone. It hadn't been him. Two years ago.

Duke turned his back to her, still sitting but no longer able to face her. "I swore I wouldn't turn into him," dawning realization, horror-edged. At last, it was starting to penetrate; what he'd done, what he'd become. No need to ask who he meant. His father, Simon Crocker, who had killed the Troubled to 'save' them and left instructions for Duke to kill her.

"I swore it. I meant it." He put the heels of his hands to his eyes. "Jesus, I thought – You weren't here and Nathan…"

"What about Nathan?"

"He checked out, for like a year. He looked for you. We all did, but there was just nothing. He…" Duke's hand waved in the air, words useless and out of reach. He turned to look at her, serious, and for the first time since she'd been back, she recognized him. "Audrey, go look at what this town is like without you. Come back and tell me what I should have done."