TITLE: 27 Years Bad Luck
AUTHOR: roseveare
RATING: R/Mature
LENGTH: ~35k, this part ~11,000 words.
SUMMARY: "It's like one of those Star Trek episodes where everyone's suddenly evil and bi." Evil duplicates run amok in Haven, threatening the friendships between Audrey, Duke and Nathan.
WARNINGS: Non-con, dubious consent.
NOTES #1: Set after Magic Hour part 2 with OT3 Audrey/Duke/Nathan leanings.
NOTES #2: This was actually written back in the season 3 hiatus nearly two years ago, although I've tried to bring it in line with characterisation through seasons 4 and 5 as much as possible.
THANKS: to Darkmagess, Kattahj and Miah_Arthur for beta input at various points throughout the editing process.


27 Years Bad Luck

Part 1

The message from Dwight had said, Be here as soon as possible. Just you. Nathan hadn't thought twice about responding to it. Or at least, he'd thought crap, because it meant there was a new situation, and serial killers in Haven and the fact he'd been dead last week were already enough to deal with.

He stepped into the antique store, keeping a lookout for Dwight, but the store seemed empty and his eyes were drawn to the open till. Instinct said turned over, and he responded by unclipping and drawing his gun, scanning his surroundings warily as he crossed the room to investigate.

Movement startled him... but it was only himself, reflected in a mirror. The small store had entirely too many reflective surfaces, the light catching off old bottles, elaborate silverwork and gilt candelabras, aping movement in the corners of his eyes. As he rounded the counter, he saw a foot and then all of Marion, lying on the floor with her face pale and eyes shut, although she seemed to be breathing. There was a shattered antique mirror right behind her but she hadn't been cut. He knelt beside her, keeping his back against the counter and his eyes up inasmuch as was possible. Finding nothing that required immediate first aid, he grabbed his radio. "Laverne? Get me an ambulance up to Marion's store. She's unconscious and I can't see the injury. I'm going to check around further."

Her warning to take care cut short as he stuffed the radio away. He rose, eyes still scanning the room. With reluctance, he stepped away from Marion. The last thing anyone needed was for Marion Caldwell to be unduly stressed again - Haven could do without another rash of crazy weather. But Nathan's instincts were doing all sorts of unpleasant pinging and he needed the area clear before the ambulance arrived.

"Dwight?" Nathan yelled. Dwight should have been there to meet him and wouldn't have left Marion like that, unattended. Unease was already gathering strongly when he spied a bulky form sprawled in the corner of the store. All he could see between the curios was a lump of dark clothing, but a body that size seriously limited who it could be. "Dwight! Damn it..."

Marion had recently rearranged and he had to negotiate through two narrow aisles around packed tables to get near to the big guy. When he could, Nathan knelt again and hauled on Dwight's shoulder, rolling him over with effort. Like Marion he was pale, quiet, and completely out, yet hadn't a visible mark on him. Anything that could take down Dwight, Nathan didn't want to meet, and no matter what secret, strange thing Dwight had brought him there to share, he needed back-up. Working one-handed, he pulled out his phone to call Parker.

Then, Dwight... stepped from behind a full-length standing mirror, almost close enough to touch.

Nathan's thumb froze on the buttons. He could hear his heart thudding in his chest as he glanced down slowly at the body at his feet - definitely Dwight - and back up. Also-Dwight looming over him tipped a nod and gave that pensive, mixed smile. Only... there was something behind his eyes that looked harder than usual, and almost… almost gleeful, or even outright nasty. "Chief. Guess you're wondering why I called you here." He took a step, marking Nathan's drawn gun, and toed the still form on the floor. "Don't worry about him. He's out of it. I checked."

"Don't worry about him?" Nathan echoed. He awkwardly stuffed the phone back in his pocket. He was nowhere near ready yet to relinquish the gun. This was Dwight in front of him, no question, but until this Dwight delivered a satisfactory explanation as to why there were two of him and what else this was aside from something that at least looked like a robbery, he wasn't ruling him out as a threat. "Dwight, what is going on?" Even if this was the real deal, Nathan surely wasn't in the mood for the usual evasive non-explanations and curt, cryptic answers. He was just about managing to keep the gun a few inches shy of actually aimed at the other man, but it took an effort of will and nerve to do it.

Aim wouldn't make much difference, given Dwight's bullet-attracting Trouble, he allowed. It didn't make him feel better. He uncurled himself warily from the floor, watching also-Dwight every second of the way.

In exchange, he still got crypticness, and not even an answer. Also-Dwight nodded at the floor and observed, "It's something to see, your own body laid out like that. Hey, this is weird-" He dipped down as if to examine something and Nathan's attention could do nothing but follow.

Dwight came back up fast. Nathan almost didn't see the punch, and didn't feel it land, but he was suddenly on the floor several feet away from where he'd been. "Dwight! What the hell?!" He scrambled for the gun, which had travelled a few feet further than he had, and hurried to stand, blinking away disorientation. He stumbled backward as Dwight took a threatening step closer.

"The old Chief? I liked him. Weren't best buds, but he knew what he was doing, and I could respect that. You?" Dwight jabbed a finger in his direction. "I am sick and tired of having to take orders from you."

"Orders from-" Nathan's words choked off. "Wait, is this about yesterday?"

Yesterday's Trouble had been at the sports centre. He could wish all their Troubles were as low key as a bit of match fixing and illicit betting.

"Not in the job five minutes and you already think you know better than I do," Dwight said.

"I'm... tired of covering up crimes because the perp's Troubled. This time, I didn't see the need for it." It didn't matter how Wassell had done it, he did it and they could press charges just fine. His weird capacity with predicting odds and numbers could help him pass the time in his jail cell. In fact, Nathan remembered the total of that conversation with Dwight as a covert shake of his head and a low, "It's fine." Dwight had looked around, his expression as closed-off as ever, then he'd backed off without a word. "Look, Dwight, I'm sorry if you took it that way. I didn't mean-"

"Oh, please," the big guy sneered. "If this is the way it's got to be, 'Chief', at least quit pussying around and have some conviction!" He slammed his arm through the items on the table near him and loped forward while things fell and shattered. "I never heard the old man apologise or back down. Of course, you were never his real flesh and blood."

The accusation stung hard, but Nathan hadn't wanted to be like the Chief when his dad was alive and that hadn't changed just because he was dead. The rest, though - he'd been shaky for a while, he'd admit, but had thought he'd been getting the hang of things, gaining the trust of those around him. He hadn't realised that Dwight-

No, not Dwight, he thought, eying the bulky unconscious form. But then, this guy knew about the sports centre, he had Dwight's memories. Whatever this was, it was more than just a guy who superficially looked and sounded like Dwight. Nathan swallowed and gauged his chances at vaulting the counter to get away from the slab of muscle coming at him. Apparently Duke had gone toe-to-toe with Dwight, only a few weeks ago, but Nathan found it hard to believe. Trying struck him as fairly suicidal. He had one personal bonus - he wouldn't feel it when all his bones were snapped like twigs.

"Dwight, what's happened? This isn't you." Getting behind the counter would put him too close to Marion. He couldn't endanger her further, nor corner himself. Nothing else in this place offered convincing cover, and there were too many sharp and breakable hurdles on the way to the door. "You help the Troubled. You keep Haven together. Like Audrey. Like me. If you have a problem, we can talk it over."

"Keep Haven together?" Dwight bared his teeth and kept coming. "Let me talk over what Haven did for me...!" It was like a building eruption. Dwight was big, but he was a trained soldier. He didn't rage like this, out of control, beyond all reason. With urgent incentive, Nathan lined up his gun with Dwight's chest. The other man's pause was immediate, but he could see from Dwight's twitchy, testing moves that it wouldn't be lasting. Nathan looked from what might only be a violent copy of Dwight to the presumably real one on the floor.

If he fired, where would the bullets go?

Crap. What were a few punches he wouldn't even feel weighed against a man's life?

He put the gun on the counter and held up his hands. "Alright. You want to land a few, fine. Work it out of your system."

Dwight looked nonplussed for a moment, then tipped his head into his shoulder in a lopsided shrug. "Okay." he grunted, and lunged to grab Nathan's collar.

...Hell. Not that he was going to feel it, but someday, someone was going to do damage significant enough to stick around till he could feel it again, and Dwight was as likely a candidate for that as anyone.

Dwight didn't play fair either. Where Nathan had expected a punch, he got dragged through everything spiky, splintery and breakable on the nearest table before being slung through the air. The world seemed to slow down mid-flight into a lazy spiral of shifting viewpoint. Then his own face surged towards him, surreally - the big mirror, the one the unconscious Dwight was lying next to. This was going to be messy.

He made an instinctive attempt to protect his face, causing his arms to lead the smash into the glass. His vision fragmented into a crazy burst of myriad reflections in the instant before he remembered to screw shut his eyes. By the muffled sound of the impact, his landing was less heavy than expected. Dwight. Right. And the other Dwight-

One thing about his Trouble: no downtime for pain. A long, pointed glass shard from the broken mirror caught his eye, and Nathan curled his fingers around it, taking a grip that seeped blood. He struggled as far as his knees, clutching the improvised weapon.

"Might not be able to shoot," he muttered. As the guy he was fairly sure wasn't Dwight closed in behind him, a hundred tiny Dwights reflected exactly where he was and what he did. Nathan gauged his moment and whipped around to jab the shard of mirror into a tree trunk of a leg, just above the knee. It sunk in and stuck. Nathan could feel the ghost of pressure moving against him as splitting muscle resisted beneath his weight, and then no resistance at all. The mirror shard slashed down into the polished floorboards and slipped from his confused grip as he barely avoided landing on his face in the sea of glass splinters.

He jerked back into a crouch and stared around. The only Dwight to be seen was the one unconscious next to him. Okay... he'd expected a manly howl and possibly a drop to one knee, but disappearing worked.

"Dwight." Nathan shook the still body, smearing the man's black shirt with darker blood, but Dwight remained unresponsive. Nathan frowned at the blood smear, and took inventory of the labyrinth of scratches on his hands and arms, his mind filling with curses. He took out his radio and was just discovering it had been broken in the impact when the ambulance pulled up outside.


Parker was waiting for him when he came out after the MRI. Funny thing was, so was Duke, and he couldn't remember calling him. Duke looked like he'd been several days at sea and hadn't cleaned up since getting back. His long hair was tangled and his overstretched knitwear even more shapeless than usual, and grubby to boot.

Catching his narrow-eyed look of question, Duke said, "I heard Dwight tried to turn you into paste. Did that happen for real, or was that just a dream?" The smile he offered Nathan was crooked - a good match to the rest of him.

"Wasn't Dwight," Nathan said curtly. "Could've been his evil twin." They were getting along better again lately, though that could just be not having seen each other in a week. But almost - no, actually dying had put a few things in perspective, and he'd even heard some apocryphal tale about Duke freaking out over his demise. He'd stopped trying to capitalize on that after his first few comments fell flat. Apparently it was serious business. The idea sent a shiver down his spine that was entirely psychosomatic. Who knew, maybe Duke really did give a damn after all? Maybe he didn't only pursue this on-off friendship to get his parking tickets fixed and have someone around with the badge-waving power to make his other problems disappear.

"An evil twin Trouble?" Parker asked. "We had that one already, I remember it clearly - strangely, you managed to get yourself hospitalized then, too. But the twin wasn't really the evil one, that time."

"All I know is there were two Dwights, and one of them was bearing a grudge and several kinds of hell to put down. I'm hoping the other one wakes up in a more forgiving mood and can maybe explain what the hell happened before I got on the scene."

"I haven't heard about Dwight, but how about Marion?" Parker suggested. "The doctors said she woke up, just a few minutes before you came out."

"Sounds like a plan." Nathan turned, but unsure of the way cast back for Parker to field him in the right direction, and Duke caught his arm.

"Back up to the part where between you and Sasquatch, you won. Which crazy parallel universe did that happen in, again?"

"Screw you, Duke." He just about managed to pull out enough of a false smile to soften that, noticing how something in Duke's expression didn't tally with his jocular tone. "Guy vanished as soon as I drew blood."

"Funny, something like that turned the tables for me, too." Duke trailed his eyes over Nathan in a critical scan. "Wouldn't trade."

"Assuming we haven't seen the last of this - and eight hundred dollars missing from Marion's till says someone made a profit from it - we need to figure out what that means," Parker said. "But first..." She tapped Nathan's arm very softly on the edge of one of the dressings, where the largest gash had nearly bisected the tattoo. The whisper of sensation barely stirred his sleeping pain receptors to the damage, but he probably wouldn't have complained. "How are you? Doctor DeRoss said it was all superficial, but you look like a human jigsaw puzzle to me. You sure you're up to working?"

Nathan shrugged. He couldn't feel the damage, but it looked particularly bad because most of it was on his exposed skin. There was a heaviness in him, the sluggishness that affected normal movement when he was injured, the mental haze that came with blood loss, and he could sense enough to know his body wasn't running at full efficiency, but he could function. "I'm alright. Cuts. Lots of cuts. A few bruised ribs. Lucky."

"Lucky?" She gave him a disbelieving scowl.

"Dwight." He figured it was a point worth emphasizing. "Plus, I was dead last week, so I'd say things are looking up."

"Right, man." Duke snorted and thumped his shoulder in that too-energetic way he had - Nathan figured it for masquerading a chance to leave a bruise as a friendly gesture. For some reason Parker had never caught onto that, so instead of calling Duke on it she smiled and placed her hands on both their shoulders, shepherding them down the corridor with a bright affection she hadn't displayed in a while. Nathan caught Duke's eye, a warning glance that lingered a bit too long for its intended purpose, but without rancour. Then Audrey's arm brushed the side of his neck and he dragged his gaze aside, falling into the rare touch, opting just to enjoy the sensation breaking through the gloom.


Marion Caldwell sat in bed looking pale and dazed, in a small, bright room with a large window overlooking the gardens. She greeted them fairly warmly, given the circumstances. "Hey, Nathan. I heard you helped me out again. Audrey." She nodded at her, then looked curiously at Duke, perhaps having the good fortune never to have been introduced. Nathan wasn't going to be the one to spoil that, but Parker opted to do so anyway.

"Marion." Nathan shuffled around the bed. "How are you doing?" Parker, smiling brightly, ducked in at his side. Duke wasn't usually so reticent around strange women's bedrooms, but this time he hung near the door. Nathan's thoughts to keep Duke away from Marion were fleeting. Recent events had reconciled him a bit more to Duke's Trouble and the fact that Duke was dealing with his Trouble. Nathan settled for just keeping half an eye on him.

"I'm... okay." Marion drew the word out in a sigh. "Really. I'm more frustrated about losing that money. I know it's not much, but it doesn't seem like I can keep my finances out of the hands of crooks."

Parker said, "That's sort of why we're here."

"Need to know what happened in the shop," Nathan said. "I found the till open, you and Dwight unconscious, and some pretty weird things going on."

"In the shop..." Her forehead pinched, and she ventured hesitantly, "I was talking to Dwight." Her sombre, dark eyes misted with confusion. A heavy rain shower lashed at the window behind them, interrupting the dry day without warning. They tried to politely ignore it. "There was a customer. I went to the counter... that's as much as I remember. I'm sorry. I really don't know what happened."

"Who was the customer?" Parker asked, and at Marion's helpless shrug, pressed, "What were they like? Male or female?"

"I... don't know. Young. Wearing black. I'm sorry, I really only remember seeing them from behind." The rain whipped heavier against the glass, and they could all hear the wind picking up. "I wish I could tell you something to help catch them. I can't believe this happened again! It makes me so angry... Maybe Dwight can tell you more."

"We'll ask. Don't worry." Parker patted her hand and carefully didn't look out of the window. "Is Conrad on his way here, now?"

She nodded. "The doctors want to do some blood tests to find out why I passed out, but they said after that I should be able to go home."

There might've been a few rays of sunshine starting to break up the clouds as the three of them filed out of the room. Marion sat and stared out of the window with her small chin very straight and a pensiveness to her expression.

Dwight, as it happened, was already looking for them, and they ran into him stomping the corridors, glowering, unhappy, and still a bit pale. His grimace intensified when he caught sight of Nathan. He slowed in the inexorable manner of a train coming in to a station, but he did stop at a moderately safe distance of a few feet. From there, his gaze swept Nathan up and down. "Heard I gave you some trouble."

"Not you..." Nathan hazarded warily. "Unless you're feeling any lingering urges to land one on me?" Dwight's expression only darkened, unhelpful in terms of providing reassurance. Nathan ventured, "Exact replica, worse temper. Disappeared when I stabbed him with a broken mirror shard. Know anything about that?"

"When Marion fell," the big guy said slowly, "for a moment, I saw two Marions. The other one overbalanced on the mirror behind the counter. Broke it to pieces. Then she was gone. Then that kid looked at me, and that's the last I remember."

"Kid?"

"Five four, dark hair, make-up. Goth brat. Could've been a boy or a girl, could've been fifteen or twenty-five, under all that. No kid when you got there, huh?"

"No, but I think we found the source of our Trouble."

Dwight gave a grunt and a nod. He didn't look greatly happier.

"You..." Nathan frowned. Pronouns were about to get annoying. "You were unconscious when I got there. Did you call me? Or was that the other one?"

"Quiet morning. Was, anyway," Dwight said, shaking his head. "Just passing the time of day with Marion. I - he called you?" He pulled out a cell phone and checked it, holding it up to show a call log that backed up his confusion.

Nathan nodded slowly. "So he called. He had, well, your clothes. Same ones you're wearing now. Probably had that phone, too. He implied there was something going on I needed to see."

"Which it turned out there was," Parker said.

"Aside from a close-up of Dwight's fist, obviously," Duke put in.

"...Two duplicates," Parker said firmly. "Of Dwight and Marion, both of whom ended up unconscious in the bargain. We also know the copy of Dwight was feeling pretty homicidal."

"More like... an impulse control issue." Nathan looked uncertainly at Dwight as he chewed that thought over, trying to remember their short but unpleasantly informative conversation. "You - he was all over the place, grinning one moment, enraged the next. But," he swallowed and put an extra step between himself and the big guy, then grew annoyed after realising he'd done it, "he was still Dwight. He knew too much about working with the Chief. Working with me."

Dwight met that statement with a slow-blinking, cagey gaze.

Nathan lowered his chin to return a single subtle nod. All right. So he knew and Dwight knew. Maybe they could both silently agree not to mention it again.

That was reckoning without Duke, who'd developed an incredulous grin while following all this, and now patted Dwight's arm in friendly fashion and pressed, "So, have you ever had any thoughts about rearranging Nathan's face? Because I have to tell you-" He broke off suddenly, dancing backwards. "Whoa, big guy!" He turned to the rest of them. "Did you hear that? Did he just actually growl?"

Exuding exasperation, Dwight said with a teeth-grit earnestness that hurt too much to be faked, "I wouldn't hit you." A pause, then with a trace of peevish frustration, "You're like half my weight class."

It was possible that was intended to inject humour, but Nathan narrowed his eyes and dug in. "Took your crazy copy down."

It hit him an eyeblink later that it was insane and counterproductive to be challenging Dwight when he needed to keep an amicable working relationship with the guy. Before he could apologise, Dwight swept him over with a reassessing look and offered grimly, "Yeah. Thanks for that. Even if you cheated."

"Is this finished?" Parker asked, rolling her eyes. "Or are you guys ready to go another round right here in the corridor?" She waited for both of them to look away from each other and went on: "So we've got two duplicates, homicidal or otherwise, disappearing after sharp encounters with a mirror. The good news seems to be that, assuming this is some kind of copy Trouble, it looks like the duplicates can't cope with mirrors."

Nathan nodded, trying to pull his head back into the game.

"Dwight," Parker said, with a chipper little injection of friendliness. "You think you could help us find the Goth kid? He or she seems to have figured out they can use their Trouble to steal. I want to forestall this before we have a Troubled crime spree on our hands."

He nodded. "Sure. Doc says I'm fine." His eyes slid back to Nathan, and away again. "Think I'll go do just that." He grabbed Duke's shoulder with a purpose that wasn't taking no for an answer. "Crocker, how about we get a sketch of this kid from Vince and make ourselves useful elsewhere?"

"What? I'm useful right here! I don't see why-" His words choked off as Dwight jerked him forward and dragged him off.

Nathan watched as Dwight shoved Duke's shoulder, herding him away. He wasn't sure if Dwight was seeking Duke's company or just seeking to get him out of their hair. "I'd normally enjoy that picture so much more."

Audrey turned slowly and peered at him thoughtfully. "What the hell was that with Dwight? He obviously knows something of what he did, or said, that the rest of us don't. Which I guess testifies to these doubles being a lot like the originals. Spill. What aren't you saying?"

A week ago Nathan might not have ventured an answer, but it had been long enough since Parker gave him any looks like that, open and expectant, so after rubbing his hand over his face and turning away and then back to her in a few false tries, he awkwardly broke out, louder than he'd intended, "He thinks I'm a pussy. His word."

The reaction he expected sure as hell hadn't been her laughter.

"...Parker?" He couldn't stop a trace of annoyance leaking through.

"Oh, come on, Nathan. This is the guy who carries kids for miles with a bear trap on his foot. The bears are pussies compared to him." She punched him in the arm, scrunching her lips with irritation. "Please don't tell me your wounded machismo was why you decided to ditch your gun and try unarmed combat against a Viking demigod?"

Nathan flushed furiously and stammered a stumbling defence about the deadly danger to Dwight. She sighed and shook her head fondly at him.

As they made their way down the corridor toward the hospital's main exit, he saw his red face staring back from the reflective surfaces of a dozen glass door panels and observation windows


Too many days at sea had left Duke's body feeling heavy and his thoughts bleary, on top of which he was vaguely conscious of needing a shower. He'd only come straight into town because Roy Deakin at the marina had said some crazy thing about Nathan and Dwight fighting, which was nuts on a level that required investigation, not the least because what was Nathan thinking? He'd been dead only last week and missed it so much already that he wanted to go again?

Of course, nothing was as advertised. His best enemy was too distracted to trade barbs, and somehow he'd ended up playing sidekick to a pissy Dwight. Unlike Nathan, he did have the advantage of knowing all he needed to turn the tables was a drop of blood. Fucking Troubles. But nothing so drastic was required - okay, Duke hadn't seen Dwight in a mood quite like this before, but they'd worked together some and were kind of buddies and this wasn't an evil clone. Dwight, he could deal with. Maybe it was just as well, all things considered, that he'd been ushered away from Nathan.

They finally paused at a crosswalk long enough for Duke to plant his feet. "Hey! Person here! You know, this floppy thing you're dragging around at the end of your arm? What's the idea, Sasquatch?"

Dwight gave him a cursory glance, muttered, "Sorry," and let go after a few tugs at Duke's knitted jersey in a futile effort to line it back up with his shoulder.

"Apologise by telling me what this is about." Duke let his teeth show, but it wasn't really a grin. They'd made it out of the hospital, out of the parking lot, and halfway down the street before Dwight would listen to him past whatever tune was playing between his ears. Now, the big guy looked less certain than usual, and Duke wasn't about to miss his chance to exploit that. He patted Dwight's shoulder consolingly, if carefully. "You don't like Nathan, that's cool. Join the club. Which, by the way, I have one, and you really can join it. We have 'We hate Wuornos' badges and everything."

Dwight gave him an unsure look, which made Duke grin even more. Yeah, the club existed. He'd founded it when he was eight years old. They'd had badges one time, too, when someone came to the school with a make-your-own-badges gizmo, and it had been awesome. Sadly, the badges had all been lost years ago.

"I like Nathan just fine," Dwight said impatiently. "I just... might have, in a few moments in the past, thought that he needed to man up. Now apparently I told him so."

Duke could feel his grin spreading into one of those ear-to-ear face-splitters, which probably wasn't the wisest thing given the guilt in Dwight's expression. And neither was saying "Awesome" and clapping the big guy's shoulder with great affection.

Dwight shoved him off. "You're lucky the other me didn't run into you."

Duke's grin folded, and he made a point of keeping his hands to his own space. "Never thought I'd see the day you were running away from Nathan," he offered, meaningfully, raising his voice to carry ahead and having to jog to catch up as Dwight stalked across the road.

Dwight rounded on him. "I'm not running away. I... can't work effectively around Chief Wuornos right now. Maybe if some dick wearing your face spilled all your private thoughts-" His face twitched in such a way he didn't even need to voice a sarcastic 'oh, wait', but the line of his mouth soured as he ground his jaw and he deliberately quickened his pace again. They turned in the direction of the Haven Herald. Duke figured he had been insulted somewhere in there.

"I have private thoughts," Duke called to his back. "I do."

Duke let his steps slow to a standstill. Dwight probably wouldn't notice if he took off. On the other hand, he did want to know what the hell was going on, and there was the question of how much he really wanted to be around Nathan and Audrey right now. He'd come so close to Audrey in Colorado, close enough to know how she felt in his arms and tasted on his lips - and know she'd responded to him in kind. Then she'd said no. Then they'd come home to the shock of Nathan's death, Nathan's resurrection - where else but in Haven? - and Audrey's reaction. He'd never seen her freak out like that. Hadn't even thought she could. Audrey Parker, always the one with the answers, always the one in control. He'd realised that what they'd revealed in Colorado, fierce and brilliant and as damn close to love as he was sure it was, wasn't enough. Because the crazy thing with Nathan left all of that in the dust.

That was why he'd taken off to sea and lost a chunk of the days that were potentially all the time Audrey had left. He'd needed the silence and the waves, and an in-depth discussion with a few bottles of his best rum. He wasn't sure he was over needing it yet. The other thoughts playing through his mind out there among the waves and the silence were of Nathan's still, dead form and just how close a call that had been. Everything they'd ever said to each other and other things they hadn't, and twenty-seven years of bad blood that, well, when it came down to it, just why? He was glad the death hadn't stuck. Nathan was alive, and that was awesome, incredible, and impossible. But in spite of his outward reassurances, he felt like he could explode at both of them right now, and wasn't sure what would come out when he did. Audrey could be snatched away from him soon. Nathan had come damned near to being stolen away from him by death. Duke should be seizing the time to be with them, not wasting that time feeling like this.

Nathan and Audrey... Back at the hospital together, they'd be working. Not touching each other, not grabbing hold of the time they had left with both hands and all the vigour they could, because it was Nathan, and Nathan was a repressed retard when it came to anything involving relationships, which meant that the whole thing was such a... such a waste.

Duke swore aloud and sprinted to catch up with Dwight. Right then, so Vince and Dave it was, the oh-so-helpful brothers. Like that was going to be a heap of fun, either. He kicked stray stones toward the backs of Dwight's ankles. "So. We're going to see Vince?" he prompted to assert his continued presence. "Should be a blast."

They found the Teagues enveloped in a cloud of hostility, with clear battle lines drawn between their work spaces, and stationary and files arranged like walls. Not so bruised and battle-scarred as they had been, but whatever was wrong between them lately was getting worse. Duke was more than happy to keep his distance from it. Dave glowered at them for wanting Vince, while Vince fumbled for glasses and a pencil.

The sketch came together slowly. Dwight's memories were clouded by his bout of unconsciousness, and honestly, Duke still could not tell if the kid was male or female. Dwight, however, seemed to get more positive as the image resolved. "A boy. It was a boy. Dressed up like one of those rock bands, but school age, I think. We should ask around the schools." In the picture, the kid had black lipstick and eyeliner, long light-coloured hair, and a little hoop in his nose.

"We can't ask around the schools," Duke pointed out. "Being the average citizens that we are."

"They know me," Dwight said, unperturbed.

Duke made a face. "Yeah, I have that problem, too." There were still a few teachers around from his schooldays, and the rest might have heard by reputation. Sometimes his kind of memorable charm could be a curse.

So they went from the offices of the Haven Herald to the schools, starting, happily, with the high school he hadn't attended, and even more happily very quickly getting a name.

"Liam Anderson," said the grey-haired, scary female janitor who was Dwight's contact in the school. The familiar tattoo peeping from under her sleeve didn't do anything to make her less scary in Duke's particular estimation. "Calls himself Liam Angel, though I don't know why - furthest thing from an angel I ever saw. Seems to think he's more like a vampire. Haven't seen him in a week, though. That one I had pegged as trouble from the day he started. That crowd don't show up half the time, when they do it's just to make a mess. Kids, hate the things. Waste of space, waste of state effort trying to educate 'em..." The rant went on for a while, but Duke tuned the rest of it out. He'd been struck by a revelation: he knew Dwight called himself a 'Cleaner', but now he had visions of a network of them, all just as freaking scary in their own ways, cleaning up the Troubles from within...

"Thanks, Clara," Dwight said, patting her on the slab of meat that purported to be her shoulder in a comradely fashion, as they parted company like old soldiers.

"Seventeen-year-old kid," Dwight muttered in disgust as they hung around the corridor outside the principal's office, waiting for Nathan to finish a phone call that would get them access to information from Liam Anderson's file. Adjacent to them was a secondary exit onto a staff parking lot and a little further down, a wider corridor sealed off by heavy double doors as a buffer against the teenaged rabble. Maybe it wasn't the school he'd attended, but all these places looked the same - the corridors he'd swear they all painted the same colour, closed doors of offices, noticeboards announcing the same old junk - and waiting there made Duke feel like he was guilty of something. Dwight had his arms crossed and his shoulders hunched, but as far as Duke could tell, was mostly pissed off by the mini-pint identity of the Troubled person who'd taken him down.

"Do you think he knows what he can do?"

"He robbed Marion's till, didn't he?"

"Yeah, but... seventeen. All seventeen-year-olds are dickheads. You see an opportunity like that, you go for it, you know?"

Dwight pulled a face.

Duke wondered how the guy would react if he knew how much that reminded him of Nathan, who would've given him that exact same face, and would have done it back when they were seventeen, too. He rolled his eyes. "...What I mean is, maybe he's more interested in being able to render people unconscious and doesn't know or care about the rest."

Dwight sighed. "Fine. Maybe. If he only found out today, the store robbery might not be premeditated."

"That's all I'm saying." Solidarity for delinquents, after all.

Duke looked up sharply as a furore of shuffling desks and raised voices sparked up beyond the double doors that led out of the quiet admin wing and into the main part of the school. Frowning, he checked the clock on the wall. Unless they'd changed things, it wasn't break time yet. Which meant something was- "Dwight." Duke broke from his guilty slouch, standing straighter as the thunder came nearer. "If I were that kid-"

"Shut up," Dwight said tersely.

"-and if I did know what I was doing, I know the first place I'd want to test out my new powers."

A flood of teenagers hit the doors and poured through, running and tripping over each other in a panic to reach the nearby exit to the parking lot. Among them, a few teachers shoved smaller students aside.

"I did not make that happen!" Duke protested, forced to shout over the sudden din, pressing back against the wall as the kids rolled past. He grabbed his phone and rang Audrey, hoping fervently that she would answer.

Dwight grabbed one of the running kids. "What's going on?"

His victim cringed from him. "I don't know! Everyone else is running!"

Duke eyerolled. Schools. Dwight let go and tried again.

"Everyone's going nuts! That dude - fucking Angel - he just walks in and looks at people and they fall over and go crazy! Let me go, man. Shania was - she had a knife!"

Duke pressed the phone harder to his ear. "Audrey!" Finally, an answer. "He's at the school! Haven West High. You need to be down here!" He couldn't hear her answer for the surrounding roar, but hoped she'd heard him.

Dwight yelled, "Tell the Chief to send back-up!"

Duke threw him a helpless shrug and relayed the message, hoping that since the line was connected it got through, because he couldn't hear a thing.

The school principal, Rawson, emerged from his office to investigate, only to be turned bodily around and propelled back inside by Dwight's guiding shove between his shoulders. "Tell Chief Wuornos to send everything he's got!"

Duke hung up and dodged between the flow of students to the big guy's side. "Don't you think we should be running?"

"You run."

Okay, that was... mildly hostile. "And what will you be doing, Sasquatch? Haven does not need a second shot of Evil You! There's like a dozen insane teenagers out there already!"

Dwight grunted. "It's a high school. There are more than that."

"You know what I meant! Also? You pick now to develop a sense of humour?" Duke made an entirely futile effort to grab at the much larger man's sleeve as he struck out against the tide, wading through the bodies. "Dwight, listen. You think me getting caught by this is a good idea? Me and my super-strong Trouble-killing Trouble? Because I do not and-"

Dwight stopped. A few kids bounced off him. "You should go."

"No, we should go. Let Audrey handle it. Nobody needs to deal with crazy either of us!"

Reluctantly, Dwight nodded. "Okay. We need to get you out of here."

Almost before he'd realised it was happening, the surge dwindled and the double doors swung fully shut, the students and teachers clearing. A heavy silence fell. Duke and Dwight stared at each other, then started for the exit, Dwight hauling unnecessarily on Duke's shoulder in his urgency. Behind them, metal clanked and one door swung open again, this time for just one figure - a short, black-clad teenager carrying a hand mirror. He had a long black coat like a cloak and swept through the door like he thought he was a freakin' vampire rock star. The coat even swirled as he stopped and posed.

Goddammit, Duke thought, and pressed back behind Dwight.

"I'm taking you in, you little shit," the big guy growled.

Duke wondered if there was any chance that not looking at the mirror would actually keep the Trouble from working. Averting his gaze as much as possible, he kept moving for the exit, hoping to get away from the kid while he was distracted by Dwight... who turned out to be a pretty good distraction, because when Liam Anderson flashed the mirror at the big guy, nothing happened.

Hah! Duke thought. Only works once. Eat that, brat.

Which meant that Dwight was the perfect person to deal with this and could happily be left to pound the panicked kid off the walls, no guilt necessary. Duke was almost to the door, just a few feet from being free and clear, but he could see it playing out in the corner of his eye almost before it happened; the swish of the coat as the kid turned around, the glint of light from the mirror. He shut his eyes and bolted that last, short distance. He had his hand on the door and just enough time to realise that it wasn't going to work as a sensation like pain sheared down his back, and the world behind his closed eyes split and swayed and then went black.


The school was a mess. Every cop in Haven was rounding up crazy teenagers. Every EMT in Haven was picking up the same, unconscious teenagers. Audrey just hoped the twain could be kept from meeting. Bill and Stan had called to tell her they'd hauled one kid out of his house just shy of finding daddy's gun with intent to go postal. Frankly, it would have really helped to have Tommy Bowen around, who had been better at the regular day-to-day shit of controlling maniacs. If only Tommy hadn't been missing-maybe-dead and evil.

"This is a disaster. Who has more buried issues and barely contained violence than teenagers?" Audrey complained as she put her phone away, storming down the corridor, back from another confrontation with a delinquent they'd finally hauled out of the classroom where this mess had all started. He'd stabbed his teacher two dozen times with the sharp point of a compass. "Just how many kids have thought about shooting up their class, anyway? I was - Audrey Parker was never this dysfunctional in school, I swear."

Dwight grunted and sketched a nasty grin, or at least an expression that showed white teeth. "Least they're easier to sit on once you get hold of them." He was nursing a scratched-up face and still moving with obvious pain. "Crocker..." He seethed Duke's name like a swear word.

They stopped where Duke was still lying on the floor, tucked in over by the wall with Audrey's jacket rolled up under his head, and she bobbed down to check on him again. There'd been no change since they left - he was out cold, but like Marion and Dwight, like the unconscious kids, had no mark on him. There weren't enough EMTs in Haven to handle all the casualties, but Audrey would have been more worried if they hadn't had Dwight and Marion's demonstration that that part of the problem would resolve itself. In the meantime, help had been called from neighbouring districts. Claire was working with the copies they'd rounded up so far, but reasoning with them didn't seem to have much effect. The duplicate kids had hair trigger tempers and were prone to violence.

It had already been frustratingly established that neither reflecting the doubles in a mirror nor dropping their blood on one dispelled them, and Nathan had even guiltily, carefully used a mirror shard to break a tiny slice of skin on the arm of one unconscious, subdued brat in case it was that which made the difference, but to no avail.

"Must need to be the mirror that created them," Nathan had muttered, and on confirmation that Liam Anderson was carrying that with him, had gone off to liaise with the principal about contacting home and family to track the kid down.

"So. Nathan and Duke," Audrey offered, as she stood up, then checked her feet because Dwight's height always made her feel like she hadn't finished standing up yet. "You aren't having a good day."

"The copy knows what Duke knows," Dwight said darkly. "Had Duke's Trouble, drew blood first." He directed what was surely an unfair glare toward the unconscious original.

"Yeah. Who knew Duke could cat-scratch like a girl?" The quip fell flat. The double being afflicted was worrying. Duke's Trouble might do a lot of damage in the wrong hands, and the Guard were going to freak out. Since Audrey particularly didn't want to draw their attention to Duke, in the light of past ominous-predictions-of-death, she would rather this was solved quickly and quietly before the Guard could ever find out. She was beginning to get concerned about how long Nathan had been gone, and hoped his eagerness to strike off alone hadn't been so he could phone a quiet heads-up to Jordan. Audrey wanted to trust him, but he was working from his own agenda these days. That, she acknowledged, was in part her own fault. Pushing him away, not trusting him, had caused them both to discover that he didn't need her approval to keep fighting for her; not for what he did, nor the methods he chose to do it.

Hell, Nathan was right. The Troubled deserved to know and be ready to protect themselves. But if she could protect them first...

"Weirdest thing I've seen for a while," Dwight commented, unprompted, which was a good indication he was disturbed. "Like the new Duke bubbled up out of the original... Got these bulges over one side of his body, next instant there was a perfect replica standing there. Happened quick. Not surprising we're getting so many confused reports from the witnesses."

"Especially from witnesses still in denial that the Troubles exist." Audrey frowned up at Dwight. The replica Duke hadn't harmed him, and that could be a good sign. But then his sense of self-preservation might have suggested that this was a fight better ducked out from than pursued to its end. Duke, unlike Nathan, actually having a sense of self-preservation. She sighed. An evil Duke was out there, with Duke's Trouble, and Nathan was already paranoid about the Crocker legacy.

"You and me, Dwight," she said, squeezing a muscular arm. "We're both immune, so we're going to find that kid between us. I'll tell Nathan he'll have to hold the fort here. Can you get Duke out to your truck? If he wakes up in time, we can use his help, too."

Dwight's grunt wasn't exactly agreement or disagreement. He did, however, lean down and wordlessly haul Duke up over one of his shoulders.

Audrey winced.

Dwight read her face. "He'll be fine." He shifted the dead weight with uncharitable force. "I was." She watched as he marched through the propped-open double doors and turned right to take Duke out into the parking lot. Audrey did not feel terribly reassured.

"All right, Nathan..." she huffed aloud. She bent down and picked up her jacket, then headed through the double doors as well, checking the signs for the school principal's office.

As she raised her hand to knock on the door, a voice from within made her freeze. "You're the one that lost him, you little toad! Thought this was your big superpower." Duke. That was Duke... Oh, crap.

"Cops! You're crazy, man," a younger voice replied. "That was the Chief cop!"

"Will you stop harping on about that? Nathan's not chief of anything. His dad was the Chief, and you - you said you'd get him for me!"

"I don't control them!" Liam shouted back. "You're the first one that ever agreed to stick around!"

"Because you said you'd help me. I'm an agreeable kind of guy. You do me a favour, I'll do you one. But you lost my guy!"

"I didn't lose him! He wasn't even fuckin' interested in you, dude. Just smirked and ran off-" The harsh sound of a blow cut off Liam's protest. There was a pause, and then a strange noise that might have had its origin on Duke's lips.

"Damn, what a rush! I really need to do that more often. And you, you need to shut the fuck up, kid. Don't mouth off about things you don't understand. Nathan's mine."

"...What about that one?" Liam asked, indistinctly.

"That one's boring, he never agrees to anything. I want the fun version. Like I'm the fun version, see? Where's the point in being the fun version alone? Too bad we really can't do Audrey, get the trifecta. Because that? That would be perfect."

Audrey moved quietly away from the door, keeping her gun low and ready while she looked for a recess she could duck into. She slipped around a corner where an upright, free-standing noticeboard stood next to a trophy cabinet and quietly called up Dwight, who was now apparently her only backup.

A hand molded itself over her mouth and an arm circled her waist and hauled her backwards. She dropped her phone to grapple, but was reluctant to give up on her gun, even though it was pressed uselessly to her side. She struggled, bucking and kicking, until Nathan's voice whispered in her ear, "It's me," and she automatically stopped.

Not Nathan, the reasoning part of her brain screamed, and she started struggling again. A stamp on his foot achieved nothing... the copies had the Troubles of the original. He pulled her closer until she could feel him pressing against the full length of her body. Too close in for any of the defensive manoeuvres she'd been taught, and close enough for his greater strength and size to neutralize hers.

He held her, without doing anything, letting her wear herself out. His own breath kept catching, and his face was leaned forward over her shoulder, his cheek against hers, his sleeves rolled up so their bare arms touched... She could see the tattoo, with its recent damage. If he had Nathan's Trouble, it was clear enough he was enjoying this, and that was all kinds of creepy.

"Wow..." he murmured in her ear. "I never realised. When I hold you like this long enough, I can feel your body heat start to seep through our clothes." He took his hand off her mouth. She debated yelling, but the only people that she knew were close enough to come running, fast, were Bad!Duke and Liam.

"What do you want?" she asked.

"That's a loaded question." Oh God, those were his lips trailing down the rim of her ear to her neck, nuzzling into her throat. She'd thought she'd have a problem with shooting the copy, after seeing Nathan shot to death only days ago. As her stomach knotted with revulsion the further he took advantage, she decided she could shoot him just fine.

She really tried, contorting her wrist, trying to twist the gun around to at least nail him in the foot, but he looked down, hearing the soft crunch from her wrist joint as she abused it. He twisted the weapon out of her hand and chucked it negligently across the floor.

"Come on, Parker," he said. "I figure there must be a few things we've both wanted to do for a while." He turned her around and shoved her back against the wall. He was too fast and she too tired and breathless to make use of the momentary shift in his grip on her. He pressed his body against her from the front, letting his weight hold her there. She felt the heat of his groin against hers. Their hands pushed and grappled, but if anything he seemed to allow her blows, move into them needily as if he sought out all and any touch. The inescapability of the situation started to build into an unaccustomed panic Audrey had to struggle to control. The noticeboard and trophy cabinet mostly obscured them from the view of the corridor, if anyone had been around anyway, to help or to care.

"What about Jordan?" she asked, finding it hard to catch her breath. The size and strength differential between them had never been an issue before. She'd never much thought about it.

"Can't feel Jordan." One of his hands slid up under her shirt, then down past the waistband of her jeans. She tried, again, to push him off, but he pinned her wrist across her body to her opposite elbow, neatly restraining the movement of both arms. His face plunged in close and she gasped, unintentionally making it easy for him to seize her mouth with his. Trying to pull away from the kiss - she'd kissed Nathan before, sweet and too-brief and with intent to take up where they left off sometime, but not like this! - she felt his hand slide down into her underwear and his fingers drift over her sex. He made an appreciative noise and pulled back his lips to say hoarsely. "I remember what moisture feels like, Audrey."

"Nathan, don't do this!" she hissed. "I don't want to. Not here, like... Mmf." He was ready to catch her cry in his lips as one of his fingers entered her, swiftly joined by another, and a few deft thrusts had her writhing, crushed between him and the wall.

Her half-free hand beat, shoved, scratched and nipped at him, but he wasn't even aware of most of it. She felt the ripple whenever her skin made direct contact with his, as he enjoyed her touch even when her intent was to cause pain. She panted into his shoulder as his mouth worked down to her throat, while his hand slid partway out to add another long, slim finger. Humiliatingly, she bucked onto him as the base of his thumb pushed hard into a sweet spot. "Nathan-"

"I know. You're ready-" He loosened his grip to fumble at his zipper, pushing harder against her to keep her pinned while her hands were free.

"No," she whispered, her voice strained and tiny.

His fingers slid out of her to tug at her waistband, and as his unfastening zipper sang sharply, her hand fell on the gun at his belt.

"You bastard," spat Duke Crocker from the edge of the alcove.

His dive ripped Nathan away from her but left the gun in her hand. She got off a shot at both of them. In retrospect, not a great plan. Blood flew from Nathan's arm, and Duke's eyes flashed silver as he gave a triumphal roar. Audrey's legs refused to support her any longer and she slid down the wall, her body throbbing. She squeezed her knees together, a sob hitching in her chest, and tried to keep the gun close to level.

"I came back for you, and what do you do? You go straight for her? Not cool, Nate. Not cool." The heavy smack of flesh punctuating Duke's words made her wince. She didn't know just how hard those punches were with his enhanced strength behind them, but they slammed Nathan around like a rag doll. Silver eyes faded back to brown, though, and their grappling became more evenly matched. There was something weird about Duke's focus, his hands diving in for bare flesh, for Nathan's face, his lips, even a quick grope to the groin. Nathan executed a head-butt so violent he split the skin of his own forehead and activated Duke's Trouble again. Duke pinned him down easily and shoved a hand into his open fly. "You were supposed to be mine! If you're feeling frisky, I can fix that, damn it." Nathan's face twisted in helpless anger but physical indifference as Duke had his way for all of ten seconds. When the strength-boost ran out, Nathan somehow flipped them and broke free, slamming a knee into Duke's stomach as he rose. He shrugged his jacket off his shoulders, turned it inside-out over his hands, and hauled Duke up with both hands around his neck, letting the jacket provide a buffer against the threat of his own blood.

For a moment, Audrey honestly thought he was going to kill him. Instead, Nathan jerked back and kicked Duke into the trophy cabinet, showering glass everywhere. Audrey shielded her face, catching a few splinters in her arms.

"That work when you bleed your own blood?" Nathan gritted out.

Duke was doing a reasonable amount of that now. He rolled and swore unhappily, nowhere to place his limbs that wasn't awash with sharp edges, shedding broken spars of wood and shattered glass in a tinkling cascade. He shook his head, thrashing bright chips from his hair that caught the light and added their own music when they hit the floor. His shapeless knitted jersey had protected him from the worst, but a few pieces had skewered the thick wool, and glittering shards caught in the weave. He yanked his sleeves down over his hands so he could plant them for leverage.

"You ass," Duke growled, surging to his knees, one hand scrabbling among the debris. "You and me, Nathan! You and me!" He gestured, arms waving emphatically between them. "We were supposed to work together!"

"Which has ever happened when?" Nathan was swaying on his feet and breathing hard, with his clothes yanked back into place and fastened again. He spat blood from a split lip, but made sure to spit it behind him.

"All right!" Audrey stood up, Nathan's gun shaking more than she was happy about in her hands. "Put the testosterone away and stand down. Nathan, do you think I won't fucking shoot you right now? No means no. Learn it! Stop walking!" Evidently he believed her threat, because he stopped trying to close the gap between them and backed off more carefully. "Duke! Put down the cup." The trophy he'd hefted as a weapon was huge and bronze and made a clang when it hit the floor that caused her to flinch in spite of herself. Nathan used the opportunity to duck behind the noticeboard and flee. Audrey got a wild shot off, puncturing a flyer about a school pick-up-litter campaign. She swore and turned the weapon on Duke.

"You won't shoot me," he said, hands raised but moving closer, his most piratical smile on his face.

"I shot him," she countered, which gave him pause.

"Yeah. Nathan. I can make him pay for that, you know."

"No, you're going to stay here and be a good boy." She fished out her cuffs and threw them to him. "Put those on. If you want a choice, I swear, I have no problem shooting you right now. You're not the real Duke."

"No, I'm the fun Duke."

"Heard it. Cuffs!" She knew better than to relax as he slipped them over one wrist and moved to fix the other.

"Hey, lady? Want to check your face? You have a little something-"

She did hesitate when faced with Liam Anderson. What was he, after all, other than a beat-up seventeen-year-old kid flashing a hand mirror? One that couldn't hurt her, for all his mischief already. All she saw in the mirror was her own reflection, lips red and swollen from Nathan's forced kisses and a smear of blood from flying glass across one cheek.

"-Give it up, kid, it won't work."

She was still dazed from Nathan's antics: must be, because before she knew it, Bad!Duke had gotten past her and behind the kid, handcuffs swinging loosely from one wrist. He held Liam like a human shield and backed the two of them out into the hallway. At the corner, Duke gave her a feral grin as he patted the kid on his bloody chin. His eyes flashed silver and he took off at his crazy mutant speed, hauling Liam with him.

Shit! She hadn't even got a shot off! Audrey rounded the corridor, angry and with renewed purpose, but saw only a couple of confused EMTs picking themselves up. Duke and the kid were out of sight. She chased into the parking lot, but they were gone, and in the ongoing confusion, no one could even tell her if they'd seen them, much less whether they'd left on foot or taken a car.

Audrey couldn't see Dwight's van in the immediate vicinity, so she returned to the hallway, retrieved her own gun and phone and tried to call Dwight again as she ventured to investigate the principal's office. She hoped the big Cleaner hadn't run afoul of any more duplicates. It hadn't been much more than ten minutes...

"Sleeping Beauty is all settled in-" Dwight said, answering almost at once.

"Dwight." Nathan and the principal were unconscious on the floor of the office. By the look of him, the latter might have been downed only by a solid punch. "Things just got worse. There's an asshole copy of Nathan running around and Bad!Duke is helping the kid." Audrey eyed Nathan and shivered. She tried to be firm with herself and separate him from the actions of the copy in her mind, but the sense of violation crushed out her breath.

No... It wasn't him. She consciously calmed her breathing while Dwight's response floated past her unheard. Nathan would barely smile in public, much less... It wasn't him. She needed to keep her faith in her partner.

Besides which, she couldn't deal with that right now. Nathan was out of action; she needed to take charge of this. And she was going to need both Nathan and Duke's help to handle their alternates.

"Dwight?" she said, regrouping. "I need you up here in the principal's office to carry out another load."