AN: Yes, I'm finally back to the Haven fandom. I've been rewatching from the beginning, and it made me think about how that must've felt for Garland to see Audrey for the first time. I'm tempted to write the whole first series as Garland, but we'll see if I get that far. I've still got a half dozen other projects I'm working on for Haven.

Unbeta'd because I don't have a Haven beta anymore.

The Wheel in the Sky

Police chief Garland Wuornos slammed the phone back down into the cradle, growling between his clenched teeth. Fucking bureaucrats. The last thing he needed was some high-horsed fed coming in and trying to run his show. Especially right now. This was clearly the wrong time to have given up smoking again.

Jerking open the left-hand drawer in his desk, he reached back behind the handful of pens that were currently rocking with leftover momentum and dug out the battered package he kept hidden there for situations just like this. He pushed away from his desk and headed out of his office, closing the door behind him with more force than necessary. As he strolled passed the building's only other real office, he didn't fail to notice a pair of judgemental blue eyes following his progress but he habitually ignored it. He'd hear about it later, no doubt, but right now, he needed a smoke before he had to deal with any more drama.

It was comfortably cool outside when Garland slipped around the side of the building and he took in a grateful breath of the spring air. They needed to get a better circulation in the station, that stale air was stifling. Garland tucked a cigarette between his lips and found a lighter in the inner pocket of his jacket. As soon as the flame had caught he took a deep drag, holding the smoke in his lungs as long as he could before letting it out heavily. As the nicotine swept into his veins he relaxed and leaned back against a tree, casually watching the steady flow of foot traffic on the pavement.

God had he needed this. He blew out another stream and closed his eyes, trying to keep his blood pressure down in a more stable range. Wouldn't do to go getting himself too worked up again. Not now that that long dormant ache and pull in his chest had resurfaced after all this time. The day after another near shouting match with his obstinate son, he'd heard Nathan complaining about finding a crack in his bedroom wall. Lord only knew what damage he could do if he let himself dwell on the inevitable problems that would come with the damn feds combing through his town.

If those trigger happy suit monkeys somehow stumbled across the Troubles...

Garland shook his head and took another drag. No, he'd make sure that didn't happen. They'd show up, see that their fugitive wasn't here, and then get the hell out of here before they had a chance to see anything they shouldn't. The Troubles were Haven's problem, and they didn't need any political scientists prodding people and stirring up everyone's emotions. The whole town would implode.

By the time the cigarette had burned all the way to the filter he was feeling less jittery, and he flicked the butt into the grass before heading back into the station. The officers needed to be told about the impending visitor, and someone would need to handle the suit when they got here, but he didn't want to be the one to do it. What was the point of being Chief if he couldn't delegate a bit? He stopped at the door marked 'Detectives' and leaned on the jamb.

"Got a fed coming in tomorrow," he announced without preamble.

Nathan glanced up from his paperwork. "For Lester?" he asked. Garland grunted in agreement. "Right." He flicked his gaze back to his papers and filled out a line. Garland had just turned to leave when Nathan said, "Thought you quit."

"I have," Garland replied simply. The look Nathan shot him was frustrated, but the Chief wasn't sticking around to hear the same lecture again. To hell with all the goddamn warnings; lung cancer was the least of his concerns right now. He spun on his heel and left his son to finish his paperwork, locking himself away in his office to prepare for the next day.

It wasn't like Lester would be stupid enough to come back to Haven, but he needed to at least give the faintest impression that he was cooperating with the feds or they'd stick around longer just to rub him. He pulled up the file the FBI director had sent him alongside the old files in his cabinet and started browsing the highlights.

He had just barely poured his first cup of coffee when his phone rang, and Garland answered it wearily. "Chief Wuornos," he grumbled, wedging the mobile between his ear and shoulder.

"Got a body down on the beach at Tuwiuwok," Nathan said simply. "It's Jonas Lester."

"Fuck," Garland hissed into his coffee mug. "Feds are gonna have a heyday." He took a deep swallow from his coffee and then groaned. "On my way." Nathan's only response was to grunt and then the line went dead. Garland snapped his phone shut and tucked it into his belt.

Downing the last of his coffee, Garland grabbed his jacket and headed out to his cruiser. It was bad enough that Lester had gone and shown his face in town at all, but then to go and die on his beach... This wasn't going to end well. There was no way it could end well.

Nathan had already arranged the patrolmen into a perimetre by the time Garland pulled up onto the beach road. He crossed the damp sand with his hands in his pockets, his eyes drifting passed the evidence markers to the crumpled body. After a few feet Nathan seemed to notice him and he jerked his head slightly in what typically passed for a greeting between them. Garland stopped and frowned down at the body of Jonas Lester.

"Julia's been by already," Nathan said. "More 'n' a dozen broken bones."

"Someone gave 'im a good beating for what he did," Garland said unconcernedly.

"No bruising," Nathan countered.

"So he fell then." Garland glanced up at cliffs towering above them. That was a fall and a half. If Lester was lucky, his heart had given out before he'd hit the ground. Privately, Garland hoped otherwise. "Guilt finally got him and he took a dive. Simple enough."

"This far?" Nathan asked, calculating the distance from the cliffs with his eyes. His tone was almost daring; he was getting pleasure from knocking aside his theories. The damn boy had always been stubborn as hell, but it had only gotten worse since his Trouble had come back a few years back. Not that Nathan would ever admit that it was a Trouble. No, he'd gone back to that disease the doctors had given him the last time, like neurological diseases just turned on and off like that. He was too close-minded. Too rational for a life in Haven.

"So he jumped really far," the Chief said. He was itching for a cigarette, and he reached into his pocket. Nathan shot him a slightly patronising look, and Garland changed tracks midway. Raising an eyebrow significantly, he pulled out the package of nicotine gum and popped one in his mouth. There was a glint of both annoyance and triumph in Nathan's eyes as he glanced back down at the body.

"I'm gonna head to the station, get started," Nathan said, jamming his hands down into his pockets. He didn't wait for affirmation before he turned and headed back for his ancient truck.

Garland knelt down and surveyed the man's face, twisted at a slightly unnatural angle. It was a good thing he was already dead, or Garland would've socked the bastard in the face. Thanks to him, he would have to deal with a nosy fed poking into things and causing trouble. It was clear enough to him that Lester had been propelled off the cliff, although by what - or more likely, who - he couldn't say. Nor did he particularly care at the moment.

If he was lucky, the fed would accept that it was just a nasty fall and they'd leave it. No city agent would be too thrilled about being sent to a little town like this in the first place, that might be incentive enough for them to go back to the Bureau quickly as possible. But he was never lucky, and the situation was just suspicious enough to prompt a bit of searching.

And if they started questioning the wrong people, boiling up the underlying traumas that triggered these people, then things could get dangerous. Hell, what if the dumbass agent got themselves killed, then he'd really have a whole heap of trouble on his hands. All sorts of federal agents scouring his town and frightening people. Afflictions cropping up everywhere and making it all worse. God, they were on their way already, the fed was supposed to arrive sometime that morning. He needed to deal with this first fed as fast as possible; turn them around and send them right back out the way they came.

Garland grunted, feeling the now familiar crushing pain blossoming inside of his chest. Damn it all. He walked away from the crime-scene and wrapped his arms tightly across his chest, struggling to hold himself together. Inside he felt himself shifting and breaking, the seismic power fighting to explode out of him. Sharp pain swelled in his head and he focused on breathing slowly and deeply, even though he knew it was already too late. He had to have damaged something by now, but he needed to get it under control before someone got hurt. He couldn't live with the guilt of his Trouble having injured someone else, not after last time.

It took nearly fifteen minutes until the ache in his chest had faded away, leaving him a bit tender but stable. He snarled and spat the nicotine gum, which now tasted strongly of dust, a side-effect of his Affliction, out onto the sand. Unfortunately the headache seemed like it was there to stay. He rummaged through his pockets until he found the migraine medicine he'd been prescribed and he downed one dry.

Tucking the bottle back into his pocket, he shuffled off toward the technicians who were examining the scene. It was going to be a long day...

It couldn't have been more than twenty minutes later when the familiar rumble of the big blue Bronco came around the bend and pulled up to the beachside. The Chief frowned; what happened to going to the station and starting on the papers? When he saw another figure jump down out of the passenger side he felt his frown slip further down. Little girl in a fancy pressed suit like that, it could only be the fed. Must've wrangled Nathan into giving her a lift to the site, wanting to find her fugitive as soon as possible.

Garland gritted his teeth and rubbed the heel of his hand against his sternum. Perhaps it would be best to let Nathan deal with the fed as long as possible. His stress levels were already high enough. He looked up, meaning to signal to Nathan to leave him out of it. And then he saw her.

After all this time, he had known this moment would be coming. The timing was right. The Troubles were back, and inevitably that had to mean that she would be too. But that didn't prepare him for the moment that he saw Lucy Ripley striding across the sand.

She wasn't Lucy, obviously. He could tell that much even from this distance. Most notably, she was a blonde instead of a brunette. The eyes though, and the way she carried herself - God he wasn't ready for the crippling wave of nostalgia that rolled over him. How many times had he seen that look in her eye; the lifted chin and purposeful stride? It had been twenty-seven long years, but his best friend was back in Haven again.

Garland turned his back on them, breathing heavily out of his nose to calm his heart rate. It wasn't her. It was her, but it wasn't. He needed to compartmentalise so he could continue to do his job. By the time Nathan stopped next to him, he had managed to school himself back under control. "Fed's here," Nathan announced and gestured with his head back at the crime scene.

"I see that," Garland said.

"And there's a crack out in the highway, gotta get Bernie out there," the younger man added. "Had to save her from going over."

Garland grimaced, knowing that it had been his fault. His frustration with the incoming fed had targeted her, or at the very least tried to stop the newcomer from arriving in Haven. The fact that he'd nearly killed Lucy Ripley - or whoever she was now - sent a pang of guilt through him that he carefully covered. by turning around and heading for the crime scene.

Not-Lucy was crouched beside the corpse, scowling as she examined the man's gray face. "Well keep looking all you want," Garland offered, "but this man's pretty dead. Tends not to change much." The patronising look she shot up at him was so familiar, so reminiscent, that his chest seized. How many times had Lucy flashed him that same look?

"Chief Wuornos," Nathan introduced him, "this is..."

"Special Agent Audrey Parker," she said, standing up and approaching him. So that was her new name... Of course the Fed he was dreading would be her. At least that solved his problem with the Fed reporting them to the bureau and unleashing the scientists on them.

Garland sized her up with his eyes, sucking at the inside of his cheek. "Oh, it's the FBI. Now is this one of those situations where you're here claiming to help, but you're really just here to step on my toes?"

"Not in these shoes," Audrey replied, the corner of her lips quirking up. Goddamn, the same old sass too. "I came here actually looking for him."

"Yeah. Yeah we got the alert here when Jonas here escaped," Garland said off-handedly. The warning had come through just before the bureau had called and informed him that they were sending an agent down to oversee the search personally. Not that he'd ever expected Lester to actually show up in Haven.

"The Bureau thought that he might return to his hometown. I guess he did." Audrey Parker knelt down beside the body again, narrowing her eyes and surveying him shrewdly. "Ah, somebody missed something," she interjected, drawing a pair of tweezers from her pocket and pulling a scrap of paper from inside the edge of Lester's coat. "There's writing on it. Can't read whatever this is, but it's worth checkin' out."

She dropped it into the evidence bag that Nathan held out to her. "I'll get it to the lab in Bangor," Nathan offered.

"So why don't you enlighten us," Garland said, digging for his nicotine gum. At this rate, he was going to start going through a package a day, and her re-appearance made him think that might actually get worse. "What does the FBI special agent have in the way of insight?"

"Well, his injuries don't suggest a struggle; I don't think he was dragged here..." Parker said, surveying the beach.

"You don't," Garland said. It wasn't a question, because he wasn't surprised in the least.

"He died last night, but your guys are gonna have to give us the exact time. At first glance it looks like he fell from up there," she nodded toward Tuwiuwok Bluff, "but his body is way too far from the know, unless there's a cannon up there or something. Anyway, I'm not sold on it being an accident."

"You're over-thinking this," Garland rebutted. Damn she's good, he thought. All of Lucy's sharp instincts with all the training of a fed. She was going to handle the mysteries in Haven so well. "Best thing Jonas Lester ever did for this town was die. So as far as I'm concerned, we're done."

The look Audrey Parker gave him was firm and unrelenting. "He killed a federal employee, so my investigation isn't done until I know why he came back here and what happened to him."

Garland rolled his eyes. As grateful as he was to see her again, even if she had no memory of him, he still had to pretend to hate the fed. Also he was sure that this Audrey Parker would go on to annoy the hell out of him in the same way that Lucy had. "Nathan, get yourself a real crime to investigate here, eh?" he said, making to head off.

"Chief, how 'bout I, uh - " Garland paused and glanced back, intrigued by the sudden interest in his son's voice, "show Agent Parker around while we tie up the loose ends."

"Go ahead, waste his time too," the Chief replied, "He's got nothing else to do with it." And if he was lucky, some of that sleuthing might rub off on Nathan. Prepare him for what was coming. Because now that she was back, it was sure as hell coming right on her heels.

It always did, and it would always continue to for the rest of time.