Letting Go

Setting: Season 1, after episode 12 Resurfacing

Nathan Wuornos knew that the hardest thing about not only growing up in a town like Haven, but sticking around and making it your home, was having to face the shadows of your past, in the form of people, and places, which sometimes held less than wonderful memories.

For some people childhood is a source of nostalgia and sweet reminiscences but for others childhood is a bombsite full of the discarded and broken remnants of a past life that you can't quite escape.

It wasn't like Nathan didn't have any found memories of growing up in Haven, he loved Little League, going crabbing, even fishing with the Chief was alright if you ignored the awkwardness and the lack of anything resembling small talk. But growing up in Haven had also been full of the pain of rejection and not quite fitting in. Even when the troubles went away Nathan knew that his peers and many of their parents, never quite forgot that the Chief's son was different. That he wasn't quite "a real boy" as Duke put it.

College had been a bit of an escape at first, but Nathan was a man with a sense of home and duty, and he was haunted by the knowledge that the troubles would eventually return, so while he'd had his share of fun he'd never quite felt at home at frat parties surrounded by people who were innocent of the greater powers at work in the world. Nathan had been marked by his troubles and he would never feel like he was really one of them just as Audrey had felt different growing up in orphanages.

Since Audrey Parker had come to town one particularly painful reminder of his childhood kept resurfacing: Duke Crocker. The friend who had become the bully. That was what had hurt Nathan the most, Duke and he had been the same age, they'd played ball together, gone crabbing together. But their fathers hadn't seen eye to eye and Duke hated that Nathan sensed the truth about Duke's home life. Their emotionally distant fathers and deceased mothers could have been the commonalities that drew them together; instead Duke had gone out of his way to show the other kids that he was the class clown, the fun one, the cool kid, while Nathan was the too-serious troubled dork. A goody two shoes and a freak.

Nathan's childhood had been painfully lonely because of Duke and those other boys, except for a few moments of contact like that night with Heather, the Rev's daughter, but even that ended too soon. Nathan had spent years learning that it was better not to reach out to other people because you'd just get rejected.

When Duke had come back to Haven and he'd reached out to Nathan, asking him to go finishing, Nathan had thought that maybe they were going to put the past behind them, that maybe as an adult Duke would be the friend he had wanted and badly needed. But Duke had let him down, Duke had used him. Duke hadn't grown up at all. Duke was still the cool kid with a dangerous streak and Nathan almost could have forgiven him for that except that Duke had crossed the line and used Nathan as an alibi, without even asking, shattering Nathan's trust all over again.

But then Audrey Parker arrived and as much as he tried to warn her, Audrey kept trusting Duke, kept bringing him back into their lives. Nathan saw the way Duke looked at Audrey and felt not only guilty but apprehension and worst of all futility. In those early days after Audrey's arrival Nathan didn't think he stood a chance with Audrey because he was sure that she, like every one girl before her, would prefer Duke over Nathan, whether it was good for her or not. The worst thing was that part of him agreed with her, knowing that Duke wasn't one of the afflicted.

With so much water under the bridge it was no small thing to find himself sitting on Duke's deck drinking a beer. Nathan had put himself in Duke's hands again, despite his better judgement. He had even handed over his gun and his badge – the two tangible things that defined Nathan, and gave him faith in his identity as one of the good guys, a protector of the people. Amazingly, Duke had come through. Sure it had been entirely self-serving for Duke, but somehow Nathan had half-expected to be double crossed.

If Audrey hadn't come back into their lives Nathan doubted he would have even gone along with the plan, but slowly Duke had taken small steps back towards being less his enemy and more his friend.

Nathan knew that Duke's business operations still weren't all strictly legit, but it made him happy to see his childhood friend running The Grey Gull, and it gave him home that Duke was growing up and might finally be the friend he had hoped for. For now it was enough that Nathan and Duke were sharing a beer, and Nathan was finally, slowly, letting go of his bitterness of their past.