TITLE: Pinocchio is Bleeding
AUTHOR: roseveare
RATING: NC17
LENGTH: 28,500 words
SUMMARY: Duke and Nathan wake up to discover their bodies battered and their memories missing three days - and events no-one will disclose that left a death toll in double-figures.
NOTES #1: Season 1 after 'The Hand You're Dealt'.
THANKS: To Miah_Arthur for beta-reading.
WARNINGS: Body horror.
DISCLAIMER: Not mine, no profit, yadda, yadda, yadda.

Pinocchio is Bleeding

Duke woke up feeling like his head was full of fluff. It even felt like there were fibres on his tongue. His mouth was dry and his throat cracked when he tried to swallow, rasping and rattling like there was sand in there, too. He tried to spit, tried again to swallow, mostly just hacked nastily, and wondered what the hell he'd been doing last night?

He managed to crank his eyes open. Light flooded in, making him moan and clutch his head and wish he hadn't bothered. But at the same moment, he was strangely comforted to hear a low groan close by that at least told him he wasn't alone. Though perhaps it was cause to worry if he could recognise Nathan Wuornos from so little, in this state.

Talk about having it bad.

"Duke?" Nathan's voice grunted.

"Working up to it," Duke croaked.

Nathan made a satisfied affirmative noise and left it at that. Did that mean he was equally reassured by the presence of Duke's company? Because if so, things were worse than Duke had imagined. Potentially apocalyptic.

Something was lying against his legs. He kicked at it a bit, and when he registered that it was warm, had the approximate consistency of flesh, and didn't react, figured he'd found Nathan. He managed to point his slit eyes in that direction and filter out some of the brightness, and confirmed that, yes, it was Nathan, and they were both lying side by side along opposite ends of a large, deep couch. His feet were about level with Nathan's stomach and vice-versa, and his shoulders were propped against the couch's padded arm. Purple leather. A few thoughts about taste crimes floated through Duke's brain, but floated straight out again. He lacked the energy.

He watched Nathan lever up, squinting and holding a hand to his temple as though keeping his eyeballs in was presenting him difficulty. Nathan couldn't be in pain, but if he was experiencing the same level of wacky in his body's signals that Duke was getting, it was reasonable to assume he wouldn't be processing this normally either. However he processed.

Nathan lay against the inside of the couch, so for him sitting up involved half climbing over Duke, who kicked at him again and squirmed and groaned. Nathan hissed in displeasure and smacked Duke's feet away. Hunched upright on the edge of the couch over his bent knees, he grated, "What the hell happened?" His face was blank and unusually open.

"I don't know." Duke was disappointed in himself that he couldn't offer more, when Nathan was looking to him and looking like he needed help. The last ten years since returning to town had taught Duke to keep a lid on thoughts like that, but his brain wasn't under his usual degree of control.

"Isn't this Montague Kale's house?" Nathan said. He tottered to his feet. His tall, thin frame gave its best impression of being buffeted by strong winds, leaning and swaying like he'd forgotten the use of all his limbs.

Duke didn't intend to do much moving - let Nathan do that, he didn't hurt - but he could feel a stiffness and lack of co-operation in his own body that didn't resemble the stiffness of injury or over-exercise. He shuffled on the couch, scrubbing at his eyes and making the minimum movement he could get away with. "Jesus. I hate you for not feeling this."

Nathan looked back at him and sort of twitched, but Duke wasn't bright enough to interpret anything from that right now. "Must've been hit by a Trouble." Nathan continued to waver on the tiled floor and stare around stupidly. He pressed the heel of his hand to the bridge of his nose, collected himself, then scanned his eyes over Duke, and down at his own body. "You look all right. I seem all right. This is," he paused and struggled, "that big conservatory up at the Kale place. I've been here for a couple of parties. I sort of remember being here... earlier." He stopped.

Duke realised he knew where that hesitation was coming from. He wasn't wholly sure what day it was. There was a hazy sense of his body clock having been screwed with, and now just being confused.

He got up as far as an elbow and managed to take a more comprehensive look around. The big couch was one of four. There was a grand piano in the corner. All the light that was giving him such a hard time was flooding in from over 180 degrees of giant windows and a glass roof. There were leafy, vaguely-tropical plants dotted around. Duke had never been in the sort of social circles that went to the parties at Kale's semi-mansion, but since he'd acquired the restaurant he'd catered for a few, so he'd been here a few times making deliveries.

He didn't remember coming here, last thing, but couldn't remember where else he'd been if not here. He bounced that one back to Nathan.

"There was a case," Nathan said positively, almost vibrating with a nervous energy that was starting to edge towards annoyance.

"There's always a case, Nate," Duke protested. He inched his way up the couch, pulling his legs up and folding himself over his knees, clinging to the cushions, and released a long, painful moan because nothing wanted to move at all. "If this is a hangover, I'm never drinking again."

"This isn't alcohol," Nathan snapped.

"Then get me something to drink," Duke entreated.

Nathan rolled his head back and stared up, shielding his face with an arm. "Light looks like early morning. There must be someone around here somewhere, and I figure we're due some answers."

"You're going walkabout," Duke said flatly. Nathan was going to make him get up? Not that he didn't already know the man was a bastard, but that was cruel and unusual.

"I'll come back." Nathan took a few lurching steps, and Duke half rose, holding the back and arm of the couch, sliding one foot over the edge, gripped by a panic he didn't want to admit. Ow. Fuck Nathan and his screwed-up nerves, anyway... Duke's foot slid around, curling up like he'd never walked before, not wanting to push flat against the floor. As his line of sight jolted, he spied something that caused him to hiss in urgent discovery: "Nate!"

"What?" The impatience in Nathan's voice as he struggled to turn spoke of the difficulty he, too, was having with movement.

Duke jabbed a finger at the big couch behind and to the left of them. A blue cardigan was abandoned on one end of it. "That's Audrey's."

"It's not," Nathan responded with swift conviction. Confusion crossed his face. "All right... I've never seen her wear it, but I know it's Audrey's, too."

"We've lost some memories," Duke said. He looked Nathan over and concluded that they couldn't have missed anything ridiculous like months or years. Nathan looked much the same as he could last remember, so it was weeks at most, but hopefully only days. A day or two. "Hey, and Audrey was here," he yelped, as Nathan made to turn away again, "and she'll be coming back. So don't go anywhere. Because..." He fell abruptly silent, aware of being on the verge of saying things he'd be embarrassed about when he was less freaked out. Then he figured it was too late already. "I don't think I can walk yet."

"You want me to stay and hold your hand?" Nathan asked gruffly, and Duke offered a hand on the off-chance, but instead Nathan snorted and limped to the blue cardigan. A few contortions juggling around his centre of balance had to be employed for him to lean down and pick it up, but he raised the garment to his face and inhaled, then released his breath with a sigh.

Duke said tightly, "Do you really have to do things like that?" Freak of nature. He hated the idea that Nathan knew Audrey by smell.

"Yeah, well-" Nathan was unimpressed. "She was here. And there's a coffee cup ring on this side table that's still wet. I should go find her."

"Nate, it's a big house and you can barely walk," Duke protested. "Wait here and-"

Wait. There was Audrey, standing in the door as Nathan turned back to it, her jaw dropping and her eyes widening. The cup in her hand slid through her fingers to dash coffee across the tiles when it landed, but she had no attention to spare for it.

"Nathan! Oh my God. Nathan!" She ran across the intervening space and hurled herself at him. Duke didn't know what he'd been expecting, but it hadn't been that. Nathan was barely on his feet as things were, and her impact sent him staggering. He backed against the piano with a din of keys all striking at once.

Duke was... well, astounded and fighting a horrible feeling of jealousy, because Audrey had her hands on Nathan's face and looked like she was about to cry tears of joy, and he hadn't thought they'd had a chance to develop that level of attachment in the few months Audrey had been in Haven. But who was he to take umbrage when he and Nathan were barely talking to each other again, and that much only due to her influence?

Audrey finally made sure the blinking, poleaxed Nathan was propped up against the piano stool and came over to Duke. That show of priorities offended him as well. Then again, Nathan had also been nearer. Yeah, that was it, he told himself.

"Are you all right?" she asked, leaning down to fold him, too, in a hug, then pulling away businesslike a moment later, studying him critically. "I know there are things Nathan can't tell me. Does anything hurt?" The was a worrying hesitation in that question.

"Should we expect it to?" asked Nathan, while Duke was still trying to find his tongue. "Parker, what happened?"

"I don't know what to expect," Audrey said. "You guys... you both got hit by something... a Trouble. I thought I was going to lose you. I've been sitting up all night... and most of yesterday... hoping you'd come out of it."

Her eyes looked red-rimmed, and not only from tiredness. "Tears, Officer Parker?" Duke touched a ghost of moisture at the edge of her eye with his fingertip. "For the likes of we two idiots? It must have been bad."

"Pretty bad, yeah." Audrey nodded and swallowed. "Scary bad."

"Well, I'm fine," Nathan grumped, "except I can't remember what happened and everything's - stiff." He shrugged a bit and Audrey gave him a questioning look. "Like my body doesn't know how to move properly. Duke's worse," he added, grudgingly, but by God that was almost concern, so Duke would take it.

There was something Audrey wasn't telling them, clear as the self-imposed distance entering her eyes. Her answer to Nathan's question had been deliberately unspecific. A parade of horrible possibilities marching through Duke's brain. Audrey was far too grim, too closed-off, too shattered.

"I... suppose that's not so surprising," Audrey said, smiling uncertainly. "I'm sure it'll... wear off."

"Where's Monty?" Nathan asked. "Were we here when it happened? We've been here since yesterday?"

"More than that," Audrey said reluctantly. "And Monty is... a story for another time. Right now I should get you both back home so you can rest. I'd take you to a doctor to get checked out, but you know how it is..."

"Troubles," Nathan filled in. "There's always Julia. She's still in town at the moment." Although Nathan didn't look like he really wanted to be checked out, and he didn't push it.

"Now you're awake, I'm pretty sure you'll both be fine." Audrey's grin was still so dented, and her relief so overpowering even with the control she was obviously trying to exert. Duke knew she was hiding something, but his brain wasn't working at anything like full capacity, and if even Nathan didn't have the stubbornness to push this right now... "Nathan, do you think you can help me get Duke to the car?"

Nathan looked dubious about the prospect, but made his way slowly back to the couch, detouring to retrieve Audrey's blue cardigan. He slid his hands over it as curiously as if he could feel again as he handed it to her. "When did you get this?"

"Oh." She paused blankly, thinking. "Wednesday, I think. Julia was clearing out some of her old things she'd left at home. She gave me a bag of clothes."

"What day is it now?" Nathan asked.

She visibly had to think about that, too, and double-checked herself by pulling her phone from her pocket. "It's 6.53, Sunday morning."

Duke wouldn't necessarily remember or know about Julia giving Audrey clothes in some female friendship sharing ritual, and Audrey wouldn't necessarily have worn that cardigan on the first day she'd had it, but he figured that left him a timeframe of one to four days to fill in. Nathan opened his mouth and then shut it again, and they shared a covert glance as he carefully leaned down to slip an arm under Duke's shoulder.

Audrey wasn't telling them things. The question that raised was whether there was still a Trouble afoot and she was caught in the middle of it, or if there was something else going on here that, for whatever reason, she didn't want them to understand.

As Nathan and Audrey hauled Duke upright, they lost balance and lurched against the couch, knocking it backwards a few inches and making a nasty screech on the tiled floor. Audrey pretty much planted her feet and rescued all three of them. Nathan said, "Wait," and staggered loose.

Duke swore at him while Audrey struggled, but Nathan ignored their plight and knelt jerkily to the tiles uncovered by the shifting of the couch. He ran his fingertips across the floor and lifted them up, coated in... was that dust? Sand? "I wonder what this is?"

"Nothing," Audrey said, her face paling almost to the colour of paper. "Nothing at all."

By the time Audrey dropped him off at the Cape Rouge, Duke had gained a little more steadiness, whereas Nathan was a snoring flop of limbs on the seat next to him. Audrey hauled Duke out of the back of her rental car on her own and saw him onto the boat and into bed.

"You seem," he remembered pointing out sluggishly, "really sure that we're going to be all right." No doctors. Willing to ditch them home and leave. This, after all her worry earlier.

"I'm pretty sure," she responded, and he remembered even in that state not trusting her words in the least. "It was whether you'd wake up I was worried about. You're both fixed now."

Whether they'd wake up... Duke's head felt too heavy and he let it loll back, and after that must have gone to sleep. Even though he had Audrey Parker in his bedroom and every excuse for some intimate sympathy.

When he woke again it was dark and he was alone. He could feel the faint rocking of the sea like an old friend. He rolled over to grope for his alarm clock and bring it close-in to his face. 3AM. He sat up slowly, easing co-operation from his body. The deep aches in his limbs had eased but not abated. Moving was still harder than it should be. His arms felt heavy, his joints stiff. His left shoulder fought him particularly, almost immobile. Even the joints in his fingers, like he had to force each small movement, the digits clicking and mechanical.

Duke sat up and switched on the lamp beside his bed, and for a while stared at his fingers as he worked them to loosen the stiffness. Things improved, slowly, although he was unsure if that was just himself adjusting, getting used to working around the wearing heaviness that lined his bones.

His hand looked fine. No bruising. No blood. No marks at all.

His shook his head, scrubbed the hand roughly over his face, and reached for his phone on the nightstand.

The idea of disturbing Nathan at such an unsociable hour didn't bother him much. In fact, it was almost a disappointment when Nate picked up instantly with a gruff, "Yeah?"

"Nate! How are you?" He'd meant to work up to it a bit more casually then that, but the question came out tense and focused.

"Alphabetising my true crime collection."

"Can't sleep, huh?" Duke said.

"I slept till lunchtime. Then I tried to go to work and catch up with what's been happening. Audrey sent me home. Look, I..." He fell silent, then warily continued, "Something's going on with Parker. I still don't know what hit us, but I think something's got at her. Maybe it didn't effect her the same way, took longer..."

"And you're telling me?" Duke asked, staring at the wall. "Because that makes me think something's amiss with you, Nathan."

"You were there," Nathan responded. "...You know what? You're right. I don't know why I'm bothering." Duke could just hear him going for the button to cut the call.

"Wait, wait, wait! Do not hang up on me, Nathan." There was a brief silence where he still half expected to hear the tone of a dead line. "Nate?"

"How are you doing?" Nathan asked, with obvious reluctance. "Still in pain?" Morbid fascination hung in his voice - for what he was missing out on, Duke supposed. Bastard. He fidgeted and tried to think of a sufficiently manly reply, but Nathan added a brief huff and summed up of his own accord, "Right." To Duke's surprise, he asked, "Do you need anything?"

"Do I need anything?" Duke repeated. "At 3.17 in the morning?"

"You called." It wasn't difficult to imagine Nathan's scowl. "Or did I misunderstand, and this is another of those middle-of-the-night calls where we exchange insults and you hope to make me sleep through my alarm tomorrow?"

"Has that ever worked?" Duke was genuinely curious, but- "No, no, don't hang up! Seriously. I don't feel... right. I'm not fucking around. I wanted to check on you."

"Ask how I feel?"

Nathan's desert-dry sarcasm was something he definitely didn't need at this hour. "Something like that." He was starting to get actively pissed off with this exchange. "At least, I thought you might have something to offer, because you might not feel your body, but you must know your body... Nate?"

"I'm still here." The silence stretched until in typical Nathan fashion it was broken by the declaration, "I'm coming over. Don't fall back asleep."

"...Huh?" Duke realised that his blankness was serenading a dead line.

If Nathan was coming to the Cape Rouge in the middle of the night, he must be equally as unsettled by all this. Annoyingly, Nathan was mobile, and had been since the afternoon. Being an unfeeling prick was a decidedly unfair advantage. Duke thought about it, then instead of sulking made himself get up, get changed and get washed, because no way in hell was he allowing Nathan to out-do him. Or at least to see that he had.

The shower didn't seem to have any benefit beyond getting him clean, unsettling him all the more because he'd never had aching muscles that couldn't be soothed by hot water. He considered that he knew his body pretty well, and he knew when something had gone badly wrong with it. Even if he didn't know what that was.

His efforts left him so exhausted that he returned to the bedroom and crashed out face-down across the bed. Nathan found him there. Duke was half-aware of the slamming and yelling intruding on his stupor but hadn't yet surfaced to the point of prying himself up to go and deal with the obvious disaster - earthquake, fire, the damn ship sinking... Nathan was the only creature Duke knew who could form a stampede of one, with his charging around in pursuit of any given task.

The hand at his shoulder was rough. The concern amid the matching roughness of Nathan's voice speaking his name for the Nth time did nothing to stop Duke cursing him foully as he rolled off the bed gripping his head.

"I said don't go back to sleep." He figured the aggression was Nate's way of hiding the fact he'd had a scare, since it came so soon on the heels of the concern. Duke hated this. They'd always been fiery, but in the last few years it had had real venom. Nathan was looking at his hand, where he'd touched Duke's head, and it glistened with water from wet hair. "You went in the shower at this hour?"

"Sure, Nathan. Because we're not all the fucking Energiser Bunny, up and about and banging on and on..." The violence of his retort fell flat as his legs buckled and Nathan had to catch him.

He was pretty grateful Nate didn't take the opportunity to be an asshole, just held Duke up a moment until they were both sure he'd stay that way, then brushed his shoulders off and said, "What the hell happened to us?"

Duke gave up on his bid to prove his greater masculinity against a guy with no nerve endings and perched on the end of the bed. "We need to find out. Audrey-"

"Knows, but won't tell me anything," Nathan picked up, sounding intensely pissy. Duke looked him over: movements stiff, but functional. "I think - I don't know what to think. I'd swear she was crying at her desk when I went in today. Hid it fast, but... If this is still some kind of Trouble..."

"Audrey was crying?" Duke repeated.

"I've never seen her like this." Nathan shook his head and leaned in close, raising an emphatic hand. "Whatever happened to us, we're recovering. God knows what's got hold of Parker." He straightened again, hyperactive with agitation. "She sent me away. The Chief's in on it, or just more ready to believe her than me, the speed he flew past me today when I tried to say anything, which actually-" He made a noise of disgust. "Either way, I'm signed off work. And I don't know when they're going to let me back."

Duke was unable to resist a snort of mirth. "Because what would life be worth without all those opportunities for handcuffs and harassment?"

"Don't worry. I don't expect you to understand the value of 'work'," Nathan retorted. "I just want to know what's going on, and you have more clues than I do."

Duke raised his eyebrows. "You mean I'm the one lucky enough to get to feel it all?" Wow, that look was hostile.

"Can we take this to a different room?" Nathan asked, gesturing at Duke's rumpled and unmade bed.

"This bothers you?" Maybe he should've stayed in his underwear.

"The smell bothers me," Nathan said cattily, and without asking, leaned over and caught Duke under the arm to heft him up. Duke did notice that Nathan's own balance was still a bit shit, and privately thought that if he were Garland Wuornos, he wouldn't have approved the guy to be back chasing down bad guys either.

"It doesn't smell," Duke defended, though he felt compelled to add, "excessively." Because he had been sleeping in the room for most of twenty four hours and it hadn't been aired.

"Everything smells," Nathan said.

Ah. Okay; it was Nathan's particular brand of weirdness at work, and Duke was familiar with that of old. In school, after the Troubles the first time, he'd been able to identify candy at a distance by scent alone.

"Have you eaten?" Nathan asked, spilling Duke into one of the hard chairs in the kitchen. Bed had been more comfortable.

"What? Because you're going to cook?" This, he had to see.

Nathan turned his back and started opening cupboards. After about a minute of searching, while Duke watched with illicit glee as his shoulders stiffened, Nathan asked, "Don't you have any cans?" He turned back, took one look at Duke's face, and spun away, declaring, "Cereal," and grabbing a packet from a shelf. He dug the milk from the fridge but was pulling a face before he'd even opened the cap to sniff at it. He dunked it straight into the sink.

Duke took pity on him. "I'll have the muesli with yoghurt. Some of that should still be good."

Nathan watched him as though suspicious of a wind-up, but shrugged and shook his head when Duke started to spoon the mixture into his mouth. Nathan turned to pick up the milk carton, scowling at the date. "Thursday. Last things I remember happened Wednesday. What I don't know for sure is if we were out of commission all that time or it's just my memory affected... but I guess we know you weren't buying groceries. I wanted to get a look at the work planner at my desk in the station, but Parker blocked me. I don't suppose you keep a diary we could use to corroborate?"

Duke grunted around the spoon and shook his head. The truth was, he wasn't very hungry, despite what it seemed must have been a long stretch without sustenance. "Not the 'dear diary' type, Nathan."

Nathan muttered, "I should have known it was pointless to come here." He didn't move to leave. Instead he grabbed an orange from the fruit bowl and sank down opposite Duke, picking at the rind with blunt fingers.

"Surprised you don't keep a diary, Mr. Organised. 'Today I arrested three felons and wrote Duke 20 parking tickets. It was the best day ever,' huh, Nate?"

"Funny." But he sat grim and silent, ate the orange robotically, and eventually offered, "Whatever happened... Audrey's completely shut me out. I can't get her to talk about it. She puts everything off to when I'm recovered, like that's any excuse for not disclosing where three days of my life went. You and Audrey have a different relationship. Maybe she'd open up more to you."

And wouldn't Nathan love that, if his theory was borne out? Duke doubted it would be, because Nathan and Audrey had that weird Mulder and Scully brain-twin vibe going on. As for 'different relationship', Nathan should know that however Duke flirted, it was a different cop Duke would rather have in his bed.

There was actually no winning way out of this one. "I can try," Duke allowed with a sigh, and eyed the clock. "Not at this time on a Monday morning."

"No." Nathan's twitch suggested he wouldn't want to find out Audrey's reaction to that either. "As soon as it's a reasonable hour."

They sat for a minute. Duke pushed the rest of his muesli and yoghurt away. Nathan picked it up with morbid curiosity, poked the spoon around it, and took a mouthful. He absently took a few more.

Duke frowned at him. "Are you hungry?"

Nathan returned a look with a lot of simmering resentment in it. "I wouldn't know."

Oh... oh. Duke hadn't thought of that effect of Nathan's Trouble before. The idea stung. He took the world seriously where food was concerned.

"I like to taste things," Nathan returned, a bit more recalcitrant, recognising the genuine shock. "Sometimes I get cravings for particular types of food. I don't get a sense of discomfort telling me to eat. Just have to remember when I ought to be hungry, and eat."

All of that probably constituted the most Nathan had spoken to Duke about his affliction in three years, and maybe as much as twenty-five.

"I'm... not hungry," Duke offered, feeling like he should be saying something else. "Which is weird, what with it having been at least twenty-four hours, and possibly a lot more."

"See?" said Nathan, finishing Duke's early-early breakfast and shoving the plate away. He piled the orange peel into it. "Clues. I may not know what happened, but I don't think we were unconscious all that time. What if we were... under some influence, still walking around? What if whatever got us has Parker, now?"

Duke shuddered. Maybe that was the bone-deep ache of wrongness he was feeling. If something else had been walking around in his skin... "God. You don't think it was another shapeshifter?" But Audrey had barely survived the last one, and it hadn't used her body, just copied a new one for itself based on her. Unless there was more than one type... "Something like... Are we saying something was wearing me?" He clenched his teeth. The explanation felt too good a fit. "Wait. If something had control of us, we could have done anything. Maybe that's why Audrey doesn't trust us any more. We did something so terrible she doesn't even want to admit it..."

He didn't want that to be true, but it felt all too possible, and Nathan's slow nod didn't help matters, especially when he considered that Nathan fucking Wuornos was agreeing with him.

Duke thought about all the atrocious things he'd seen happen through the influence of the Troubles. Burned bodies and Beattie's children's leftovers of aged corpses, half the town with food poisoning and Eleanor dead at the chameleon's hands. He shuddered again.

What the hell had they done?

There had been a time when a couple of hours to waste aboard the Cape Rouge with Nathan wouldn't have been an awkward prospect, but those days were long gone. Now, it was just frustrating to have him there, prowling restlessly as they awaited the dawn.

Duke filled a couple of big cafetieres with sludge-strong coffee and they moved up top where they could watch the sun rise and there was more room. It felt less like being caged in with an agitated tiger, that way, or at least less nerve-janglingly up-close to the beast.

Watching Nathan pace about the deck, Duke wondered - as was, he was pretty sure, natural and not remotely creepy - what it would be like to have that body pressed to his, now that almost two decades had gone by. They were older. What things had changed? How had age marked Nathan? Hell, he knew his body had changed since he was seventeen. Picked up a bunch of scars, a bunch more tattoos, lost puppy fat and worked hard to replace it with muscle. Nathan didn't strip down however hot the weather, so it was a genuine mystery what lay, these days, beneath his layers of clothes. Duke had reconciled himself to never finding out.

He sipped his coffee and shivered in the morning chill, pulled his woollen jersey closer around him, and folded his arms. Nothing much else to do, he sat back and let his imagination indulge.

Nathan stopped pacing and returned to the table to chug down his mug of coffee. "What the hell are you smiling about?" he demanded, and Duke shook his head and kept smiling until Nathan turned away in disgust.

Slowly the light increased and the coffee went cold. Yellow-orange bands drifted upwards from the sea into the sky, and the water glowed with a cold, pale fire. Nathan sat down for what was probably meant to be just a moment in the chair opposite Duke and fell asleep, head lolling and his mouth open. Apparently he'd been running on his nerves alone... or at least, Duke mentally amended, on his anxieties.

The swift shut-down was both amusing and annoying, as well as a bit worrying, a reminder that the fact Nathan couldn't feel didn't lessen any underlying damage. But Nathan was a bitch to wake up: shaking him wouldn't do it, and Duke didn't think his head could handle yelling. Let the guy sleep. At least right now he was freakin' still.

Duke resisted temptation to screw with him while he slept, although his better angels probably only won that fight because he'd have to get up and go find black markers or safety pins or sticky tape. He watched Nathan sleep until the sun was high enough in the sky to demand action and his bladder was complaining about all the coffee.

Duke refilled the cafetiere below deck and returned to waft Nathan's refilled cup under his nose until he jerked awake. "Wakey, wakey, sunshine."

"I fell asleep?" Nathan asked incredulously, narrowly managing to abort his instinctive waking swipe and turn it into a grab for the coffee. And you let me? was the implied criticism. There was always going to be one of those, even when Duke came bearing gifts.

"You looked like you needed the rest. On the bright side, those two hours went by so much quicker." His grin bounced off Nathan's glower.

Nathan gulped the coffee - although, damn it, it was probably still too hot for that. Duke's tired, aching muscles ached even more as he watched Nate go from sleep to hyperactive insanity again, setting the emptied cup down and jerking to his feet. The movements of the Rouge and his numb legs caught him out and he staggered, grabbing the front of Duke's jacket to steady himself.

They eyed each other silently and mutually agreed to make no mention of it.

Nathan's Bronco was waiting by the marina. Duke personally had his doubts about either of them being in condition to drive, but hell, he wasn't the cop, and was too glad not to be walking to offer any complaint. Nathan drove carefully.

It was still a fraction too early for them to be sure Audrey would be in at the station, but Nathan was impatient to be moving and drove them out to the Kale place where they'd first woken up. They parked and stared at the big house. The long drive and well-cared-for expanse of lawn looked innocent and normal.

After watching for a while, Nathan moved to open the door and get out.

"Wait, what're you - stop." Duke lunged across from the passenger seat and grabbed the end of Nathan's jacket before he was gone.

"I saw movement," Nathan said. "Gonna knock on the door and check it out. We didn't see Kale, remember. Whole place felt empty, except for Audrey."

"Seriously?" Duke said. "Doesn't it look bad if this comes across as police harassment? We don't know what happened."

"No, we don't," Nathan snapped. "Which is why I plan to find out, and you don't have to come." He broke Duke's grip and slammed the door. Duke watched him stalk rigidly up the long drive and ring the bell after the briefest of detours to a window. The housekeeper answered, opening the door tentatively, and there was no point, from that distance, trying to wind down the car's window to listen to what she said. She looked distressed. Duke could see her shaking her head and trying to field away Nathan's questions. If Nate hadn't wound it up and spun away to walk back when he did, Duke was on the verge of heading out there to try and drag him away.

"You work her over enough?" he asked sourly as Nathan climbed back into the Bronco. "Sure you don't want to go back and soften her up a little more?"

"Montague Kale's dead," Nathan said, and that shut Duke up sharply. "Last Thursday. No known cause, he 'just died'. Heart gave out, maybe, but I couldn't get a definitive answer on that, so it might be me putting words in her mouth."

"He just died," Duke repeated. "Oh, come on! Even Vince and Dave come up with better excuses than that. At least throw in a gas leak."

Nathan grunted. "I'm about ready to kill someone myself if someone doesn't just spit it out."

Duke felt his face twist unhappily. "Let's hope you didn't already."

Nathan fell silent a long moment. "She didn't know anything about us waking up in there. Says she doesn't work weekends."

"You believe that?"

"I believe she wasn't there yesterday morning." He sighed and flexed his fingers on the wheel.

This time, Nathan drove to the station. After cutting the engine, he paused, gripping the steering wheel hard enough to make his knuckles white. "Whatever she tells us, no matter what it is... if we did anything crazy, or catastrophic... Both of us know it wasn't something we could help." He gave Duke an intense look, and Duke nodded, feeling sick to his stomach. He supposed Nathan evaded that discomfort, but maybe not. He wasn't sure how Nathan's affliction worked where it came to psychosomatic symptoms.

Duke was also very surprised. It was a pact of sorts, and it was Nathan suggesting it. "You said it, buddy. Whatever it is, we're in this together."

Nathan gave a double-take and a slow, suspicious nod, as if that wasn't quite what he'd been aiming for, but then shook himself and got out of the car.

Duke followed more slowly. Movement was still an effort, but being able to move under his own steam today was a big improvement.

A nasty feeling stole over him quickly, starting between his shoulder blades and sending chill knives out along his spine. He cast around and discovered that people were looking at them, in creepy, stalkerish, Haven-folk kinds of ways. "Nathan," he urged in a low hiss, and jerked his head. They were picking up stares from a couple of cops leaving the building, and Vince from the newspaper, across the street.

"It's not just Audrey acting strange," Nathan said flatly. "I noticed it yesterday."

And he couldn't have provided some warning that the whole town was treating them like a new freakshow? But then, Nathan had been a freak since he was eight, so people staring at him was probably less alarming. Duke fixed a grin to his face and hissed through his teeth, "I don't like this."

"It's not everyone," Nathan said stonily. "I figure... the more Troubles-savvy. Or maybe some of them were involved, saw something. I only know for sure that we're out of the loop. But I'm damn well finding out today." He stomped across the road and up the police station steps. Duke risked a jog to catch up: definitely improving.

"Hey, Nathan," greeted a cop in the corridor. "Chief said you'd be off for a few more days. Sucks, that flu, huh?"

"Kind of what I'm here to see him about," Nathan responded. "Morning, Stan." He obviously had to really try to push that genial greeting out. He moved on past and Duke edged around after him - a few too many uniforms in this place for his liking.

Audrey was in her and Nathan's shared office - the door was shut but they could see her through the blinds, talking to a tired-eyed man, perhaps in his late twenties; dark hair, round face, pleasant enough demeanour. Didn't strike Duke as a dangerous felon, but Nathan hissed a harsh breath through his teeth and pressed Duke back against the wall, out of sight. "Why the hell is she talking to him?"

"Who is he?" Duke asked.

"Landon Taylor. He's Troubled." Nathan pulled a weird face but didn't specify, which Duke took to mean it was one of Haven's more fun Troubles.

Whatever the guy was, or did, the conversation was intense. Audrey was pacing and rubbing her head when Taylor eventually left the office, and Taylor looked grim. The dark rings scored around his eyes were too visible despite the distance.

"Wow, that guy has not been getting much sleep recently," Duke observed. He waited, but Nathan grunted and pressed Duke back further into their covering recess as Audrey walked towards the door.

She passed them in the corridor, head down and little attention for her surroundings, fortunately. Nathan removed his hand from Duke's mouth and hustled him into the empty office. Duke stumbled and turned once they were inside. Nathan leaned on the closed door, sweating.

"I love it when you get all handsy and commanding," Duke murmured, slightly breathless from the manhandling now as well as nerves.

"Nothing's funny. Landon-" Nathan screwed his eyes shut and said forcefully, "No. We don't know anything. This is my chance to take a look over my notes for those missing days. You keep a lookout for Audrey coming back." He crossed to his desk and started rummaging through it.

Duke hovered by the door feeling extraneous. "You think he has something to do with all this?" He'd think Nate should be sympathetic enough to what it was like being out of the loop to at least keep him as informed as Nathan was.

"I don't see how. That's what bothers me." Papers rustled. Nathan sank down and his open palms hovered over the desk top. "He could be used for a cover up... Say if one of us... both of us... really did kill someone. Or more than one someone." The computer finished booting up and he tapped on the keyboard, eyes intent. "But Montague Kale's death has been filed. The M.E... that's Julia... it looks like she ruled heart attack."

"Now that's a cover up," Duke said.

"It's a hell of a cover up." Nathan's eyes were widening. "Duke, there were fourteen deaths filed last Thursday. Cause... probable heart attack, though Julia hasn't got to them all yet. Bodies unmarked. Looks like they 'just died', too."

"Fourteen?" Duke had been expecting to hear something he wouldn't like, but... "We couldn't cause that."

"Thirteen," Nathan amended. "There's one death by gunshot amongst them."

"Oh, well, then." Because he or Nathan could have done that. "That's so much better."

"Shut up," Nathan said tersely. "These all happened Wednesday night and Thursday morning. Funny thing? The addresses for Thursday's victims are clustered around Monty Kale's place. Like it was the epicentre."

"That's the funny thing?" Duke snarked, mouth beating his brain to the punch. He brain coughed up, just about simultaneously, Oh, thank God and Oh, shit. "Nate! This wasn't us. There's no way we could have done this! That's not what Audrey was hiding." Excitement and incredulity warred in him. "You know what does make sense? Audrey didn't lie after all. We must have been caught up in it, and she... Audrey found a way to heal us." That was terrifying but at the same time, such a frickin' relief, because they were all right now and it really did explain everything. Even Audrey's strangeness... She'd saved them, her friends, but not the rest. That was enough to make any good-intentioned person crazy. Duke was just happy to be alive, and he would fucking take it.

But Nathan was staring at his jubilation with something akin to horror, lips parted and facial muscles frozen. "She didn't heal us."

Duke frowned, because obviously, they were there, and fine, and what were a few muscle aches compared to dead? He couldn't believe he'd been griping so much. "Nathan, we're okay."

Nathan was getting up and rooting through his desk, frantic and furious. Duke had never seen him like this before, but the closest was when he'd been hit by the Crazy-Trouble. "Whoa, wait!" Duke yelped as Nathan found a penknife in the drawer and flipped it open. "Do not do anything stupid, Nathan!"

Nathan rolled up his sleeve and slashed the knife across his arm.

He dropped the knife and slapped his hand over the cut immediately, eyes tight closed, stance stiff and tense.

Duke stared at the small pile of what looked like sand on the desk. Nathan made a noise, and opened his eyes and his fingers again, letting the sand trickle through from the slice, letting Duke see... He'd exposed fluff and rags along with the dust, but what he hadn't drawn, even a little bit, was normal, red, human blood.

"What the hell is this?" Duke asked. His voice came out little more than a croak. "What is... Will I do that?"

Of course he would. They had said it before they set out for explanations: they were in this together.

Nathan's face had an aching expression on it, like he just didn't know what to do. He moved his hand away from the cut and blankly watched it trickle.

"Nathan," Duke urged. "What did they do to us? What the hell are we?"

"Landon's a taxidermist," Nathan said hollowly, like that was an explan- oh, shit. Shit.

"No," said Duke. "You are fucking kidding me. You're kidding me... this is some kind of elaborate set-up. Audrey's giggling around the corner." He waited. Mentally, he pleaded with the world - but his life didn't work like that.

Nathan grinned like a skull. "Audrey didn't save us. She had us... fucking... stuffed." Nathan's 'fuck you Haven weirdness' expression had never been better applied.

"Jesus!" Duke grabbed his head and, very abruptly, had to sit down. He pressed his fingertips into his aching forehead, trying to process... "Wait, wait, no. I cannot be stuffed, Nate. I have internal organs. I have freakin' bodily functions! Which I exercised before leaving the Rouge, and thanks to this fucking discussion, feel a pressing need to exercise again! I drank coffee! I ate! You ate! That's - it's just not-"

Fucking Haven, said Nathan's face, and Duke just couldn't argue with that. He stared blankly at Nathan flexing his fingers and watching sand... sawdust... whatever the hell that was trickle from his forearm.

"This is sick," Duke declared. "He'd have had to - I can't even think about it." He cringed away and covered his eyes, not wanting to contemplate being skinned, innards discarded and replaced, by some guy he didn't know going over every inch of his dead body, inside and out. "Fuck. Fuck. Fuck." He felt like he was caught in a mental loop. How the hell was he supposed to accept this? How were any words supposed to encompass...? "Fuck!"

"We're alive," Nathan muttered. Was that supposed to be an 'on the bright side'? Duke's frustration boiled over and he grabbed up a pencil from Audrey's desk and hurled it at Nathan, followed by any other small item within reach.

"Do not fucking try to cheer me up about being a... a hunting trophy!"

"Pack it in," Nathan growled back, slapping the last of the thrown objects aside. "I didn't do this!"

Right on cue, Audrey walked back through the door. She froze and gasped. "No! Nathan. Duke. Oh my God." Her hand rose to her mouth, the back of it pressing hard against her lips.

"Audrey." Nathan jerked to his feet almost guiltily.

Fuck that, thought Duke, and surged forward to slam his hands down on the desk. "What did you do?!"

Audrey's eyes were fixed on Nathan's leaking arm. "You weren't meant to find out like this." She lunged for Nathan's arm, pressing her hands over the cut. Nathan made a noise of protest and struggled briefly before surrendering. "We have to fix this. Duke, pass me some tape."

There was a roll of parcel tape on the desk. Duke made himself move, and not throw it at her, because she had a point. Nathan probably should not be allowed to leak all his insides out onto the police station floor.

"Were we supposed to find out?" Nathan asked roughly, as Audrey dragged a big 'X' of the tape across the wound, pulling the edges of the skin together. "How could you try to hide this?"

She swallowed, and a spark of anger fired up in her at being surrounded by accusation. "It was only until you were recovered enough to hear it! Landon said when it first happened to him, he felt lousy for days. He thought it was from the smoke inhalation at the time, but later, in retrospect... So I wanted to give you the chance without laying that trauma on top of it."

"Wait. This happened to the guy who - the taxidermist?" Duke laughed, crazily. "The taxidermist is stuffed?"

"Runs in the family," Nathan said brusquely.

"...This fucking town!" Duke swung around back to Audrey, moving a stiff extra step to jab a finger in her face. "You're not forgiven. Jesus!" His legs were stiff because they were full of sawdust and rags and who-knew what.

Nathan dragged him away from her, putting his body between them. "Leave her alone. Audrey, what the hell happened? Why'd you... shut me out?" His voice trembled and his hands fisted at his sides.

"You were sick," she emphasized, frustration and anger building. "I wanted to... at least..." She ducked her head and grabbed fistfuls of her hair. "I wanted to give you time to feel normal. It wouldn't be so bad... if you could see there was no difference first. Landon suggested it, because he had that. He says there isn't a difference. He didn't know for months." Her chest heaved and angry tears sparked in her eyes, catching the glow of the desk lamp. "And yes! I was afraid of exactly this! But do you know what? There are a whole bunch of people in the morgue who didn't get a second chance. They're just dead. So try to think about them before you start to complain!"

Nathan confounded Duke's expectation by not reaching for her. His face twisted in various ways. "Tell me the whole story. Who... who was there?" He raised his taped arm. "Does dad know about this?" He paled visibly at the prospect.

"Yeah." Audrey sighed, "the Chief knows. A couple of the guys who... you were dead. People saw you. EMTs. Cops. Vince and Dave! To the rest of the town it was passed off as a nerve toxin, and you guys got luckier than the rest. Some... seafood thing. Duke runs a restaurant, after all. But the people who know things, they... know."

Nathan looked away and splayed a hand over his face.

"We're dead," Duke said hollowly. "Wait, the arm with the tattoo... I was supposed to-"

Audrey gave him a triumphant look. "That proves this doesn't count. You must have that death still to look forward to."

"Yay me."

"Piper Taylor lived for years like this, far as we know." Nathan's voice cracked a bit. "While the Troubles were away. Maybe we'll just... return to normal... once the Troubles are over."

Audrey made a noncommittal noise, and Duke had to wonder how much they really knew about this Trouble, whoever Piper Taylor was. "Look," she said grimly, dashing at the edges of her eyes with her knuckles, "I'll tell you everything. I hated hiding this. But not here, please. Let's go somewhere else."

A man would've had to be made of stone to say no. Even Nathan gave her a terse nod after a moment.

They went to the scrap of grassy park along the road. A trailer was selling donuts and hot dogs, and Nathan bought donuts, dipping into the bag every so often, chewing mechanically.

"The case was waiting for us Thursday morning," Audrey said. "Five people had died during Wednesday night, no mark on their bodies, no explanation." She looked at Nathan.

He shook his head. "I don't remember it at all. Sorry."

"We plotted the deaths on a map and found they'd all occurred within a hundred yard radius. You were positing an actual gas leak." She gave Nathan a hard look. "But there was one guy who lived smack bang in the centre of the death zone who hadn't turned up on the slab. That was Jerry Coggins, Montague Kale's gardener, so we went to talk to him. He didn't know what had happened to his neighbours, just got up and went to work as usual."

Audrey pressed her knuckles hard against her mouth, visibly struggling. "We were suspicious, but we weren't even sure it was a Trouble, you understand? Some... normal, tragic environmental catastrophe. Toxic gas, or water supply contamination... The autopsies hadn't begun. We had to pull in Julia again and it took hours even to sort that out. But I... I should have been more careful, should have taken some kind of precaution. The moment we confronted Coggins about the incident, people started to..." She stared at Nathan, who mirrored the terrible look blankly. "You fell first. Just crumpled next to me. I grabbed Jerry. Maybe it's because I was touching him that it didn't affect me next. I heard Kale's wife screaming, and then the sound cut off. Duke... we'd passed you on the way in, delivering catering supplies. Kale was going to have a party at the weekend, he'd called you in..."

"Some party," Duke murmured, shuddering. "And then I was-?"

"I saw through the window. You collapsed out in the drive. It was spreading and I didn't know how to stop it... I asked Jerry how he'd stopped the episode the night before, but of course, he didn't even know he'd done anything. So I..." She gulped. "I was shouting for him to stop... I suppose it wasn't the most helpful reaction, but I was freaking out, too. I'd just watched both my best friends in this town drop dead." Tears glimmered in her eyes. "I took out my gun and I shot Jerry. But even with Jerry dead, Nathan wouldn't revive. I tried CPR. I tried... Then I ran outside to try Duke, and heard Landon Taylor yelling for help out in the road. He'd been driving by - must have missed it himself by a matter of yards, or maybe it didn't affect him because he's... like he is - and he'd seen one of Kale's neighbours collapse. He was doing pretty much the same thing I was. By that time the backup and the ambulances and everyone and everything were arriving there, but when I told Landon what happened he said-"

She looked at Nathan. "He offered to try to save you. You'd helped him get his life back, and if you could give him that pep-talk, then surely you would choose to keep living, even like that."

Nathan grimaced.

Audrey's breath sobbed slightly in the back of her throat as she turned to Duke. He had never seen her like this, nor imagined he ever would see her like this. "You... I said you were a survivor. You'd choose this too. I asked Landon to do it. I was a mess, Duke. I wasn't thinking. Almost the next thing I knew, Landon was long gone with both of you and Vince and Dave were trying to comfort me, and I don't even know where they came from or how they found out."

"Why not fix everyone?" Nathan asked. "If he could bring us back, then..."

"He said," Audrey choked, "that he couldn't work quickly enough. He wasn't even sure that he could do Duke, as well. I begged him."

"This is really hideous." Duke raised his palms to Audrey. "I'm not judging. But it's hideous." She slumped on the seat, head slack on her shoulders. "Landon called on Saturday. He said it was finished and he thought it was going to work. I took you back to Kale's place, hoping I could say you'd had some sort of collapse and send you both home to recover. But when you woke up, you didn't remember being there. Landon says he's never remembered the fire." She sighed. "I should have told you straight away. I can see that now."

"I was going over all kinds of theories," Nathan admitted. "Troubles affecting you, affecting me... Things I might have done that you didn't want to tell me about. I never thought of this. Well. Until I saw Landon come out of my office."

"If you didn't insist on sneaking around when I was only trying to help you..." Audrey started. Nathan abandoned his empty donut packet and twisted sideways on the seat to envelop her in a hug.

A strange, conflicted wave crossed Nathan's expression as his cheek touched Audrey's, and he bent his neck, averting his face from the contact. Duke stared, but it was a minor note, in amongst the rest. Duke wasn't going to do any damn hugging. He needed to think long and hard how he felt about this before he did anything else. He deliberately folded his arms and stood up, wandering a few steps on the grass and keeping his back to Nathan and Audrey.

"So what now?" he asked, and risked a brief peek behind to determine it was safe. Nathan finished disentangling himself with faint embarrassment. "We're supposed to just carry on? Pretend like we're not fake people, or... reanimated stuffed corpses?"

"That's the advice I gave Landon Taylor," Nathan said unsteadily, staring at his arm.

"That's stunning advice, Nate."

"Taylor has a kid to live for." A spark of Nathan's aggression returned. "He doesn't know that his dad is... whatever the hell this is." He shook himself and turned on Audrey, one hand raised imploring. "I need to come back to work. This - I can deal with this so long as I don't have to think about it, so long as I can do the things I normally do. Audrey..."

"I'll talk to the Chief," she said, subdued.

Duke scowled. "Well, then I guess I'll just be on my way."

"Duke, no-"

He stamped away from them, ignoring Audrey's protest. Fucking Audrey Parker. Fucking Troubles. Fucking Haven. Why the hell had his dad wanted him to come back to this place? It was like flinging your kid at the front lines, and look at the result! Shit like this. Now he was screwed, well and truly screwed, and dead. Technically. What the hell was a man supposed to do when he didn't even have internal organs any more?

Simon Crocker never had been that great a dad.

He heard a burst of activity behind him and sped up his steps. A quick look over his shoulder showed to his surprise that it was Nathan, and not Audrey, coming after him. He continued for about twenty yards more then faltered at the edge of the road, where Nathan caught up.

"Thought you were going back to work," Duke said sourly.

"Probably not yet." Nathan's scowl told his opinion of that. "Duke, I'm not going to defend what she did."

There was a surprise. "Go on."

"I mean it. I gave Landon this pep talk about... carrying on and being 'magic' and how it's okay to be a freak, and now I don't even... I'm not going to be able to face the guy." He shook his head and made a noise of frustration. "We said it before. We're in this together. I'm not going to let you go charging off and do something crazy while you're in this state of mind."

Which was funny, because that was Duke's feeling about how Nathan usually dealt with the world.

Duke grinned fakely and gripped Nate's shoulder buddy-fashion. "Good for you, Nate. But I need to go and get drunk. Assuming I can still get drunk. Since I can still pee, I'm gonna go for it."

Nathan rolled his eyes, but then apparently thought about it and nodded. "That sounds like a plan I could get behind."

"Wow. Nathan Wuornos, wild man."

Nathan dashed the hand from his shoulder with annoyance and shoved Duke out of his personal space, and Duke almost didn't register how momentous this was, with everything else on his mind. Nathan had agreed to share a drink with him. Nathan had come after him, presumably out of concern, and reiterated that they were together in this no matter what.

Duke mainly noticed that Nathan's skin was warm, and felt alive, and grabbed after the brief contact, seizing his forearm between both hands, just beneath the tape. Nathan screwed up his eyes and returned a hostile stare as he wrested his arm clear. "Warm," Duke said, realising he probably did owe an explanation. "Your skin's still warm. In case you... didn't know. You feel alive." He poked his own wrist, just to establish... Yeah. "How is that possible?"

"Haven," Nathan said, shaking his head. "Troubles. Who knows?" He returned his hand to Duke's arm to foil a stumble, with an impatient sigh. "Come on, let's get that drink. I hope it's something strong."

"I own a bar," Duke reminded him. "We can pretty much take our pick."