Title: Eurydice's Adventures in the Underworld
Author: roseveare
Rating: R
Length: ~25,000 words
Summary: Mara and Nathan search for William on the other side of the gate.
Warnings: Be aware that there are a lot of consent issues in this, on all sides.
Notes: Post-season 4. Mara/Nathan, Audrey/Nathan, Mara/Nathan/William.
Disclaimer: Not mine, no profit, yadda yadda yadda.
Eurydice's Adventures in the Underworld
Prologue
"Mine. You're mine, too," William says, with unanticipated softness that does nothing to slow the panicked pounding of Nathan's heart. He can feel the pounding only because William is pressed so close against his back, that weight and heat as alarmingly present as Nathan's body suddenly is. But Audrey - Mara - is clamped to the front of him, delighted and cooing, stroking her hands over his sweating face, telling him he wants this, and he has nothing left to resist with. William breathes in his ear, "Everything Mara has she shares with me." He nuzzles kisses into the ridge of Nathan's jaw, and Mara's hands stroke and soothe and her voice whispers, "Shh." William's hips push hard, and his body makes the claim of his words.
Mara catches Nathan's sounds, sealing her mouth over his.
"First Mara," Audrey says, tapping her foot. "Now William, too?" She's wearing one of her old outfits - a cheap pants suit and pale shirt - and her hair is uncomplicatedly blonde, her face smooth and perkily uncreased by cares. She's not real. Nathan's been hallucinating her for days. Losing his mind is just one of the things he's had to deal with on this journey so far.
Without Mara or William touching him, Nathan can't feel any of the aches left by what they just did, and they both wisely left him alone at their little camp to watch the fire, while he simmers and occasionally flares even as the flames do, glaring at the rumpled blanket that was spread beneath them.
"That wasn't-" he rasps, bile rising. It wasn't exactly rape, because he could also have shoved an elbow in William's stomach and rolled away from them. But with all the touch overwhelming him, with Mara's touch overwhelming him... It was definitely of Mara's engineering, under duress. He plants his face in his palm and groans, and reminds himself he doesn't need to make real excuses to hallucinations.
"I know," Audrey soothes. It's slightly condescending and enough like the tone Mara used on him while smoothing the way for William to screw him to earn Nathan's glare. "Of course not. You just accidentally fell into Mara. The same way you accidentally fell onto William. And, hey, it was Sarah before them. Seriously, Nathan, just learn to say 'no'. Just because she's wearing my face doesn't mean you have to let someone lead you around by the-"
"You don't understand," Nathan hisses desperately. Hallucination-Audrey ought to already know this, but she's never quite complete or coherent, like he's only remembering her in distorted fragments. It seems to him that a product of his own brain ought to be more sympathetic and accommodating, but then again, the last time he fantasized Audrey she spanked him naked over a desk. "I told you, I need her. She did something to me." He scrapes at the collar of his grimy shirt, ready to pull it off to show her the handprints. He can't see them, but Mara has worked enough mischief that surely there's something there for Audrey to see.
Audrey shakes her head with what seems a deep, morose disappointment. "It's your choice. It's always your choice." She steps toward him and as her palm closes in to touch his face, she fades away.
Nathan shuts his eyes and shudders a shudder that's as much imagination and muscle-memory as Audrey Parker ever being there at all. The ghost can't touch him. She appears to him, to talk mostly, occasionally offer sympathy, usually when he can't sleep. Audrey is trapped somewhere inside Mara. She has been consumed by Mara, and Mara's return may have shredded her personality entirely. He might never speak to her again.
He forces himself to think about practical matters and goes to feed the fire. He entertains petty hopes that William and Mara don't find anything to eat, He can't feel the discomfort from hunger but they can. Then again, they might just come up with some new weird Trouble to give him, to make him provide them with food.
Nathan presses his knuckles into his forehead, boring them in as if by applying enough force he could make himself feel it. He's already five times the freak he was when he left Haven. Mara keeps promising to remove them, but she only removed one so far. Although most of his Troubles are helping their survival, so it's possible to argue their usefulness hasn't yet expired.
This place feels like someone stole the colours out of the world. The land is black, dry, dusty. It's scattered with white rock and bone. It's possible the white rock is also bone, so worn it's lost all shape and definition. The sky is white-grey, though it's beginning to tint red-orange now as two suns stretch out its sunset. It has animals, small ones, that can be caught and eaten. William, who's spent so much time in exile on these worlds, seems to regard this place as a safe base. Nathan could leave them both but would probably not last very long. They haven't seen anyone else remotely human, nor anyone they could communicate with. Mara and William aren't his allies, but he's better off staying where he is than embracing solitary madness.
He's not ready to regret his choice to be here. This way at least some of his sins are undone. By now, Haven is safe. Duke and Jennifer, Dwight and the others will have closed the way behind them. Mara and William are sealed in exile forever.
So is he.
1.
"Now. Who's going to help me get William back?" Mara asks, and the awful moment extends, swallowing up the world. Duke is - Nathan doesn't even know what Duke is experiencing, except that what Audrey has become doesn't think anything of his chances. Jen is failing to respond to Dwight's attempts to resuscitate her; he must have crawled over there while Nathan's brain was whiting out with crushing loss at the very moment they'd thought they won. The Teagues are clutching each other looking stunned.
Nathan is apparently the only one really listening to Mara's question.
He points at Jennifer. "You need her."
Mara's calculating eyes aren't far enough removed from expressions he's seen Audrey wear in the past, and that discomforts him. "True," she says, and that part is surprisingly easy, although Nathan isn't expecting her to use Dwight to do it.
She turns and sneers at Nathan as he jerks his stiff legs into action, to move to stop her while her black palm is still only hovered over the back of Dwight's neck. Dwight's face is fixed but unresisting, his chin forward, but his eyes slide back to watch her in his peripheral vision. Mara says to Nathan, "Stop there, fool. Do you really think I could use you to heal anything?"
That freezes him in place. He hopes Dwight can forgive him the extra Trouble. Maybe it will even come in useful, though using it doesn't look like any kind of fun. When Jen gulps in air, panicked but awake, alive, eyes fluttering and clinging to a dizzy Dwight, it seems like a fair return.
As soon as she spies what's happening to Duke, she moves far faster than expected. "Don't touch him," Mara raps out harshly, which even Nathan can see is a waste of time.
"Oh my God! Duke, no. No, no, no! What's happening to him?" Jen turns to Mara. "Audrey...?"
Mara's brows raise. "No. Pay attention while you're unconscious."
Jen gives a little gasp and clings to Duke.
Dwight is getting up and moving toward Duke, too. Nathan grabs his shoulder and blocks him. Notices almost absently that his hands - in fact, his whole body - are shaking worse than Dwight is after the experience of using his healing Trouble for the first time. "Can Dwight heal Duke?" Nathan asks Mara.
"Not unless he wants to experience a hundred Troubles at once." Her mouth twists. Nathan thinks she would have let Dwight try just for her amusement. It hits Nathan abruptly that he'd only thought he didn't like Lexie wearing Audrey's face. This is worse.
Although part of what's worse is that Mara feels closer to Audrey than the facade of Lexie ever did.
"Duke," Nathan growls at her, holding her gaze, "is non-negotiable."
Her nose turns up. "Oh, you. I'm not going to get any sense out of Jennifer until he's no longer gibbering and bleeding from every orifice. Besides, he has something I want." She steps toward Duke and frowns at Jennifer. "If I were you, I really would get out of the way."
Dwight and Nathan pull Jen clear. She fights them with a few token shoves. "What the hell happened? I pass out for, what, thirty seconds, and... and this?"
Dwight asks, with what may be distraction or genuine concern, but Nathan can't pretend it's the biggest thing on his own mind at the moment, "You said something else came through the door?"
"I - I - it's not here now, Dwight. Duke!"
Mara's hand slides around Duke's jaw, forcing his mouth wide as he convulses. His eyes are open, but they're pools of red, seeing nothing. The blood on his lips daubs Mara's hand, but a moment later a torrent of those black spheres pours out, causing Nathan, Dwight and Jennifer to duck and stagger back. They cloud around Mara, and when she lifts her bloody fingers to flip open the breast pocket of Audrey's jacket, they flow down and stash themselves impossibly there. There shouldn't be enough room, but they don't even bulk out the fabric.
"Duke?" Nathan says uncertainly. Duke looks blind, blinking and wavering on his knees, half propped up against Mara's thigh. Mara steps back from him unheeding and he slumps over. Jen lunges forward to catch him.
"He's alive!" Her hands pat at his cheeks, frantically tugging and pulling on him.
"Of course he is," Mara says scornfully. She waggles a finger toward Duke and Jennifer for Nathan's benefit. "This can be undone in seconds. You owe me, Nathan. I'm not leaving William in that place one moment longer than I have to."
"Now?" Nathan catches Dwight's eye and hopes they're on the same page. "I'll help you," he allows. "Just me. You leave them all out of this now."
Mara tips her head and smiles. "I expected no less."
"Jennifer," Nathan says, and has to repeat her name until it penetrates enough to lift her head from Duke. "Can you open the portal again without William?"
Dave moans and jerks from Vince's grip, trying to crawl toward the steps.
"I can open it without any of them," Jennifer says. "The soft spot has been disturbed. It can't be completely shut... not by me, anyway."
That news isn't good for his plans.
"But I won't," she hisses, glaring at Mara. "You can't make me. We all just risked our lives to send that creep away."
"Jennifer." Nathan tries to catch her gaze. They may have got rid of William, but now they're stuck with Mara, who may be just as bad. Who may be worse. Nathan does not think he is capable of killing Mara, and he's not able to contemplate living without Audrey. If all that's left of her in the world is trapped inside Mara, then he'll take this. He'll do this. When so much of what's happened is his fault... in the end, it's the best solution he has.
In any case, Mara pissed off and alone may be worse that Mara and William together.
"Jennifer, do it," Dwight urges. "We have no choice now."
"We do!" she retorts. "We do have a choice." Jen has never particularly listened to Nathan. "I can choose to tell you to shove this book up your-" She brandishes the book at Mara, whose eyes spark dangerously.
"Little girl," Mara says. "Understand what is happening here. Nathan and I are playing a game. He thinks that if we go through the portal together, neither of us is coming back." She looks at him and raises her eyebrows with great amusement. "I would have pretended for the sake of his pride, poor thing. Never mind." Dwight shoots an 'oh shit' look back at Nathan over his shoulder. "I am content to challenge the assumption that Crocker will let any such thing happen. Now, open the door." She points imperiously, and pulls a face at the antics of the Teagues. "Oh, for goodness sake. She told you that you could go. Help them," she orders Dwight.
Dwight hesitates, looking back with his arms under Dave's. "Nathan..."
"Nathan is my foot soldier, now." Mara's smile is sickly. "Say 'goodbye' nicely, boys."
They exchange a tense look instead. Then Dwight is gone, and there's just Nathan and Mara and Jen. The mostly-unconscious, feebly-stirring Duke on the floor barely counts. Jennifer is shaking with frustration and anger, and she keeps having to drag herself back from checking on Duke.
"Do it," Nathan tells her, rougher than he intended.
"Hasty," Mara berates. "First things first." She pops a black sphere from her pocket, making it dance in the air above her splayed fingers. "Now, let's see..." She tips her head on its side, regarding him, before smugly nodding and telling him, "Open your shirt."
"Nathan, don't let her," Jen urges.
Mara points a finger. "Shh."
Nathan opens his shirt. "What are you going to do?"
"We may need fast protection when we get there. I'm going to give you some defences. Don't worry. This won't hurt." Her smile curls. "It wouldn't hurt anyway... Oh, but this one will be a masterpiece. Such a perfect intersection of personality and power."
She places her hand on his chest. Nathan feels her palm, but that's all. He doesn't feel her do anything, and doesn't see anything either. He barely knows she's done it except from the addict's hunger fading to a sated afterglow in her eyes.
Jennifer is looking annoyed and judgemental. Beyond her, Duke's eyes are open, still very red, but Nathan can pick out the darker shapes of pupils and irises again, can see focus and clarity gathering there. Duke saw that.
Good. Mara's confidence can't shake Nathan's convictions. Duke will know what to do. He understands necessity.
Mara re-fastens some buttons and steps back. She instructs Jen, "Now you can do it."
Jennifer lifts up the book. She glares at Nathan like it's his fault and, well, it is, but the chain of cause and consequence is rather long by now.
Duke pushes sluggishly at the floor and says, "Nathan, don't." It tugs at something inside Nathan's chest, but Dwight will explain things, even if Jen doesn't. Dwight will explain everything.
"Jen, no," Duke changes his focus as she raises the book, desperation taking over his pale features. "Last time you did this-"
This time, it doesn't look anywhere near so difficult or complex as it did last time. "Dwight can help her if anything happens," Nathan says, hoping it doesn't prove necessary. Duke doesn't understand because he was out of the loop for that part, but right now he's too weak to put up a fight.
Duke grunts, rising to his feet with monumental effort. He's wavering, pissed off and determined. "Damn it, Nathan, after everything that's happened, I can't believe you'd just-"
After everything that has happened, Nathan can't very well do anything else. "Quickly!" he snaps at Jen, who doesn't want Duke any more involved in this, either, and with that imperative, the trapdoor starts to open.
It's all much quicker than before. Nathan clings to the fact Jen is the one who knows about the portal and she seemed confident that if she refused to open it Mara would not get it open any other way, even if the door is less secure than it used to be.
Mara is smiling and Duke is too slow, too damaged. Nathan intends to wipe the smile off Mara's face. The portal is wide enough now to take both of them. He lunges at her in a diving tackle that carries them through.
Dizzying confusion swallows his consciousness. The last thing he hears is Duke's despairing cry.
Fingers jab at Nathan's chest, at his jaw, and the fact he knows that narrows the options for who's doing it. A slap rings out; sharp, weird sting across his face. The only other pain he's felt in months was when William punched him.
This isn't William. The buzzing in his ears settles a bit, allows him to better distinguish sound. His blinking eyes can't pick out anything that makes sense at first. For a while there, everything was white light and white noise. Nathan relies more on sight and sound than regular people. Sense-deprivation or sensory overload or both - he isn't certain how best to label it, but it flattened him, reducing him temporarily to nothing but floating consciousness.
Mara's fingers pry him out of it. "Wake up, you useless worm..."
He opens his eyes, staring up at her. Her clothes are marked by dust, pale and dark patches, and her face is red with anger. "You didn't need to do that so roughly," she snarls, and he remembers his dive with her between worlds. Well, he wasn't going to let her shove him in with some instruction to "fetch", to discover she'd lied about the nature of her deal. "Now get up and fight."
What?
It's only then Nathan realises they're surrounded by creatures who... his brain tags them as 'bone men', although it's more an exoskeleton and they don't really look like men. They're bipedal, approximately seven feet tall, and might have two eyes and a mouth hidden in what could loosely be called their faces.
Nathan realises he still has his gun and draws it. He points it their way as he scrambles upright. Their demeanour shows hints of interest, but they don't stop. He fires a shot into the ground at their feet to teach them caution, but Mara curses him. "Don't waste ammunition, stop them. I gave you everything you need!"
"What?" Nathan asks stupidly. He blinks over his shoulder at her, then swiftly turns back. Aliens... check. "No guessing games, Mara. Now would be the time to explain."
She sighs exaggeratedly. "It's an invisible wall of force that blocks out everyone and everything. I wonder where in your psyche that Trouble takes its roots, Nathan."
"So how do I-" Nathan nervously backs up a step as the bone men venture too close for comfort, and the foremost bounces off a barrier he can't see. Abruptly Nathan feels it, not with his dead nervous system, but like an extension of his thoughts, an immovable block sitting heavily in his mind. "...Control it..." His voice cracks and it's no longer a question, more like an urgent demand of himself, as he and the barrier seem to mesh together, and the walls slam down all around him. It flattens the bone men on the way. Suddenly he starts wondering - can he breathe, thus encased? Control isn't there. His panicked thoughts cascade and he feels the walls build up thicker and thicker, his instincts responding to threat. He can see from the way the invisible barrier shifts the dust on the ground that it's right up to his skin and extends maybe ten feet around him. The air tastes stale.
...This is a Trouble, after all. Mara's trying to use it like a tool for her purposes, but Nathan's never seen a Trouble that wouldn't screw you over when it could. Control has never been that much a factor.
Movement stirs behind him and the whole thing collapses as Mara's nails dig into his arm. "Stop making such a drama of it. I made you Sue Storm, not some eldritch abomination." Her tone clearly suggests that the other option is still open, if Nathan doesn't pull himself together to her satisfaction.
It gives him some pause that Mara reads Marvel comics, mainly because he's pretty sure that must have come from Audrey. It could be Lexie or Lucy, but Audrey was the pop culture geek.
"Just breathe," Mara says, and while she's touching him, she's like a breaker on the fields wanting to fly off from him in all directions. "And now run," she adds, blithely low-key. "Before they get up."
"Can I turn invisible?" Nathan gulps as he pounds after her, distractedly looking back to the bone men, wondering if he hurt any of them - their appearance might be freakish, but for all he knows they approached to say 'hello'. It all happened too quickly for rational thought, and Mara's demands have been leading his brain, but now that he thinks about it, they didn't have anything resembling weapons, and seemed more curious than anything else. "Can I fly?"
"No," she snaps, pissed off. "You're just an impenetrable wall, Nathan. Deal with it."
She looks strained and very much not-invulnerable. She's not Audrey, but at the moment, the mask of aloof evil she's worn since emerging in the lighthouse and dismissively declaring Duke as good as dead is definitely askew. Nathan has an odd sense that more time may have passed while he was out of things than he can definitively pin down.
However strained, he's sure that he's worse-off than she is. He can sense the walls wanting to press down around him the moment her pincer grip leaves his arm. He has always been passively numb; never had to fear carrying around a Trouble that lurks in readiness to endanger everyone around him. Suddenly he has a lot more sympathy for Duke.
They're running over sandy scrubland, where he has to watch his feet around the occasional thick tufts of alien grass. There's nothing much as far as the eye can see, but at the same time... "This isn't the place on the other side of the trapdoor," Nathan says groggily, not understanding.
"You were catatonic in the void," Mara says. "We need to get out of this world. William isn't here."
"How can you be so-"
"I know, Nathan." She stretches her red smile and shows her teeth at his displeasure being reminded of their 'connection'. She lets her grip fall from his arm and Nathan grabs desperately to reclaim her touch. Her hand is small and hot with sweat, and it's Audrey's hand.
"Don't let go," he begs. The shield is going to slam down and suffocate him without her driving it back.
She swears at him, but lets him keep her hand. It saves her a moment later, as she almost takes a tumble on the uneven ground, but she doesn't acknowledge that. "We need to find the soft spot again. There was some displacement when we came out of the void." She glowers at Nathan. "I would have been able to pay more attention if I hadn't had to hold onto you."
Glaring at him, her expression suddenly clears. "But you... you're good at finding things, Detective..."
The next instant, they've stumbled to a halt and her hands are tearing at his shirt, while Nathan tries to catch her wrists and shove her back. "No more Troubles!" He already has two, when he didn't even know that was possible, and he can't control the newest.
"It will be harmless," she hisses, "and we need it. You're useless to me if you won't. I might as well abandon you here, unable to navigate the void without me, lost forever. Why would I accept your company, except to make use of this?" She sneers into his face, enjoying his shock. "You think you can double-cross me, but I still need a canvas, even if it's an inferior one. I can't Trouble myself."
He didn't see her crush the sphere, but the words get through his defences. Suddenly her palm is splayed against his chest. Nathan averts his eyes. Mara grabs his face and drags his gaze back to her. "We need an exit."
The question lights up inside his head, that way, and he presses his lips together and dumbly points. Mara nods her satisfaction and drags again on his arm.
Nathan's newest curse leads them to a glimmering patch in the air. He supposes not every otherworldly portal can be hidden and enclosed. Maybe this world just doesn't care enough. Maybe there's no infrastructure here, or dimension-crossing magical portals are too commonplace to bother.
Either way, they've made it. Shouts from behind turn their heads. Figures on the horizon are catching up, and whether their approach was initially benign or not, they don't seem happy now.
"Go!" commands Mara, and they jump into the twisting colours. Nathan sees Mara's hair stretch out behind her, seeming to defy space and gravity as time slows down. Then he disappears, a white-out on his senses. He pins all his focus onto Mara's grasp on his arm and tries to hold that focus. The next thing he knows, she's pulling him out of the light and noise, and they're tripping and falling on bare rock. Nathan watches, feeling very removed from it all, as a sharp edge strips skin from his arm. Then he shakes himself clear of the last threads of confusion.
"Better," Mara says, critically. She stands, brushing off her clothes, looking around.
She isn't touching him anymore. Nathan crouches and draws breaths in rasps, trying to force that rhythm into something steady. Safe, he tells himself. The forcefields are a threat response. He doesn't need them. Mara brought them somewhere safe.
He doesn't know that, but isn't looking around and telling himself any different until he has this under control. He clings on all fours to the ground, the solidity of gravity cradling his sense of balance even if he can't feel rock beneath his hands. He even wishes he'd paid more attention to Duke's faddy meditation ideas. For the Driscolls, control was all about breathing. This is like claustrophobia in reverse. He can get a hold of it.
Nathan becomes aware of Mara's voice at his back, rolling out soothing tones to match the rhythm he's trying to capture in breath. "That's it... slowly... You alone control this..." As he wins back self-control by inches, she finally steps away. He watches her feet move around him. She stops and her finger reaches out to tap his chin up to look at her. "It isn't a curse."
"Fine," Nathan growls. "It's a tool, and it's back in the box. Where are we now?" He wrenches up onto his feet, yanking his sleeve down and buttoning it over the graze. She just helped him and there's no real reason for him to be so angry with her, except she witnessed that, and she's not Audrey.
"A world I saw in William's mind." Mara is unconcerned by his hostility. "He isn't here." She looks perturbed. "But perhaps we should use this as an opportunity to gather ourselves, while it seems safe to do so."
They're on top of a cliff. Nathan wavers on his feet when he turns around and sees the expanse beneath them, but even if it's a long way down, they're at least six feet from the edge. The view is incredible and holds no trace of civilisation.
"I thought William was a prisoner in the void," he says.
"William was exiled through the void," Mara corrects. "The Barn functioned as both the door and the guard of his prison."
"Then the lighthouse-?" Nathan starts.
"Such portals exist everywhere. The Barn was purpose-made, but the soft spot exists naturally. Our world is locked tight from intrusion - not only, or even primarily, from William. Without its purposeful activation, it would have been impossible to use that route. But all these backwards, brutal or empty worlds aren't locked down in any such a way."
"Audrey said she first met William in the Barn."
She smiles. "You're the one who let him in. Congratulations, Nathan You shot the prison warden."
Nathan has regretted gunning down Howard far too often in the past eight months to react with much more than a grunt now. "Doesn't seem like much of a punishment, having the run of all these worlds while you were made to stay behind and fix what you'd done, as all-" As all those different women. As Audrey. Nathan's vision blurs with moisture.
Mara rolls her eyes. "He was parted from me for centuries. At least for all my long years in exile, I didn't know what I was missing. Although-" Her eyes flare. "I don't know whether to thank you or gut you for killing Howard. It means I don't get to do it with my own hands."
Nathan grimaces at the hate distorting her face, and has to remind himself again that she's not Audrey.
Howard, had he been a bit less smugly mocking of Nathan's helplessness to save Audrey, might still be alive. "We wouldn't be here." He glares at Mara. She is dust-coated, scraped-up and tired, as he must be. He wonders if that smile persists in hanging around her lips purely to torment him, or it's the thought of finding William that bolsters it.
It isn't fair. They were so close. William gone, and okay, the Troubles were still around, but at least without William to stir things up they'd just be the old Troubles they were used to. Without William to distract them, maybe they could have found a better solution. Audrey had almost had a chance.
Now, Nathan has to wonder if any part of Audrey still remains. It's that which drives him to push, saying to Mara, "You still remember them, obviously - Audrey's memories."
She smiles her false, wide smile just for him. "I remember that you love me... No matter who or what I am."
She gropes a hand up for his face. He jerks away from the caress of her fingers but he's too close to the cliff edge to back off again as she catches him by the belt and the front of his shirt, and leans up to plant a mocking kiss.
Nathan Wuornos is not the tool Mara would have chosen. There's an infuriating rigidity in him that seems designed to resist her best efforts. Hendrickson or Crocker would have made for more versatile raw materials, if she were empowering either of them with skills to aid their journey. Nathan's a far narrower set of possibilities, and even those would be nigh impossible to ferret out if she didn't know him so well.
Therein lies the other problem. He has been far too close for comfort to other personalities she's been forced to wear. She remembers him in bed. She remembers loving him, as if she could love him as an equal and that thought were not laughable. He has done things to her that some part of her would strike him dead for, if other parts wouldn't so violently protest such an action.
That, too, is an infringement on her soul.
She has not been Mara for many, many years. There are forgotten moments, inside the Barn, inactive, in the waiting period between Troubles, where she could feel William on the edge of her thoughts... She remembers those now, with everything else. William reached out and tried to touch her from so very far away. Right now, he is not here, she cannot feel him, and his loss is an ache.
She tells herself that the Barn straddled the void. That's why she could feel him then, and can't now. His mind cries out for her still, but she cannot hear it because worlds separate them.
That doesn't explain why she couldn't hear him when she was in the void. It could be Nathan's fault because she was struggling so hard to hold onto him and bring him with her at the time.
Nathan asks something else annoying, the answer to which is self-evident, and Mara would leave him behind if she could. He's a treacherous fool, waiting for his chance to screw her over in favour of a woman who never existed. Who the hell does he think Audrey Parker was? Memories might invoke habit, in the absence of real self-awareness, but that was still a mask she wore. Unknowing and unwilling, framed with the skills and impulse to help these flies, but still Mara underneath.
Mara remembers. Everything.
In 1955 she is Sarah returned from the war, witnessing things that she was aware, even then, didn't shock her so much as they should have, for she has seen so many things before, and still knew it somewhere on a deeper level. Nathan Wuornos is out of time and ridiculous as the first man she meets in town, and she feels the attraction almost instantly as her anger wears off. Her inhibitions are low and it has been such a long, long time.
She can't help but wonder what Howard thought about the baby. Mara's fingernails break the skin of her palms as she contemplates it. Was he sorry? It can't have been part of the Barn's intent for such things to happen. In her memory she holds in her arms the fragile form she'd had to leave behind and holds the dying body of the man he became, and she wants very badly to kill someone.
In 2010 she meets Nathan for the second time, not knowing it. All the months as partners and friends... until they are together again, her legs wrapped around him, he moving inside her.
There are too many memories, too many pieces of her. She has only been Mara again for a matter of hours, and they have not been quiet hours. She needs time and cannot afford to take any. Where is William? Is he too incapacitated to feel her mind's call? Unconscious? Wounded? He can heal himself but it takes will and focus to do so. Pain or oblivion could set him back.
"Mara," Nathan says, with increasing harshness. "Mara."
She hates the way he speaks her name like he wants to speak another one and doesn't have the decency to be subtle about it. Doesn't he grasp that this body was always hers?
"Shut up," she tells him fiercely. A black sphere dances unconsciously above her raised hand and he backs off. At least his fear amuses her.
But he plants his feet and states stubbornly, "We're there."
So they are. She puts the sphere away and peers down over the cliff edge. The distortion of the soft spot hovers a few feet shy of the rock face.
Mara stops and strives for clarity of thought. If William is indisposed and cannot answer, she would yet know if he were on this world. They have no reason to stay except to prolong their safety, and the thought of William in need won't allow her to do that.
"I suppose we try not to miss," she declares to Nathan, raising her eyes from the drop. One push would do it, she thinks, but both of them find the mark. She stumbles to her knees in the void, ill-balanced to meet solid ground after the plunge. Nathan lands full-length beside her with a whump of noise.
In the void, Nathan is crippled by the incapacity of his senses. The void, above all, is a place where you feel your way. So much information is transmitted through the skin, the pulse and flow of energy, the currents to follow to find the routes to other worlds. He gets to his knees this time and freezes there, seeing only light too bright to function in and hearing only the buzz of energies flowing around them. She could do something about that, possibly, but she likes the way he's forced to react to her touch, hers and hers alone, and it might detract from his function at other times. He is used to being a blank. She can manage for them both in the void, in exchange for a foot soldier who can fight and never feel the damage.
This time around, he stays still and tips his head cautiously, near-blind, near-deaf, tracing the geography with what he has. His face zeroes in on her unerringly, though his eyes aren't focused. Perhaps he can smell her. She wrinkles her nose, because much running around has been done since Audrey Parker last showered. Nathan's eyes close. He waits for her.
She reaches out and takes his wrist in her hand, pulls him up with her. If he were able to hear her say, "Good boy," as he starts to plod trustingly where she pulls him, he'd probably react less sedately to those words and that tone. Having him obediently at heel is a much-improved situation from fighting him or hauling him around. The idea is pleasing, after what he's had from her.
Mara examines the possibilities of keeping Nathan while searching the currents leading out to different worlds for places she recognises from William's mind. She still doesn't sense William, and they were only together again with their hands touching for a split second before cruel Nathan broke them apart, so the impressions are fleeting and jumbled, not nearly so useful as she let Nathan believe. Nonetheless, she picks a world and sets their course with her intent. Their next step carries them along the current and into normal-
-Night. It's dark where they've come to, and William still isn't here. A very big moon looms above, and tree branches sway in a light wind. The ground crunches beneath their feet and Nathan breaks from her and stares around. The moonlight falls on his fine-featured face.
Apparently navigating the void takes it out of you. Mara feels exhausted. She shook it off before - perhaps unwisely, since they were safer, unassailable from their vantage point, in the last world - but now she definitely needs replenishing.
"I'm hungry," she tells Nathan. "Scout the area and search for food while I build a fire."
He stares at her, apparently feeling no such waning of energy. Of course not - presumably he keeps going until his body gives out. "I'm not your henchman," he says distastefully, narrow-eyed.
"Do it or don't do it," she snaps, having no patience with his attempts to resist the natural order of things between them. "I am lighting the fire. We need warmth. We need to eat."
Nathan draws his pistol and goes. He's not without craft there, ghosting into the trees. The whistles, rustles and howls of animal life prove they're not alone. Mara shivers and regrets being so quick to send him away. Being herself again gives her no extra strength, though she has Audrey's skills and one small gun to protect her. She would rather leave the lowly tasks to Nathan.
She focuses on the fire until the flames leap, warming her hands.
She has annoyed Nathan, and he is gone a long time. (She refuses to entertain other options.) She doesn't hear any gunshots. When he eventually does come back, he's caught some small, grey, furred creature with a passing resemblance to rabbit or squirrel.
Mara raises her brows at him. All that time for Benjamin Bunny?
He mistakes her and responds, "I used the forcefields. Watched and waited. Walled it in. Asphyxiated it."
Mara is surprised he risked that. But it was wise, both not to waste ammunition, and to avoid the possibility of bringing attention down on them with a shot. That he knew it was a risk is clear from the way his limbs are still trembling faintly now.
"I have to learn to control it," he adds defensively.
"Sit down." She wants to order him to cook the unrabbit, but suspects he would make a mess of it, and she would rather eat.
Time passes. She watches Nathan sprawl out and maybe sleep, but wouldn't put it past him to fake in the belief she'll do something somehow incriminating or terrible when she thinks he's unaware. They are forced to be allies, at the moment. She needs him to help her find William. When she finds William...
Well. Mara is not completely decided upon what will happen then. Something inside her, a resistance that she doesn't want to examine too closely, kicks up a fierce rebellion at the idea of hurting Nathan.
She nudges him awake - maybe - and they eat. He does so mechanically. She remembers the distant ancestor she created his Trouble for, and why she created it, and the thought makes her pensive, but she also remembers specifically how his Trouble works. Nathan needs the food as much as she, but can't feel that he needs it, and certainly the flavour gives him no reason to care. Mara wishes she had no sense of taste, but the immediate problem of hunger is resolved. Her mouth is dry, but there is no solution for that but to suck the juices from the remnant of the roasted carcass, which at least are plentiful.
She decides, with her thoughts still grey and floating with too much exertion, that she'll sleep before looking for water. But there is still something else she needs to do before that.
When she tries to lay a hand on Nathan, he reacts violently, twisting to avoid her at the same time as shoving her away so hard she falls, barely missing the fire. "Don't touch me. I know you're not Audrey."
He looks a little bit sorry as she picks herself up, but she's reassured by his reaction and the new scrapes and bruises on her body, burning their outrage. He is too volatile, too injured, hurting and raw, to trust in his co-operation alone, that he'll follow Audrey's body and continue to do as Audrey's lips say. It seals her need to do this, before she sleeps in his presence.
"Audrey was a set of memories," Mara poses. "Memories I still have. Nathan, nothing was erased by William's touch. I only remembered who and what I really am."
While he dawdled, she has had more time to sift through and integrate those memories. Beginning with Audrey, since Audrey is most relevant to her situation now, and will offer the most clues of how best to use Nathan. The rest she has closed down into tight packages in her brain, to unpick one by one when she has the chance. Realistically, she may not need to reabsorb any of them, but sitting on them indefinitely is bound to cause problems, and they will remain in her subconscious however hard she tries to lock them out at the surface. Besides, she wants to know what she's been doing all these years. Careless enough to let your body go wandering without you. Foolishly blinkered not to find out where it's been.
Nathan stares at her like he's dancing around the connection but doesn't want to make it.
"I am Audrey, Nathan." She strikes the point home without mercy. "You can never 'bring Audrey back'. She is already here, and there isn't any power left in the world that can take Mara away again."
"That's not true," he mumbles, looking away.
"You told me you love me." She's worked her way close enough to touch his face. She hopes he won't add to her bruises again.
"We were talking about Lexie, then, not some..." he jerks his hands helplessly at her. "Whatever you are. Ancient evil."
"A promise is a promise, Nathan. No pancakes in this wilderness, but it's still you and me... more or less." More. Mara is more. She had never imagined, as Audrey, how much more she could be.
She has shattered him sufficiently that he only shudders and closes his eyes at the touch of her hand on his face. She leans in and kisses him. He tastes of their meal, but at least they both ate the same.
"It's still me..." she whispers, and his resolve collapses as she strokes her hand ever so gently over his jaw.
"Audrey...?" It's a sob, and his chest heaves in time to meet her other hand, sliding under his shirt and firmly pressing, pushing down over his heart and placing the seal that should fix her Nathan problem. His need is already rolling out of him in waves, so tangible and sickening... She locks it now into the fibres of his being and hisses triumph into his mouth as the breath rushes out of him and his eyes fly open.
He pulls away from her and drops onto his knees, gaze locked to her blackened palm. "What did you do?"
"Guess."
"I already have three Troubles," he chokes, chest jumping with his swift panic. He screws his eyes shut and ducks his head, burying his fingertips in the dirt as he battles something - the forcefield Trouble spiralling out of control again. "That's not enough?"
"Four," Mara corrects.
"I said no more!"
"It's already done."
With a growl, he flings himself at her. Panic takes her, fleetingly, as his body covers hers and presses her down, hard enough to form more bruises. His hands curl and yank in her hair. For a moment, she thinks he's still going to hit her. The rage in his blue eyes is extraordinary in its violence. She remembers again his ancestors, from Max Hanson all the way back to the first, and wonders what possessed her to get close to that lineage.
Then confusion blurs the clarity and intent in his eyes. He leans down and sniffs at her neck, delicately at first, a quick and darting motion, then shoves his face against her skin and inhales her thoroughly. "Oh, God..." he groans, indistinctly, sounding like a man drugged. A moment later Mara is laughing as he laps at her skin, his hands sliding up under her shirt, loving again, worshipful in a way that would never hurt her.
Less mirthfully, she reaches in and grips his wrists hard. "Don't you dare tear these clothes." They're the only ones she has. Sooner or later, she needs to do something about that, too. They need supplies of all kinds. Trying to get them from alien peoples whose languages they don't speak only seems like a way to find trouble.
Nathan is breathing shakily. She set the ground-rule, and he has no choice but to listen. She has been lucky, really, that this Trouble works as intended. She was tired, and it's only the sixth or so that she's made in centuries, leaving the door wide open for any number of things to go wrong. It was also tediously complex to fine-tune it to bind him to her by physical stimuli, in such a way that her touch won't negate it and render it useless. "What did you do... to me?" he gulps. His eyes can't leave her, an addict's haze in them, but still, also, horrified awareness that he doesn't want this.
"You need me," Mara tells him. She slides both their hands down to her waist, and lets his go, then unfastens Audrey's cumbersome jeans. His hands shake as they pull on the denim, dragging it to her ankles, carefully sliding free her shoes and then removing the thick fabric over her feet.
He makes a wordless noise of affirmative, raises his head and awaits her nod of permission before he buries his face between her thighs. Mara wraps her fingers in his hair and bends her knees wide, and pushes him firmly down. She laughs and gasps as his needy mouth goes to town.
Occasionally he twitches like he's trying to pull away, and his trembles tell her that intellectually, he wants to stop, but can't, and that only makes it more delightful.
His tongue delves her sex until they're both sated. After that, her tiredness takes over and she cuddles into him, his body large, warm, tamed, and hers again. She rests safe and pleased in the knowledge that the biggest threat to her has been conquered.
Mara wakes in dawn colours to find a furious Nathan stamping around the camp and kicking out the remnant of the fire. The look he directs at her is pure fury, and he averts his eyes before it can turn into anything else.
"My rules," he growls at her groggy early-morning state, closing his eyes as he faces her. "You don't give me a single further Trouble unless we can't survive without it, and without clearing what it is with me first. Because if this happens again, I'm walking away."
She looks at the world, unknown, stretching around them. Being alone might spell death for either of them. She has no powers if she has no clay to sculpt them upon. It would mean his death, too, but in that moment, she cannot doubt that he means it.
"You're not Audrey." He scowls hate at her. "Audrey would never have done that. Audrey was - Audrey was in love with me."
He turns roughly away from her, and she pouts at his back and keeps her mouth closed on reiterating how all his assumptions are wrong.
There is no need for him to fully understand what that means, and it's probably better that he doesn't.
He might struggle, but he can't escape. Her touch, even her nearness, can turn him against himself now. She was optimistic to think it would be simple. Of course he would fight her. But his stubbornness is of no consequence, when he cannot win.