~oOo~
Your flames are flames that kiss me dead ~ Robert Smith
~oOo~
After the ride home with her father and Agent Cooper, Audrey wanted to be alone; to lie down, though she'd just awoke.
Nothing her parents could say was of any importance. She didn't want to deal with them. She didn't want to deal with anything. Closing the door, she removed her shoes before lowering herself to the comforting stillness of her bed.
Raw were the crooks of her arms, senses drifting. Her consciousness in the surrounding air. She existed in and out of induced dreams. At One-Eyed Jack's her visions had been gray and clouded, filtered in transparency, steeped in cold, strange darkness. A type borne of the unknown; of fear. She'd felt hands wrapped around her own, a body falling with hers through impassable distances, and had heard Agent Cooper's voice breaking through the barriers. The hands around her were his. He'd calmed her, kept her from a worse fate. She felt as though she'd merged with him in that state.
Audrey, with the spirit of her Special Agent, traversed the dark lake beds and tangle weeds not knowing how to escape.
After an eternity she awoke to find Agent Cooper beside her bed, his eyes full of concern, his hand burning into her cheek. Audrey knew of no other in the room save him, though the voices of many cast their weight.
She didn't want to leave. Never wanted to.
Ben Horne hovered over her side, violating the place she seconds ago had held dear. Calmness left her and was replaced by the memories of her father forcing open the curtains surrounding her bed, a porcelain mask over her face.
She hated him.
Audrey damned her father for joining her on the drive home. She wanted more of what she had left. The feeling that now she would associate with that bed, that room in the Bookhouse she would probably never see again.
She had so much to tell Agent Cooper.
In the perfume of her sheets, she grew tired, still reeling from the drugs of One-Eyed Jack's. Audrey pictured her Special Agent and ran her bare foot over the cool comforter where she wanted him. Wishing she could feel his arms around her.
She'd find a way to tell him everything.
A noise outside the door broke Audrey from her thoughts. Turning, she saw no one and her heart sank, knowing that her mother didn't care enough to even open the door to peek through. Sylvia was away regardless of when she was near. Closing her eyes again to find sleep, Audrey was shocked by a sudden embrace, and cries she knew as Johnny's soon muffled her ear.
"I missed you too."
~oOo~
"You spent a lot of time staring up into the arches of a bridge, making yourself dizzy. I remember."
"I wanted up there. I wanted in those rooms," Audrey reflected, searching the yellow counter of the diner beneath her hands. Dell Mibbler was two seats from her finishing his meal.
"Yeah, uh, I'd see you running though those weeds at least once a week. Running to look up at that old bridge. What... Eh, what did you see up there?"
"I saw a room. A room I wanted to be in, where the ceilings were arches no one could walk. I liked looking at that room for hours. I saw everything I wanted in there. Sometimes I didn't know if I could walk for staring, but I did. I passed the beauty salon and all its empty chairs and the Double R on the way home. Sometimes it was either so late or so early that the diner was closed. All I could do was stare in the windows. I pressed a camera to the glass and took a picture without lights. I still have that picture. But I never got that room. Never."
"A pretty girl like you shouldn't have been out doing those things."
"That room still exists, though," she continued, thinking. "It's waiting for me. And now I have someone to share it with."
"Who?" Shelly asked, re-filling Dell's coffee cup.
"Someone who doesn't even know about it or me, really." Audrey spun the stool under her to the left. Stop. Right. "But who understands."
"Don't you know you shouldn't be out doing those things?" Dell repeated.
"Now any bridge I see, wherever I go, I can look up and think of another time. Of that special room. It's all one big circle." Audrey stopped as the door opened and Agent Cooper and Sheriff Truman stepped in. "Like this," she said, remembering where she'd left off, heart beating fast. She removed her ring, holding up the small circle to frame Cooper's face.
"Hello, Audrey," Agent Cooper nodded. He approached the counter, addressing Shelly, "Two cups of coffee and two of today's specials."
"Pie for dessert?" She asked for the fun of it.
"Without a doubt."
"Coming right up," Shelly smiled, her teeth showing between her partially closed lips.
"I'll go ahead and get us a booth," Sheriff Truman said, knowing Cooper would soon be otherwise engaged.
Cooper inexplicably felt inclined to extend his hand to Audrey, so he did.
She contentedly stared at his flesh. "I know there was a ring. I saw it," she said, examining where once a band had been on Dale's little finger. "Where'd it go?"
"A giant took it."
"What did it want with it?"
"I don't know. But I believe it will be returned once I solve Laura's case."
Audrey kicked a foot outwards, swinging her leg twice. "It feels strange to not wear it, right? Do you find yourself pulling at the base of your finger willing it to appear? I know I would. Wait, here take mine." She promptly removed her silver ring, slipping it onto his little finger. "Just borrow it tonight, while you sleep. You can give it back to me tomorrow, OK?" She smiled and gently slid from the stool. Almost out the door, she looked over her shoulder. "Sweet dreams, Special Agent."
Stunned, Dale stood by the counter in the same spot where Audrey had left him until slowly he woke and took a seat opposite Harry.
The Sheriff watched, knowingly, as Cooper fidgeted with the jeweled ring on his finger throughout his meal, never taking it off.
~oOo~
Audrey emerged from shadowed corners to follow a man in a black suit. He, for some reason, uncharacteristically appeared unaware of her presence as he stopped to look to the boughs of distant trees, to the beauty in their animation.
She walked a few steps behind, watching as different hairs on his head rustled faintly with the breeze. Her eyes moved to the pink skin of his neck, visible from under his collar. He had stopped, his head craned, listening to the music of the trees in the darkness. As she continued coming closer, Cooper grew slack, his back still facing her. "How did you know I was coming for you?" he asked calmly.
"A little bird told me."
He slowly accepted this information, turning around. "And did this bird have any distinctive markings?"
She drowsily blinked seeing him in full again. "Mmm, no I don't think so. It was red like a cardinal. I think. He only whistled, but I knew what his whistles meant. They spelled out your name, C-O-O-P-E-R. I added the Special Agent part."
Dale nodded, his chest raising as he inhaled.
"I just came back from seeing my brother Johnny. He was having some sort of bad dream. He didn't want to talk to me about it, though. He just kept asking for Laura... Agent Cooper, do you feel my hand on your heart?" Her empty hand reached outwards.
"No, Audrey, I do not."
"Now?"
"Yes. I see a heart."
"But is it yours? Reach inside and feel."
Dale placed his hand over his ribs. "It is mine. My heart."
"It was."
Cooper looked to her without a reaction other than mild confusion.
"You've given it to me. And I just might keep it, Special Agent. I just might."
He opened his mouth to speak, but Audrey stopped him, laughter and adoration in her eyes. "You're not going to find it out here. When we met, my heart jumped out of my mouth and into yours."
Dale's vision of trees faded to one of black, white and red. He realized they had all the time been in The Black Lodge.
"How did you get in this room, Audrey? Why are you here?"
"I'm not in this room. You called for me and I came to you."
"Then I'm still here. This is a dream."
"Yeah, but in dreams," she said, her eyes slyly roving to the side, "we can do whatever we want."
~oOo~
Searching for an untold amount of time, sometimes with Laura, sometimes with a woman she didn't know whose dress was stained with blood, she eventually found Dale Cooper.
She saw him from behind, his legs giving out, his body sinking. A small man in a red suit ran palms over the other, making water the floor. She was walking toward him when BOB appeared from thin air, threatening Audrey in flames; a mirror of herself in whitened eyes. Convulsing, BOB threw his head back to emit a howl.
".eerf eb reven ll'ouY"
In a haze Audrey felt herself moving. Her steps progressing through the Lodge, as if on their own accord, through the maze of chevron and blood, until suddenly she and Dale were under a starry sky in the middle of the forest, surrounded by 12 bare trees.
Dale fell to the ground, coughing; his free hand to his blood-stained shirt. He was not himself, nearly mad from his years in the Lodge, but she would not let go his hand.
For reasons unknown to herself, Audrey remained calm, touching her fingers to the veins of his wrist in a pulsing manner until he began to breathe normally.
Ushering Dale to the car, she drove to the Pine View Motel, away from her family, and stayed with him through hours that were not real.
At length, Audrey alerted Dale's friends of his escape. They visited, offering comfort, but could discern from his withdrawal that Cooper was Audrey's alone. Her care was what was anchoring him to Earth, what was preventing him from fading. They would in time know him again as he was, but for now they understood they should not expect their friend to so quickly emerge from the shadows.
Sheriff Truman informed Audrey that BOB was no longer tethered to a body. The night before, around the time of Agent Cooper's escape, his doppelganger had seemingly committed suicide while imprisoned. His body had disappeared as they went to inspect it, a filmy haze exiting his crown as an aura as they entered the cell. Hawk believed BOB had in that way returned to The Black Lodge, concluding that he could now be anywhere, or anyone.
Audrey knew, according to lore, that the force residing in the woods had existed for hundreds of years. If no other before them had found a way to banish it's evil, how would they? The most they could do was keep it at bay. Use what knowledge they had gained from previous victims to instruct others of ways in which to fight if sought as a host. But that could only go so far until death occurred, whether it be self-sacrifice or no.
She didn't inform Cooper. There was no sense. He knew already that his doppelganger had ruined his life. That shortly after he had been sentenced to the hell within the Lodge, Annie Blackburne had died. In a semi-conscious state she'd bled to death in the hospital. Her wounds caused by the steel instruments of the room surrounding her, the hands performing her surgery his own. No one had seen it as it happened, aside from himself. And he'd been powerless to stop it.
His stand-in had left the FBI, taking a job as a pharmacist. In thin plastic gloves he had returned at night to Dead Dog Farm, so near the woods.
Alone.
It had been easy in the beginning. No one had suspected him. He and his surgery in the woods. Aid to the beast incarnate. After time, fear took root causing even those who had before trusted him with their lives to doubt. To avoid him. To dread seeing the man in dark driving by, walking the streets in the dead of night.
He had no idea how many people he'd harmed. How many he'd killed.
In a corner of the floor, Audrey would find him crying as she came back from an errand, from another room. Lying beside him, she would run her hand over his hair before embracing him.
She was willing to wait forever.
Cooper told her what he'd seen in black and white. In sheets he would whisper of nightmares. He spoke often of his mother, Caroline, a girl named Marie. How in time he'd seen all those whom he'd lost, even if they were only mirages of blood.
He was distant, forlorn. His words sometimes muffled as he sank deeper into a pillow. Audrey listened, her face unreadable. As always, something unspoken lingered above them as thick as hovering smoke.
His love of Tibet was leaving his lips when one night he wandered, staring into her blue eyes. She'd smiled, loving him as he was uncharacteristically silent, and that was when he put his hand on the hollow of her neck, gently, warmly.
When he kissed her it was his death; he was reborn.
~oOo~