A TroublesFest extra, for a request by Dorinda: Dwight Hendrickson, caretaking. Post-3x13, includes a small spoiler from the s4 preview trailer. Deploy slash goggles at will.
Dwight's a fixer. He fixes.
He also attracts more than bullets. It's not part of his Trouble—probably—but somehow Dwight always ends up catching strays. Abandoned puppies, lost mall kids, broken hearts. They turn up in his orbit, looking to him for comfort. And generally, he does what he can to help fix the situation. He finds puppies new homes, kids get reunited with their parents, and as for hearts, well. Dwight's found that keeping his mouth shut and just listening is the best medicine.
It's been three months since the barn disappeared and Dwight is still helping Nathan keep a lid on Haven. The Troubles didn't end with the barn's vanishing like usual, the Guard is losing its collective shit, and Nathan can't hold things together. He's not just broken-hearted; he's broken.
The last thing Dwight expected was to end up on the Haven PD, but Nathan needs the help and hell, it's not the first time Dwight's worn a uniform. It's an easy transition from being the town's unofficial cleaner to being an official-official. Much easier to get into crime scenes to clean up the mess now that he's got a badge to flash around, anyway.
It's irony and nothing else that Dwight wasn't there for the shootout clusterfuck on the hill. All those guns going off and Dwight would've been—well, not happy to catch all those bullets, but prepared for it, at least. While the Troubles are active he doesn't go anywhere without a vest, and he'd recovered from multiple gunshots before. But he and Dave and Vince were halfway down the slope when the shooting started, and by the time they made it back to the clearing the only one left standing was Nathan Wournos.
Barely standing. First priority had been to get him to the hospital, despite the fact that Nathan couldn't feel the bullets in his back and fought, bitterly, to stay on the hillside where the barn had vanished with Audrey inside. Dwight had been about a half-second from clipping him upside the head when Nathan's eyes rolled back and he toppled, neatly ending the debate.
The next few days were pure chaos as the meteors continued to fall and Haven nearly got itself pounded out of existence. The physical damage pretty much wiped away the "pretty little town" veneer, and tourists wouldn't be coming back any time soon. A host of Troubles got activated thanks to the stress and that nearly did the rest of the town in.
By the time Nathan recovered enough to relate what'd happened with the barn, things had passed the initial crisis point and settled into a low, dull panic. Those who knew the score were keeping their heads down. A number of families left Haven, hoping the Troubles wouldn't follow them elsewhere.
Dwight wished them luck with that but didn't hold out much hope of it. Sooner or later the Troubled always came back to Haven. In the normal scheme of things—what passed for "normal" around here, anyhow—the Troubles would have stopped when the barn disappeared. This time, Nathan's desperation to keep Audrey out of the barn collided with Jordan's desperation to see her go back in. Near as Nathan could recall, in quick sequence he'd shot "Agent Howard"—the barn's caretaker, guardian, whatever—Jordan shot Nathan, Duke shot her. And then Duke hurled himself into the collapsing structure when Nathan asked him to get Audrey back.
Which made a possible total of six people in the barn when it vanished, since Nathan'd been alone on the hillside and Jordan's and the skinwalker's bodies were nowhere to be found. James Cogan had already been inside and Howard's body disappeared too, folding in on itself with the barn's bright light. Dwight can't imagine what kind of reunion might be going on in there, if time even passes within the barn at all. But out here, he and Nathan have been left with a disintegrating town and a tentative truce with the Guard and a whole lot of frightened and angry people who no longer have hope of their Troubles being ended.
Dwight can't see a solution either, but he's always been more of a here-and-now guy anyway. Best he can do is pitch in to clean up the mess, like he's always done but on an even bigger scale. While Nathan was out of it in the hospital, Dwight helped herd people into makeshift shelters to ride out the rest of the meteor storm. Afterward folks kept looking to him for help and he just kept on doing what he did, right up to the moment when Nathan silently pressed a deputy's badge onto Dwight's jacket.
That's the easy part, all told. The town will knit itself back together because Troubled or not the residents are New Englanders, stubborn and set. Whether Nathan can recover past the shambling, efficient zombie he's turned himself into, that's another matter.
It's not strictly part of Dwight's duties to accompany his boss when he goes drinking, but he doesn't mind. Dwight doesn't object to Nathan getting shitfaced—he's more than earned the indulgence—but when the guy can't feel said face, it's better if someone's standing by to look after him. The town's lost enough without losing its police chief to a drunken accident.
The Gull's been closed since Duke vanished, but Nathan has a key and freely avails himself of the liquor behind the bar. Dwight follows suit at a more moderate pace. He can match Nathan drink for drink and still be standing upright at the end of the evening, but someone has to drive Nathan home and Dwight's elected himself.
They've done this frequently enough during the last month that Dwight can pretty accurately predict the sequence of events: Nathan mopes, Nathan drinks, Nathan more or less passes out on the bar. It's as fair a way of coping as anything and not Dwight's business to tell the guy otherwise; he did far worse after his daughter died.
Nathan doesn't talk much at the best of times and hardly ever now, so Dwight almost misses it when Nathan declares in an alcohol-slurred voice,
"I loved her."
Dwight just murmurs agreement because no shit, Sherlock. Hell, he'd half fallen for Audrey in the five minutes he'd known her.
"Loved him too," Nathan continues, mumbling into his whiskey.
Again, not a surprise, although Dwight never expected Nathan to say it out loud. Haven's full of secrets but some things are plain as day, and the tension between Nathan Wournos and Duke Crocker had always been more complicated than simple antagonism. No matter how many tacks Duke stuck in Nathan's back when they were kids.
Dwight doesn't really have any words of wisdom and he refuses to offer empty promises. Maybe the barn will reappear, maybe it won't. Maybe the Troubles will end, maybe they won't. There's nothing he or Nathan can do to change that either way, so there's no use dwelling on what can't be helped. Dwight sure as hell misses Audrey too, for more practical reasons—no one can help the Troubled like she did. But he's not counting on her coming back and if Nathan's talking about her and Duke in past tense, he's finally starting to accept the hard truth. It took Dwight at least as long to stop looking in shadows for his daughter after she died, to start looking forward instead of back.
So it's okay when Nathan starts toasting to Audrey and Duke and all the others they've lost. It's okay when Nathan starts talking about how he wishes he'd told Audrey he loved her sooner, and how he should've made his peace with Duke years ago.
Nathan presses his face into Dwight's shoulder as they wobble toward Dwight's pick-up and that's okay, too.
Dwight can't fix this. He's not even gonna try. But if Nathan needs someone to hold on to for awhile, sure, Dwight can be that someone. It's in his nature.
Title from "The Fixer" by Pearl Jam (song admittedly chosen for its title :D)