Chapter 11
A Sea of Troubles
They could hear things being thrown around in the hold/storeroom as they approached. Two coasties on guard actually looked glad to see Nathan, escorted by the officer. Who cocked his head at the door and shrugged. You see what we're dealing with. It sounded like a gorilla beating on a Samsonite in there. The walls actually shook with impact, showering them with rust and dust.
"I thought he was restrained," the commander said, embarrassed, with a brief glance at Nathan. This was not how professionals handled prisoners.
'He was, sir," one of the men said, after checking with the other. "He … musta broke every bone in his hands to do get loose."
"Open the door." The two guards flinched, appalled at the order. Nathan didn't repeat himself, just lifted his chin a little.
Their commander nodded, after a moment, cleared his throat. "The guys in the white coats with the big drugs are coming to take him," he said, apologetically. "I don't know what happened out there –" out at sea, "but he was in there, like this, when we got aboard."
He stopped Nathan with a hand on his arm when Nathan started forward, and Nathan recognized the look. Trouble, and no explanation. "There was a fire, but nothing was burnt." He stepped back, let Nathan enter.
*.*.*
She ducked as a bullet rang out against the metal hull, rang the entire boat like a fire alarm. Ducked, and the shot missed – or the shot missed and she ducked, because how Dirk could have missed, the hallway short and Dirk right behind her, she didn't – Duke! He was up again, and had pulled the bullet off course…
"Duke – get away! Please!" she called. How many times could he stand it? Their gun held seventeen bullets – how many times could Duke get shot and still get back up again?
Dirk faced away from her as she stepped into the main stateroom, faced off with Duke, gun raised to eye level. Would Duke be able to recover from a shot to the head? They didn't know.
"Dirk, I can explain," they said.
"Get out of here," Duke ordered, stepping closer to the gun.
Ordered her, but not by name. Did not look at her and that could be because his attention was all on his brother, or it could be because he could not stand to look at her. At them.
"I killed you," Dirk cried, actually cried, tears streaking down his cheeks and eyes rimmed red. "I killed my brother – and you can't be him -"
"Yeah, you shot me," Duke acknowledged, hands wide and patient. "Which, by the way, you bastard – that hurt. But I am not dead, look." He laughed, patted his chest, - which, considering the bloody holes in his shirt was more than a little frightening on its own, "just me, your little brother, like always. It's all good. Just put down the gun, Dirk, and we'll get through this. All of us."
They believed him. Surely anyone would believe him, so calm, so cool. Dirk was freaked right now but surely…
Dirk swung around to point the gun at her. "Not her. Not the witch." Turned his back on Duke. "I was looking for you. This is all your fault. The one who changes –"
And froze, his gaze shifting from her to something internal, to himself – to the blade that stuck out of his chest just below his breastbone. He fell to the floor.
They grabbed the pistol, emptied the chamber and dropped the ammunition magazine, threw it across the room.
Duke ignored her, kneeling, pulled Dirk into his arms. The blade was buried up to its jewel encrusted hilt in Dirk's back, and he tried to stem some of the bleeding on the front with his own hands, pressing down. "You stabbed me in the back." Dirk attempted a breathy bloody laugh. "You actually stabbed me in the back."
"I know. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
"You're my brother."
Duke rocked him, but had no answer. He looked at the blood on his hands, blood that did not absorb, his blood that held no power, nothing beyond the could-have-been bonds of family. Dirk's hands gripped his, moved as if trying to pull the dagger free.
"You'll see. It's her. Dad said… Dad said…"
They would never know what Simon had said.
Duke keened as he curled over his brother's body, a cry of steel bent beyond breaking point, cold tortured.
"Duke, I'm so sorry," they whispered, reaching out. He'd saved them, sacrificed for them – he threw her arm aside.
"Dana."
"What?" They didn't understand.
"I want to talk to Dana," he said slowly, not looking up, words distant. "Just her."
"She's here." She was, wailing her grief inside them, his pain hers, distracting and unusually violent, but she could hear him.
The dagger that had been buried in Dirk was suddenly pointed at them, still bloody. "Wrong answer."
They stared at it, at Duke Crocker holding a weapon on them. It always came down to this. One way or another, no matter what. Here they were again. How many times, how many centuries, and it always, somehow, came back to this.
"I WANT TO TALK TO DANA!"
"What are you going to do with that, Duke?" They didn't know who spoke at first, or maybe it was all of them. Audrey was there, and Dana. Two of them who loved this man holding a knife on them, who had changed the pattern of what had gone before. They could still break free of it. Maybe. "Are you going to stab us to get to her?" Cut away what wasn't Dana?
"Please," he begged. The blade dropped to the floor. At first they thought he was begging for his brother's life. But it was too late, even for Dana's skills.
"Please. Just tell me why."
Her monkey king. Dana fought her way to the surface, pushed the others aside, and they let her. Reached out and brushed tears and bangs. "I will. I promise. Not much longer now."
*.*.*
Dave followed the ambulance down the dock, followed the Freddy's orderlies on board, nodding to the coast guardsmen in distracted professionalism. He was not responsible for their assumptions, he never said he was a doctor – but he'd been a reporter for even longer than he'd been chasing the Troubles. Getting in where he was not wanted was just part of the job.
One body under a sheet on a gurney, waiting on deck. Dave checked under the sheet. Sighed his regret. Not that Dirk had ever had a chance, really. He was – had been – a Crocker, through and through, regardless of his legal birth name. Which left only one Crocker heir now, in Haven.
This had to be it. Duke's daughter was doing well in Nebraska, Dave had cause to know. A pretty happy child, the light of her adopted family's life – but god help them if they didn't get it right this time and she had to come back to Haven. God help them, this had to be it.
It was up to Duke now.
*.*.*
The Cape Rouge seemed to stumble, shudder – a physical vibration that passed by in a wave, and she slowed. Lost power, rocked stern high and then bow as her own wake passed her by.
The engines were dead. She tried pushing what buttons she could, but none of her past lives included any experience at the controls of a large modern ship. Or even an old rust bucket like this one. Duke… Duke was probably drinking himself into unconsciousness right now – but they had to get back to Haven.
She could hear things being thrown around in the engine room before she got to bottom of the ladder. She heard screams, and she jumped. "Duke!" Please, not the Glendowers again.
She ducked in low, crossing the passageway and getting a glimpse of what was going on inside. A crate of some sort came flying out of the air at her. She barely ducked in time. "Whoever you are, you are not getting out of here. Where is Duke? Is he okay?"
No answer, just a grunting heaving animal noise. A wounded animal noise. "Who's in there?"
"Come watch it burn. Watch it all burn."
That was Duke's voice. Sort of. She stepped inside the engine room. It looked like the aftermath of an explosion. Of a suicide bomb. Blood splattered over everything, thrown, a paintball war of blood.
"Duke!"
Blood dripped down the jeweled blade in his hand. Duke ran it down the length of his own arm, slicing it like cold butter. His blood gushed out, and he gathered a handful of it, watched it, then let it dribble through his fingers. "Look how pretty it burns."
"Duke…" she moaned.
He pointed the knife – the dagger, double-edged and a foot long, tapering to an elegant delicate tip – at her throat. "My blood. My Crocker blood, my cursed blood. You see this? I tried to get rid of it. It burns like acid and I tried to stop –" His tone swung abruptly almost cheerful, an unexpected twenty dollar bill in his pocket. Look what I found. "I can't die. I tried. It just heals again. How the hell about that?"
"Duke, stop it. This isn't you." Sarah was the coldly practical one. Most of the others were busy holding Dana back.
"Is this me?" He held up his arm, shoulder height, and they both watched as the long gash, pouring out his blood, knitted itself together as if it had never been. He took the blade and did the same on the other arm. Cut himself, let the blood pour out. "I killed him. I saved you, but I killed him. I –" Duke stopped, bright-eyed, looked at her as if he'd just had a new thought.
"You can kill me," he said, a solution to the insolvable. "You can make it stop." He offered her the dagger, hilt first. "Look how it burns. So pretty." He held out that arm and healed himself again. "But it doesn't stop. It burns even now. I can feel every vein inside me like acid…"
"It isn't burning, Duke. It isn't acid. It's just blood." Audrey was calm, but sympathetic. Horrified, but this was still her friend. She reached out and touched his shoulder, and he didn't move away.
"Make it stop. It hurts. Please, Dana. Audrey, please make it stop."
She took the dagger from him, her hands dripping the same as his. "Will you trust me, Duke? You have to trust me."
He could only nod, sliding to his knees. His hands slid down her ribs, to her waist, to her hips. Held himself there, not looking at anything, anywhere. "Yes," barely audible. "Please, please, please –"
She hit him, hilt first, just behind his ear.
*.*.*
Omnia vincit amor.
Nathan sat on the stateroom bed, held the lid to the ornate silver box in one hand, what he'd found after searching the room for something, anything, that would explain what had happened aboard the Cape Rouge. The bottom was loose in his other hand, along with Evi's note, still there two years after she'd died. The glowing Crocker name was faded now – after Nathan had followed the directions and saw for himself.
He didn't understand. Why this, now? Why, all of it?
He wanted desperately to feel the squeeze on his heart that must be there. He wanted to feel the lump in his throat and the pounding of his head, and even – as he tasted salt on his lips – the burn of tears. He wanted to know what he was feeling as he felt it because he didn't know what to call this –this– that wanted to burst out from inside him, tear him apart from the inside.
Of course, he thought bitterly, as Dave Teagues knocked on the open door. "Not a good time, Dave." He didn't even care what Dave was up to now, how he got on board. He had nothing left to spare for them, either of them, and their impotent conspiracies.
Duke was off the charts crazy – Nathan had persuaded the guards to let him try to talk to him, try to calm him down, but it only seemed to rev Duke up to ever greater ravings about burning blood and begging Nathan to kill him. But then the drop of blood from the injection of sedatives – after the Taser and the four orderlies and the straitjacket – had hissed and spit flame like a birthday sparkler, and Duke's nosebleed lit up with the soft light of spilt kerosene.
"You see," Duke had said, watching their reactions. "She couldn't see it. I tried to show her."
Her, according to Duke, who was neither Dana nor Audrey. And she wanted Duke dead.
But Dave didn't go away, just stood there, twisting something in his hands. "Nathan, I'm sorry, but there's something I think you should see."
Which meant that Dave wanted to wind Nathan up again like his own toy soldier and send him off in another direction, another windmill tilt, another skirmish as their sacrificial proxy while the Teagues sat back and watched from the sidelines. Again. Well, screw that.
"No."
"Nathan, this is –"
"No."
Dave held out the rolled up piece of paper in his hand. "Dirk had a map. Passed down through generations of Crockers, I think. If you look –"
"Why did you set fire to the Gull?"
Dave looked stumped for a moment, trying to think up an acceptable lie, maybe. Maybe just annoyed that Nathan was still harping on that. "I wanted to break Duke Crocker. I wanted to take something away from him that he couldn't stand to lose."
Nathan wanted to be sick. Wanted to feel his disgust, not just this dull distant anger. "You got your wish." Congratulations.
"The Troubles have to end, Nathan. One way or another. Duke Crocker has to die. And they were just going to go on and on if you three went on pretending that you are all such good friends while the rest of Haven gets chunks taken out of it with every new Trouble."
Not pretending, he wanted to shout. He hadn't been pretending to be friends with Duke. Poor destroyed Duke, finally driven insane by the burden of Troubles no one could have been expected to carry. Audrey… owned his soul. He wasn't pretending about any of it. Damned if he was going to help them kill each other, Troubles or no.
"Go tell it to someone who cares."
When he looked up again, Dave was gone, and Nathan hadn't noticed him leave. So be it.
Omnia vincit amor. Love conquers all.
Why?
Agent Howard had said that to him. Dana's professor boyfriend Corey – but talking to him. Why would Duke have this? He knew the story about Simon's weapons, and even how Dwight and Duke had fought over possession of the box, how Duke had cut Dwight and absorbed Dwight's curse, starting everything…
Duke had never mentioned the inscription.
Friendship isn't wrong, Dana had said.
Nathan remembered his failure when Audrey had disappeared, how he had given up. And his vow to never do that again. He was her bedrock. He loved her, Audrey, he only now knew how much. When he loved her even when she was more than just Audrey alone.
… and love conquered all.
*.*.*
"Tell Nathan!" she yelled to Dave Teagues, as the Coast Guard men escorted her out onto the Cape Rouge's deck. The US Marshals were here, apparently, to take her into custody and there was nothing she could do. Dave had unscrolled it for her, since her hands were handcuffed behind her back and the guards were less than interested in letting her talk to anyone. They were escorting Dave off the boat too, looked like, since he'd exposed himself as a reporter, asking to get a statement from her in order to get close enough to show her the map.
God, if it fell into their hands, it could be lost for generations more. And she hadn't even had a good look…
Dirk bloody Harrison had had it. Simon's gift, no doubt. The Crocker family legacy actually written down on parchment almost four hundred years ago. Rumours of the map had surfaced, and been forgotten, over the generations. A map to the heart of the Troubles.
Dave yelled back something she couldn't quite catch. Nothing positive, from what she read of his tone and body language. She bucked and fought against the hands holding her, pleaded with them to let her talk to him. Nathan had to know. He would help. He'd gone to check on Duke, and then nothing… They were taking her away.
They were taking her away from him, again, and she had to tell him – make sure he knew she would come back, one way or another. God, she was going to have to start all over again…
But here was something odd. Stan and Bill, in suits, two Haven PD officers pulling up to the boat in a dark blue sedan. Stan flashed FBI credentials – Audrey's credentials! – too fast to be closely inspected while Bill just looked bored behind his dark glasses. Stan signed the form the coastie held out for him – government work meant paperwork… and they shook hands. Then the coast guard men left her behind on the dock, went back aboard the Rouge, while Bill indicated the backseat for her.
He undid her cuffs first.
Inside the car, rubbing at her wrists, she wasn't even sure she was free as Stan backed the car down the dock. "Impersonating federal officers, boys?" is pretty damn illegal.
Stan actually grinned, sparing her a glance, arm extended over the seat and looking out the back window.
"Nathan said we should use our imagination," Bill supplied, laconic and dry as ever. "His," meaning Stan's, his imagination, "in this case. Not mine."
"Nathan has gone after Duke," Stan said. And threw the car into a 180 as soon as he hit dirt, accelerated up the hill.
*.*.*
Stopping the ambulance taking Duke to the Freddy was merely a matter of getting ahead of it, skidding across the road with lights flashing, and pulling out his badge.
The orderlies stepped out when he asked, confused, but it wasn't like they were fleeing criminals. They were health professionals – sort of – and worried about their patient more than anything. Even beyond why the police chief had stopped them. That sedative was going to wear off in a few minutes and it had taken four of them to restrain Duke last time. And a Taser.
Did Nathan have a Taser?
He did, but he wasn't interested in answering their questions. If he stopped long enough to think, he was only going to start doubting, questioning. And he couldn't afford that.
Bill and Stan pulled up moments later. Nathan could hear his heart racing, even if he couldn't feel it. He'd left the boat after seeing Duke without talking to her again and, as she stepped out of the back seat of the car, he acknowledged to himself that he was scared. Of her. Of who she was now, and of losing Audrey. But her eyes were Audrey's deep sea blue, and her hair caught the breeze the way Audrey's did, and she smiled at him, almost – god, almost – exactly the way Audrey did.
"Thank you," holding his elbow, and it was almost the same as when he'd given her Lucy's address. Sincere, and surprised. Grateful.
He'd guessed, frankly, that she would want Duke for something. That there was a reason for Duke to have that message from his past. There was a reason she was aimed at both of them, beloved by both of them. There had to be a reason. He had the sense too that this was now or never.
"What now?"
"Dave Teagues has Dirk's map. I need that."
Nathan nodded at Stan, who understood immediately. "On it, Chief." He pulled out his phone, moved away.
It was odd, he thought, how much she looked like Audrey. And then, how odd that thought was. In his mind Dana and Audrey had always been separate people. One went away while the other was there, job sharing or something – but that had been facilitated by Dana's brown eyes, not to mention the brash sometimes over the top personality. "What do I call you?"
Huh. She smiled and ducked her head, looked up at him from under her lashes, just like Audrey. Shifted uncomfortably on her feet. "You can call me Audrey. Nathan…"
And then silence, because what was there for him to say? Don't kill Duke?
A scream from inside the ambulance broke them apart, and she threw the doors wide. Duke was strapped onto a gurney, strapped into a strait jacket. He screamed again, and kicked, nearly freeing his legs.
She petted his face, pushing hair out of his eyes, but Duke seemed completely lost, shaking her hand off his head, panting. Words of comfort only seemed to make him worse. She gestured Nathan into the vehicle beside her, at the same time as she searched the ambulance's drawers and cabinets for something.
Nathan climbed in beside her, not hesitating despite the way his friend's state made him want to look away. If Duke got loose, she would need his protection.
She found what she was looking for, a scalpel – and before he could comprehend or react – took Nathan's hand, cut the tip of his finger, and pressed it against Duke's forehead. One of the few areas of exposed skin.
oh.
Oh god – Duke seemed to seize, a frozen catatonia, and his eyes turned white with power.
Nathan's finger stung – more than he ever remembered such a small cut stinging before.
Years ago.
Oh god. "What did you do?" he asked. Like Duke needed more Trouble.
Duke passed out, falling unconscious.
"His blood was burning, from the inside out," she said, not taking her eyes off Duke. "Synergy. Killing his brother set off an emotional crisis the welded the Troubles he'd absorbed over the years into this wholly new one. The pain of it was what was driving him mad."
That was not Audrey. That was not how Audrey would have said that. "Who are you?" Not to mention that Audrey would have asked first.
"Nathan – we're not – we're all here, all together."
"It sounds… crowded."
She laughed. "It is." Duke moaned, waking up. Blinked clear brown, and sensible.
"Hey, you," he said. His bright and happy look of recognition faded as worse and more recent memories surfaced. Duke looked from her to Nathan, back to her. Tested the straitjacket. "This is going to be worse than Bangkok, isn't it?"
*.*.*
Dave met them at the Fisherman's Memorial. Or rather, the three of them met him there, him and Vince, as per his instructions.
It was an unimpressive block of granite, about six foot tall, shaped in the classic obelisk style, parked in the middle of the roundabout of three roads. The center of Haven, utterly ignored by… everyone. The root of the Troubles.
"This?" Duke questioned as they walked up to it. The stone was carved with the names of fishermen lost at sea in generations past. "You're sure this is it?" Real names of real people, real tragedies in the dangerous business of fishing – nothing associated with the Troubles that anyone knew.
"This is the spot," Dave said. "According to the map." It was with less than his usual authority, as his gaze shifted between the three of them. Vince was frankly staring at her.
"Vinnie, you dog. Put 'em back in your head." Her smile was wide, her eyes shining with unshed tears as she saw him. "I'm too old for you." He huffed, and had to look away.
"I'm sorry about Dirk," Dave said, to Duke.
"Why are you sorry?" he bit back. Yeah, that was too soon.
Nathan stepped in between them. "Why here? What is this place?"
Dave showed them the map, held flat against the stone. Nathan saw it right away. "It looks like the tattoo."
It was drawn with the bitter black of crushed oak galls, more permanent than any modern ink, but that only made the pattern stand out clearer. A complicated maze of islands and bays and shorelines, it did indeed look very like the tattoo on Nathan's arm.
"The Crevecoeur," Dave said. "From the French. Literally, the heartbreak."
"What?"
"That's what it is really called, that tattoo. The Crevecoeur. It was adopted by those of the Troubled who –"
"Dave!" Nathan barked.
Dave desisted on his lecture. "But this must be its origin."
"It does not look like any map of Haven." Nathan stubborn Wuornos.
She borrowed a pen from Vince and started redrawing certain edges, ignoring Dave's gag reflex objection to altering such a historic document. "The Great Hurricane of 1713 washed away this bit, made this into an island. Tuwiuwok Bluff used to stretch out to about here – most of it slid into the sea back in…"
"1794," Dave answered.
She nodded. "Something like that." She filled in a bay with a few strokes of the pen, and a private smile and shake of her head, as if amused by the memory. The others started to nod, the pattern resolving itself into a recognizable map.
And in the center, she stuck the tip of the pen. And looked out across the harbor and the bay, where they could all see the now familiar outlines. You are here.
Duke put his hand on the obelisk – the memorial. Slapped it a bit too hard. Both she and Nathan flinched. Duke examined his hands. "You know what," Duke commented dryly, "you're forgiven. This sucks."
"Forgiven for what?"
She stepped in between them, still able to push each other's buttons even now. "Boys."
"The memorial was only put in in the 1930's," Vince supplied. "New Deal public works thing."
They all looked at her. "Not the memorial," she said after a moment. "Underneath. It's called the Crevecoeur. We have to find the broken heart of Haven."
Sudden understanding broke on Duke's face, and they stared at each other. And not a happy understanding either. The crushing inevitability of fate. Both Dave and Vince noticed, made noises about looking for something to move the stone – they moved discreetly away.
Nathan noticed, too, the way they stared at each other – but didn't understand. He stepped in close, blocking her view. "To do what?" All fierce guard dog, for Duke – even up to opposing her.
"Nathan…" As if any of it could be avoided now.
"What are you going to do?"
"If I'm right, I'm going to end the Troubles for good."
"By killing Duke." It wasn't even a question anymore.
She had said they weren't separate anymore – but it was Audrey's swimming eyes who looked up at him, who looked like her heart was breaking for what she had to do. "Please, Nathan. This is hard enough as it is."
"It's all right." An unexpected voice, Duke's, calm and sure. A hand on Nathan's shoulder, that Nathan felt, looked at, shrugged off.
"No, it's not."
"This is why, I think, we believe – why Audrey and Dana were chosen. To be loved by you, and you Duke, so that you would trust us. Max thought he was helping Simon escape… This time it will work, and the Troubles will never return."
"I call that a fair trade," Duke said. Nathan stared at his friend, still not accepting. "Crocker is the Anglicized version of Crevecoeur. It was always going to be like this."
"Your name means 'heart break'?" Nathan rubbed at his eyebrow, shifted his stance between her and Duke, as if not sure who he should confront. "Your goddamn name is 'heart break'?"
"And yours is 'the boy who stuck his finger in the dam.' Just let it go, Nathan."
Let them go. He was going to lose them both.
That realization is what stopped him, his objections. He was being selfish. He had once thought that he would condemn all of Haven to keep Audrey. And then he'd lost her. Lost himself. Given this second chance when Audrey, impossibly, came back, and he'd vowed to be better. Do better. Christ, ironic now that he could feel, when all he wanted was to be numb and be able to do what was right, but when it felt like it was tearing him in two.
Fine.
He turned away, got in his truck. She called to him, but Duke held her back. Then Nathan backed the Bronco up to the memorial stone, pulled out a heavy duty chain out of the back. Duke understood, helped him loop it around the base of the memorial and onto the hitch. Low gear, and the Bronco shifted the three ton stone off its base, until it tumbled over. Broke into three pieces.
The plinth at the base might have been marble, maybe granite, polished black and shiny, but it held shiny flakes of some mineral or material that reflected gold and green from deep within. A beautiful stone. But not native to the area, and obviously a late addition. She nodded. It had to go too.
She held Vince back as he moved in to help. Let the boys do it. She could feel his tremor under her hand and their eyes met. Half a lifetime ago, and she remembered him tall and lean – fighting fit, as they said. Those curls, buzzed short in those days, because curls were for girls and not for bad boy rebels like Vinnie Teagues. Their eyes met, and they needed no words. This time at least, she could say good-bye.
Between the two of them, Nathan and Duke lifted the stone. Flipped it over to reveal the native bedrock beneath. Pretty much the same as the rest of the rock found in the area, a dark grey rock, criss-crossed with light pink granite dykes. Only here, the dykes all seemed to meet in the middle, forming a radiating star pattern in the rock. Or – they started here, and radiated out, under all Haven and the surrounding area. No telling how far. And there were finger length crystals of a green gem – the same as in Garland Wuornos' ring, in Sarah's ring. As on Lucy's locket – but loose and broken within the matrix of the granite.
She ran her hand over the stone, and the green crystals glowed briefly, then faded.
"You knew this was here?" Nathan questioned. He crouched beside her.
"It has always been here. The Mi'kmaq knew it as a sacred place, where they could speak to their spirits, where they asked for blessings. Where they brought their sick to be healed, and their cursed to be forgiven. When the white men came – they called it blasphemy. And witchcraft. So much was lost.
"But it took a foolish, very vain young girl – betrayed in her first love – to turn those spirits into curses. To start the Troubles."
"What did you do?"
She smiled ironically at him. Because it had been her. The first her – Charity Crocker - born with the ability to sense the power of the place, she had taken that power and corrupted it, poured her anger and her pride into the stone along with her blood – and she cursed a terrible curse. Every generation would know her pain and suffering. Only those who loved with a true heart would know any peace. "I was caught in it myself, you see, forced to keep coming back, to love and to lose. Over and over again."
"And you need Duke because…"
"Because he can absorb Troubles. Because he can cure them."
"All of them?" Duke said, faintly.
"I won't force you," she said. "I can't."
Duke looked thoughtfully out over the town. Nathan stood beside him. "There's another way, Duke. We just have to find it."
Duke looked at him. "There's supposed to be a guy coming from New York, tomorrow, to offload all that ice."
"Duke!"
"No, I'm serious. We agreed on five bucks a pound – don't let him cheat you. Dry weight. Split it up between the employees at the Gull. Severance pay or something." Nathan looked away, not agreeing, but not disagreeing to this last request. Duke shrugged. "That's all I got. Oh," as if remembering, "and you can have the boat."
"I don't want your boat, Duke."
"Sell it, then, you ungrateful bastard." He clapped Nathan on the shoulder – as close as they were going to get to hugging it out – and sat cross-legged in front of her.
In her hands was one of the shards of crystal, almost six inches long and glowing brightly. "Show me your wrists," she instructed. He did, pushing up his sleeves. She put a sharp edge against the thin skin there, and hesitated. Too long.
"What? What's wrong?"
She looked up at him, tears streaking down her cheeks. "Dana says: lengthwise, not across. Otherwise it will cut all your tendons."
He cupped her chin, kissed her, hard. Then looked down to discover that she had cut him, lengthwise, a long gash along his inner forearm. He hadn't felt a thing. The blood welled up and spilled over in a sheet, but burning yellow and orange. She held his arm when he flinched reflexively, until he realized that didn't hurt either.
His blood dripped onto the rock, flowed into the cracks of the granite lines stretching out under the town, burning all the way. Once it hit the green crystals it erupted into actinic fire, straight up into the sky and brighter than a laser show. Fireworks, a plasma arc – but in a continuous straight line, up, too high to see the top.
The others fell back, it was too bright to look at. Duke shielded his own eyes, but she pulled his arm down, and cut it the same as the other. The cuts didn't heal, for whatever reason- because she'd made the wound, or because of the crystal. She leaned into him, her voice directly in his ear. "You can absorb Troubles, Duke. Remember what that feels like. Reach out," and she put the palms of his hands directly down on the bedrock. "Bring them to you."
His hands were numb – but he felt something. Inside, connected to his heart, to that place where your heart went when it hurt beyond bearing. And lines connecting him to Haven, to all of the people of Haven. God, so many Troubles. This – this was going to hurt.
"Now, Duke, give them to me."
No, his heart said. Dana was in her, somewhere, and he still believed that somehow Dana was innocent, that Dana was separate. He opened his eyes, and saw that she had cut herself, that her blood flowed with his into the earth. "Crocker –" and that was Dana's voice, no mistake, "now."
He did, and the fire turned into a fire hydrant, a hydrant of fire – from him into the stone, all the anger, grief, and pain, healing the cracks and reforging the bedrock into something new, and whole.
*.*.*
The face looking back at her was the same as ever, dark brown eyes, black hair. But somehow it seemed to shift and slide around, like looking through a prism, a cracked prism, where none of the lines met where they should have. Still the world spun and it was like she could feel it, feel the speed of the world as it turned on its axis, as it flung itself through space. They were all going to be flung off if she didn't hang on with all her strength. Gravity pulled her down, but some equal force was pulling her up, up and away, she was unplugged, untethered to anything solid. Reality itself was a watercolor in the rain, only the faint outlines left and ready to be painted over.
Reality had no reality in Haven. Certainly no permanence.
Duke's face, his sweet sweet face. He was talking to her, and yelling at Nathan. That ridiculous mat of hair under his chin, as if it somehow hid how long his jaw stretched. She brushed his hair out of his eyes. For pity's sake, she would make him cut it at some point. He'd probably never had a mother to nag him about it. She didn't like the look there now – he was scared. Horrified. She wanted to help him, she always wanted to help him. She just didn't know how.
Nathan's face, so beautiful. Equally terrified – he wasn't going to be much help either. Eyes that made her think of flying. Of skies that were warm and cloudless, an ocean of air that promised and teased freedom and joy. She had wings when he looked at her, and she could fly. The deep lines around his mouth, once the sign of how easily and often he smiled, now wounded reminders of how little he did.
Were they real? Did they matter? She so wanted them to matter. Her feelings were considerable, if not considered. But there was someone else running this show, not her. She would beg for their happiness if only she knew to whom to address her pleas. Not for herself. She was gossamer. A cloud in those blue skies, a faint song from nowhere. But these two men, they loved her, and would be hurt by her loss. She didn't want that.
She could go now. She could feel it. She could vanish into thin air even though several pairs of hands worked on her body. Medical hands, pushing and prodding and that miserable machine that squeezed her arm painfully and supposedly measured the strength of her heart and its ability to push her blood around in her arteries and veins. That was not what her heart was for. Her heart was supposed to be strong enough to take on all of Haven's troubles, shoulder them and end them. Did that bloody machine measure that? Because she really wanted to know how she was doing.
Two men, and they were going to break her heart.
But they anchored her, equally, backed her up and supported her when she felt the sand melt from beneath her feet, and the wind die from beneath her wings. Two men, and the rest of the world looked as dimly on that as they did on songs that made people insane, or voodoo cursed sketches. Two men, and only one of her. Because there was only one, there had only ever been one. Even in decades past she had gone by other names, other memories. They were all there, here, now too. But now there was only one of her.
She was going to stay, she discovered. She hadn't actively decided, but the forces pulling her away backed off, decided to wait. They could wait. As if they were curious, more than benevolent. They wanted to see what she would do with her two men.
*.*.*
She woke, in a hospital bed, with her two men asleep at her feet. Asleep in chairs at the foot of her bed, but still. A tube ran into her arm, dripping saline, and a pump at the other end clicked away regular as a heartbeat.
Why was she still alive?
She wasn't surprised when Agent Howard walked into her room. She was a little surprised when the pump seemed to pause, and when neither Duke nor Nathan stirred. Maybe she shouldn't have been.
"Did it work?" Please, please, please. She really didn't want to have to do it all over again.
"Duke Crocker absorbed all the Troubles. The last one he gave up was his ability to heal, after he healed himself. After he healed the town."
"And Nathan?"
"Nathan Wuornos had an ambulance ready and waiting. Remarkable forethought under that kind of pressure."
"And me?"
"Yes, what about you?" He rubbed at his upper lip as if she was still his wayward agent, and he her long-suffering supervisor. They both knew that wasn't true. But he had guided her, watched over her, from the beginning. Not always as a black man, sometimes white, sometimes – especially early on – as an ancient Mi'kmaw shaman. Only sometimes had she listened to his advice.
"Please, I want to stay."
"All is forgiven, you know. You can come home now."
She would not ask again. That would be vain, in both senses. "Haven is my home. And I think I can still help people there." Her eyes strayed involuntarily to the sleeping men at her feet.
"Mmm. There is that. There is still a Crocker in Haven. Maybe we shouldn't upset him again so soon."
Was that a yes? She allowed herself a slow smile.
"Fine." He waved a finger at her. "But only for another sixty… seventy… years." He turned to leave.
"Wait," and she held out a bandaged arm. "What color are my eyes?"
"Sort of… hazelish."
Like they had been in the beginning. Or, like a combination of Dana and Audrey together. Because that was true. She was just one person now, healed, and whole. Her memories were fading even as she spoke, becoming less something she had lived, more like something she had read about. Once upon a time.
He smiled and nodded, as if he could read her thoughts. "Two guys, one you. Good luck with that."
Oh, fuck. Her head fell back against the pillow. So much for the happy ending.
Howard laughed himself out. The pump started clicking again, and Nathan stirred and woke just as the door clicked closed. "Audrey?"
It would do.
*.*.*
the end
A/N: thanks for sticking in to the end. Took a lot longer than I figured, many plot threads left behind due to lack of time. Ambition overwhelmed ability, as always. On to season three.