AN: Yes, after ages, I am back! Nearly finished with season one, guys. This one gave me a world of trouble but I'm pleased with how it turned out.
Set during "Resurfacing," Audrey's POV.
An Unbroken Circle
The inside of your head feels like a hurricane. Questions and theories and confusion and emotions all whirling together, throwing around the debris that is your self-identity like it's nothing more than dust and leaves. This morning you felt so sure, so confident in yourself and your place. You knew who you were and what your purpose was, and all of the questions in your life lay with something external, something and someone outside of yourself.
Now they are all inside of you, eating away at your core like acid dissolving the very foundations that your life is built upon.
You sit on the rock and unlace your boots. It comes off with a mighty tug, and then you peel off the thick woolen sock that keeps out the chill of spring in Maine. Propping your foot on your other knee, you twist it so you can look at the bottom. There, gleaming pale against your skin, is the scar. That little two inch mark that destroyed everything you ever believed about yourself.
Lucy Ripley had the same scar, a long jagged gash in the sole of her foot from a piece of broken glass, he had said. You trace a finger along the hardened flesh. When did you get the cut? You don't remember, and something about that feels wrong. It must've been a deep, painful injury to cause such a mark. Surely you should remember something so traumatic as that. So why don't you?
Is it because you've always had it? Is it because you got it twenty-seven years ago, in a time before Audrey Parker was even born?
If you're not Audrey Parker, then who are you? Lucy? A woman you only know through an ancient newspaper article and a handful of whispers? It's not possible, and yet here you are. Who was Lucy? Was she someone before too, someone else before she became the dark-haired woman who stood in this spot clutching the hand of an eight-year-old Duke Crocker? Are you the same woman who has been here all along, a woman who settled in Haven back when it first began?
None of this seems possible, but you can't stop the thoughts from churning as you rub your thumb over the knotted scar in the sole of your foot. After all the strange and magical things you've seen since you've come to this little seaside town, is this really so far out of the realm of possibility? But where does that leave you? What are you supposed to do now?
The chirp of your phone startles you and you hastily dig it out. An APB from the station, a crack in the road opened up on the highway by the marina. You're half tempted to ingore it, to pretend that you never got the message or that you were busy with something else, but you can't do that. Besides, with all the thoughts in your head, a distraction is a welcome relief. Sighing, you tug your sock back on and slip back into your boot. You pocket your phone and stand up, looking around you one last time.
This is the spot where she stood, twenty-seven years ago. This is the very spot where Lucy Ripley stood. Were you there? Was that really you, you with a different name but the same face? It this all a circle that refuses to break, keeping you trapped in its familiar loop?
A text from Nathan, asking where you are, reminds you that you have duties beyond yourself. Your existential crisis will have to wait. You have a job to do.