Marie shivered – it was really cold. Had the furnace gone out? Why couldn't the building manager just do his damn job? Her eyes blinked open – was that moisture on her face? What the hell was going on?! She took a deep breath, coming more fully awake. Salt water? Why would she smell the ocean? And were those stars overhead?
She sat up and looked around her – now that she was awake she could feel the motion of the boat she was on. Just the most gentle of swaying as it was clearly moored to a dock, but she was on a boat! She pulled her blankets more tightly around her as she stood, her toes curling against the cold of the deck. How on earth had she gotten here?
"Don't move! I've already called the cops!" A masculine voice came from the darkness of an opening in the cabin on the deck before her. Marie obediently froze. Moonlight glinted off the barrel of a handgun as the man stepped from the opening.
He was tall and lean with dark hair and a fuzz of a dark beard under his chin. Marie blinked as the moonlight etched out a familiar face with a high forehead, dark eyes and a strong chin.
"Duke?" She asked in disbelief. "Duke Crocker?"
"Who are you, kid? What are you doing on my boat in the middle of the night and how do you know my name?"
"Kid?!" Marie looked down at the hands clutching the blankets around her. "Kid?!" Her voice rose.
Duke set his gun down on a stack of boxes next to the cabin door and went to the young girl he saw on his deck. Her skin was very fair, almost glowing in the moonlight and her hair was definitely red but the misty moonlight wasn't enough to settle it as to one particular shade.
"Marie? Marie Bauer?" He asked incredulously. "No, you must be her daughter."
"No, I never had any children." She said automatically, still staring dazedly at the slender body that shivered under the blankets. She slept in the nude and it was cold on the water, blankets or no blankets.
"Come inside." Duke finally offered, giving her a gentle push on the shoulders. "We'll figure it out."
"God I could use a drink right now." Marie said, mostly to herself, as she entered his main living quarters, trailing her blankets behind her.
"Yeah, that's not going to happen." Duke told her with a small smile.
"I guess I would have been worried if you were willing to give alcohol to a kid. How old do I look to you?"
"Ten, maybe twelve at the most."
"I am not going through puberty again." Maria said with a valiant attempt at conviction but it fell sadly flat.
"Tell me what happened while I make us some cocoa." Duke suggested.
"Well, I got fired from my job today. Came home, drank half a bottle of wine to console myself, sent off some applications over the internet and went to bed. And then I woke up here on the deck of – I suppose this is your boat?"
"Yeah, the Rouge is mine. What happened to you after my mom claimed me from the Lawsons? I worried about you but by the time I could get back in the area you were gone."
"I ran away. I wasn't going to let that bastard touch me again." Marie said soberly.
"You couldn't have been much older than you appear right now – how did you survive?"
"I hooked up with someone who got me to Boston where I got into a bit of trouble. Ended up in Juvie until I was 18. When I got out I hitched to California. Decided to be a movie star." A self depreciating smile touched her lips. "When that didn't pan out I got lucky. I got hired to be a receptionist for small special effects company. Didn't have the first clue what I was doing but the owner let me learn on the job. Eventually he helped me get some training and certification. I ended up as a paralegal. Unfortunately, I also ended up working for the slimiest scumbag in California."
Duke had glossed over his own childhood enough to recognize huge events that Marie wasn't sharing with him. He didn't press her, though. He knew she'd tell him when and if she wanted to and not before.
"And you? I worried about you too."
"I survived." He said bleakly. Marie nodded, understanding the wealth of pain behind that brief answer. Duke handed her a mug of cocoa and she shifted her grip on the blankets to free one hand for it. It went a long way towards warming the cold inside her but there was an icy core of fear that not even hot chocolate could touch.
"This is a trouble, isn't it, Duke?" Marie said after a brief silence between the two of them. "Like those stories you told me when you were at the Lawson's."
"Yeah and it's probably one of mine." Duke admitted trying to remember when he could have released it.
"One of yours? I thought a person could only have one trouble."
"Yeah, that's what I thought too but it turns out Crockers are special. We have a whole bunch of them. And if I bleed and it touches the ground one of them gets loose."
"So, you got a nosebleed or something like that in your sleep and poofed me into my twelve year old body and onto your boat on the other side of the country?" Marie asked him. Even living through it this was hard to swallow. "What trouble was that?"
"I don't know." Duke admitted. "But I was dreaming about the Lawsons. I was thinking of you. And here you are."
"Well, I've got nothing to return to in California but I'm not staying twelve years old. Un-youthenize me."
"It's not that easy. I'm not really in control of this."
"Okay, Duke, start talking. I told you more about my shitty childhood than "I survived" but I'm not pushing you. You can tell me all about that or not. But you owe me a full explanation of this." She shot a speaking look down at her greatly reduced body.
Duke sighed with frustration, running one hand through his hair which was short on the sides and longer across the top. Marie smiled into her cocoa, enjoying the play of muscles on his bare torso. Apparently Duke slept in nothing more than a pair of comfortable yoga pants and had grown into a fine specimen of manhood.
"The Crocker Curse –" he began slowly but Marie cut him short.
"By "curse" you mean "trouble", right?" She clarified.
"Some troubles are worse than others – the Crockers are cursed, in my opinion. See, when we kill a troubled person we end their trouble forever. No one else in their family will ever get it."
"Oh my." Marie breathed, seeing the implications immediately.
"We also get a rush if we come in contact with troubled blood. It's like – it's like a spike of euphoria and many of the Crocker men have gotten addicted to it."
"Not you, though." Marie said without hesitation.
"No. I hate it, although the strength that comes with it has been useful from time to time."
"So, you get high and you get strong when you touch this troubled blood?"
"And my eyes turn silver."
"Wow, that must be an interesting sight. But none of this explains my youthful presence here." Marie honed in on the crux of this confession.
"This is where it gets a bit complicated. Someone activated the curse in my brother, Wade, and he got addicted. I had to kill him to protect someone I cared about very much."
"So you ended your own trouble."
"Yeah."
"And yet you're troubled."
"Yeah. Something happened and my trouble was needed again. So I got re-troubled. But it changed when she re-troubled me. Now every trouble my family has ended is active in me. I should have exploded from them all but instead if I bleed on the ground I release a trouble and some of the pressure. Then I have to work through the emotion that is connected with the trouble and deactivate it again."
"On one hand that sounds pretty horrible. On the other hand you might just wind up being the most well adjusted male in the history of humans."
A snort of laughter escaped Duke at Marie's unique blend of sympathy and pragmatism. It was one of the things that had drawn the two of them together in the Lawson's foster home. Marie was a couple of years older than he was and she had taken him under her wing like a born mother but her care was always combined with a certain ruthless practicality. The things she managed to teach him before his mother came to collect him had done a lot to help him survive his mother's neglect. And his determined protection had kept "Papa" Lawson from bothering Marie – at least until his mother had removed him.
"So," Marie interrupted his introspection. "Why me? I'm guessing that my youthenization is because this is how you remember me but why bring me here at all?"
"Mara said that releasing a trouble and its result involved intent. I can't think of anything I want more than to fix me once and for all. I never want to kill another person, Marie, and I never want to hurt someone with a trouble either."
Marie put down her drink and took Duke's hand in an instinctive gesture of comfort but touching him made her gasp and clutch his hand convulsively. His thoughts and feelings crashed over her. Her hand flew back and tears filled her eyes as she absorbed the strength of Duke's self-loathing.
"What?" Duke asked her in confusion. "What happened?"
"Duke, it's not your fault."
"What are you talking about?"
Instead of answering Marie held out her hand to him. With some hesitation he took it. This time she was prepared for the onslaught of emotions. She rode the tide until it subsided to background noise and then she "listened" to the underlying thoughts: thoughts of desperation to be cured, thoughts of loss, thoughts of failure and an overwhelming sensation of isolation. And thoughts of the woman sleeping in a cot in the hold beneath them, chained to pipes running by her bed.
"Duke," she said quietly, releasing his hand. "Why can I hear you in my head?"
Duke's eyes widened and then they widened further when she added; "And who is the woman in the hold?"
"You're troubled?" He asked her.
"How would I know? I was abandoned at Haven Memorial as a baby. They never knew who dropped me off."
"Will you help me?"
"Do you really need to ask?" The smile on her face convinced Duke once and for all that this child was really his childhood friend. No twelve year old had the life experience to create that blend of acceptance, agreement and concern.
"Come with me."
"Maybe I should get dressed first?" Marie suggested wryly.
"Your pajamas are fine."
Marie just smiled at him, waiting for understanding to dawn. She laughed out loud when he blushed.
"I have a few things left from a friend of mine." He told her and she didn't need to touch him to read the pain in those words. "She was just a tiny thing – you could fit her things well enough."
"I'm sorry, Duke." She told him – and he knew she felt his pain.
"She died." He said gruffly, trying to hide the tears rising. "She'd have shared with you, though."
"I wish I had met her." Marie told Duke, following him at a trot as he hurried through a door off of his main room. He rummaged through a dresser fixed to the wall of the bedroom and finally pulled out a pair of black leggings and a black t-shirt that wouldn't be too large on Marie's smaller frame. Then he left the room so Marie could dress.
When she emerged, shirt down to her thighs and leggings rolled up at the bottom, Duke led her to a hatch and down something that was a combination of stairs and ladder. Then he took her down a hallway that divided the lower level of the boat to a hatch at the very end, separating off the stern. In that room the woman Duke had been thinking of rolled over sleepily.
"Not in the mood right now, bucko." She told him grumpily before she noticed Marie standing slightly behind him. The woman made Marie feel uneasy. There was a malice radiating off of her that Marie had felt only a few times in her life, and always from someone who was going to hurt her and smile while doing so.
"Mara, be nice. This is Marie and she wanted to meet you." Duke said.
"Hello." Marie said hesitantly, but she held out her hand for the blond woman to shake. Mara glared at her and pointedly folded her hands in her lap.
"Now that's just rude." Duke said with an easy grin that didn't hide his frustration from Marie. "You afraid to be nice to a little girl?"
Marie watched Mara closely as Mara pasted on a patently false smile and held out her hand to shake.
"Hello, annoying little girl, why are you bothering me?" She said in a syrupy sweet voice.
"Hello, Mara." Marie took the proffered hand with definite trepidation and barely managed to turn the urge to jerk away into a shudder. "Why do you want to hurt my friend, Duke?" She asked, pulling her hand free and moving halfway behind Duke.
"I don't." Mara said but Marie heard her displeasure as she continued. "Duke, she's just a kid. Whatever she thinks I'm thinking, she's misinterpreting it. I just want to fix you."
Duke put his hands on Marie's shoulders and urged her out the hatch.
"Don't kid yourself, Duke, you and I are in this together!" She called as they left the room.
When they were both safely upstairs Duke silently handed Marie the blankets she'd arrived in and she wrapped them around herself and sat down on the leather sofa along one wall.
"Did you actually sense that she wants to hurt me or were you guessing?" He asked, pacing the room rather than joining Marie.
Marie's perception seemed to be growing because she could tell that Duke really hoped she was guessing. He really wanted Mara to want to help him and Marie hesitated, knowing her answer was going to add to the load of bruises on his heart. He read the answer on her face and cursed quietly.
"She wants to change you into something that can explode troubles on a population." Marie said quietly. "She's been manipulating you. She's also been trying to make you feel more isolated than your normally cynical self usually is."
"I knew it." Duke hissed through his teeth.
"Duke, what's going on?" Marie asked again.
"There's a CDC doctor here and someone has a trouble that's making the troubled sick and then activating their troubles." Duke explained, finally sitting on the sofa with a defeated slump to his shoulders.
"You brought me here for a reason." Marie reasoned. "And I don't know if I was troubled to begin with or…"
"I have to have troubled you." Duke told her. "You wouldn't be able to affect Mara if I hadn't."
"So there's going to probably be a drawback to this." Marie agreed. "And that's okay, brother bear, because I owe my little brother for watching over me when I slept."
"I didn't do anything that makes it okay that I troubled you."
"Duke, if you had asked me I would have said "yes" – just like you did when you agreed to be re-troubled. You aren't the only person who cares. If you decide to keep wallowing in guilt I'm going to find some shoes and then kick you in the shins." She warned him sternly, although the half-smile on Duke's face made it clear that it was pretty hard to take a 12 year old seriously.
"I think I need to meet this CDC doctor." Marie said slowly. "It'll be light soon so why don't we get your prisoner fed and get out of here. And Duke?"
He turned and looked at her.
"Don't go down there without me. She's sly and she's really, really good at manipulation."
"Pinkie swear." He promised her with a smile and she smiled back.
While he prepared oatmeal for his involuntary guest Marie made her way to his lavatory and straightened her long, dark copper hair. She braided it and found an elastic band to fasten the braid with. Convinced she was as presentable as she could be she rejoined Duke as he put the tray together. When that was set up he filled a plastic gallon jug with warm water and threw a clean washcloth and hand towel over his shoulder. Marie took the jug without saying a word.
"She's going to take a sponge bath – she's fanatical about cleanliness – and then she'll change into fresh clothing. That's already down there. Then I'll move her restraints to the chair." Duke told Marie as they headed to the hold.
"This ought to be entertaining." Marie noted.
Duke's cheeks heated slightly. He knew that she knew that Mara turned these moments into a low-key seduction. He hoped Marie didn't know how much he wanted that seduction to eventually bear fruit but she did. Marie found herself hoping this mental ability was only this strong with Duke but she feared that the slow increase of the range and strength were the drawback that Duke had told her about back when they were kids together.
"I see you brought the brat back with you." Mara noted when they entered the room. Marie looked at her silently, easily picking up on Mara's unease with her presence. Marie was an obstacle to Mara's plan and she knew it.
"So, is she yours?" Mara probed. "That would be interesting, wouldn't it? Mind reading, or is it just empathy? and the Crocker curse. I'd pay money to see that all in one package."
Duke set the tray on a stack of wooden boxes by the door and picked up a large metal bowl from the next stack over. Silently he handed Mara the towel and washcloth, poured the water into the bowl and handed her a bar of soap. Mara frowned as she stripped off her clothes and quickly cleaned herself. Under Marie's silent gaze she engaged in none of the mannerisms she'd employed before. Duke handed her clean garments and she quickly dressed and submitted to being restrained to the chair.
"Oatmeal?" She demanded when she saw the tray. "Seriously?" Duke shrugged.
"Eat up, I'm taking the tray in just a minute." He said briefly, gathering up the dirty clothes, emptying the bowl down a drain by the back wall and wiping it down and grabbing the plastic jug. Marie stood quietly by the door as Duke carried the various items back up, watching Mara eat.
"Quit staring at me, kid." Mara snapped. "You're making me lose my appetite.
Marie smiled impishly at that.
"When I get out of here I'm going to give you a trouble that will melt your face off." Mara snarled, shoving the tray away from her. Everything fell onto the deck making a huge mess. Marie didn't move.
"Well don't just stand there. Clean it up. Make your daddy happy."
Marie's smile grew broader. She knew Mara was trying to tempt her closer.
"You look like a moron grinning like that." Mara sulked.
Duke walked in and sighed at the mess.
"Too bad about the coffee," he told Mara casually, "I used that cinnamon vanilla creamer you like so much."
He cleaned up the mess with towel and washcloth that he hadn't brought up and then gathered the dishes back on the tray.
"See you around lunchtime." He said as they left.
"Well don't bring that whey-faced brat with you when you do!" Mara shouted through the door.
"She doesn't like me." Marie noticed, the smile still on her lips.
"You did that on purpose, didn't you?" Duke asked, trying (and failing) to repress a grin of his own.
"I might be a little prejudiced against anyone who tries to mess with my little brother." Marie told him.
Duke put the dishes down on his table and suddenly swept Marie into his arms for a fierce hug.
"I've missed you so much, Marie."
She returned the hug just as fiercely.
"Me too, Duke. I wish I'd looked you up years ago. I've always wondered…"
Duke set her back down.
"All right, enough of this sentimental garbage. Let's head to the hospital first. I'll text Nathan when we get there and ask him to bring Dwight with him."
"Sounds like a plan. We'll work this out, Duke."
"Siblings forever?" Duke asked rhetorically as they climbed into his mustard yellow jeep.
"We shared blood." She grinned at him, looking down at the fine white scar on her left wrist, twin to the one on his right wrist.