Nathan dreams of blue eyes and a shoulder tucked against him no matter that he can't feel it. He dreams of a teasing smile and mischievous words, of a gun held in a steady hand on his behalf and a firm voice raised in his defense. He dreams of a hand stretched to him in friendship, a badge offered in partnership, a hug given to cement their alliance.
He dreams of red curls and a smile freely granted even before transient names were exchanged. He dreams of trust and openness, of confidences exchanged and comfort sought and accepted. He dreams of a finger tracing his face and slow, light kisses, of gentle patience and soft sighs.
He dreams of Parker and love and a world where Duke wasn't in Haven. He dreams of what was, what he wants, what he destroyed.
Nathan hates sleeping more than anything else in the world because every night he dreams—and every morning he wakes to brutal reality.
The door to the Herald's backroom remains locked all day, enforced solitude not even broken to offer a basic meal or a bottle of water (he hopes the Teagues never try to keep a pet). Nathan paces and tries to pick the lock (that was always Parker's province, though, not his); he sorts and organizes the files that Vince and Dave have let go since Nathan left for the police department; he even finds some paper and tries to write down all the questions he has for Duke and his Troubled rescuer (he runs out of paper before he runs out of questions).
The one thing he doesn't do (cannot do if he doesn't want to fly apart in a million numb, hollow pieces) is think about Parker alive.
Parker lost somewhere.
Parker locked away in some hospital.
Parker hurt and alone.
Parker alive but forever out of his reach, still just as trapped, as locked into an endless, torturous cycle as ever.
He doesn't think of it.
(It is all he can think of.)
When the door finally opens, it is only Jordan there and the disappointment is so overwhelming that Nathan actually staggers at the force of it.
"Where's Duke?" he demands. "What's going on? Have we found Parker yet?"
"Crocker doesn't want to see you," Jordan says, voice filled with gleeful satisfaction. "However, he did identify those crystal forms as people struck by lightning."
"Lightning. Weather related?" Nathan blinks. "Marion Caldwell?"
"Marion Brauer now." She gestures him to his feet. "So come on, time for you to earn your keep."
"What? No, we don't have time for this right now. We should be sending out Parker's description to every police department, hospital—"
"No. Not you. Audrey can't help us anymore, remember?"
Nathan shakes his head, frustrated and impatient (and maybe just a bit scared). "Parker helps the Troubled, Barn or no Barn. If you really want to help Haven, you need to find Parker."
"You wanted this!" Jordan spits. Her hand hovers over his chest, his neck, his face, bare millimeters separating them. "You demanded the right to help the Troubled. You brought this mess down on us, ruined everything because you were blinded by your feelings for Audrey. Or maybe," she says, slower, softer, her ungloved fingers a hair's breadth from his face, "maybe just blinded by feeling. By having a woman you could actually feel. After all, you didn't care to distinguish between Audrey Parker and Sarah Vernon. I guess the personality doesn't really matter so long as you can feel. But what about the rest of us? What relief do we get?"
He only knows that her fingers actually finally (after all this time, all the long moments of temptation she allowed herself) touch him when her eyes widen, wet and big and so, so surprised. When her mouth trembles and her whole body sways toward him and her breath ghosts close, all mint and tea and bacon from her breakfast.
There is a part of Nathan that thinks he deserves this, to be a vessel for Jordan, to pay for his sins by giving her back this simple (profound) gift. She has been bitter and manipulative and desperate, but how can he blame her when he knows what it is to be so completely isolated? If his feelings for Parker were motivated just because of her immunity, then he deserves to be used in turn for his own.
But they weren't. Her touch was never what it was all about. And Parker is Parker, whether she's the blonde Audrey or the red-headed Sarah. She's good and brave and teasing and kind and compassionate. And she looks at him and she sees him and that is worth more than any amount of working nerve endings.
And Jordan's fingers are resting where Sarah's played. Her eyes are fixed on his mouth where Audrey gave him a last parting kiss. Her touch is nothing to him and her kiss would be a betrayal.
And she doesn't understand at all.
"Not a mess," he says quietly. He wraps his fingers around her sleeved wrist and moves her hand away. "They're lives."
Silence. A blink. Incomprehension.
(Rage tastes like oil, thick and viscous and overpowering.)
"They're lives, Jordan, and I know the name of everyone. I know who their families are and how they died and—"
"You."
Nathan steps back.
"You," she says again, her vulnerabilities tucked away as easily as her incomprehension, covered over and buried beneath blame and bitterness and grief. "You're the reason they all died, so you're crazy if you think we're going to let you loose to wreak more havoc. But if you're so upset about these lives you've ruined, then I suggest you do what you promised and help everyone you condemned to endless Troubles."
(Rage is bitter and thick as poison when he swallows it back, washes it down with his guilt.)
And Nathan remembers, yet again, that there's no appeal he can ever make next to the magnitude of his sins.
Conrad was one of the few people in this town (before Parker came) who ever spoke to Nathan, who always nodded a hello even as he made sure there was enough distance between them. Nathan had once thought that war did to Conrad what the Troubles did to him (a perimeter no one could breach, a barrier necessary to keep everyone else safe from the disasters he could so easily cause). The difference was that Conrad had been able to reach across that distance and bring over the woman he loved. Out of everyone in the world, Marion was the only one ever allowed to touch him (maybe because she had reached back toward him and refused to let go).
Now, as his breath frosts the air and Nathan's perspective changes to alert him he's sunk to the floor, he stares at Conrad's still, blue form and wonders how he's going to get back up tonight when he has to add Conrad's name to his list.
"You have to let go," Nathan says, and almost chokes on his own hypocrisy (on his anguish). How dare he preach on sensible decisions when he's guilty of holding on at the expense of this whole town? (How can he even attempt to compare this situation to his own when Conrad's indisputably dead and Parker…Parker can't be?)
"This isn't love," he hears himself say, and he never knew he was such a liar. He never realized before just how easy it is to tell others what to do (and how hard it is to apply that same advice to his own life).
"He's gone," he tells the heartbroken Marion, and knows that if he wasn't already on his knees, this would have been enough to drive him down.
She's gone.
Parker's gone.
Even if she and James are somehow still alive, scattered across the world like lost treasure without a treasure map, he will never be allowed near them. They will never want him near them.
They're lost to him. Now. Forever.
Marion throws herself into his arms, trusting him to hold her up, allowing him his pitiful efforts to console her, maybe the last person in town who doesn't blame him in some way for her personal tragedy.
His breath no longer taints the air in physical form.
The Troubles are still here.
Nathan feels cold.
It's the third instance of bodies turned to husks, simulacrums of life that crumble to ash when touched. Not only is Nathan's list getting painfully longer, but Nathan also hates how similar he feels to these lifelike corpses (a body on the outside, nothing but ash on the inside). Jordan and his usual escort lead him to a coffeeshop, and Nathan tries to brace himself for a roomful of bodies, half a dozen new names to memorize, lives to learn about, crimes to try (uselessly) to atone for.
"Is that the witness?" Jordan suddenly snaps, jarring Nathan from his preoccupation. The world jolts as his guards pull him to an abrupt halt.
Nathan scans the busy crime-scene: cops he knows by name but who don't seem to see him, their eyes sliding right past him (a kindness that probably makes his chest ache). Dwight standing with a cluster of other people, a short woman Nathan doesn't recognize at all. Stan keeping busybodies away. And…
Nathan hears his breath catch in his throat. He knows that form, that profile, that deceptively casual stance.
He's alive.
"Get him out of here," Jordan commands.
"Duke!" Nathan gets the name out only once before one of his guards claps a hand over his mouth. They're dragging him away, Duke receding into the distance, obscured by obstacles, before he can do more than glance over his shoulder in the direction of Nathan's shout.
Duke's alive.
Nathan heard them say it, of course, and he'd even believed it, planned on it, but… It's different, somehow, so much more real now that he's seen him, hair too long, clothing too tattered, façade too worn to be completely believable anymore.
He's alive.
He's here.
Nathan didn't kill him.
The last time Nathan saw Duke, he sent him running straight into a supernatural barn that disintegrated into fractured pieces (and of all the times for Duke to listen to him, of course he'd chosen then). All this time, Nathan's locked all thoughts, all memories, of Duke away in a tiny box because every one of them was edged in that final image of Duke flinging himself into destruction at his command.
Now, though…now it all comes rushing back. Duke who caught him when Jordan's bullets drove him to the ground. Duke who didn't betray Parker, who had the chance to turn his back on her but didn't. Duke who for all his faults is not the man Nathan thought he was.
(Duke who loves Audrey. Duke whom Audrey loves.)
And if Duke is there, so intent and protective…then that woman with him, the witness Jordan doesn't want him talking to, must be the Troubled woman who can hear Audrey's voice.
Nathan doesn't need to feel to be overwhelmed by envy. Of all the useless Troubles, of all the important Troubles, he would trade any and all of them for that young woman's.
To hear Parker's voice again…
To be able to imagine her any way but scared, lost, alone, locked away (dead and gone and vanished forever).
Nathan wants with a strength he's never allowed himself before.
Duke is alive and Audrey might be (must be) and all is not lost.
Except the Guard won't let him anywhere near Duke (or is it Duke who won't let Nathan near?). They lock him away again until, suddenly, they're there, frantic and urgent, dragging him to the Founders Day parade, pushing him toward a fireman who lost his partner.
It's not hard to find the words to say, even though the acrid stench of burning fabric and leather and flesh is distracting. Nathan knows better than most that sometimes dying is the mercy and survival is the real punishment. This poor fireman never meant to hurt anyone (they never do, he knows, firmly not thinking of Max Hansen's grin and a pyromaniac's madness gleaming in eyes directed Parker's way), but that doesn't matter to the fireman's guilt (or to his), not when he's alone and can see those lives (that list of names) staring him down.
Duke's alive, Audrey is (must be) alive, but that doesn't bring everyone back. It doesn't undo any of his crimes. That list that haunts him, he knows, is always, always going to be there.
Grumbling about the uselessness of the Guard, Dave bandages Nathan's burned wrists. He thinks about telling the older man that it really doesn't matter but decides to remain quiet. Dave needs to do something to make himself feel like he's helping and this is harmless. Besides, it's nice, though he doesn't deserve it, to feel like someone cares about him.
"Nathan?" Duke's voice is weighted with a heavy surprise. As if he thought Nathan was gone. As if he'd expected him to run away from Haven and never look back (much the same way Nathan had once expected the same of him).
In a daze, Nathan turns, peers past the Guard escort hastily converging all around him, and catches a glimpse of graying hair falling out of a messy ponytail, flint eyes (missing their usual twinkle), sharp chin. Just an instant, then Nathan's being hauled away while Dwight catches at Duke's arm.
"Duke!" Nathan calls back. He's not quite sure why. If he can't get past the Guard between them, he doesn't know why he thinks that Duke can. But then, Duke Crocker's always been curiously skilled at accomplishing the improbable.
"Nathan! Nathan!"
Then he's gone, the Guard and the Herald and who knows how many locked doors standing between them.
That slight glimpse doesn't really change anything, doesn't help him get any closer to Parker or to stopping the Troubles, but somehow, it makes Nathan feel better. (It has been so long since he's heard his name used as anything but an accusation and indictment and warning all in one.)
In some way, no matter how small, it gives him hope.
(He's not the only survivor left after all.)
For the next few days, Nathan waits. Every time either of the doors in the Herald opens, he looks up expecting Duke. Any sound, he holds his breath thinking Duke is picking the lock, come to save him—or at least to confront him and blame him for Audrey (for the Trouble Duke has never wanted) face to face. But the locks remain stubbornly in place, the doors open only to exchange his guards or bring him another case folder about a body drained of blood, and Duke doesn't come.
He shouldn't have expected it, Nathan tell himself angrily. Of course Duke won't come—Nathan may or may not be responsible for the death of the woman he loves, and he's absolutely responsible for Duke losing six months of his life and still having to deal with his Trouble. Besides, it's not like he and Duke have ever been friends; even at their best, they were little more than uneasy allies. Why should Duke come to see him? That surprise in his voice when he called his name was probably just shock that the Guard didn't keep Nathan locked up at all times.
Nathan's trying (and failing, as per usual) to figure out this newest blood-draining Trouble with what little information they've allowed him when the door opens behind him. Expecting Vince's cold glare or Jordan's crawling fingers (every day he's locked away, she grows more bold, less constrained), he's surprised to see Dave instead. Nathan's usual guards are there, but they don't follow Dave into the room.
"I'm sorry, Nathan," Dave begins, but Nathan brushes aside the apology.
"Duke?" he asks in a low voice.
Dave casts a sidelong glance to the Guard. "His brother unexpectedly came to town. Between that and Jennifer, he's been kept pretty busy."
"Jennifer? The Troubled woman who can hear Audrey? What has she heard? What's—"
"Nathan, that's not important just now. I tried to talk him out of it, but Vince won't listen. He's—"
"Ready?" The sound of Vince's voice, all innocent expectation, casts a pall over the room.
"I'm sorry," Dave says again. Then he gestures mockingly to Vince and says, "Don't keep him out too late. Be a shame to have to discipline yourself over breaking your own imposed curfew."
"What's going on?" Nathan asks.
"We're going on a trip," Vince says. "Out of town."
"But this case—"
"Jordan's volunteered to help Dwight with it. I think they have it well in hand—you're hardly indispensable, Nathan. Now come on. We have quite a drive ahead of us."
Dave steps between them. "Remember your promise, brother. Bring him back safe and sound."
"I won't touch him," Vince says (it doesn't sound like a reassurance), "but as to 'safe and sound…' Well, that all depends on what we find, doesn't it?"
"Where are we going?" He hasn't even finished the question before Nathan realizes he really doesn't care. "Have you found Audrey yet? Did you expand the search to hospitals outside the East Coast? Has Jennifer heard anything to give us a clue about where she'll turn up?"
"We're going to figure that out right now." Vince's smile cruel, cold, but brittle around the edges. "Now come on."
And though Vince carries no gun and has made no overt threats, Nathan has no choice but to follow him, unresisting and uncomplaining.
For answers, Nathan is beginning to think, he'd destroy another hundred Barns.
The drive is silent (oppressive). The walk into the building is weighted and too long (like a nightmare, everything stretching endlessly around him). The realization of where they are hits Nathan with the force of a sledgehammer.
A morgue.
Vince has brought him to a morgue for answers. Answers about where Parker's ended up.
Nathan stops dead in the middle of the fluorescent hallway.
"Vince," he says (his voice breaks).
For a wonder, Vince actually comes to a stop. The cold look in his eyes slips, just for an instant, into something worse: grief-stricken pity. "It might not be her," he says with absolutely no conviction. "It's a Jane Doe matching her description. It could be anyone."
"It's not her." Nathan hears his own statement and realizes the truth of it. It's enough to let him take another step. "She's not dead. You said Jennifer hears her."
Vince says nothing else, just falls into step with him. They traverse the rest of the too-long hallways in silence (this silence more like a breath held in suspense, the inhale before a scream).
"Nathan," Vince blurts out just before they go through the last door. "If it is her…"
"It's not."
"But if it is…" Vince's eyes lock on Nathan's, and for the first time since a Barn appeared on a hillside, Nathan can see past the head of the Guard to the man who went fishing with the Chief, who offered Nathan a job and a place, who's laughed with him and drank with him. He sees an old man, bowed under the weight of too much loss, too many tribulations, too few victories.
"As many times as I've said goodbye to her," Vince says, "I've always known she'd be back. That's the only way I've been able to live with any of this, to know that she will continue, will always be there. I just…I don't think I can bear it if she's really gone for good."
It's strange, so strange, to hear these things not as an accusation but as a confidence. To be addressed not as the root of all their problems but as someone who can completely understand. Nathan suddenly feels more real than he has in almost seven months.
"Do you want me to go in alone?" he asks. It's the only gift he can give (any words he might offer would only ring hollow).
"No," Vince says slowly. "No, I…I need to see for myself."
It's almost surreal, the moment when the sheet is pulled away from the body. Noise seems to disappear entirely, leaving Nathan with only a few senses, all of them inclined to deceive him.
For just a moment, Nathan's eyes see Audrey lying there, cold and empty and pale. For just an instant, he'd swear he smells coffee and paper and gunpowder. For just a heartbeat, it is Parker dead in front of him and Nathan's world contracts down to nothing.
Then he blinks and it's not Parker at all. It's a woman with too-dark hair, too sharp a nose, too pronounced a chin, too tall, too bony.
It's not Parker.
The room shifts around Nathan until he throws out a hand to clasp a nearby table for balance. Some pressure propels him out of the room, down the hallways (Vince, some part of him realizes), out of the building (his hand on Nathan's shoulder or back), and to their car. Only when Nathan can see the sun-warmed metal, presumably solid under his numb hands, does he feel the world snap back into place around him.
"It wasn't her," he says, mostly just to hear it said out loud (to reassure himself another sense hasn't been stolen away). "Parker's still alive."
Nodding, Vince looks away. "I'm sorry, Nathan."
Nathan blinks at him (at the unfamiliar phrase). "What?"
"I'm sorry. It's always been easier to blame the name Sarah gave before she left than to see you as a person. Garland insisted on adopting you even after Dave and I told him about James's father. He made me promise not to blame a kid for the future, but…I've broken that promise your entire life." Turning to meet his eyes, Vince says, "But how can I blame anyone else for loving her? How can I hate you for falling under her spell when we both know we're not the first ones?"
"The difference is that you were strong enough to let her go."
"Or maybe I just wasn't brave enough to fight for her." Vince shrugs. "Either way, you were…you are enough for her to actually love you back in return. And if I'm being completely honest, that's what I hated you for more than anything."
"Parker cares about me," Nathan admits (tries not to remember lies and long silences and someone else always chosen before him), "but Duke's the one she loves. He's the one she chose."
(Over and over and over again.)
Vince squints at him. "I don't know what happened between her and Duke, but I know who she took into the Barn with her. I know who's dangerous enough to pull the trigger on a centuries-old cycle."
"For all the good it did." Reminded of everything he needs to make amends for, Nathan pushes himself off the car. They don't have time for this. The Troubles never rest, and neither can he.
Before he can open the car door, Vince's phone rings. Chafing to be back in Haven (far away from this morgue and the possibility within), Nathan waits impatiently for the call to end. But whatever it is, it must be important because as soon as Vince closes the phone, he squares his shoulders.
"Jennifer's been hearing Audrey," he says. "New conversations. Things that don't totally make sense. She and Duke believe that Audrey's still in the Barn, trapped in the moment of its destruction."
"So she hasn't landed yet?" Nathan could swear the world suddenly becomes brighter.
"Nathan, wait. Have…have you heard what Jennifer's been hearing? What Audrey and Howard said in their final conversation?"
"This may surprise you," Nathan says dryly, "but I'm not exactly first in line on the gossip chain."
"There's a way to end the Troubles forever."
"What?" Nathan only just barely stops himself from grabbing hold of Vince and shaking the answers out of him.
"Audrey has to kill the person she loves."
One blink. Two. Three.
The sun still lights the world. Cars still pass on the road just outside the parking lot. Nathan assumes he's still breathing since he remains upright and conscious.
Duke. He's only just accepted that Duke's alive, and now, so quickly, he might still end up standing over his grave.
Or will he?
"The person she loves," Nathan repeats. "Any of them?"
Vince stares. "What?"
"Audrey loves a lot more than one person. Does she have to kill the one she loves the most or…or just anyone?"
"We assumed it's the person she loves most." Vince takes a deep breath. "That's why James ran from her. Arla told him that Lucy had tried to kill him to end the Troubles. But Jennifer says that in the Barn he claimed that Audrey didn't love him enough for it to work because she didn't know him. He asked her who she loved now. And that's when she started saying her goodbyes."
Of course it was. Parker's always ready and willing to sacrifice herself, but other people? No, she'd never stand for that. (For the blink of an eye, Nathan even wonders if he could actually bring himself to hate her for that, for making him live with her repeated sacrifices.) It's no wonder this cycle has continued as long as it has even with such an easy solution waiting in the wings.
"She does love him."
Vince hesitates. "Who?"
"James," he grits. "She does love him. She doesn't have to know him to love him. He's her son."
"And yours," Vince says neutrally (impassiveness cloaking ravenous curiosity, easing envy).
"When we find Audrey," Nathan says with finality, "you know what we need to do."
"Nathan…"
"She has to kill me."
Vince says nothing. He tries to pass off his silence as uncertainty, but Nathan sees it for what it really is: agreement. (There's a reason Vince broke the Guard's injunction to keep him in the dark, after all, and Nathan's willing to bet it's for exactly this result.)
For the first time, Nathan feels hope.
(Finally, finally, there is an end in sight.)
They've been back in Haven only long enough to reach the Herald when Jordan meets them with a strange gleam in her eyes.
"There's a kid missing," she says. "Maybe more than one related to this case."
A shadow seems to pass over the sun.
A kid. Not just a kid. A little kid, three tiny children from a preschool. Vince melts away, no help at all (an uneasy alliance doesn't make them friends, as Nathan well knows), leaving Nathan alone with a strangely cold Jordan.
"Are you all right?" he asks her (any distraction, even one that probably equates with poking a wild bear, is preferable to where his mind insists on wandering).
Jordan glares at him. "Oh, I'm fine. Just peachy, really, with no end to the Troubles in sight. Why? Are you planning on doing anything else to make my life better?"
"You seem…" He tilts his head, but the change in angle doesn't help to clarify her. Before, even when she shot him, or when she taunts him with barbs and tempts herself with touches, he's always understood her. She's hurt, lonely, isolated. Desperate for all of that to change and fixated on an end to her Trouble as a way to erase all her pain and trauma. For all she hurts him, he knows that hurt is all she knows how to inflict because it's all she feels inside. But now…
"Hollow," he finally settles on. "You seem hollow. Numb."
"Well, you'd know better than anyone what that feels like," she sneers. "Morally hollow. Physically numb. And empty of any sort of plan to fix this mess you made."
"Jordan." Carefully, he pulls in a breath. "I could have a plan. If we just find Audrey—"
"Audrey!" She nearly snarls as she lunges at him, her gloved hands twisted in his shirt. "Always Audrey! Did anyone ever think that maybe she's the cause of all this?"
His pity evaporates. Nathan shakes his head and knocks her hands away. "Parker is the only solution to the Troubles."
"Maybe. Maybe not. There's more than one way to end a Trouble."
"We can help people come to terms with their Troubles, but that's not a permanent solution."
"Maybe I have my own solution in mind." Jordan's eyes lock on her hands as she drags them up his chest. She's too close and he assumes from the look on her face that she's touching his skin (he imagines his skin crawling, a physical scream he can't hear). "Did you know that Duke's brother is in town?"
"Which one?"
"Does it matter? A Crocker's solution is more permanent than anything your precious Audrey ever managed."
Reaching up to wrap his hand around her bare wrist, Nathan tries to meet her gaze (to reach past the shell wrapped around her vulnerable, hurting self). "Jordan. No. You can't be considering that. There's always hope."
The preoccupied mist clears from her eyes as she shoves him back. "Don't you dare judge me, you hypocrite! You were willing to kill to save your precious partner—and trust me, most Troubled people would willingly choose death over cursing their entire families to live forever in our personal hells."
"And the ones who choose life rather than giving up?" he demands. "Will you respect that choice or will you blackmail them into doing your will like you did that little girl, Ginger? And what about the Crockers? You'd condemn them to living forever in their personal hell to save those few who do take the easy way out? To making their hells all the worse for putting innocent blood on their hands?"
"Since when do you care about the Crockers? Any of them? And no one who's Troubled is innocent." A quick flash of pain, of guilt, ghosts across her face, raw and aching. For the first time, Nathan would actually willingly reach out and touch her (try to convey a comfort he doesn't feel), but she backs away, locked behind an exterior every bit as cruel as it is fragile.
"Let's go," she says coldly. "Or are you not interested in finding these kids?"
Returned to his proper place (alone, isolated, used only so long as he is useful and set aside otherwise), Nathan has no choice but to let it go (never something he's been good at).
Better that way, though, he thinks, because soon he will have to let his entire life go (take the easy way out to save others, to save Parker, but above all, to save himself).
Nathan feels like he's in his own personal hell during the next few hours, but it has nothing to do with his Trouble and everything to do with the son he just barely allows himself to remember. The little kids freezing to death while caught up in something so much bigger than themselves. A would-be father whose denial threatens lives and futures and the woman he loves.
"I have a son," he tells Braer, the Troubled father, and almost chokes on the words. It makes it real. It makes it inescapable. It brings it all roaring up from the shallow grave he's hidden it within.
Even in the midst of danger, with all these kids' lives depending on him, he is assaulted by a flood of images, half memory, half imaginative guesswork.
Sarah (always Parker, sometimes red-headed, sometimes blonde, but always so open and kind and mischievous). Her smile and her hands so willingly bridging the gap between them. Her kisses and the softness of her skin and her absolute, unswerving (emboldening, strengthening, intimidating) trust in him.
Sarah (Parker, competent and compassionate and brave and so very lonely) left alone facing a town he could only warn her about. Left alone but pregnant, strong and already in love with her baby (his baby, abandoned so definitively by his selfish father). Her heart breaking when she has to give her baby away (another sacrifice this vicious town demanded of her).
And James. James Cogan (who could have been James Wuornos), growing up with parents (replacements, Nathan can't help but think, though he knows, he knows, how unfair that is), still going off to look for his birthmother and finding Lucy Ripley instead of Sarah Vernon. Loving her anyway, being pulled into a world of Troubles and danger and endless inevitable loss.
His family…but not really. Not at all, Nathan thinks. Sarah chose him only because she hadn't met Duke. James had a father and looked only for his birthmother, not his biological father. They're not Nathan's. They'll never be his. The only thing that binds him to them will be that he, too, sacrifices himself for Haven.
There are no working nerve-endings in his body, but Nathan can feel the stickiness of blood on his hands, thick and so pungent it burns in his nostrils.
He killed his son just like he killed his birthfather (and stood by and let his dad die right in front of him).
"We have to admit that it's our fault," he tells Braer as the man stares at his dying wife and the fading children.
It's his fault. He was trying to save Parker, yes, but his intentions don't matter compared to what he actually did.
He killed James. Duke was thrust out, they'll be able to pull Parker out somehow, but his son? His son needed the Barn to survive and Nathan shot that all to hell.
"It's my fault," he whispers, and expects the sky to start falling around him again, the earth to crack under his feet, his own body to burst into flame like it almost did what feels like a million years ago (back when he was beginning to let himself hope, to think that maybe, just maybe, someone he loved would love him back and choose him).
None of that happens, of course. Instead, his punishment is to endure. To survive. To stand in a world that stays in one piece while the bodies of his loved ones are strewn in his wake.
The douen disappear. The children are released to be wrapped in blankets and taken home to their parents. Carmen wraps her arms around Braer's sobbing shoulders.
A happy ending—but no baby for the Brocks.
(No son come back to wipe the largest name off his list.)
But a moment later, Nathan's world does end up shaking. Rocked off its axis when Jordan puts her phone back in her pocket and says, "Jennifer knows where Audrey's coming out. Vince wants you there."
Parker. James is beyond his reach, but he can still save Parker (Sarah; Lucy; Audrey; all the future incarnations she will never have to be molded into). It's time to bring Parker home.
And then…then it will all be over.
On its own, the hillside might look like the scene on a postcard. With the line of heavily armed Guard-members ringing it, it looks more like a battlefield, all of them prepared to go to war. Nathan, though, sees only salvation in the two figures standing at the peak.
A young short woman he knows to be Jennifer Mason—and Duke.
This hillside is, despite all appearances to the contrary, his salvation.
"Duke!" he calls. He tries to move forward, but unsurprisingly is brought to a quick, probably painful halt.
"Let him up," Vince says authoritatively. "This is what we need him for."
Nathan meets his eyes and shares a quick nod with him. (He hopes Parker will look at him, will see him, before she turns yet again to Duke.)
Duke meets him halfway, his movements so quick and purposeful that Nathan braces himself for the punch and is taken completely unawares by the hug Duke pulls him into, so tight all Nathan can smell is brine and metal and alcohol.
"Nathan!" Duke pulls back and looks him over (Nathan was once used to these quick surveys, someone checking him over for wounds, but it's so unfamiliar now that he feels awkward). "I've been trying to see you ever since I realized you were still here! Are you okay?"
"Are you?" Nathan asks.
"Nathan…" Duke looks over his shoulder to the makeshift soldiers arrayed behind them. "What's the plan here? If you need me to create a diversion so you can make a break for it—"
"I'm exactly where I need to be." Nathan consciously puts a hand on Duke's arm, hoping it's a reassuring touch (knowing it's probably goodbye). "Duke, I'm sorry I sent you into that Barn—"
"No, don't be." Duke's smile is the same as ever, only now instead of smugness, Nathan can see the reassurance in it. The willingness to be a friend. The plea to depend on him and give him a reason to stay, an expectation to meet and exceed. (He wonders if these things were always there and he never saw them, or if Audrey brought them out in Duke.) "It's something I needed to do. And look, no harm done, right? It's you I'm worried about right now. Everyone seems ready to crucify you, and if what Jennifer heard is true, you know they're going to be expecting—"
"I know," Nathan cuts him off. He's exhausted suddenly, so mentally tired when he realizes that they haven't filled Duke in on the plan. Why would they want Duke to think he'll be expected to lay down his life for this town? Why wouldn't they tell him that Nathan is the one who will take this last bullet for the Troubles? "It's okay, Duke, really. Being here is my idea."
(He hopes Parker will smile at him, one last time.)
Duke narrows his eyes, but before he can say anything, Jennifer calls his name.
"Duke! Duke, I can open the door now!"
Nathan sticks close to Duke, lets himself be carried alone in his wake, and the Guard fall back, Vince and Dave standing halfway between, Dwight holding Jordan back—and then they all disappear. Nathan's entire focus gravitates to the door that materializes into being at the touch of Jennifer's hand.
(He hopes Parker won't hate him, before the end; he hopes she doesn't hate him already.)
When she flings the door open, there is an alien wilderness on the other side. Swirling colors, greens and browns and yellows that shift and spiral and mutate, fragmenting and reforming. Time-streams collapsing around them? Whole worlds just out of reach? Something even further outside his comprehension?
Who knows. It doesn't matter.
There is another door across that nebulous chasm. A bar of light with (or is he imagining it?) the silhouette of a slender figure standing on the threshold.
"Audrey!" He calls the name out before he can remind himself it is Duke who should be calling.
But Duke's steadying Jennifer, distracted and distant, and Nathan can't keep the name he clutches even closer than he does his list from winging free.
"Audrey!"
(He hopes she'll touch him, one last time, one touch to prove she can eventually forgive him.)
His feet are edging over the threshold, inching into the coalescing kaleidoscope, but Duke's hand on his shoulder prevents him from straining farther toward that figure (a picture of his life, Nathan figures, Duke between him and the ever-unreachable Audrey).
"Audrey!" he calls again (it's been so long since he's let himself even think her name). "Audrey!"
(Above all, he hopes that Parker is the last thing he sees, the last touch he knows, the last thought he has.)
The figure moves. Shifts. Elongates, then shrinks, then vanishes, no longer backlit by the open doorway.
"Audrey!" he yells, frantic.
And the world breaks into a million pieces.
