Nathan looks up from the story he's cobbled together (writing's never been a passion, but it was his job for years so he plans on taking this seriously whether they intend him to or not) when he hears Duke's voice. He and Aud—Lexie are back, strolling into the station together, Duke smiling and relieved, Lexie casting him a smile though there's a furrow between her brows Nathan got used to seeing on Audrey when she was preoccupied with thoughts she didn't want to share.
The minute they turn toward the office (her office, not his anymore, but probably hers still), Nathan feels awkward and unsure. He stands and moves out from the desk, then takes a step back toward the seat, then ends up standing there uselessly until Lexie comes in. Alone. A glance outside shows Duke headed back toward the entrance where that young woman—Jennifer—stands, looking shy and happy (Nathan's used to seeing that effect on women around Duke; he's less used to seeing Duke bend, soft as he talks lowly to the smaller woman, a new sort of gentleness in the way he reaches out to take her hand).
"All solved," Lexie says as she hovers in the doorway, and Nathan forgets all about Duke and Jennifer and anything but the woman in front of him.
"How'd it go?" he asks, doing his best not to look too concerned.
"Easier than the last one." She takes a step toward her desk (Nathan imagines his chest seizes up as he waits to see anything of Audrey shine through), but she just runs a finger over the surface (the picture frame and the stapler and the cup of pens Parker was perpetually losing) before turning away and flopping onto the couch, curling up like she had earlier. "Turns out this store clerk just felt helpless and overwhelmed. A little bit of listening, a few words of encouragement to help him ask out this girl he likes, and voila! Trouble solved and a happy ending all around."
There's something off about her tone, something wistful and…sad? (Or is that just him projecting? Just him seeing what he wants to see in this relevant tale of a guy wanting to connect with the woman he loves no matter that the whole world seems against them?)
"Are you okay?" he asks.
The glimmer (whatever it was) is gone just like that, shrugged away in favor of bravado.
"Oh, yeah, Troubles, shmoubles. A bit of relationship advice is nothing compared to enforcing last call on a bunch of scary drunk guys in the middle of the night."
He doesn't think she's lying, exactly (no matter her persona, she always seems to take the Troubles in stride), but there's definitely something bothering her.
"Lexie," he says (careful to pick the right name; careful not to sound too intense; careful not to crowd or pressure or expect, even though that's all this town can ever do to her, isn't it?).
"Oh, but your biggest fan showed up and I get the feeling she doesn't much like me either. Or Audrey, anyway—"
Nathan narrows his eyes. "Jordan was there?"
"Yeah, she your ex-girlfriend or something?" At his sharp denial, she makes a face. "Huh, well, she sure seems to have an awful lot of repressed rage about something. She sounded crazy, honestly, talking about needing to end the Troubles once and for all—said that if you were useful, then maybe I'd be even more effective. What do you think that means?"
"Nothing good," he mutters. When he glances down at a cracking sound, he sees his hands locked around the edges of his desk, the wood buckling beneath his grip. Carefully, slowly, he watches his hands open, lets them hang limply (uselessly) at his side.
Jordan wants Aud—Lex—Parker dead. She thinks Parker is responsible for the Troubles—that the Troubles are Parker's Trouble. Ridiculous and so, so dangerous. Is this the plan she'd been talking about, before they got Parker back? Could she really think that killing Parker would end everything once and for all?
Nathan's never particularly minded Jordan wanting him dead (she has just reasons), but there's no way in hell he'll let her get her hands on Parker.
"You really don't like her," Lexie observes, peering at the desk where he left cracked indentations. "Troubled history, huh?" And then she smirks at her own pun and Nathan can't help but laugh (he remembers long hours spent sitting side by side in his Bronco or standing leaned against it while she teased and joked and prodded until he remembered what it felt like to laugh with someone).
"Thank you," he offers impulsively, "for helping us."
(He wonders how many times the people of this town have troubled themselves to say that to her.)
"Yeah, well, you did say I'd be getting paid, so…" She shrugs, and Nathan's sure he must be smiling at her (she's always so blasé about her own amazing strengths, always so blind to everything she offers).
"Have dinner with me," he blurts out. It's blunt, inelegant, and surprises him as much as it does her, though naturally she recovers faster.
"Wow. Just like that, huh?" That strange glimmer ghosts briefly across her face again before she comes to her feet, dropping the strand of hair she was fiddling with. "Dinner? So, like, you're asking me out?"
He swallows hard. "Yes," he says. "I'm asking you out."
(And he can't help but wonder what could have, would have, been if he'd done this before, when she first came to town, the first time she made him laugh and he thought maybe… But how could he have? When he had no connections, no practice in relationships, no confidence in anything but the fact that she'd one day look at him and see him as broken as the rest of Haven did? How can he now when the truth is, he will always, always get more out of any relationship between them than she will?)
Lexie studies him as openly, as intently, as Audrey often did. Seeing him. Learning him. Knowing him and yet still looking (as if he's worth more than just a cursory glance and then being relegated back to invisibility). Nathan feels himself growing stronger, bolder, more real under her attention.
"All right," she says, sounding half surprised at her own answer and half delighted. "Dinner, then. Just us."
Nathan blinks, his steel melting away into startled disbelief. "Really?"
She laughs—not meanly. Almost fondly. "Yeah. I mean, you obviously need a few good meals, and I can always eat, and…well I've spent countless nights whining about wanting to find a good guy. You…well, you seem like a good guy. I've certainly said yes to far less likely options."
"Don't build me up too much," he says dryly, and is charmed by her all over again when she laughs and steps nearer to him.
"You…" Her eyes are softer than he's seen them on Lexie (Audrey-soft, nearly Sarah-soft). "You've been a friend to me since I got here."
His mouth is dry and tastes vaguely of copper. "I am your friend," he says, hoarse and raw and honest (vulnerable and needy and far too revealing).
"So. Dinner then." Her eyes narrow, the moment passing. "Do you even have a place to live or do they just keep you—"
"I'll pick you up," he says defiantly (this is what they all want, after all, the mission he's been given, so they will have to make allowances). "Tonight?"
"Okay." It's only belatedly that he realizes she's nervous. Unsure. Audrey's social awkwardness peeping through the corners of the jaded bartender. "I'll try to find something worthy wearing," she adds with a suggestion of her previous bite.
He wants to say something about how beautiful she looks, how beautiful she always is, but the words don't flow and he closes his mouth awkwardly over a clumsy mishmash he can't quite get out (Duke would have been able to, he finds himself thinking), and then it's too late.
"Tonight, Nathan," she says, as if fixing his name in her memory (and, oh, he wishes she really could).
"Tonight," he promises.
(And for the first time in so long, he's looking forward to something that isn't his death.)
If it weren't just a trick to lead to the end they've all decided is the right one, Nathan would almost feel whole that night, dressed in a suit jacket and tie the Guard insisted on, pulling up to the Gray Gull in his Bronco (it's been neglected and needs some work, but Nathan's too happy to see it again to care too much), and seeing Parker open the door at his knock. She's dressed in something more Lexie than Audrey, maybe, low-cut and tight, but dark blue like Audrey favored, and though she still has the nose ring in, her hair's been pulled back so that it's less obvious how different it is from Audrey's.
"Hey," he manages. He feels overdressed and underprepared and like a fraud (standing here where Duke should be) and Lexie's smile is so open, so bold, that he feels like the worst kind of liar (love me, he's telling her, so that it will hurt when you have to kill me with your own hands).
"Hey!" she chirps back. "Where are we headed?"
The entire night's itinerary was prepared by the Guard, Vince biting out acidic comments, Dave's mocking taunts more riling than helpful, Duke intervening to do most of the actual planning while Jennifer studied him with narrowed eyes and pursed mouth. Nathan had mostly just sat in the corner and let them hash it all out (it's never going to be a specific dinner or a precise restaurant or an ambient atmosphere that will make Parker care about someone).
Still, he lets himself wish for just a second that he'd been the one to ask her out of his own free will. He imagines what he'd have done if he'd been allowed to plan this date. He thinks that he would have skipped restaurants and the gazes of Haven entirely, would have cooked for Parker or let her cook for them, pancakes or something easy, would have let them stay entirely wrapped up in a world all their own, unbroken by the town.
But it's just a dream, and this is his reality. A few nights of leading Lexie DeWitt on, then a gun placed in her hand and a bullet in Nathan's heart.
An ending. A final moment to underscore his life.
A stop to all his guilt and his pain and his regret and his futile imaginings.
Lexie waves her hand in front of his face, startling him back into the moment. "Hey! You okay?"
"Yeah. Yeah, sorry, just a little nervous, I guess."
Her smile is slow and more Audrey than Lexie (but then, what does he know? He hardly knows Lexie at all) and beautiful.
"Shall we?" he asks, and tries not to stumble backward when she loops her arm through his and laughs.
"We shall."
Valentino's Ristorante is too nice, fancy and expensive (Nathan's wallet is heavy with cash the Teagues placed inside), the menu covered in names of food he can't pronounce, too many choices of silverware beside their plates, and eyes on him from every direction.
"Wow," Lexie says when the waiter's finally let them be. She leans forward, her elbows placed directly on the pristine tablecloth, and Nathan finds himself admiring her boldness all over again. "I didn't know the newspaper job paid so well."
"You deserve to have a nice meal," he says awkwardly (and it's the truth even if he thinks that just like Audrey, Lexie would have preferred something a lot simpler).
"Aww, you're sweet." Lexie leans back in her chair to rearrange the silverware (his plan to pick what fork to use by emulating her goes up in smoke). "So why'd you pick this place?"
"It…was a recommendation." Nathan watches her shift in her seat and adds, "And I will never listen to that person's advice again."
Lexie's laugh is quick and loud and sincere. "Good call. Do you even know what we ordered?"
"Not really." He lowers his voice conspiratorially. "But I know a good drive-through on the way back to the Gull if that waiter brings us snails or something."
"Two dinners in one night?" Lexie arches a mischievous brow. "You really know how to sweep a girl off her feet, don't you, Wuornos?"
Nathan flinches and looks away. Big mistake. The four people seated at a nearby table are all familiar, all of them Guard-members who've made up his escort quite a few times (a couple of them have been the ones leading the mobs on those nights when the town feels he requires a more physical punishment).
Looking back to Lexie, he tries to center himself (remind himself what, who, is really important here). "I, uh…" He's already lying in everything but word; he can't add actual spoken lies to his plate. "I'm not really good at this. I haven't…really done it in a long time."
Lexie sets her elbows back on the table so she can lean closer to him, her voice soft and low. "You want to know the truth? I haven't either." At his look, she holds up her hands. "No, really. I mean, I talk a good game, but actually finding a guy worth a second look or a yes isn't as easy as you'd think. Late nights at the bars don't exactly bring in the best of humanity, you know?"
"You're there," he says.
"What?" She blinks at him.
Nathan shifts, imagining that his face has probably flushed warm. "I just mean…you were there. Late at night. At the bar. So maybe there's more good there than you thought."
"It wasn't actually a bar," she reminds them after a quiet moment. "It was a barn in disguise."
"Like us in this restaurant," Nathan deadpans and is rewarded by her laugh.
"Yeah." Her eyes are on him again, heavy and open and studying. It's been so long since Nathan's felt seen, since he's really been heard, that he feels drunk even though he hasn't taken even a single sip of the wine the waiter chose for them. "So who are you, Nathan Wuornos?" Lexie asks suddenly. "I've already figured out that you're not really a bar-at-night kind of guy, and you're not a cop anymore, you only write part-time—what do you do?"
"I…want to help people," he says, struggling for honesty (fighting not to react to how much it hurts that she doesn't know him). He looks away from her too-blue eyes, too-willing smile, too-condoning presence. "But mostly, I just seem to cause trouble."
"Duke said you were helping, though."
Nathan casts her a sharp glance (the whole scene seems to fracture, in some way, at the sound of Duke's name on her lips). "What?"
"Duke. He said you'd been solving Troubles while he was gone. That you'd been doing everything you could to help."
Of course. Duke knows as well as Nathan what catches Parker's attention (and it has nothing to do with neckties or expensive food or baseless hope), and if the Guard refuse to let Nathan help Parker solve Troubles, then he must have had to bring Nathan into the thick of it somehow. He can't imagine how much it must have galled Duke to have to talk him up to Lexie, and Nathan tries to be grateful but can summon up only a bit of chafed resentment.
"Not enough," he finally says. "Besides, you're the one who really helps people. Look how much you've been able to do just since you got here. You've settled the tension that was eating this town alive, solved Troubles, you saved that man's life today and who knows how many more that would have been affected by his Trouble."
"But that's not really me," she says uncomfortably. "That's all of you helping me, guiding me, telling me what to do. It's what's expected of me, and when everyone expects something, they end up seeing it even if it's not really there."
"Park—" Nathan takes a deep breath, a sip of the too-bitter wine, everything he can to pretend he hasn't just made a misstep. "Lexie, trust me, I saw what Haven was like without you. And I know what it's like now that you're here. You make everything better. You help people be better."
"That's a lot of pressure," Lexie says, wry and sharp and vulnerable all at once. "Kind of like you."
"What?"
Lexie takes a deep breath, her hand reaching up to tug a strand of her hair loose, playing it between her fingers. "You don't really know me. You want me to be Audrey—that's what you called me when you first saw me, when you put a gun in my hands and told me to kill you. I saw the picture on her desk, you and her together. Smiling. Happy. You don't want me at all. You just want her, that woman you loved in the past, the woman who loved you—and that's a lot of pressure I don't really deserve."
Whatever Nathan would have said to that (however he could have explained the complicated, oh-so-simple truth) is interrupted by the arrival of their food. The waiter, having figured out that they have no idea what they ordered, sticks around to explain everything in heavily accented words that fly right over Nathan's head. He can't stop looking across at Lexie, who's avoiding his gaze by pretending to be overly interested in the tiny portions before them.
Nathan blindly grabs a fork and takes a bite of the food. It's tasteless, or maybe he just can't spare any attention to process the taste. He needs to straighten this out now, before Lexie (before Parker) gets it fixed in her head that she's interchangeable but separate. That she's somehow a completely different person every time she comes back rather than the same person just seen through a different lens, with different life experiences but the same heart inside.
"Lexie," he tries to say, but she starts rambling about the food, about the presentation of it on the plates reminding her of some story from her past that Nathan really should care about (he needs to listen to her because he of all people knows how important it is to be heard), but he can't focus past her misconception.
"I do want you to be Audrey," he blurts out over her, so loud that the nearby tables all look over at him. Nathan ignores them (past time for him to turn the tables on them, after all). Leaning over his plate, he quietly says, "I made a decision that I thought led to Audrey's death—I thought I'd killed her—so of course I want her back. I want her to be safe and here and happy. But…but I know that you're not her. You're Lexie, and you're not a cop, you weren't raised in a Catholic orphanage and you didn't try to protect your foster siblings through any means necessary and then graduate from Quantico. I know that. But I also know that no matter how terrifying things were for you when you got here, you were immediately willing to help. You put your life in danger to save other people. You left your whole life behind on a chance no one else would have taken. You accept all the craziness this town can throw at you because you're drawn to its need. And that…that's why you are her, too, always, no matter what your name is."
"You can't know that," Lexie says after a long moment where he has to remind himself to keep breathing.
"I do," he says firmly. "I do know that. It's the one thing I really do know."
Lexie puts her fork very slowly down on her plate. They've barely eaten at all, but the plate's nearly empty and Nathan doesn't know who suggested this restaurant but whoever it was doesn't know Parker or him at all.
"And you want me to kill you."
Nathan stares.
"It's not that hard to figure out," Lexie says with a shrug so casual it comes across as forced. "The first thing you did was put a gun in my hand and aim it at yourself. So why all this? The dates and the setups and the Guard being in on it? What happens when I kill you? And why you?"
"Why not me?" he replies. His voice sounds strained, but he feels calmer than he has since Vince took him to a morgue (finally the lies can all stop). "If one person's life can end all the Troubles forever, who wouldn't make that sacrifice?"
"I don't know," she snaps, suddenly angry for no reason Nathan can tell, "maybe someone who's actually smart enough to question something that seems a little too easy."
Nathan winces away. "I wouldn't exactly call any of this easy." He hates the sullen note in his own voice (but this is his one chance, the only thing that gives him any sort of hope, and it stings to have it brushed aside like a fantasy).
"Yeah, well, just don't expect me to be firing any bullets any time soon, at you or at anyone else." Lexie's smile is thin and bitter. "Jennifer may have heard some of what went on in that barn, but I heard some things while in there too, you know."
The room goes still. So quiet that Nathan can hear his heartbeat pounding away in his ears.
"Like what?" he asks through lips that don't want to move.
"Like the fact that it's only by killing the person I love most that this will all be over. And…" Lexie pauses, then takes a deep breath while she fiddles with her hair. "And I don't love you, so…what's the point?"
He can't move. Can't think. Probably can't breathe or feel, but then, that's hardly new. He doesn't fool himself into thinking it will kill him, though. No, his punishment is, as always, to survive and to endure.
"Is that what all of this is for?" Lexie waves a hand at their fancy surroundings, the Guard-members watching them from afar (watching him fail, as they knew all along he'd do). "You want me to fall in love with you?"
"It doesn't matter what I want," he finally says, and looks down at his plate.
The waiter tries to talk them into dessert, but Lexie doesn't seem interested so Nathan just pulls out his borrowed wallet and sets out the Guard's cash. (He feels dirty, cheap; he's not the willing sacrifice anymore, just a discarded tool that has lost its usefulness.)
It's only when they're alone again, together in the Bronco as he drives her back home, that he finally manages to speak.
"If you knew all along," he says, "then why'd you go along with it? Why go out with me at all?"
She plays with her hair for only a second before letting her hands drop to her lap as she looks out the window (away from him; she has, he thinks, seen her fill of him). "I don't know," she says quietly. "I guess I just…I wanted to see."
To see if she could love him? To see if there was anything there worth her time?
And there isn't. She can't. It's Duke she talks to and trusts and cares for, and in the end, it will be Duke who dies and Lexie who's broken and Nathan who's once more all alone, bent under the weight of his failures.
"I'm sorry, Nathan," she says when he parks the Bronco outside her apartment. The lights of the Gull are brightly lit, noise spilling out into the parking lot. Nathan wonders if Lexie will leave his dark, cold Bronco and head into the bright merriment to seek out Duke. "I know this isn't what you wanted."
"It's fine." Nathan takes a deep breath. "Probably best if you don't go around telling everyone you can't love me, though. The Guard are only playing along because they think this plan has a chance of working. Who knows what they'll do if they know it's hopeless."
She turns to him, her body angled in the seat to face him, and in the dark, in the quiet, Nathan imagines a different context to this scene (he shouldn't, he knows he shouldn't, it'll be far more painful than any blows the Guard rain down on him). Imagines a date where she'd laughed with him and reached out to touch his hand, a fleeting touch not nearly as invigorating as the warmth of her eyes. Imagines this scene here, alone, with takeout bags between them and pancakes warm in the carryout boxes and syrup on her chin and laughter spilling between them as he reaches out to wipe it away.
"What will the Guard do to you?" she asks, expression grimmer than any he's seen on Lexie before. "If their plan doesn't work."
"They won't hurt you," he assures her. "You're too important."
"But what will they do to you?"
"Don't worry." He looks away, all his imaginings drying up and drifting away like dust in the wind. "It's fine."
"Nathan…"
"You know, we should get pancakes." He tries a smile but figures it probably fails even before it begins (that is what he's known for, after all). "No pressure. No expectations. Just friends having some pancakes for breakfast before heading out to solve more Troubles."
"Pancakes?" Lexie opens the door and jumps down to the ground as she makes a face. "Ugh."
Nathan's not quite sure why this hurts more than everything else combined, but it does, sending a sharp spike of white-hot grief through his heart (even a Trouble can't take away that kind of pain, he thinks).
"Lexie!" He leans across the seat to look down at her, meeting her eyes and wishing he could read whatever secrets swim there in blue and gray and determination. "About what you said earlier… All Audrey Parker wanted was a chance to be herself. She fought so hard for it. And no matter how much I wish I'd been able to help her do that, I… Well, I imagine that Lexie DeWitt deserves just as much of a chance as Audrey Parker did."
She stares at him for a long moment (seeing him again, which means this admission, no matter how painful, was worth it), then gives him the suggestion of a smile (small but honest). "Thank you," she says, and then the door slams between them and the Guard-members that have followed them from the restaurant honk to get him moving. Back to his prison. Back to his endless punishment.
Back to a life without Audrey.
That night, crammed on his small cot, Nathan dreams. Not the soft, gentle dreams that cut so deeply and tore so sharply. These dreams are different.
He stands in a classroom, unprepared and vulnerable, and is handed a quiz he can't possibly pass.
Who do you love? the question reads, but the correct answer isn't even on the page. Sarah Vernon, Lucy Ripley, Audrey Parker, Lexie DeWitt. Each choice a name he knows (red curls and soft touch; a face marked by tears and a son he'll never know; friend and partner and ally; a stranger who isn't a stranger), but none of them are the right answer.
The real Sarah Vernon was probably a lovely woman, but he wouldn't have been so drawn to her. She could have told him stories of her time in the Korean War just like Sarah did, but it wouldn't have touched him as her voice did.
The real Lucy Ripley was hard to find, smart and cunning and willing to help Audrey when she came to her, but what about her would have intrigued him next to the woman he sent her way?
The real Audrey Parker was someone he didn't care to know, more abrasive, less trusting, completely uninteresting to him so that he felt as if it were a stranger who eventually had all her memories taken away.
The real Lexie DeWitt is someone he doubts he'd even give a second look.
It's not the memories, not the pasts, not the mannerisms and hair colors and style of clothes that charm and bewitch him.
It's her. Parker. The woman beneath them all, the true personality overwritten by false memories but shining through nonetheless.
Nathan stares down at the paper in his hands and cannot move no matter that the timer is ticking down.
When he looks up, Sarah stands before him, dressed in her white uniform and smiling so coyly at him. (His greatest weakness; his most precious memory.) When he looks to his left, Lucy Ripley stands over the shadowy figure of their son, dead first at some stranger's hand and now at his. (His greatest crime; his most terrifying truth.) When he looks to the right, it is Lexie DeWitt, smirking and distant and playing with the hair hanging over her shoulders. (His greatest fear; his most painful reality.) And behind him, just out of sight, he can feel her: Audrey Parker, the woman he knows best, the woman he knows least, his closest friend and his most frustrating puzzle. (His greatest desire; his most elusive dream.)
And Nathan stands in the very center of them all, alone. Isolated. Unable to reach any of them but equally as unable to escape them.
Her.
Parker.
Four names, but only one woman, and he can't understand why she can't understand that.
Who do you love?
All of them.
But that answer's not accepted, and his time runs out, and they all vanish, leaving him alone and calling out the name of a woman who will never call back his own.
Nathan's not surprised to learn there is a dream Trouble, though he's thankful for the timing of it, since the news that it might be connected to the Herald interrupts the grilling Vince and Dave are giving him about his date with Lexie. He is surprised that they let him go to the morgue as if he might actually get to be a part of this case (a single date has allayed more fears than he anticipated, built up more hopes than he's entirely comfortable with).
Lexie's already there, and she gives him a faint smile in greeting. Anything more she might say is cut off by the arrival of the coroner.
Gloria used to be a fixture of the Haven PD; Nathan remembers the Chief talking about her, grumbled complaints mixed in amid grudging admiration and healthy respect. Nathan remembers speaking to her only once before, when Garland dragged him along to some case where Gloria met them at the crime scene tape. She'd scowled down at Nathan, scowled up at the Chief, then said, "Hey, kid, why don't you go to Benji's and get some ice cream for me. I suppose some for yourself too."
Nathan remembered asking her what flavor she wanted and she'd waved him off irritably. "Surprise me, kid—I imagine you're good at that, aren't you?"
Then she'd handed him a ten-dollar bill, Garland had shooed him off, and Nathan had spent a peaceful hour with Benji and his cows before coming back with a coffee-and-almond cone for Gloria. She'd been gone already and Garland had eaten the cone himself, leaving Nathan feeling guilty, like he'd stolen the old woman's money.
Now, she bustles into the room calling for her intern, scowls to see him, scowls at Lexie, then says, "Hey, kid, where's my ice cream?"
"What?" Lexie frowns in confusion while Nathan actually feels a hint of laughter bubbling up inside him.
"Long eaten," he says, "but even it wasn't, I think it'd have melted a while ago."
"You owe me ten bucks," she says, then turns to the body without missing a beat. She needles Lexie, enough so that the bartender actually snaps at her a few times (something Nathan hasn't seen anyone else accomplish). If he didn't know better, he'd say Lexie felt defensive, but he's not sure why she'd need to.
"Don't forget my ice cream next time!" Gloria calls after him, and Nathan waves back with a nod (it's refreshing being around someone who only puts the blame for an ice cream cone on him rather than the fate of a town).
"Hey." Lexie reaches out as if to take his wrist before they can rejoin his escort, and Nathan's not sure if he's more relieved or disappointed when her hand falls away before it can reach his. "About last night, I…" Nathan stiffens and looks desperately toward the door. "I wanted to say I'm sorry. I can be a little blunt and…and maybe I get hyper-focused on one thing and ignore the rest."
"I know," he says, then winces when Lexie looks away.
"Right."
"I'm sorry, I just meant—"
"No," she says. "I'm sorry. Hurting you is not what I meant to do."
Nathan can't help but smile, then. An entire town out to destroy him for his crimes, but Lexie wants to apologize for telling him the truth.
"Thank you," he finally settles for saying. She doesn't look happy with the response, but she takes it and that's enough for now (that's all he'll ever have from now on).
"How's it going?" Duke asks him a bit later, checking in on Lexie though he looks nervous and preoccupied. "I heard you had dinner last night."
Nathan checks that his guards aren't in earshot (that Lexie is busy narrowing down what exactly about the Herald connects all their victims). "Look, Duke, I don't…I don't think this is going to work."
"What?"
"She…she doesn't care about me, all right? Even if she kills me, I don't know if it will end the Troubles."
"Nate, I know you've got some self-esteem issues going on, but let me be perfectly frank with you, okay, because I'm losing my patience: that woman loves you."
"I think you may need to get out of town," Nathan blurts. "If the Guard realize that her killing me won't work, they're going to come after you, Crocker Trouble or not. Besides, didn't they say your brother was in town? They probably think of it as having a spare."
Duke unexpectedly bridles, the friendliness falling away from him like a mask. "What does my brother have to do with anything? He's not even Troubled, okay? Just leave him out of this."
Nathan squints at Duke. "Did you even hear me, Duke? I'm saying I think you should run. In fact, you should probably take Jennifer with you. Just get out of town while you still can."
"Jennifer? I can't. She's at a job interview at the Haven Herald."
It takes a minute for Nathan to process that enough to know why he suddenly feels so unsettled. "What? What job interview?"
"She used to be a reporter," Duke says impatiently. "Dave and Vince said they might need another hand around the place."
"Oh." Nathan looks over to where Lexie is sitting at Audrey's desk, her hands for once busy with files rather than a strand of her hair.
He's already been replaced. His place as Audrey's partner. His temporary job as a writer for the Herald. Even whatever rivalry/friendship thing he had going with Duke looks to be supplanted by whatever sibling/rivalry thing he has with his brother.
It's all coming together for his graceful exit.
(If only his death would actually solve anything.)
"Look, Nathan," Duke says, "just keep trying, okay? I'll talk to Lexie and try to find out what's going on, but you? Just…you know, keep being charming."
His dreams that night are even more disturbing. It's another classroom, but this time there are items resting on each desk around him. Lucy Ripley's locket on one, Sarah's white cap on another, Audrey's badge directly next to him, and a half-empty glass of liquor on the desk closest to the door. On his own desk, there's a piece of paper with another question.
Who does Parker love most?
His name isn't one of the choices.
Duke Crocker, James Cogan, Chris Brody, Garland Wuornos—but no Nathan Wuornos.
Nathan looks up from the page and sees a gun resting on his desk where a pencil should be.
"Might as well," Audrey says from somewhere behind him. "We all know it wouldn't help if I did it."
"Maybe if I did it," Sarah says.
"Don't look at me," Lexie says with a shrug, while Lucy is utterly silent.
Nathan can't look away from one name on that page.
"James," he whispers.
"Is that your answer?" Audrey asks him, and the gun goes off.
Nathan wakes in a pool of blood drip-drip-dripping along the edge of the cot to the floor of the Herald. He'd barely had a chance to try to get between the bullet and the Colorado Kid's (James's) body so it only grazed his arm, but it still frightens him to see the long strip along his right arm, red crimson against dark bruises.
He bandages it himself, but Dave's eyes sharpen on sight of the blood-stained rags Nathan's still holding when they unlock the backroom door to let him out.
"I think I'm being affected by the dream Trouble," he admits, and Dave pulls him into the front where Vince calls Dwight and Duke and Jennifer bustle in a few minutes later. It's too much noise and pressure and people when Nathan's used to silent recrimination, so he goes quiet. They try to ask him about his dream, but he clamps his mouth shut (no way he's bringing any of that nightmare out into the open).
"What's going on?" Lexie asks when she steps inside. "I thought we were supposed to meet at the station."
"There's been a complication," Duke says. Nathan's surprised when he doesn't even rise to his feet, just keeps sitting at Jennifer's side while Lexie's eyes grow wide as she looks at Nathan.
"Nathan?"
"It's fine," he says hastily, "just a scratch."
"And we'll keep it that way," Vince says in a halfhearted attempt at a reassuring tone. "If Carrie Benson is the common link between this—"
"And she probably is," Dave interjects, "since Nathan reads the extra papers she brings back here."
"—then we'll be able to talk to her and figure this all out," Vince finishes.
"She's already long since delivered the morning edition, but we'll catch her before she can get out the afternoon papers," Dave says.
Lexie shifts uncomfortably, her fingers tapping against her thigh as she looks from the Teagues brothers to Nathan. "Uh, why don't you guys go find her now? Don't you have her phone number?"
Vince narrows his eyes, all intractable suspicion. "Why? Are we in a hurry?"
"Well, not everyone has the same sleep schedule," Lexie snaps acerbically. "So what if, I don't know, someone who works a graveyard shift is just about to go to sleep and dream about a nuclear explosion or something?"
"That would be bad," Dave says with a look at Vince.
"Fine," Vince grumbles.
"Great. You guys get her—she trusts you both, right? She's worked for you how long? You bring her back here, and presto, we'll solve another Trouble with just a bit of encouragement, counseling, and fairy dust."
"You really are getting the hang of this place, aren't you?" Duke mutters, and Lexie glares over at him.
"You have any better ideas, Duke?"
He holds his hands up and shakes his head. "Just saying. Seems like you already understand how important it is to get everything out in the open."
"You guys going?" Lexie asks, looking at the Teagues expectantly.
Nathan frowns. Something's wrong here. Something he can't quite catch hold of but that simmers in the air all around them. Jennifer catches his eye for just a minute, as confused as he is, and Nathan belatedly tries to give her a smile (she's the reason Lexie is here at all, after all, and he never got a chance to even talk to her).
But then Lexie's dropping into the chair right next to him, so close he can smell her (still lilies and lilacs and Parker), her gaze locked on the bandage around his arm. "What did you dream about?" she asks. There's a shadow of fear in her voice, though Nathan's sure they've told her that she's immune to the Troubles.
"Nothing much," he says after a hesitation (James and his fault and death all swirling through his mind). "It's just a graze, nothing too bad."
"Dwight woke up with a knife wound to his shoulder, said something about a strange knife-tip connected to some murders."
"What?" Duke's voice sounds choked. "What murders? How many?"
Lexie barely spares him a glance. "I don't know, it's not a Troubled case. Nathan, is that a bullet graze?"
"It's quite a bit less than he deserves."
Nathan jerks his head up toward the voice at the same time as everyone else in the room, all of them looking to the door where Jordan stands, confident and smug and vindicated. Behind her, there's a man in a dress shirt and black gloves, his eyes cold and calculating.
"Wade?" Duke says. "What are you doing here?"
And then everything devolves into chaos.
Jordan has a gun, Wade has a knife, Duke is shocked, Lexie's silent, Jennifer's huddled behind Duke and his outstretched arm, and Nathan can only stare.
(You were selfish, they told him when he raised a gun against Howard.)
Jordan points the gun at him, her arm rock-steady, her eyes flinty and uncompromising. "Go on, Wade," she says without looking away from Nathan. "You know what you have to do."
(You were stupid, they told him when he dared to try to break the cycle.)
"This will end everything," Wade tells Duke when he tries to get between him and Lexie. "You might not be strong enough to try, but I can do it."
(You were wrong, they told him when he dared to stand before their accusations and not bow his head before their accusations.)
"What are you doing, Jordan?" Nathan finally asks. "This isn't the answer. You think killing Howard was a mistake? What do you think killing Parker will do to Haven?"
"It will end all the Troubles!" she spits. "Not just for you, but for all of us!"
(Every night, bruised and numb, Nathan lists out the cost of his decision. Every day, he lives out the consequences.
He wonders if Jordan's prepared to live out her own ramifications.)
"And if it doesn't?" he asks quietly.
Jordan's there an instant later, the room spinning and lurching as she pushes him back, does something that makes his legs fold underneath him until he's kneeling before her. When he looks up, there's a woman (the wrong woman) standing over him and a gun (in the wrong hand) aimed at his head and this will accomplish absolutely nothing.
"Nathan!"
The scream comes from behind him. It's strange and jarring because it sounds so familiar. He's heard this cry before, the desperate edge to it, the steel at the ends of panic, the concern and the care that once gave him hope for something more in his (in their) future.
But it's impossible. It's wrong. He must be imagining it.
Imagining Lexie with Audrey's cold experience in her eyes. Imagining Lexie lunging forward and grappling for a gun with all Audrey's determination. Imagining the way she says his name again when Jordan fires off a shot that rings in his ears like endless thunder.
Off to the side, Duke is rolling on the floor with Wade, Wade's grabbing for the knife, for Jennifer, something dead in his face and eyes that makes Nathan want to shudder. Somewhere behind them, he thinks he hears the door opening, thinks he hears more people (his Guard escort? Vince and Dave back with Carrie Benson? he can't tell, can't look past Jordan and Lexie, Lexie?, fighting for control of the gun).
Nathan's limbs don't want to obey him, but he forces through whatever's holding him back and manages to grab hold of one of Jordan's arms. In the next instant, Lexie has Jordan's weapon and is standing over Jordan, who collapses in on herself, face crumpling.
"This isn't fair!" she insists.
"Jordan? What is this?" Vince looms over the scene, his brother and Carrie behind him. "I thought we talked about this."
Jordan's weakness folds itself away behind brittle strength. "I'm sorry, Vince, but sometimes, some of us have to be monsters for the greater good."
"And what? Killing Nathan was supposed to be part of the greater good, too?" Lexie hisses out, furious and vengeful and everything Nathan remembers Audrey being when the Rev held him on his knees near a cabin in the woods.
(There's a cop peeking out from under the dyed hair and heavy makeup and nose ring. A cop. Not a bartender. A savior well-used to Haven's idiosyncrasies and secrets, not a woman still learning to accept every crazy thing thrown her way.)
"He deserves it!" Jordan cries, and then she tackles Lexie.
At first, Nathan thought she was trying for the gun again. It took him a long moment, too long, to realize that Jordan had been keeping a closer eye on Duke and Wade than Nathan had. A delayed moment to process that Jordan wasn't attacking Lexie herself so much as pushing her toward Wade. Wade, who still has a knife in his hand. Wade, whom Duke had fallen away from as the scene had slowed.
Wade, who turns with an unholy hunger in his eyes, greedy and murderous and everything Nathan once thought Duke would become.
"Audrey!" Duke shouts.
The world goes still.
Oh, many things happen. Duke lunges for Wade. The knife turns. There is the sound of metal sinking into flesh and the thump of a body hitting the floor and blood on Duke's hands and silver in his eyes. There is the sound of a gunshot and the thump of a black-gloved body hitting the floor and hurt fading from Jordan's eyes and blood staining the Haven Herald. There's a scream as Jennifer ducks and a quiet moment where she creeps forward to fold herself in around Duke's shuddering form. There's the feel of eyes from old men who've seen this town tear itself apart in every conceivable way and the harsh breathing from Carrie as she flattens herself against the door behind her.
But for all intents and purposes to Nathan, the world simply stops.
Audrey.
All Duke's manic overcompensation. The looks he and Lexie (Lexie) shared, the hidden subtext to their conversation, the glares and the snapped retorts and the tension that never seemed to break whatever bond had sprung up between them so quickly.
Audrey.
Lexie saying yes to a date, dressing up for him, looking like she was willing, like she was tempted, like she might, maybe, possibly could love him. Her eyes on him, seeing him, knowing him, and it wasn't Sarah all over again—it was the Hunter meteor storm all over again.
Audrey.
Slowly, so slowly he feels as if his every bone is cracking within the ponderous weight of his fragile frame, Nathan looks up from Jordan's body to Lexie.
And he sees Audrey. Standing alone in the middle of the room. Gun in hand, strength in every line of her body, clear-eyed and steel-willed and forever denied him.
Audrey, and all this time he thought he was tricking her, she was lying to him. Lying and using and tricking, a stall tactic, a diversion, a decoy, a dupe.
He's never been her friend. He was never her partner. He wasn't even an ally.
Instead, from the very beginning to now, he is always, always standing on an opposing side to her.
(You were pathetic, they all silently judged while they let him fool himself into thinking he could ever mean anything.)
She lied and Duke knew it all along and this is all Nathan will ever be: a convenient patsy.
