Early morning

COOPER: (Weakly) Diane, you'll forgive me for the quality of my report. I have had a…most gruelling day. (Pause) The deal at Dead Dog Farm did not go as planned. (Cough) I...offered myself as hostage in exchange for Agent Bryson and Mr. Niles once they were discovered, and what followed was a difficult afternoon in the forced company of a madman. Jean Renault was singular in his pursuit of me. He blamed me for the loss of his brothers, for the collapse of his holdings at One Eyed Jack's, and for the dissolution of his drug ring in the town. These are accusations I can take in stride, but it was far more insidious to hear him tell of the nightmare that followed me here. (Pause) Insidious, Diane, because they're just words, but if he only knew how I felt about the cloud above my head...maybe he's right to think that the nightmare could die with me. It is not the first time such things have crossed my mind…(Another, long pause; continuing softly at first) Now we are left with the fallout—Renault is dead, his accomplice is in custody, Agent Bryson is gone, and while all this was happening, Windom Earle was taking a victim. (Almost a whisper) The first pawn has been taken from the board, Diane. How many more will die before I can end this? (Clears throat; a knock at the door) Break's over. My suspension still stands, but having been deputized, I am under Sheriff Truman's orders, and we've bagged another case. So, for now, this is Deputy Dale Cooper signing off from one very long day…

Cooper trod the few steps between his chair and the door and swung it open on its creaking metal hinges to reveal the last person in the world he was expecting to see.

"Audrey!"

She stepped forward, reaching a hand to the side of his face and the spot below his eye where he'd been struck. Cooper had forgotten it was there, but the moment Audrey touched her fingertips to the tender spot, he winced, and her eyes welled up with tears.

"I heard someone at the concierge desk saying…," she trailed off.

"What are you doing here?"

She was shaking. "I came down as soon as I could. I needed to see for myself. I needed to see...to know...for myself...that you were...that you were…"

Cooper managed a small, sad smile. When she'd given him the photographs, he'd chalked it up to residual feelings. He'd been glad to see her, intrigued by her presence, but encouraged by the fact that she was there at all. It meant maybe they could move past the unpleasantness of their separation, to a plateau of friendship at the very least. That maybe they could remain in each other's lives, in the smallest capacity. But now, seeing her emotion written so boldly across her face, he was hit doubly hard with the realization that her concern for him was as much as his for her.

"It's late, Audrey," he said, his mind racing—there was a dead body in the room down the hall, and a psychotic former FBI agent almost certainly on the loose nearby. "You shouldn't be here."

"Bobby drove me from the hotel."

At the sound of the younger Briggs' name, Cooper's heart leapt into his throat. When he'd said the things he'd said—about Audrey meeting a nice boy some day—he certainly hadn't expected her to take him so literally, so soon. Now, he fought to hide his jealousy. "Bobby?"

Audrey ignored his question. "Agent Cooper, are you okay?"

He tried to nod, but his head shook instead. "Audrey, I don't—"

She stepped forward and gently pitched her arms around his neck, stepping against his body, clutching him with an intensity that frightened him. He had to bend to accommodate her, reaching to circle her waist, and as he pulled her close, he began to panic over the thought that he'd been so close to never feeling this again. It filled him with wonder, but also with fear; he was too close to her, and this was proof.

But in that moment, holding her her firm against him—running his hands down her back, as much to soothe her as to intake as much tactile sensations as he could before she ripped herself away from him—he relished the feeling that the love of a good woman had brought to him.

"Here," she whispered, pulling away and taking him by the hand as she led him to a chair at the end of the conference room table, which he gladly took while she pulled out the first aid kit sitting on a long low shelf nearby. With nimble fingers, she pressed peroxide-dampened cotton balls to his wound; she was careful to ease up whenever it hurt, though he tried his best not to let it show.

"If I hadn't given you those pictures…"

"That was the biggest favour anyone could have done for me," Cooper said.

"You could have died."

"But I didn't."

She blew on his skin, drying the peroxide, and he smelled peppermint chewing gum on her breath. Her shaking hands searched for bandages, but she drew them away, finding none. Cooper reached over and place his hand over hers.

"Audrey."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be."

"It's just when I heard…I couldn't get here fast enough."

"Why did you come?"

She seemed at a loss. Her hands stilled and she drew a deliberate, deep breath. He could tell he'd upset her. "Because I—I care...about you," she said. "Even if you don't feel the same way about me."

"I do feel the same," Cooper told her.

Audrey began to rummage through the kit again, looking for ointment.

"Audrey, did you hear me?"

"You should see a doctor as soon you have time. I didn't do a very good job."

"Audrey."

She shut up the first aid kit. Cooper reached out to stop her hands again. He wanted to shake her, to spell out all the reasons why she was so wrong in her assessment of the situation, that his distance from her—professional and measured—was not an indictment or representative of anything other than his desire to save her from the very nightmare Jean Renault had been so eager to destroy only hours before. But he sat, dumbstruck, as she smoothed her hands over her thighs and took even, practiced breaths.

"Agent Cooper," she said, "I just had to see, with my own eyes, that you were okay."

She bent to kiss him, gently, on the cheek as the door to the room opened wide and Truman walked in. She pulled away suddenly, hurrying from the room; Cooper let his fingers linger on the spot where her lips had been.

"Coop?" Harry asked.

Cooper shook his head slowly. He knew he wouldn't sleep; not after that. He turned to face his fried. "Harry, I think I've made a huge mistake."

Truman cast a halfway glance at the door Audrey had blazed through seconds before. "Do you want to talk about it?"

Cooper nodded solemnly. "I think we'll need a pot of coffee first…"

A short time later...

Truman leaned back in his chair and studied the desk top for a long moment. Finally, he sat up again, splaying his hands over the surface, across the papers scattered there, and nodded his head. "That's quite the predicament you've got there, Coop."

Cooper nodded and sighed. "Harry, I'm not the kind of person who enters into a situation without figuring out an exit strategy, but this happened so fast."

Truman seemed sympathetic. "I'm not one to give love advice—"

Cooper held up a hand. "And I'm not looking for it."

"But it sure is a humdinger..."

"Legally?" Cooper ventured.

Truman shook his head. "She's an adult, well past the age of consent. Unless you're a sixteen year old Boy Scout and never told me..."

Cooper chuckled. "I can assure you that's not the case."

Truman smiled and thumbed the edge of his coffee cup. "Does the FBI have any sort of policy about—"

Cooper shook his head. "No. It's a bit ambiguous, because she was never directly involved in an FBI case, but...personally, I feel—" he sighed. "I don't know how I feel." He took a deep breath and leaned forward, his elbows digging into his knees. "'Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.'"

"Shakespeare."

Cooper scrubbed a hand over the well-past-five-o-clock shadow on his jaw. "It's that last one I seem to be having the most trouble with. 'Do wrong to none.'"

Truman disagreed. "That's a load of baloney, Coop, and you know it."

Renault's words—Maybe you brought the nightmare with you...—drifted through Cooper's open mind. How can I do harm to none if I'm followed by a nightmare wherever I go?

"Have you told Audrey that you still care about her?"

He sighed. "Rejection is loud, Harry. I don't think she can hear me. Even if she wanted to."

Truman leaned forward across his desk. "She's always been an old soul, for as long as I've known her. I would think many a man would be envious of you for getting so close to her."

"She's a remarkable girl," Cooper said, his guilt rearing up as he studied the chess board in front of him. "I was her hero for a time, and she saved my life. But all I really wanted to do was be there for her. She has no one." He lifted his hands, despairing for a moment. "And now it's all this."

"I'm sorry, Coop," Truman said. "I really am."

"It's all right," Cooper said with a sad smile as he took the last pull from his mug of coffee. "I'm just glad to be able to tell someone about it."

Truman stared into his own coffee cup. "What are you gonna do about it now?"

Cooper shrugged. "Move on. As I hope she will. There are plenty of fish in the sea."

"Let's just hope none of them end up in the percolator again," Truman chuckled as he stood up. "Speaking of, would you like a refill?"

Cooper nodded. "Thanks, Harry."

As the Sheriff walked out of the room, Cooper continued to study the chess board, finding it hard to focus with the memory of Audrey's kiss still planted in his mind. The board yielded nothing but chess was never his game. It was always Earle's. And that was what filled him with dread as he tried to imagine what his next move ought to be.

Truman returned with the carafe. "So how does chess figure in to all this?"

Cooper sighed. That's another story altogether…