Warning – the beginning of this chapter's intense. But don't despair. By now you should know I love my angst with a mound of fluff.

"Everything's going to be okay," Nathan told her, his hands steady on each side of her face. His eyes were bright but he was impeccably composed, and she didn't understand how that was possible when everything inside her was flying apart.

"It's not," she argued, her voice choked and ragged, her hands reaching for his face because she needed to spend every second she could touching him before it was too late. It felt like she was caught in an undertow and being tossed around by the waves, the unfairness of the situation pulling her down and spinning her about again and again and again.

"Think about everyone we're going to save. There are so many people out there who love each other like we do who will get to be together because of today. Families that won't be broken apart. Parents who won't have to live with the guilt of passing their Troubles to their children."

He was right, but that wouldn't take away the pain she felt just contemplating the action she must take. How could she ever live with it? "How am I supposed to go on without you?"

"You'll have James and Duke. They'll look after you. Teach you how to laugh again."

"I don't want to laugh with anyone else."

"You're so strong, Parker. For hundreds of years you've cared for the Troubled, borne their pain. It's time to set that right so you can be free."

Some part of her felt the allure of that, but it didn't compare to her need to keep him with her, always.

"It's time to keep your promise," Jordan spat. "As cute as this is, can we get on with it? Some of us have normal lives to get back to."

In that moment Audrey hated the woman, just as she'd hated her ancestor who had caused all this misery. But the Guard had them surrounded, shotguns cocked and ready, and they had James and Duke and there was no way out of this except to do what they demanded.

Nathan's fingers wiped away her tears, drawing her attention back to him. "You'll always have the memories of us. Always know how much I love you. These past six months have been more incredible than I could ever imagine, and I don't regret any of it. A part of me will always be with you, but I want you to move on. Keep living for the both of us."

"I don't want to." Back in school she'd thought Romeo and Juliet melodramatic and silly, but she understood far too clearly now. Maybe it was extreme, but she'd rather follow him in death than be left behind.

"I need you to take care of our son," he implored. She thought of James, who was certainly old enough to care for himself. But there were pieces of Nathan in his presence and demeanor, and it wasn't fair to leave him with Duke as his only friend in the world.

Nathan gently pulled her hands from his face and pressed his gun into them. Then he was kissing her and it was surely goodbye, so she drew the moment out as long as she could. She kept her eyes open, needing to see him every possible second. Determination practically radiated from every pore. He was saving her, in more ways than one, and all she could do now was accept that gift, terrible as it was.

"It's okay," he whispered against her mouth. "It won't hurt. All I feel is you."

He didn't know how he'd said the exact same thing in a timeline that didn't exist, and it shattered something inside her now just as it had then, except this time there was no re-do. She wouldn't wake up frantic in his arms, praying for a chance to do it all differently.

It should have been his arms she'd woken up in then, not Chris's. She had wasted so much time.

"I will always love you," she swore. She kissed his cheek, so that the last touch he'd ever feel would be the same as the first. Then she pulled the trigger.

He collapsed backwards with a strangled cry. She surged forward, horrified. Her aim, so steady at long distances, had failed her now. The wound was surely fatal, but it wasn't a clean shot.

"Why can you feel that?" she sobbed, because it was clear that he could. His jaw was clenched in agony and he was making some terrible gurgling sound in the back of his throat. Every other time she'd watched him die had been peaceful.

She pressed her hands to the wound out of instinct, but the pressure amplified his pain. She knew she had to let him bleed out, that touching him now was counterproductive, but she couldn't pull away. She wanted to take this all back. She'd rewind to her arrival in Haven and drive herself off that cliff if it would save him from this.

"Maybe it's working," he gasped. Blood bubbled from his mouth and she felt terribly sick.

"I'm sorry. So, so sorry," she sobbed, running a hand through his hair, but the red streaks it left there made her stomach roll.

"Love you." Then his eyes went glassy and his breathing stopped. She collapsed against him, barely able to pull air into her lungs. Everything smelled like his blood, and it was choking her.

A scream from somewhere behind her brought her back to herself.

"It didn't work," Jordan screeched. Her gloves were off, and a Guardsman lay crumpled at her feet, clutching his arm. "The Troubles are still here."

"No." Surely her heart would explode in her chest and end this nightmare. There was no way she had just killed Nathan for nothing. "No!"

"You cold-hearted bitch," Jordan sneered, grabbing Audrey's arm. She didn't feel anything, of course, but she wished she did. "He loved you so much. And apparently you didn't return those feelings."

"I did!" she cried.

"Was it Crocker you preferred? Could have told Nathan you were fucking his best friend before he let himself get killed for you."

"I don't love Duke." She didn't know how she could ever leave this field and move on from this. How had it all gone so terribly wrong?

"Calm down, Jordan." Bernie's voice was as level as always, as if he was prepared to lecture a class. "There's no need to get hysterical. This is only a temporary setback. We have her son and the Crocker boy. She need only decide which one she loves the most. Killing one of them will surely end the Troubles."

"I can't." She desperately tried to come up with another way out of this situation, but her clever mind could process nothing but grief and revulsion. She looked up to where two pairs of Guardsmen were holding Duke and James. The smuggler struggled, but his face was resigned. Their eyes met, and she knew with shocking clarity what he was thinking. He'd ask her to kill him, except he knew that it wouldn't work.

But James was frozen in terror. Audrey knew how many years this very scenario had haunted him, and now it was playing out again. But she wouldn't do it. She wouldn't kill her child. Not even to save this awful town, which had done nothing but hate her unjustly for centuries.

She grabbed the gun from the ground, pressed it to her heart, and fired.

Nothing happened.

She tried again before she realized why. Nathan had only put in one bullet, to stop her from doing something exactly like this.

"Contain her," Bernie ordered. One of the Guardsmen complied, and she shrieked and fought, not wanting anyone to touch her ever again, but all her training was lost in her hysteria and she could only flail ineffectively. He pinned her arms and dragged her toward the other captives.

"Decision time," Jordan taunted. "You better make up your mind fast, because it'll be worse on both of them the longer you wait." She reached out and grabbed their necks and their screams tore through Audrey's soul. When Duke tried to hold his back Jordan laughed and stroked his face. "You psychotic bitch," he spat, unleashing a string of expletives in languages Audrey didn't know, but his control slipped further the longer she touched him.

"I can do this all day," Jordan crooned. "So by all means, take your time."

James was crying now, and Audrey ached to go to him. Why couldn't she remember rocking her baby? Why had he had to grow up alone?

None of them were ever leaving here.

The mania faded from Jordan's face and she was suddenly serene. Her tight leather clothing flickered, becoming a long black dress. She was no longer concerned with ending the Troubles because she had caused them. "This is your fault, you know. You never should have loved him."

"You're a monster!"

"Doesn't matter who you choose. There's no escape for you, Prudence."

Audrey bolted upright so violently her head collided with Nathan's where he was bent over her, hands on her shoulders. Blood started to leak from his nose and the smell was too much. She stumbled out of bed and to the bathroom. She barely made it to the toilet before she was throwing up everything she'd eaten, seemingly for days. The bile kept spewing from her but it didn't make her feel any better. When her stomach finally seemed to settle she pressed her head against the cool porcelain and bawled.

"Parker." Nathan's hand on her back and his voice in her ear only made her cry harder. It was too good to be true that he was here with her, that it had just been some awful dream. But he rested his chin on her shoulder and pulled her back into him. "It's okay, Audrey. Breathe for me, okay? Deep breaths. You're safe."

"You weren't." She couldn't bring herself to turn around and look at him. This had to be reality and not the dream, but some small part of her wasn't sure.

"Am now." He turned her around gently and then he was kissing her, one hand tangled in her hair and the other pressing her closer. She never thought she'd get to do this again, but he was warm and present and lovely and alive, and the terror that had gripped her mind started to fade. They were making out in his bathroom, and he was alive and safe and she was never entertaining the notion of killing him again.

When he pulled away he kept a hand on her cheek, but she noticed the way his nose wrinkled.

"What?"

"You taste like vomit."

"Gross. Sorry." She reached up to touch the blood dripping from his nose. Otherwise her hands were clean, but she remembered so vividly how they'd been slick with crimson. "Your nose is bleeding."

"You have a hard head." Even in the dim glow the nightlight cast she could see his lip twitch upward. "Which shouldn't surprise me."

She grabbed some toilet paper and handed it to him. "Hope it isn't broken."

"I wouldn't know," he said as he pressed the paper to his face.

She prodded at his nose and he didn't groan in pain, so she figured it was all right. "I'm so sorry," she mumbled, collapsing against his chest.

"You have nothing to be sorry for," he said into her hair. "But if we never kiss again right after you throw up that would be great."

She pinched at his side. "That was your fault, mister."

"Had to calm you down somehow."

"Thank you." She was so grateful that he was here with her, and it had all been a terrible nightmare. She ran her hand up his back, feeling the muscles twitch under the stimulation.

"Musta been an awful dream to get you this spooked."

She pulled away so she could look at him. She needed him to understand.

"Killing you – it won't work. I won't do it."

He ran his hand gently across her face. "Audrey, it was just a nightmare. Wasn't real."

"You told me once to trust my instincts."

He looked at her strangely. "No I didn't."

"Yeah, you did."

He shook his head, eyebrows raised. "No. I told Sarah that."

There was too much going on to process that particular bit of information at the moment. "Whatever. Did you mean it?"

He didn't hesitate. "Yes."

"Well every instinct inside me is screaming that this was more than just a dream."

"Okay," he soothed. She wasn't a frightened animal, but his tone calmed her anyway, even as she knew she probably should feel patronized. She was just glad she could feel anything besides despair. The fact that he was really all right hit her all over again and she hugged him tightly, pressing a kiss to the hollow of his throat that made him sigh.

"Tell me what happened?"

She didn't want to relive it, but if doing so kept it from actually happening she'd tell the story a million times. She nuzzled her nose into his shoulder, drawing strength from the way he tightened his arms around her. Dream Jordan was wrong. This was love in its purest form.

"Our deadline was up. The Guard had us surrounded, and you wanted me to go through with it. There was no other way." When she closed her eyes she could still see the blood coming out of his mouth, so she kept them open and focused on his eyes, which sparked with life. "So I shot you." Her voice cracked, and it took everything within her not to sob again.

His hands ran up and down her bare shoulders. "You did what you had to do. I'd never blame you for that."

She shook her head. He'd misinterpreted why this upset her so. "You didn't." She took a deep breath. "It didn't work."

"Audrey."

His agonized pity prompted the rest of the story to flow from her in a terrible rush. "You felt it! You weren't supposed to but you did, and then you died but the Troubles weren't gone. And the Guard had Duke and James, and Jordan was there, and she was torturing them, and Bernie wanted me to kill them too in case that worked but Jordan looked at me and she was Morgan and she told me that it didn't matter what I did, because there was no escape for me."

"She was wrong," he said vehemently.

"Dammit Nathan, I won't kill you!"

"Not about that," he assured. "We're taking murdering me off the table. But she's wrong that there's no escape for you. We will find another way."

She was overwhelmed by his determination, and by the fact he'd accepted her refusal to kill him so readily. "God, I love you." The only thing that kept her from kissing him in that moment was the realization that subjecting him to her vomit breath again probably wasn't the best way to show it.

"Love you too."

"Killing you doesn't even make sense, now that we know about Morgan. She loved whoever Prudence did – or was obsessed with him, anyway. She didn't want Prudence to kill him. And Prudence didn't mention Morgan or Henry saying anything about another way."

"So why did Howard tell you it would work?"

"I don't know. Maybe because it's the kind of cruel thing that would make me suffer. Having to kill you – and then finding out it didn't work – nothing has ever hurt like that."

"Hey, it's over now."

"That could have been real."

"But it wasn't." His lips pressed against her forehead. "We can run."

"You don't want to do that." He'd been adamant before that they needed to put an end to the Troubles, refusing to consider abandoning the town to the damage they caused.

"It's better than making you go through what you just dreamed. We've still got a couple of months, so they won't expect us to go yet. We'll have to take everyone we care about with us. Though maybe we can ditch Duke somewhere along the way. Not sure I can stand a lifetime of hiding out with him."

The thought of living in peace with Nathan someplace far away certainly held some appeal. That's why she'd suggested it months ago. But it had never been particularly feasible. "Lucy tried to run. Didn't work."

"Lucy didn't have me." His blazing determination soothed her, but there were too many holes in his plan.

"They'll start killing innocents until we come back. They'll know we can't live with that."

"I can't live with them using me to hurt you."

"There has to be something we're missing. Sarah and Lucy both knew something we don't. I'll go back to Eleanor's. Maybe Lucy hid something else there." She scrambled to her feet, mind racing. "I'll just brush my teeth and go."

He grabbed her arm. "Parker, it's two in the morning."

"We don't have any time to waste."

"We can waste four hours."

"What if we can't, Nathan? I don't care how tired I am now if it means in two months we're both still alive."

"You're running on adrenaline. But it's going to catch up to you. Soon as it does you'll be useless for the rest of the day. Let's go back to sleep. First thing in the morning we'll go looking."

"I don't want to go back to sleep," she admitted. "What if I have the same dream?"

"Then stay up. But let's go back to bed at least. Get comfortable. I'll be useless if I go running about now."

Tiredness never seemed to faze him, but she couldn't imagine going to Eleanor's if he wouldn't come with her. Not tonight, when it would be too easy to believe the nightmare if he wasn't right there at her side. She scowled up at him, but then moved to brush her teeth. She could see him in the mirror behind her, swirling mouthwash. Once she was satisfied her mouth finally tasted clean she turned to him. He filled a glass in the sink and handed it to her.

She set it on the counter and drank him in instead, standing on her tiptoes to get as close as she could. His life thrummed under her fingers, his mouth tasted like Listerine, and this was unquestionably real.

"Bed," she panted when they broke apart. He nodded and followed her back to the room.

But the sheets were damp from her cold sweat and there were spots of red on the pale blue from his battered nose. She stared at them, remembering how his blue shirt had been soaked through but she hadn't dared strip it away to look at the damage.

"I'll change the sheets," he said quietly.

"No need," she said, grabbing his arm to stop him. "We'll just mess them up again."

She stuck to his half of the bed though, curling tightly into his side. He rubbed her back but didn't try anything fresh, not even when she started drawing her ankle up his leg.

"I'm not sleeping," she reiterated.

"Heard that the first time." Even if he was pretending to understand, she knew he wanted her to get some more rest. But if he was planning on out-stubborning her on this, he better be ready to put up one hell of a fight.

"Lotta hours til morning," she said, drawing patterns across his chest. "Wonder what we can do to pass the time?"

"Don't know any lullabies," he answered.

She snorted, certain he was joking, but he'd been completely monotone and he wore no trace of a smile. Could he really be that dense?

Either way, she could work with this.

"If we both make it out of this—"

"When," he interrupted.

"Okay, when we both make it out of this, you'll have to learn a few," she told him.

His arms tightened around her and he pulled them into a sitting position. "Parker, you're not—"

"No," she assured, not expecting him to look quite so devastated about that. "I've been on the pill since I came back. Can you imagine us trying to keep a baby safe right now? There's no guarantee we'd have nine months to carry it to term." She shook her head and looked into his eyes, allowing herself just a moment to imagine them staring up at her from a cherubic baby face. "But if we did, you'd be a wonderful father. You are a wonderful father, but you'd be good at all the parenting stuff, besides just impregnating me and then offering advice when the kid's twenty-something. Or fifty-something, I guess, technically."

"If this is a joke, Parker, it's not—"

"I wouldn't joke about something like this," she promised.

"You'd have a baby with me?" he asked, voice soft with awe.

It hurt a little how much that shocked him, but the last time they'd really talked about children he'd been cooing at babies and she'd been pretty vocal about how uncomfortable the whole situation made her.

"Already done that once. But it'd be nice to remember it the second time around. And third. Maybe fourth. I think that's where I draw the line. No matter how cute they are, there's a limit on the number of people coming out of my uterus."

He looked at her with narrowed eyes. "Sure you're not a chameleon? Because Audrey Parker does not like babies."

"I reckon it'll be different when they're half you." She grabbed one of his hands and linked their fingers together. "I always saw kids as this ticking time bomb of responsibility. Never saw the point of subjecting myself to that. But now – I figure you're going to be such an amazing father, anything I do to screw them up you'll just fix, so—"

"Audrey," he breathed reverently, and he looked so ecstatic that she wished they could forget about deadlines and start working on that family now. "You make me so ridiculously happy."

"Even when I wake up screaming and bash you in the nose?"

"It doesn't matter. One of these days none of these dark times are going to matter."

"I look forward to that. Just like I look forward to the day you lose all semblance of masculinity when you look at our next child."

It was the perfect opportunity for him to show her just how much he looked forward to that too, but instead he settled back into the pillows with a goofy grin. Suddenly overwhelmed with frustration, she wiggled against him, but while that normally drove him crazy he didn't appear to take any notice. She was convinced this was the reality now and the nightmare was fading, but when she closed her eyes she still saw him sprawled out, bleeding, and she wanted to replace that image with something far better, him moving above her, every bit of him alive and driving her wild.

She heaved a heavy sigh. She knew Nathan could be pretty oblivious about women, but he was usually better at picking up these particular signals.

"Something wrong?" he asked.

"You certainly know how to miss a hint tonight, Wuornos," she huffed.

"Who said I missed a hint?" His voice was laced with mirth, and she gaped at him before flicking him on the shoulder. "Something you want, Parker?"

"You're holding out on me, Wuornos! The night I had, and you're teasing me."

"Would you prefer if I didn't?"

"No," she admitted. They got along much better when he wasn't acting like she was made of glass. And his ribbing was a comfortable reminder of their early days, where he wouldn't touch her but he would give her a hard time for her city-girl ways.

"Thought so." He smirked at her. "I'm just waiting for you to tell me what you want." He drew his hand through her hair slowly, pushing the strands behind her ear. "What do you want, Parker?" he whispered, his breath hot on her face.

It had taken her a long time to get to a place where she could admit that to herself, let alone anyone else. But she had no doubts anymore. "You," she confessed, licking her lips in anticipation. "I want you to chase the nightmares away."

"Always," he swore, rolling them both so his body sheltered hers as he began his quest.

If by the time he finished she'd forgotten all about her pledge to stay awake, that she'd never tell.

Sorry to have to squash the Audrey is pregnant theory some of you've had. Many of you are on the right track about Prudence's mystery man, though … more will be revealed soon.

Next chapter should hopefully be posted in a few days. It's all written and just needs some polishing.

Thanks so much to all my readers, particularly those who take the time to review almost every chapter. Special shout out to Doks, my biggest fan, for all the encouragement.

Reviews make my day, and I particularly love to hear readers' favorite lines or sections.