A/N: So this is a direct sequel to 'Between The Lines: Friends,' and follows season 2 of the show. It's kind of hard trying to juggle everything and still remember what I've changed and what all that change effects, so I hope you can enjoy. If you spot something missing (like, did anyone else notice that I completely forgot about Julia Carr last season? because I didn't notice until I was posting it, and by then, oh well, guess she went back to Africa a little early!), you can let me know, though I may just shrug and move on.

I'm eager to hear what you guys think of this season - Nathan's point of view is HARD!

There are only two things Nathan knows for certain, two constants around which his life revolve. The first is that Haven (his hometown and his prison; his refuge and his penance) hides a multitude of secrets, and none of them are good news for him. Not the Troubles brewing beneath the Americana façade. Not the growing hints that Duke's even more of a pain than Nathan already knew he was. Not the reason behind the chief's stern silence and gruff words or the motivation behind the Teagues' job offer so long ago, just when Nathan had begun contemplating leaving Haven (pretending the whispers and the glares and the pointed avoidance would not follow him everywhere he went), leaving all of it behind for good (contemplated turning tail and running like a coward; just like Duke had).

The second absolute is newer but he is even more sure of it than he is of Haven's secrets—more sure of her. Because the second thing he relies on absolutely is Audrey Parker, and she is so much more real than all of Haven's impossibilities.

Nathan knows Parker. He knows that she can only ever be good for this town (for him), that she is the best thing to ever happen to Haven (to him). He knows that she will throw herself headfirst into danger, and be happy about it so long as it's a weird danger. He knows that the only thing stronger than her intuition is her compassion. He knows that her sense of humor is as quirky as the things that amuse her, that her laugh is the best sound his sensitive ears have ever heard, that she smells of lilacs and lilies (or at least, that's how he processes her unique scent), that she is the one silver lining to the Troubles (to his Trouble). He knows her.

And this stranger, this woman with dark hair and a badge, a gun, an attitude, and Audrey's words in her mouth is not Audrey Parker.

Parker's thrown. He can tell by the way her gun wavers, by the glance she slants toward him before she catches herself. He senses her doubt and confusion. But Nathan is not confused, not even surprised (he's long since realized the futility of questioning any of the improbabilities Haven throws at him; better just to set his stance and endure than waste time and energy questioning why or how).

He wishes he had a gun so he could keep his own aim secure and let Audrey have her moment (after everything, it's past time for her to be allowed a little time to process). He wishes he had handcuffs so he could take this woman's wrists (he wouldn't feel them, he knows that without question) and cuff her, put her in the Bronco, drive her far outside Haven, somewhere so distant she'll never again be able to stir that doubt in Parker's eyes.

Nathan's seen a lot of things in Audrey since she came to town. Excitement, interest, curiosity. Worry, fear, fierce resolve. Compassion and friendship and trust.

But never doubt. Never this strange, unsettling hesitation.

He doesn't like it.

He wants her to smile again (at him). He wants her to tease him about pancakes and sip his coffee and bump her shoulder against his (to reach out to him even when he can't feel the touches through clothes, because it's nice knowing that someone wants to reach out). He wants to rewind the last few moments and make sure she knows (knows with the same surety he knows her) that he doesn't regret her entrance into his life. That he doesn't even remember what his life was like before she came to town (except that it was dull and monochrome and lonely in a way he hadn't even allowed himself to recognize until she made it a thing of the past).

But even in Haven, that's impossible. And he has no gun. No cuffs. No badge. Only a camera, a notebook, and a pen.

It will have to do.

When the other woman finally puts her gun down and Audrey pulls out her cuffs, Nathan takes them from her. Usually, it's Parker moving forward, two steps ahead of him but always looking back at him over her shoulder with an expressive face and a quip or two. This time, he has to forge ahead in her place.

(He was right: he can't feel this strange woman at all. She is as unreal and abstract as everyone else in his world.)

Nathan does his best to take the whole thing in stride. He shrugs at Audrey when she blurts out questions one right after another. He ignores the other woman, pointedly and repeatedly (he of all people knows how much of a punishment being completely ignored truly is, and for all her seeming honesty, he cannot forgive her for the catch in Audrey's throat), and directs his gaze, his attention, his words, to Audrey alone.

But it's not enough. She's not looking at him. She's staring at the other woman, noting gestures and mannerisms and word choices. While Nathan uses the Herald's resources to look into this other 'Audrey Parker's' past and background, Audrey is examining emotions and motivations, backstories and private anecdotes. It's what she always does—looks at the person rather than the situation. Connects to the Troubled and understands them in a way he doesn't think she understands herself.

Ordinarily, Nathan would be fine with it. But not when it makes her look smaller and more fragile every time he sees her.

"What, you on the force now?" his dad demands after tripping over him in the station for the fourth time. "Didn't you get enough action around Hansen?"

It's cruel, but he lets it slide off him (just like he always does around the chief, because better to take a few grumpy words than the physical blows Max Hansen gifted him with; at least he knows the chief really does love him). Just shrugs and doesn't look away from the computer screen displaying three cases that 'Audrey Parker' has supposedly solved since Nathan pulled Parker out of that swaying car (one in Miami, another in DC, and a third in Houston).

(He chooses to focus on Audrey and this other woman rather than the fact that the chief knew Max Hansen was in town but didn't bother to tell him; or to wonder at the reason the chief hasn't said a single word to him about the bullet he put through Hansen's chest. At least Audrey is something he understands.)

"You're Audrey Parker," he tells her when she wants to take the stranger with her on the case. "I know who you are, Parker, and that…" He nudges his chin toward the other woman without actually looking her way. "That is not you."

"No, but maybe I'm her," she says.

She's wrong. Nathan drives them both to the house of parents terrified for their son-in-law and the grandbaby he took from them. (The other woman doesn't smell of lilies and lilac, only a generic perfume and a hotel shampoo; Nathan rolls down the window to rid the Bronco of the unwelcome scent.) He tries to stay in the background when the Rev and Duke are both on either side of him (since he's relegated back to the role of chauffeur while this other woman takes his place at Parker's side). He feels darkness closing in on him, thinks he sees the Rev standing over him (or is it Duke? one triumphant, the other worried, both unwelcome), but he's not afraid.

Because he knows: Audrey Parker solves the Troubles.

When the darkness recedes and his limbs once more obey him by righting his view of the world (when he looks up to the second story window and sees Parker smiling down at him), Nathan feels only a vague sense of satisfaction (and possibly a quiet relief to have proof that there isn't another Max Hansen Jr. running around somewhere; one is more than enough) because it never occurred to him that Audrey would fail.

Through it all, he watches the other woman. It's what he does, after all. When people are busy ignoring him, they forget that he isn't ignoring them so they speak more freely in front of him, reveal things they don't realize he sees.

This other woman says some of the things Parker would, yes, he won't deny that. But her tone is off—more abrupt, less amused, clipped and just a bit rushed. She may draw her gun the same way Parker does, but she draws it quicker, holds it in a tighter grip, and doesn't holster it when she comes across the Troubled. She is drawn to the weird, but she is afraid of it, too, slightly, enough to prove that she is just a regular person, not at all like Parker, who is absolutely fearless when it comes to Haven's Troubles.

She's different, this other woman, and Nathan wishes he knew how to show that to Audrey, because all she sees are the similarities. But words, at least spoken words, don't come easily to him, and Audrey moves so much faster than he does. By the time he's marshalled his arguments, she's already accepted this other woman as the real Audrey Parker. Already installed her in a room next to hers at the hotel and switched her suspicion entirely to her own Agent Howard.

"If my memories are all hers, then who am I?" Parker asks when Nathan shows up the next morning to drive her to the station.

"You're Audrey Parker," he says stubbornly.

The shake of her head is impatient. "No, Nathan, I don't think I am. But am I really Lucy, or was that just another person whose memories I stole?"

She always has so many questions. Not that Nathan doesn't, but he doesn't have quite the same drive to see them answered. To Parker, a mystery is a challenge she can't walk away from; to Nathan, it's a puzzle that probably holds a concealed weapon aimed straight at the heart.

"How long is this other woman going to stay?" he asks, because as much as he wishes otherwise, he has no answers to give her.

"Her name's Audrey Parker," she says, almost petulantly.

"Maybe," is all he says.

But even if it is, he realizes, he does not care. She is not his Audrey Parker, so maybe she has the same name and maybe Parker wants to treat her like they're sisters, but to Nathan, she will never be anything but a stranger (an unwelcome one).

To Nathan (to Haven), there is only one Audrey Parker that matters.

"You had to shoot him," Duke says, out of nowhere. Nathan frowns over at him. He hopes Audrey will finish settling the other woman into her hotel soon; he doesn't want to have to stand here with Duke any longer than necessary.

"Hansen," Duke says, as if that explains everything. "Everyone knows you had to shoot him. I mean, the inquiry lasted all of…what? Twenty minutes? He was better off dead."

Nathan squints at the other man. Though he used to know Duke well, things have changed and there are a lot of things he doesn't understand about the smuggler (most especially why he keeps hanging around Parker when she hasn't, as far as Nathan knows, ever agreed to even a date with him). But Duke is, he thinks, trying to comfort him. In a very strange, disjointed way.

"I know," he finally says since Duke seems to be waiting for a reply. Nathan looks back toward the hotel on the vague chance that Audrey will appear.

Duke scoffs. "Oh. Just like that, huh? But then, I forgot, you're not really a…real…boy, are you?"

In his peripheral vision, Nathan sees his own shoulders rise, and knows he must be tensing, huddling into himself. Because attempted comfort or not, this is always the way it goes between him and Duke. Duke approaches, Nathan rebuffs, Duke needles, Nathan snaps inside, Duke is left looking like the injured party. They've been playing this same old game since they were kids, and he wonders that Duke doesn't seem as tired of it as Nathan is.

"He's dead," Nathan says coldly. "And he wasn't my dad. Why should it bother me?"

Duke stares at him. "Why shouldn't it?"

But Nathan refuses to look at him. He hasn't even told Audrey about the sleepless nights when every time he closes his eyes he sees Hansen shoving him toward Duke, or the surprise in Hansen's eyes when he saw the blood in his own chest, or the way the trigger was so easy to pull that Nathan hardly even realized he'd done it. So why would he tell Duke? Why would he confide in Duke, of all people, that he is afraid he will wake up one day and be as cold and curious and smiling as Max Hansen when people are hurt all around him? Because of him.

"Huh." Duke nods, backing away. "Like father, like son, I guess." Nathan can tell by the none-too-casual glare Duke directs to his left arm that he means the tattoo (and that explains it all, doesn't it, not a sloppy attempt at comfort at all, just Duke wanting something from him, again, like always), but Nathan flinches anyway.

Then Audrey's there, striding up to meet them with some quip on her lips, and Duke's smiling and casual, the consummate chameleon. Nathan looks away and knows there will be bruises on his hands from the fists he is making within the shelter of his pockets.

"You okay, Nathan?" Audrey asks.

"Of course he is," Duke exclaims, fun and teasing (mocking). "Nathan's always all right. No matter what. Right, Nathan?"

Nathan tastes blood in his mouth. But he walks away.

(That's what he always does. It's all he knows how to do.)

He's coming out of the Herald with his keys in his hand when a man barrels into him. Nathan catches the scent of brine and dust and sweat, sees the street swing from before him to behind him, and instinctively clasps his hands over the man's shoulders.

"Sorry," the guy says. He moves—Nathan hears the clinking of the keys in his hand; he assumes the man tried to shake his hand—and then before Nathan can even get out a "No problem," he's hustling away, presumably late for something. Besides a look down to make sure he still has the keys in his hand, Nathan puts the event out of his mind (though he feels slightly pleased that the man bothered to apologize at all, even if just because he didn't realize who Nathan was).

Audrey is spending all her spare time with the other woman, and though he does his best not to feel like he's been replaced, it definitely leaves him with a lot more time on his hands. Stephanie at the coffee shop started making Audrey's drink before he could tell her that it was just him today. Strange, that, how much he's gotten used to having someone else in his life when for so long it was just him.

"Nathan!"

He turns at the call and sees Audrey striding toward him. She's smiling. The sun is brilliant against her hair, warm enough to make Nathan wonder if he should have left off his jacket. Or maybe it's only the warmth of Audrey's smile and the relief he feels that she is alone (no other woman to throw her off balance; no Duke Crocker to annoy him).

"Parker," he says, to communicate both his surprise at seeing her and his pleasure that she is obviously looking for him.

(It's petty and small of him, but sometimes he wonders if she would want his company so often if he didn't drive her places or offer her his local and journalistic insider information. It is not that he doubts her, but that he has no idea what else it is he has to offer her.)

"How about lunch?" she asks him brightly. "I haven't had pancakes in almost four days, and I'm pretty sure that's a record since I've met you."

Nathan hums noncommittally, then says, "Was actually planning on a cheeseburger today."

Her eyes widen for an instant (victory that quirks his lips upward) before she smirks at him. "Either you're putting me on or there's a very strange Trouble at work here."

"We've had worse," he says as he falls into step with her (and he loves this, the way their strides are so different but they walk at the same pace anyway; the way he knows where she's going without asking and she knows when he'll slow to smile at a baby in a passing stroller).

"Worse than changing you into a strange echo of yourself? I don't think so."

She's laughing as she says it, but he thinks she means it, and Nathan suddenly feels warm and wide and expansive. He feels as if he can sense everything—the sun on his face and the jacket hanging on his shoulders and the edge of his denim pockets biting against the backs of his hands.

The nip of a breeze and the nudge of Audrey's elbow against his arm through their jackets and the pebble he steps on with his left foot.

"How powerful would a Trouble have to be to affect the way a person is, do you think?" Audrey's asking (teasingly, still, but he can sense the pensive undertone). She doesn't realize he's stopped in his tracks as abruptly as if he ran into a wall. Nathan wants to call out to her so they can realign their steps, but his voice has been snatched away, perhaps taken in payment for this miracle (and that's a trade he would make in a heartbeat, would never regret, something he could live with so easily, to speak through pen and paper rather than live in such unfeeling isolation from the world).

He runs one hand over another. Feels it, the smoothness of the back and the calluses on the palm, the tendons moving and fingers sliding against each other. Unable to help himself, he reaches up to his face. Gasps at the sensation of stubble, the abrupt transition to weathered but softer cheeks, then nearly drops to the ground when his pinkie brushes against the nerves on his lips. Sensitive and responsive and flaring with sensation.

"How would we even grade them on a scale—" Audrey's voice cuts off as she realizes he's not beside her anymore. "Nathan?"

Wonderingly, afraid to take his hand from his face in case this all goes away, Nathan looks up to her. "Think I did change somehow, Parker."

Her eyes narrow. "What do you mean?"

"I can feel," he says simply. Just that.

Just everything.

It doesn't go away. They walk to Joe's Diner and order pancakes. Nathan touches everything he can—silverware has a strange fascination now, so sleek and shiny and ridged on every side so that there is always a delineation between the metal and his own skin. Even simple temperature is startling, the contrast between the rays of the sun and the intermittent sweeps of the wind. And his own skin…he knows it must look weird, even disturbing, but he cannot stop himself from touching his own flesh, his face and his hands, his wrists and his knees, his toes wriggling in his shoes. He has been a stranger to his own body for years now; it is mesmerizing to reacquaint himself with the boundaries of his skin.

Audrey watches him. She smiles when he does and laughs when he exclaims at the feel of his glass of ice-water against his fingertips, but there is a shadow of worry under her eyes, too. Nathan doesn't mind. When she questions herself, he is there for her. It feels good to know that in his euphoria, she is watching out for him in return. Besides, the only reason she is so worried is because she cares about him.

And for the first time, Nathan lets himself think on that.

She cares for him.

She likes him.

She seeks him out and chooses to spend hours of her day—every day—with him.

And he likes her. He cares for her. He does not want to become a nuisance, but he would, he thinks (back to days when she slept in his bed and guarded his door and pulled him so effortlessly into her office), spend every hour—of every day—willingly beside her.

He can admit it now, can think on it and consider it, because now it is not about her being immune to his Trouble. Now it is about who she is and how much he loves hearing her laugh and helping her figure out Troubles and watching as she reaches out to people who feel alone and scared and helps them. Fixes them.

Well, now he's fixed, so if she does still want to spend time with him, it's not about his Trouble either.

Suddenly, so suddenly that he is afraid, there is so much possibility open before them. So many options he didn't have before.

The pancakes are finished and Audrey's inviting him (or ordering him, really) to spend the day with her (just in case, though she doesn't say that), and Nathan sets aside these thoughts for later. For now, it's enough to have been granted one miracle.

"It's not a miracle," the chief tells him bluntly. Nathan had found him talking to a strange giant of a man with wild hair (for all his size the man slipped away without a sound), and Nathan had blurted out his exciting news. Garland isn't happy for him, though. Of course not. Nathan wonders now why he'd thought he would be.

"It's a Trouble, son. It has to be, and there's no way it can last. As soon as Audrey finds out who's causing it, you'll be right back to the way you were."

Nathan knows he's probably right. Nothing good ever comes for long, he knows that, and when it disappears, it usually leaves things worse off than before. But he wishes, just once, that his dad could be happy for him.

"I can feel," he says (one last bid for a moment of understanding).

But the chief just shakes his head and grinds the gum between his teeth. "Don't get attached, Nathan. It's not worth it."

Swallowing back his anger and his resentment (choking on his disappointment), Nathan clenches his fist (feels the strain), turns (notices a crack behind him, running up over the door of the chief's office), and stalks away. He's glad when Audrey chooses not to comment.

It's not that Nathan wishes ill on the other woman (mostly he just wishes her gone), but he is triumphant when he realizes she froze at this strange fear Trouble while Parker ran ahead. It is one more proof that she is different, is less, and surely even Audrey must recognize this sign.

But she doesn't. Of course. To her, it is only further proof of her own immunity, the fact that she is set apart, an outsider; and she bonds with the other woman more to hear that she shares her terror of clowns. Nathan tries to joke about that particular phobia, but he cannot keep it up for long. Not when he is beginning to be afraid of his own reaction when he runs into this fear Trouble (it's inevitable, seeing as how he will not leave Parker and she won't stop until they find whoever's causing this). He is afraid that he will break and run and abandon Audrey, too.

Still, he finds it odd, the method Audrey chooses to threaten him and his teasing smile.

"Remember you can feel pain now," she warns, as if the reminder is a bad thing. As if it does not make him smile, all over again, to remember that he is fixed. To remember that the slight awkwardness and the imbalance of power between them has been removed. To realize again that there can be more.

When he does see his fear (a girl, he tells himself, over and over again, a young girl who's scared and even more isolated than he was before this morning), he is instantly a young boy again. There's a shape over him, large and menacing and smiling, smiling, always smiling as the fists come down and his mom is crying in the background and Nathan doesn't feel the blood sliding down his skin but he still feels so very, very scared. All his accomplishments, the years he has spent coming to terms with these repressed memories, the bullet that ended this nightmare…none of it matters. All gone, and Nathan is helpless and useless, unable to save his mother—the only one who loves him—and all of his pain and horror is witnessed by that gaping, unchanging smile.

But Nathan has felt this before. Has faced it and dealt with it over and over again. Has watched it cost him the future he could have had and the job he wanted enough to pursue it even over the chief's objections. He's endured and knows he can emerge out the other side, so this is simply a temporary setback.

"Go!" he tells Audrey. "I'm fine, go after her!"

She asks him what he sees, but he waves her away because some demons you shouldn't ever put into words. Especially when his is dead and buried and unmourned.

Jackie is young. She is scared. She is isolated. Nathan has been all of those things, but he was still able to live and work and interact with people. He understands Jackie in a way he thinks Audrey and Duke don't. They stand at his shoulders like sentinels (even Duke, and for all that Nathan has always thought Duke doesn't care what he caused, maybe he does feel guilty after all) and caution him again and again (don't get too close, don't let his blood touch you, don't risk it, don't take a chance on going back to the useless version of you), but they don't understand.

Before, his Trouble was an affliction. It was a curse put on him by who knows what and never guaranteed an expiration date. But now, here, today, with a bandage in his hand and blood smeared over skin he can feel for only a second more, it becomes a choice. A decision he makes. A sacrifice he takes on himself.

It doesn't make it easier when the sun fades away and the wind vanishes and the feel of his own body's confines evaporate. It doesn't make it better when he wakes up each morning and wonders if he's died without realizing it, only drifting through the remains of his life. It doesn't make up for the feel of silverware and the nip of the wind and his dad's warmth an arm's length away. It doesn't give back all the possibilities he glimpsed so very briefly that are now closed and dark and impossible once more.

But it helps him sleep at night. Even if just for a while.

"Hey," Audrey says across from him at the Gull. "What you did, that was really amazing."

Nathan looks at the rose in his hand. He can't feel it. He might as well be holding nothing in hands he doesn't possess with arms that don't connect to him. It's colors and scent and even taste when he licks his lips over where he brushed the petals, but no weight. No texture. Nothing but a dream, like an imaginary phantom.

He told Audrey that sometimes he feels like a ghost in his life, but that isn't entirely true. If he knew how to put it into words, he'd try to explain that he doesn't feel closed in by his affliction. It doesn't confine him at all. Instead, it makes him feel limitless. Unbounded. He floats on an ocean with no landmarks, no islands, nothing but nothing. All around him the world exists, but he feels as if he can walk through walls and fall through chairs and sink through the floor. Sometimes he wonders if any of it is even real, if all that he cannot feel is nothing more than the delusion of a sick mind locked away in a padded room he cannot see.

But that's egocentric and ridiculous when the Troubles are all around him and the lives they take are so very real.

Still. For just a day, he got to be a man. Bound up in the shape of a human, enclosed in the warmth of his own frame and given definition and distinction by the nerves that sang to him of the world. And now he's once more lost, adrift, anchorless and formless in a shifting, ethereal plane that must be always, always taken seriously no matter how senseless it seems.

"I'm fine," he says even as he twirls the petals in his hand (testing to see if they will slide right through the useless skin on his palm).

Then a flare of sensation. A mark binding and enclosing him so that he can feel his hand. His hand, contained and in reach and his.

Nathan glances down, though he already knows what he will see. Audrey's hand on his, warm and comforting, cutting through his stoic façade.

"Nathan," she says.

That's all.

And any other day her touch would be a comfort. It'd be something he could cling to and remember and think back on when he lays down in a bed he can't feel with a blanket pulled over him out of sheer force of habit. Today, though…today it is only a reminder of all that he lost. Because once more she is the only thing he can feel and all those possibilities that had seemed to spread before him are now gone, crushed to dust or maybe just vanished like the mirage they really were.

"I hope I didn't act too weird," he says, relieved when her hand falls away from his (the ocean of formlessness is at least familiar). "I don't want to make you uncomfortable."

"Why would I be uncomfortable?" she asks.

He nods but knows his attempt at a smile doesn't come through when her frown deepens.

"Nathan," she says again.

"I'm going to get home." He stands, the petals falling from his senseless hands. "Long day and all."

"Yeah." She has more to say, he can see the words piling up on her tongue, but she closes her lips over them and gives him a fake smile. "Good night, Nathan."

"Parker," he says.

That's all (and all there will ever be).