A/N: Hey, I'm still here and still plugging away at this impossibly long redundant story that I'm enjoying too much to give up. Hopefully there's still a few of you out there that are still enjoying it with me. I wish I could promise a consistent posting schedule, but...yeah, with things the way they are, not much chance of that. Still, I wanted to get this out there before whoever's reading this thought I'd left it forever, and I'll try to get the rest out in a somewhat timely manner.

Disclaimer: So much, oh so much, was inspired by episodes of Haven which were written by others and not me. No copyright infringement is intended.

"This is your fault," Jordan says, and Dwight's agreement is plain in his stiff silences, the breadth of his back turned to him, the loss of respect in his eyes (an absence so pointed, so painful, that it makes up for the bullets he can't feel in his chest).

"Your fault," Vince says in so many oblique words (he's been saying the same thing for years in just as oblique and obvious ways), and Dave's silence is not an objection.

"Your fault," his reflection says, and not even refusing to look at it even for the time it takes to shave can save him from hearing that inarguable reproach.

"Your fault," says the Guard, the Troubled, the unTroubled, the Rev's followers (the divisions in Haven finally finding unity in this one thing: in hatred of him).

They're right, he knows.

The sky fell. The world burned. Destruction reigned. The Troubles didn't leave.

And all because he pulled the trigger.

(All because he dared to believe, for once in his life, that something good could be his.)

They do not call it penance (but then, they didn't call it ostracism, before, so clearly it is yet one more truth to go unspoken in this town of open secrets). They don't even call it punishment or reparation or justice.

Nathan knows it is all these things, and one more: right. Right that he work to undo what the catastrophe has brought on them. Right that he have to continually look into the eyes of those who lost people they love (a loss he saw reflected back from his own eyes before he began flinching away from mirrors), flanked by his constant Guard escort (one a cop, one not; guards, jailors, silent executioners taking his life from him one endless day at a time), and to own up to his sins.

It's right that this is his fate.

He deserves it.

(Because he sinned. Because he was selfish. Because even now, knowing what he has wrought, he does not think he was wrong.)

The station is banned to him. Dwight asked for his badge back two days after the meteors finally stopped falling, and though Dwight let it remain unvoiced, the terms of his exile were clear enough. Without the badge and the gun, his belt feels too light. Or he assumes it does, anyway.

He doesn't really know. He can't feel anything (not because the Troubles are still here, but because he is numb inside and out, hollowed out of everything that made the world worthwhile).

Dwight still has to wear a vest, Vince's arm still occasionally sports a shifting tattoo, Jordan still wears gloves (still strips them off, when she's his lone warden, and plays them just an inch over his skin, threatening, yearning, asking if she could still harm him even if he won't feel it, silently wondering if she wouldn't), and Haven still pretends its secrets are hidden even as blood runs down the streets and stains the sand of their shores.

(The beaches of this town will run red with blood, Cole Glendower had threatened, and the Glendowers are still out there, forced to remain exiled from home and family, so maybe Cole's words were more prophetic than melodramatic.)

Days blur, nights run together, and twenty-seven years of this will still not be enough to atone for his sins.

You're good, he remembers her telling him, and that is worst of all, because it's then that he thinks maybe it's best he probably killed her (and James and Duke and Howard and thirteen others) so she didn't have to see just how wrong she was about him.

(He wishes he hadn't lived to see it either.)

As the resident scapegoat, he's the first to be sent in after any potentially Troubled person. It takes Nathan so much longer to figure these cases out without Audrey there, seeing straight through to the heart of the problem and the soul of the person. The Guard claim to help, but since their form of 'help' mainly comes in the form of pointed accusations and muttered reminders that he's the reason this is all still happening, Nathan usually just ignores them (he already knows just how much he's to blame for).

"How can you be sure this is the place?" Jordan asks, her gaze as scornful (as wounded) as always. Sometimes he's temped to ask why they keep leaving these Troubles for him to solve if they don't trust him at all. He never does, though. Why bother asking questions to which you already know the answer?

(He deserves whatever happens to him. He's the most expendable person in the whole of the two. Better, and right, that it be him who faces the danger rather than anyone else.)

"All the affected people have a link back to Elin Roberts." Nathan's already said all this, already outlined the investigation for the Teagues (his caretakers; his prison overseers). Much as Haven repeats its cycles, Nathan spends much of his days repeating (justifying) himself.

"And do you know what set her off?"

Instead of asking how many Troubles she's solved (solved, not manipulated or used for the Guard's advantage), he just gives a short nod. "Her friend died in a car accident. Elin was driving the car."

Jordan arches an eyebrow. "And when did this car accident happen?"

By the look in her eyes and the twist to her mouth, Nathan can see that she already knows the answer.

(All winding, repetitive roads of blame lead back to him.)

"During the meteor storm." Nathan pushes past the accusation she's drawing breath for. "The reason no one caught it is because at first the doctors thought it was a result of trauma. Elin must have figured out what was happening, though, because she pretty much became a recluse. It must be getting worse now—the effects are spreading farther and lasting longer."

"Then you'd better get to it."

Every time he's given this imperious demand, he reactively wants to refuse. Wants to draw himself up and plant his feet and say no.

But he never does.

The Troubled need Audrey, but he's all these is so he owes it to them. It's dangerous, confronting the Troubled, and better he take the risk than innocent cops or unreliable Guard-members. (And maybe, somewhere deep, he hopes that this will be the day he pays the ultimate price for his crimes. Maybe this day will finally be the end of his sentence.)

"You're not coming?" he asks.

"I'm already one sense down thanks to you." Jordan tosses her head back. "Besides, I'd like to see you talk this one out before it can get to you."

Before, just the thought of losing more of himself, of losing one of his few ways to interact with the world, would have given him pause. Before, Audrey would have been fearless, and he'd know that even if he was affected, she'd fix it. Before, he had a lot to lose.

Now…now, things are different.

Turning his back on Jordan and her partner, Nathan heads into the house without an instant's hesitation.

Empty-handed, Nathan knocks twice on the front door before trying the knob.

"Leave!" a voice calls from just beyond the thick wood. "Trust me, you don't want to talk to me."

"Elin? My name is Nathan Wuornos. I'm here to help you."

"No! No, don't help me. Just go. Leave me alone."

"Please, Elin. I know you think that you've made things safe by locking yourself away here, having your groceries delivered, cutting off all your friends and family. But it's not working anymore. It's getting worse."

A long pause before she says, "I don't believe you."

"Joe Abbot, the man who delivers your supplies, lost his voice last week. Madge Sawyere, the woman who bakes your order of bread, was struck mute two days ago. And Ellie McPheron, your papergirl, woke up yesterday unable to speak. Elin, you need help. Please. Please let me in."

There is no answer, no door magically opening to let him in.

Every moment of every day, Nathan wishes Parker were here, with him, helping the Troubled, healing Haven, seeing him. Now, facing this closed door, his yearning for her is so strong that it nearly chokes him. She would be inside already, getting Elin to open up, connecting with her, reassuring and commiserating and understanding.

"I know your friend died," he says, softly. "And I know you feel like it was your fault—"

"It was my fault! Maryse didn't even want to go out that day. She said it was too dangerous. But I was so worried about Jesse, my boyfriend—he wasn't picking up his phone. I convinced Maryse to come with me, told her Jesse needed us…and when that lamppost fell, it only crushed the passenger side. I wasn't even hurt, but Maryse… And it was all my fault!"

"Jesse? Jesse Bulloch?" Nathan thinks back on the case, remembers that name as one of the first to report to the ER with a sore throat that eventually led to mutism. "Where is he now?"

"I…I don't know." Elin's voice is watery. "He came by, but…I couldn't look at him. I couldn't… I don't deserve him. Our friend is dead because of me."

"You didn't mean for it to happen. Elin, you were trying to do the right thing. You were worried—"

"No! Stop saying that! Everyone says that—that I didn't mean it so it doesn't matter, but it does. I killed my best friend because I was selfish. Because I didn't want to go out there alone."

Bright flares of light dance at the edges of Nathan's vision, sign that he's not breathing or at least not breathing right. Relying on muscle memory, Nathan coughs, coughs again, again, until the spots fade and the world steadies.

"Elin," he tries to say, but no sound emerges from his throat.

"When they told me she was dead…" The doorknob rattle as if she's gripping it with shaking hands. Nathan does his best to look harmless (imagines he succeeds pretty well considering he has no weapon, no real authority, no partner, and now no voice). "They were so nice. So considerate as they asked me questions. And I didn't…I didn't have an answer for them. I literally couldn't talk. Every time I tried, everything I said, it just sounded like excuses. I couldn't talk because what could I possibly say? Maryse is dead. There's no excuse at all good enough."

Nathan clutches at the door and waits.

(In the flare of lights encroaching on the edges of his world, he sees a rain of fiery stones. A man torn into a thousand glittering pieces. A barn fractured and distorted.

He can hear his own voice, drowning in blood, pleading and commanding all at once.

He remembers Duke's hands slipping away so that Nathan tilted toward the ground. Remembers the enemy he could never trust running straight into unimaginable danger. Remembers his friend vanishing into a supernatural construct coming apart at every possible and impossible seam.

He remembers, and it hurts. It hurts so much he's glad he doesn't have a voice to let it out.)

"Hello? Are you still there?"

At the note of fear in Elin's voice, Nathan taps lightly at the door.

"Oh, no! No, not again!"

And the door opens.

Conscious of Jordan's eyes on his back, Nathan nonetheless takes his time stepping into Elin's home. The last thing he needs is to scare this poor woman into slamming the door again and leaving him permanently mute.

Elin's a few years younger than him, he knows, but at the moment, she looks older, worn and stressed and guilty (and for all the lengths he goes to just to avoid his reflection, he still keeps coming face to face with it).

Coughing a few times, trying not to think about what damage he might be doing to his throat, he finally manages to get out a few words.

"I know it's hard," he rasps. "I know it seems impossible to move on, but—"

"If Maryse can't, I shouldn't either," she says, stubbornly. Loyally. But it's there. He can see it there, buried in her eyes: a spark of hope. Of longing. Of exhaustion and loneliness and desperation.

He's felt that same spark. Hidden that same longing. Denied the extent of that endless loneliness.

"It is your fault," he tells her, because that's what she needs to hear. She needs someone else to say it so she doesn't have to keep saying it to herself in the dark. "You were driving and you knew it was dangerous and you should have let her make her own choice. But that's the thing, Elin—she did. Maryse chose to go with you. She cared about Jesse too, and she got in that car with you of her own free will. It's awful, and she's never coming back. But you don't really want to change what you did that day. You want to change what she chose to do."

Go, he'd told Duke. Implored him. Commanded him. She needs you.

But Duke Crocker, consummate survivor, ultimate conman, spotty friend—he never would have thrown himself into all-but-certain death for just anyone.

You love her, Nathan had said aloud to Duke's back, with only Howard's evaporating body and meteors hurtling themselves to violent, catastrophic ends as witness to that long delayed revelation.

All that time spent distrusting Duke, suspecting him, watching him, accusing him…all that time and the answer had been staring him in the face all along.

Duke loved Audrey.

(No wonder Audrey had only kissed Nathan while hidden away in the Barn, a last gift given him out of friendship and grief and pity, but safely out of Duke's sight so that it wouldn't break his heart.)

Nathan couldn't be sorry for asking Duke to go after Audrey (or for shooting Howard and breaking the cycle and doing everything he could to save Parker), but every day he woke up wishing that Duke had been smart enough to refuse him. Had stayed at his side. Had chosen survival over a doomed chance that fizzled into nothing. (Wished, above all, that Duke hadn't loved Audrey.)

When he hears crying, Nathan almost thinks it's him, finally broken and penitent on the ground. But no, it's Elin, instead, who folds and almost falls until he steps forward and catches her. It costs him nothing, to enfold her in an embrace, to catch her tears against his skin, to realize his voice is fully returned to him when he hears the soothing murmur he offers her. It costs him nothing because he has nothing left to give.

He tries to be grateful that at least no one died this Trouble, but can't quite manage it.

(After all, he knows better than anyone that death is not always the worst outcome. Sometimes…sometimes you live.)

On the way back to the Herald to report to Vince, Nathan's escort melts away. It's not the first time; it won't be the last. Nathan can't help but wonder what they think they're accomplishing. It's not like they don't all know what his Trouble is (of all the things Haven has denied him through the years, privacy was one of the first to go).

But maybe this isn't about punishing him. Maybe it's not about him at all. When you lose everything, when everything that makes your life worth living is ripped away from you, sometimes, Nathan knows, you just need an outlet, a way to take handfuls of that endless emptiness inside and transmute it into pain and anger on the outside. If anyone knows that, it's Nathan.

So he doesn't fight the group that materializes from the dusky shadows. Aside from protecting his eyes and ears, he lets them hit him where they will, feels the world tilt as he's forced to the ground, lets the fists and the boots connect with a heavy thud that should make him nauseous but actually does nothing.

This group is mostly silent, though a few shake with ragged sobs they try to turn into angry roars. They lay into him quickly, as methodically as deep wells of emotion allow them to be, sharp and brutal and edged with more guilt than Nathan thinks he can possibly carry. But he can try. He does try. Every day. Each hour. The Guard aren't the ones who thought of sending him out against the Troubled, after all. That was all his idea (his responsibility), and it was Dave's support that saw it accepted by Dwight and then by Vince.

With a few departing epithets, they disappear, the sound of their footsteps fading into the distance—a progression thankfully clearly audible. His hearing hasn't been impaired, then, and his eyes still work, too, picking out the shape of his Guard escort returning now that he's been reminded of his sins. It's when he rolls to his knees and tries to stand that he recognizes where the most damage was done.

His arms won't lift him. He can't stand up straight, and when he tries to bend to get his feet under him, his body simply stops responding.

The Guard-members drag him the rest of the way to the Herald. Nathan tries not to look more than a minute or two ahead anymore, but he can't deny that he's hoping it'll be Dave there to greet him.

A sigh of startled relief slips from him when it is the older Teagues brother holding down the fort (he so seldom gets what he hopes for).

"What happened?" Dave demands before huffing in irritation. "Never mind. I can guess. All right, I've got him. You can go now."

When the men hesitate, Dave draws himself up. Nathan doesn't have to look to know that Dave is transforming, as he can do at will, from amusing old newspaperman to the vaguely threatening presence of something old and unknowable.

"I may not be head of the Guard," Dave says caustically, "but I'm the one who's here now. I've got him. You can go."

The same words, but delivered differently, so commanding that soon Nathan sees the Herald whirl around him until Dave's there, ink and musk and popcorn, a familiar combination of scents.

"Oh, Nathan," Dave says. Clumsily, they make it to the backroom of the Herald where two cots are set up, one with a blanket and pillow, the other bare and tucked into a corner far from any exits.

"I'll be okay," Nathan says. Or tries to say. His voice comes out garbled.

"Oh, yeah? And are you going to say that all the way up to the minute they accidentally kill you during one of these beatings? Or when they purposely lynch you? Or maybe the moment when you slip a rope around your neck yourself?"

"I won't do that."

Dave regards him steadily. "Only because you think you don't deserve a quick end."

Nathan looks away (feels bare, exposed, vulnerable in a way he didn't feel lying prone beneath the anger of a small mob).

Under the cover of handing him a wet washcloth, Dave gets close, lowers his voice to a hushed whisper. "I can still get you out of here. It's not too late. I'll distract them in the morning, you make it as many miles into the woods as you can, make for the cabin that—"

"Dave. Thanks, but my answer's still no."

"You're crazy!" Dave snaps. "No one deserves this—especially not you. You only did what we all should have done—try to stop this cycle, stop using that poor girl as a band-aid."

"What about the Troubles?" Nathan says over the sharp surge of pain that roars up inside him at this blatant mention of Parker.

"Well." Busying himself with wringing out Nathan's bloody washcloth, Dave shakes his head. "We would have figured something out."

Silence falls, then, because there is no other way. Not really. Once, Nathan thought there could be, and straining for it, desperate for it, he just made everything worse. Best to accept the fact that this is the way things are. Best not to think on what could be (on what he would risk, would dare, if only Parker hadn't been killed at his hand).

"Take a shower," Dave tells him. "I'll get you some clothes that are still in one piece."

Nathan takes the kindness gratefully. It's (one of the reasons) why he hoped it would be Dave here rather than Vince. Nowadays, taking a shower is the only time he gets a moment alone.

Before (before the Hunter, before the Barn, before Parker), he would have done a thorough inspection of each bruise and gash, tried to determine whether he'd broken any bones or injured anything internally. Now, after a cursory look to the patchwork map of layers of bruises over the place where scars should mark the path of the three bullets Jordan planted inside him, Nathan forgets all about the injuries.

Ever since Ian Haskell took his Trouble for a few days, then broke every bone in his body and set it all to rights just to get in and out of a museum, Nathan's had the idea that maybe his injuries are only as serious as he allows them to be. Anything he worries over, gets MRIs of, puts casts on, they linger and heal slowly (though quicker, even still, than a normal person's injuries). But if he ignores a wound, shrugs it aside and keeps going, it disappears almost immediately with not a scar left to show where he was hurt. The only scars Nathan still bears are those collected during the years between Lucy Ripley and Audrey Parker.

(Besides, even if he did need medical attention, he doubts the Guard would be willing to take him to the hospital. His punishment is extensive and ever-evolving.)

Nathan avoids the mirror in the tiny bathroom as he steps into the shower, the faucet turned to cold. Only when there are two doors between him and anyone else does he let his breath turn shaky, unsteady; the cascade of water blurs due to the trembling that tremors through his body.

The beatings don't bother him (if they help anyone else feel better, he's more than glad to endure them). Solving Troubles at the risk of constant maiming or death is actually all he lives for anymore (the only thing left that he's good for). But it's when he's alone, unwatched, that he gives into the true flaying of his soul. The self-castigation that would break him if anyone ever thought to inflict it on him. Since they haven't, it's up to him to parse out, yet again, the ever-growing measure of his sin.

"Audrey Parker," he whispers to the water (the flash of blue eyes, blonde hair, red curls, steady hand on a gun, even the blue of a sweater contrasted against sun-warmed sand). "James Cogan." (A son he'll never know, a child he'll never help, a man he struck down in a moment of desperation.) "Duke Crocker." (The friend that could have been, all sneaky smirks and a hand to support him whenever he wasn't looking to see it.) "Mitchell Frales, Maryse Goodall, Maria Lopez." (Bodies pulled from the wreckage of cars and smoldering meteorites. "Heidi Asher. Zack Asher." (Dead in the first Trouble activated by the seeming end of the world.)

On and on. Twelve names. Twelve lives snuffed out.

Because of him.

Long after the water would have turned painfully cold if he were a normal man, Nathan huddles on the floor and lets the falling water brand each name (each indictment) into his soul.

"These Troubles are never going to stop," Vince says behind him. Nathan tries not to betray how startled he is, both to find Vince in the room at all and to realize his Guard escort has once more conveniently vanished. "The Troubles will always be here now—and that's all thanks to you."

Cautioning himself to calmness, Nathan looks back to the pictures of crystalline forms that were once innocent Havenites trying to enjoy a day on the beach. "We can't just give up, Vince. There has to be something we can do."

"I think you've done enough." The note of finality in his voice is enough to make Nathan's muscles clench up, or so he assumes from the way the papers in his hands crumple beneath the force of his grip.

He's never fooled himself into thinking that Vince likes him, but lately (ever since his selfishness saw to Parker being disintegrated), Vince's antipathy has transformed into open enmity, his guarded watchfulness into a menacing rage. And now he's alone with Nathan for the first time, standing between him and the exit—and his eyes are colder than Nathan's ever seen them.

"The Troubles are still here because of you," Vince says very calmly. Frighteningly calmly.

"I know."

"No, you don't know. We've allowed you the bliss of ignorance for too long. But you should know what you've done—you should know as well as I do just how badly Max Hansen served this town…and how wrong Garland was to think he could mitigate some of your dangerous mistakes by taking you in."

"I know what I did was wrong," Nathan says through the roaring in his ears at the mention of his dead father (both of them), "but I am not my father."

"No. You're worse."

"Vince—"

"Nathan Wuornos. That's what Sarah said was the name of her baby's father. Nathan Wuornos and he wasn't even born yet, the only two things she ever revealed about you but more than enough."

The room shrinks around them. Swirling memories of Max Hansen's fists and the Chief's solid back vanish entirely, subsumed by the flash of Sarah, all kind blue eyes and soft smiles and unhesitating touches. His greatest joy. His weakest moment (another sin he can't quite bring himself to regret).

"She could have fought harder to stay," Vince says, growing closer step by step, always so much taller, so much broader than Nathan remembers. "She could have found a way to stay. For her son. For Haven. For me. But she left so you would be born, and when Lucy came, she could have actually stayed away, outran the Barn and the storm and those of Crocker's ilk. But she didn't—because of James. Because of you." There's pain etched deep in the lines of Vince's face, making him just as sympathetic as he is terrifying. "And then, just when we grow accustomed to what she has to do to save all of us—just when I get used to saying goodbye to her for the greater good—there you are to screw it up forever."

Anger rises, sharp and tasting of copper. "Parker didn't deserve to be the sacrificial lamb for this town!" he snaps.

A mistake. He forgot. He forgot that he's not allowed to have any excuse (any valid reason) for what he did. He forgot that he's the villain of this story, not the hero.

Vince quickly reminds him by shoving him back and by loosing an accusation Nathan's heard before.

"The Troubles are here because of you!"

Nathan can't feel Vince slam his back into a wall, but he feels the accusation down to the very marrow of his bones.

He stood in a field once, just before his life fell apart (not for the first time; not for the last time; just one time in a long line of transformative moments, but no less painful for all that). Stood in a field while the Rev and Cole Glendower drew battle-lines in blood and his dad stood in the gap as a willing martyr (always so much more willing to be a good parent in absenteeism). Stood there and heard the Rev's accusation like a deafening thunderclap.

Heard his father's answering silence like an earthquake (and how fitting is that, when the earth shook moments later and ensured his dad's silence forevermore?).

Your son is the reason the Troubles are still here.

In the mouth of two or three witnesses, he thinks, and in that moment, he does give up. How can he possibly think that he can help at all when everything going wrong in this town is on his head? How can he possibly think that finding every bit of information about Troubles and Barns and a bright soul come back and ripped away and come back and ripped away ad infinitum, storing it away for a day nearly three decades from now, would ever help when it is his trigger finger that extinguished that bright, pure soul forever?

Better, maybe, just to die now, saving one or two, than to live condemning all (and he envies Duke more in this moment than in any other).

But then the door flies open and Dave hurries in with news and Nathan's world falls apart and remakes itself all over again.

"Duke's alive!" Dave shouts. "Duke's alive! He's alive and in Boston and on his way—"

It takes Nathan a second to realize that the reason Dave's fallen abruptly silence is because Vince is still crushing him against the wall, his hand fisted in Nathan's shirt.

Dave blinks, blinks again, then moves. "Vince! Let him go! This isn't what we agreed on."

"Maybe it's time for certain agreements to be renegotiated," Vince growls.

In one of those strange transitions Nathan still can't follow after all these years, Dave's eyes go hard, his mouth sets, and the air crackles with electricity Nathan doesn't need nerve endings to sense. "And you know what the consequences will be of breaking that promise."

Nathan doesn't care about their squabbling anymore, though.

"Did you say Duke's alive?" he demands. "Duke Crocker?"

Quick as the blink of an eye, Dave transitions back into his more common façade. "You know any other Dukes?"

Stepping away from Nathan, Vince narrows his eyes. "How do you know it's really Duke? It could be a trick."

"It's Duke," Dave says with a finality he doesn't explain. "He appeared in an aquarium tank in Boston—and according to him, only seconds had passed since he leaped after Audrey."

Nathan can't help but flinch. It's been so long since he's heard her name (his friend; his partner; his ally—his victim).

But…if Duke's alive…she could be too.

James could be alive.

(Nathan's crimes may not be as insurmountable as he thought.)

"He ended up in a hospital," Dave's saying, "but apparently a young woman found him and got him out. A Troubled young woman. She claims she's been hearing the last conversations from inside the Barn since the night of the Hunter."

"A strange Trouble," Vince muses, but Nathan talks right over him.

"She can hear Audrey? What happened to her? Does she know where Parker's been spit out?"

Dave hesitates. "No. But we know the Barn plays with time, so if Duke just showed up now, maybe she hasn't landed yet."

"Or maybe she's dead." Vince's glare impacts Nathan far more than a fist would.

"This woman could be the key to finding Parker," Nathan says (he can't think about her being dead, not now that there's hope; not when he came so close to giving up; not as long as he's still alive).

"Maybe so," Vince says, drawing himself up. "But if so, it'll be for us to find out. You won't be allowed anywhere near it."

Nathan and Dave both protest (one much more vehemently than the other), but Vince shuts them both down.

"You can't be trusted with her," Vince hisses. "Who's to say you won't just get her killed again."

The barb strikes deep, a lash layered atop the scourging he's self-inflicted and the flaying heaped on him by the town. Nathan staggers at the pain (the truth) of it, and before he can recover, he is locked in the backroom, a criminal shut away lest he cause more harm to his surviving victims.