In a shocking turn of events, they lock him away, shut up alone in the backroom of the death-stained Herald. Nathan doesn't even care. (He wishes, suddenly and fiercely, that Jordan had fired a bullet at him as soon as she entered the building so that he didn't have to live long enough to know just how little Audrey thinks of him.) He sits beside his cot, the smell of blood thick in his nostrils, and rewrites his rose-stained memories with the truth of reality.

As if to hammer in exactly how different his fantasies are from reality, when the door opens, it is only so the Guard can shove Duke inside. Nathan wants to look away (to ignore the sight of Duke as easily as his body ignores the feel of everything), but something in Duke's posture catches his attention.

Duke doesn't protest being shoved inside. He doesn't move inside and prowl the edges of the room, or plop himself down as if completely unconcerned. Instead, he slumps down into a seat and just stares at his hands.

Hands that should, Nathan belatedly remembers, be stained with blood.

Wade's blood was all over Duke, but it vanished and Duke's eyes turned silver before completely fading back to their usual dark brown (but dulled without their usual sheen of cunning scheming and backhanded concern) as he stared down at the body of his brother.

"Duke," he rasps (because he knows, doesn't he, what it's like to have blood genetically similar to your own on your own hands? knows twice-over, once for a father and once for a son and though the blood is long gone, Nathan knows he will never escape it).

"It's gone," Duke says numbly. "I killed my own brother and in return get what I wanted most. What kind of justice is that?"

"You saved Audrey," Nathan says (and if there's a hint of acid on the name, well, Duke is too preoccupied to really notice). "That earns you a lot. You probably saved the whole town, really."

"Wade shouldn't have been here. He didn't need to get tangled up in all this. But then," Duke's laugh is mirthless, painful, "that's what Haven does, right? Sucks you in and pulls you under until you drown."

"I'm sorry," Nathan finally says. "No one should have to be responsible for killing their own family."

Duke finally moves, raising his head as if his neck is a joint badly oiled, stiff and creaky as he turns to look at Nathan. "But you still want Audrey to kill you, don't you?"

Nathan almost chokes on something thick and burning in his throat. "Guess all chance of that ever working is off the table now."

"Look," Duke sits up straighter, though his hands are tucked under his knees and out of sight. "It's not what you think."

"You knew," Nathan says before Duke can even try to lie to him again (turn him into the dupe for the countless time). "This whole time, you've known?"

"The body-snatching Trouble," Duke says. "I knew there was no way she'd leave me alone with the Troubled killer unless she knew my own Trouble would—" His voice chokes as he's reminded of his current situation, and Nathan could almost feel bad for him as he stares back down at his clean hands.

"So all those times you were encouraging me to win her," Nathan says (not sure whether his anger or his compassion is what prompts him to distract Duke from his own pain for now), "telling me there was hope…you were just lying. Again."

Duke actually rolls his eyes (Nathan's compassion is fast dwindling). "Come on, Nate, I know you're upset, but Audrey just wants to save your life."

"Why?"

Groaning, Duke seems to forget what should be stained over his hands as he waves them helplessly in the air. "Really?"

"Why save my life at all," Nathan grits out," when what my life consists of matters so little—to both of you?"

"The first thing you did was put a gun in her hand and aim it at your own heart! Even you have to see how extreme—"

"No. No!" Nathan snaps, anger rising in him, overwhelming him, and any minute now he'll snap, strike out, wild and uncontrollable (too much like Max Hansen and the dark legacy inside him), so extreme, so stark against his usual numbness that it will make everyone look at him as if he's crazy (as if he's no more than a petulant child; or worse, as if he's a monster waiting to shed the hollow cocoon to emerge into the world). "You don't get to sit there and pretend like I'm the one who doesn't understand what's going on. Not this time."

"She won't kill you."

"She has no idea what my life has been like for the past seven months, but she still thinks she knows how to live it better than me. And you?" Nathan is on his feet, closer to Duke, staring down at him, looming (like his father did, in shadowed memories that Nathan tries his best to keep buried deep). "You know what it's like. What it's always been like. And why am I even surprised? You knew what my life was like before, too, when you first came back to Haven all those years ago. And yet you still… You pretended to be my friend. You always pretend—and I always fall for it. You'd think I'd learn eventually."

Duke stares. Typical, Nathan thinks, that he is speechless only now when it matters.

The door opening interrupts nothing because that was, he is sure, the end of the conversation (no apologies, no explanations, because what does a patsy really need of any of those things?).

Audrey stands on the threshold.

Nathan makes himself really look at her. The stance. The tentative expression. The cock to her hips where she's used to balancing the dual weights of a gun and a badge. Her hands don't reach for any hair to play with. Her eyes are wide open and observant rather than half-lidded and cynical. She's still dark-haired, still wears a nose ring and Lexie's cobbled-together outfit, but it is Audrey standing there. Audrey looking him over. Audrey's eyes going wide and worried as she notices the blood he can smell staining the bandages over his right bicep.

"Nathan!" she cries, and even as she takes a step into the room, her hand is stretched out, reaching toward him as if to touch him (to pull him back under her spell).

Nathan flinches backward.

It's as if he fired a gunshot (into Howard, into the Barn, into any possible future where he could be happy). The room is silent. Still. Each of them frozen in place.

It hurts, being stuck here between them both—the woman he would have loved and the friend he would have accepted (if not for the lies littered at their feet, detritus of a life-that-could-have-been).

"Was it Carrie?" he finally asks. "The dream Trouble?"

It takes a long second for Audrey to answer (but when she does, with every word, more of the Lexie façade falls away). "Yes. But she said her Trouble has only ever affected the women of her family, never anyone else. There's more, though—the men who mugged her and triggered her Trouble? They were in the Barn."

"The Barn?" Duke's on his feet in the blink of an eye, worry staining his voice. "Jennifer might have heard them, then. You don't think they'd go after her, do you?"

"I don't know. I don't know what they want." Audrey looks back to Nathan (he tries not to curl in on himself to escape the scrutiny). "She was able to resolve it, though, Nathan. You don't have to worry about your dreams anymore."

Nathan scoffs (reminded that there's no reason to escape her scrutiny when it's clear she doesn't really see him at all). "Right. Because that's what I've been worried about—the dream Trouble."

This time, she's the one to flinch. "Nathan, I'm sorry, okay? But I couldn't kill you—"

"Why did her Trouble change?" he asks, resolute and unflinching and everything he isn't really (not deep inside where his Trouble doesn't affect the ache on his heart at all). Despite his anger, though, he can't really make himself not see the hurt in her eyes, so he focuses on the bridge of her nose, the suggestion of a freckle.

"She… I don't know. But there was a glowing black handprint on her shoulder—one only I could see." She pauses, then, and looks to Duke (of course she does; Nathan isn't even surprised save in that it took her so long). "Which, speaking of what no one else saw… I convinced Dave and Vince to tell everyone that you killed Jordan, Duke, and that I killed Wade."

"Great." Duke smiles a smile that looks more like a scowl as he slumps back into his seat. "Wouldn't do not to be useful to the Guard."

"How nice for you both," Nathan mutters.

"I know you may not approve of my methods, Nathan, but I had to save you!" Audrey protests. "If they knew I was still Audrey Parker, they would have made me kill you and I couldn't let that happen."

"And how's that working out for you?" he asks with a jerk of his chin to indicate their confinement.

He wishes he'd said nothing at all when she flinches, her eyes falling away, throat working as she swallows. "I think Vince feels bad about letting Jordan get so out of hand, so he's giving us a bit of leeway."

Nathan's laugh is bitter and sharp. "Until what, exactly? It's not like we have any other solutions."

"Nathan—"

"No. This whole time, all the time I thought you were Lexie, you were actually Audrey. You lied to me—again. You hid things from me—again. You confided in Duke—again. I may not be the fastest learner, but even I get it eventually."

(If he thought listing out all the blades littered in his back would help, he was so, so wrong.)

"You don't get it!" Audrey snaps. "This is exactly the reason I couldn't tell you! You're with them. You want me to pull the trigger on you. And I will never, never do that!"

"Why not?" he cries out. "We have a way to end all the Troubles forever—why won't you take it?"

She stares at him. Silent. Mute. (Too kind to tell him that his death would solve nothing. Too cruel to bother to put him out of his misery anyway.)

The door opens again (astounding how easy it is for everyone else to come in and out while he's locked away with no recourse) and Dwight stares at them all with narrow eyes and the distinct impression of not being impressed.

"Dwight!" Duke leaps forward. "Where's Jennifer? Is she okay?"

"She's fine. The Teagues sent her out on some kind of assignment. It's Vince and Dave we should be worried about right now. Seems like, as usual, they're in the middle of a Trouble."

"Let me help," Nathan demands immediately (Audrey's eyes are like weights on his back).

Dwight sighs. "Nathan, you know we can't risk—"

"I'm useless to you now," Nathan says (someone has to actually say the truth aloud, even if it makes Audrey gasp and Duke groan). "Audrey says that only the person she loves the most can end the Troubles, and we all know what that means. Let me do something useful."

"Nathan, please—" Audrey's hand touches his, blazing life into his fingers, like lightning forking illumination over the whole world.

Nathan recoils so violently that he runs up against the filing cabinets, setting them rocking with a clatter that underscores the reverberations in his bones. He has to resist the urge to clasp his tingling hand close, as if she's scorched him rather than just touched him.

When he chances a quick glance, he sees Audrey far away from him, small and contained, arms held close to her body, eyes hollow and desolate.

Like injury on top of insult.

Nathan can't bear to see anymore.

Spinning toward Dwight, he begs, "Please," and like he did once before, Dwight takes pity on him.

"Well," he says, "we do have a pressure problem—and it looks like Jack Driscoll might be involved in some way."

That sparks something besides yawning pain. Nathan frowns and says, "Driscolls aren't Troubled."

"You didn't think your dad was either," Duke says, caustic and annoyed and something else Nathan can't make himself turn and identify (not when he's busy pretending that barb didn't hurt).

Nathan stares ahead and sees nothing. "Turns out there's a lot I don't know."

There's not only a lot Nathan didn't know, there's a lot he knew that no longer seems to apply.

Troubles don't change. Families don't spontaneously catch new Troubles. Nothing in Haven ever really changes.

All false. All changing right in front of him.

"I thought you'd be gone," Duke says abruptly, when they stand at the edge of a bubble surrounding a park surrounding a new father eaten up by panic and terror and loneliness. Behind them, Audrey and Dwight are talking to Jack (trying to distract him from asking, again, for Duke to kill him and end this new Trouble forever), a shattered phone in Jack's hands, his connection to his brother lost.

"What are you talking about?"

"When I got back to Haven," Duke says, "I thought you'd be long gone."

Neither of them look at each other. Both of them stare ahead at the trail of devastation leading to this newest horror Haven has to offer.

"Even if I would have considered leaving, the Guard would never have allowed it."

"No, I…" Duke takes a deep breath. "When I came back to Haven all those years ago. I thought you'd be gone. I mean, I know your Trouble still would have been there if you'd left, but after everything this town has done to you, I didn't think there was any way you wouldn't have gotten as far away as possible. I mean, I've thought about leaving, more all the time. I should have made Wade leave."

"Haven's my home," Nathan says shortly (the Chief, he thinks, and vindication and fear and loneliness, all things he can never put into words, just a swirling mass of confusion that always kept him planted here with unbending roots).

"Come on, Nathan!" Duke scoffs, startling him into looking over at him. "What has this place ever done but dump on you? I thought…when I got back and found you still here, I thought I could give you a way to strike back. A way to fight when your whole life, everyone's…" His jaw clenches. "We've only ever told you to stand still and take it."

There's nothing he can find to say to that. Or maybe it's just that he doesn't know what Duke expects him to say. He's long since resigned himself to this being an issue that would never be addressed, and certainly not by Duke. But here they are, and Nathan can't process that it's happening, let alone what difference it makes to know that Duke was trying to help him in his own way rather than just targeting him.

"I know you've helped Haven," Duke adds. "You're willing to sacrifice your own life to save everyone here. But…what has Haven ever done for you?"

Parker.

The name is there, dancing on the tip of his tongue, hanging in the air between them. It's the truth, the one thing that has ever made staying here in Haven bearable. But it's also a lie, because Parker isn't his, will never be his, and he will never be hers.

Duke snorts and shakes his head. "But yeah, thinking of it, when I got back from the Barn, I did expect you to be gone then, too."

"That's not the way it goes," Nathan says bitterly. "I'm always the one left behind."

He wishes it unsaid immediately, but Haven has never granted his wishes.

"Not this time," Duke says, almost fiercely, as he grabs Nathan's arm. "Nathan, there's something I have to tell you."

Nathan goes numb inside as well as out. "Another secret?"

"No, but I have a feeling if I don't spell it out for you, you'll never figure it out."

That stings more than it probably should, and Nathan pulls away from his grip. "I don't have time for—"

"I'm in love with Jennifer."

For a moment, Nathan wonders if the pressure bubble has expanded to include him in its sphere. He can't think, can't feel, can't even move, motor skills deserting him along with the power of speech.

"It kind of snuck up on me," Duke says with the beginnings of a smile Nathan's never seen on him before, "but I really do love her. And if I haven't completely screwed things up with her in the past couple days, then I think she loves me too. I mean, she moved onto the Cape Rouge."

Now Nathan knows what to think.

He has handfuls of Duke's shirt in his hands, pressing him back a step (still well away from the pressure bubble, though) as anger writhes in his mind like livewires. "How could you do that to Audrey?" he growls. "After everything, how could you even—"

"Because Audrey doesn't love me, Nathan. She had a chance, I'll admit it, but nothing ever happened—because before I ever even met her, she was already in love with you."

Nathan's backing away, but Duke now has his hands around his wrists, keeping him from letting go entirely.

"Why do you think Sarah fell for you so fast? Why would Audrey—leaning on Lexie's memories—agree to a date with you? Audrey said you were her first friend in Haven. She always went to you. Talked to you. Confided in you. Trusted you. She wasn't afraid to be vulnerable around you. Why? Because, Nathan, she loves you."

"Guys?"

Nathan startles and Duke must too because Nathan stumbles a bit with the release of pressure from his wrists. Audrey's brow wrinkles as she studies them, but she must decide whatever was happening is part of their ongoing feud because she seemingly shrugs it away (Nathan hopes his face doesn't betray how relieved he is by this reprieve).

"We have to get to Aidan if we want to calm him down, but to do that we need—"

"I know a guy," Duke says with a snap of his fingers. "He can get us three suits perfect for deep sea diving."

"Well, can he do it fast?" Audrey asks. "Because if this pressure bubble hits the hospital generator, there's not going to be much of Haven left."

Nathan thinks the world is spinning because of Duke's words echoing in his ears. He thinks the drag to his movement is because of the weight of the suit locking him inside its dubious protection. He thinks everything will be fine the minute they can get Parker to Aidan to talk him down.

But then the world stops moving entirely before tilting and going sideways. His eyes are sliding shut, darkness closing in around him, and something's wrong. There are voices in his ear (Because, Nathan, she loves you), looping and repeating and rising and falling with emotions he can't quite reach out and grab hold of.

"I'll take him. You've got to get to Aidan."

"No! No! You know the deep-sea breathing techniques, Duke—you go. I'm not leaving him, not again. Go, Duke!"

Audrey. No, wait, Lexie. No, no, of course not, it's Audrey. Audrey who came out of the Barn. Audrey who emerged from the doorway and the seething nexus between this world and wherever she came from. Audrey who looked at him on that hilltop with that open expression. Who leaned into his touch. Who watched him as if he were the most important thing there.

Audrey who asked after him, who dressed up for their date, who laughed with him and teased him. Audrey who said that he only wanted a woman she used to be.

Audrey who said she didn't love him (but she fidgeted even while she was sure to meet his eyes, and in Lexie, he thought that was discomfort, but it was Audrey and he knows what Audrey looks like when she's lying).

"Nathan? Nathan, stay with me. Nathan!"

He's never heard her say his name like that. Broken and wavering, small and helpless and fierce all at once. It's strange and unfamiliar, but she says it as if she's played this moment out before.

The world tilts, the darkness blurs, she's telling him to walk, to move, and he tries (he always tries, but this is the first time in such a long time that he thinks he might actually succeed). And the park moves around them, the pathway falling away behind them.

Too slow, though. Even he, in his dulled state, can tell that.

But then, just like he has so often lately, Duke comes through for them.

The pressure bubble shrinks and fades and vanishes (another man facing a Trouble; another family broken by something they have no control over; another son doomed to live out the fears of his parents).

Audrey's breath is harsh and shallow and staggered in his ear as blackness threatens to envelop him completely.

Then his helmet's off, oxygen tastes crisp and clear on his tongue, and Audrey's face is revealed as she tugs her own helmet off to reveal the tears staining her cheeks, blotting her dark mascara. There's fear, written there in blue in a way he's seen only rarely and always thought he'd imagined.

There's traces of Sarah lurking there in her eyes, gentle and yearning and so full of emotion that brims over in Audrey's face.

"Nathan!" She pulls him closer, heavy gloves and suit keeping him from flinching away (or maybe just leaning in). "Are you okay? Are you all right? Nathan!"

Everything he thought he knew…everything he's reconciled himself to…everything that has been his reality for almost a year… It's all wrong. Untrue.

A lie.

"You love me," he breathes out. He's never heard his own voice like this, so full of wonder and awe and everything he thought could never be a part of his life. It's his fantasy, his dearest wish, and speaking it aloud is more terrifying than anything since seeing Audrey step into the Barn.

"Nathan," she whispers.

"You love me," he says again, suddenly alert, grasping for her hands, fighting the weight that holds him back. "Audrey, if you kill me, the Troubles will—"

"No!" Standing, backing away, Audrey looks down on him with wide eyes and a trembling mouth and indecision he's never seen in her before. "No," she says again, more firmly. "I won't kill you, because… Because I do love you, Nathan, and that—that makes this my choice. We'll find another way."

(Nathan wonders if she knows that she's lying.)

(He wonders if she's never really been lying to him at all. If all along, she's only ever been lying to herself.)

His Bronco is still parked outside the Herald. Nathan notes it as they escort him into his prison cell. His Guards shove him so he stumbles, toss him a greasy wrapped sandwich, and then settle in to ignore him (Vince and Dave are keeping news of these last few days quiet, then; that's something, at least). These few Guards have been his nightly wardens enough times before that Nathan knows they'll soon fall asleep—he doesn't need enhanced hearing to catch their eventual snores. Lockpicking is incredibly complicated when he can't feel any of the responses, but he has loads of time and enough anger to keep him motivated until the door finally clicks open.

Nathan locks and closes the door behind, strides past the sleeping Guard-members, and hotwires the Bronco into roaring life. Depending on how sincere Dwight was (or was not) about letting Nathan help with the Troubles, it could be as long as a day or two before anyone even realizes he's not in that backroom anymore. Not that Nathan needs that long. He only needs a few hours, probably, if that, but some engrained sense of caution has him parking the Bronco deep in a wooded clearing and then hiking the mile to the Gray Gull.

The steps up to Audrey's apartment are so familiar it takes him back to all the other times he's trodden these steps on his way to see Parker, accompanied by the scuff of his treads against weathered wood and the beating of his pulse (of hope he couldn't acknowledged) in his ears.

Countless times coming to pick her up, their friendship new and exciting and everything to him. The Christmas party in July, when he walked up to what he thought would be a quiet meeting and found a room full of people who didn't shrink away from his presence. Coming with the papers on the Hunter Meteor Storm in his hands that fell to scatter across the deck when he found her door open and her apartment a mess and herself missing. Spending the night when he got her back, watching her from across her apartment, steady and sure to counter the nightmares that jolted her awake over and over again. Pancakes in the morning and smiles between them, arguments and miscommunication, crossed wires that led to him demanding she not give up and her kissing him (kissing him as consolation prize, he thought, to make up for her later absence; now he wonders if maybe that kiss wasn't her own personal goodbye as she chose to give him up for the greater good). Another night spent here, his blood in her bathroom, her bandages over the tattoo he tried to turn into a scar, her body warm and weighted against his as he counted her breaths to make up for all the years he'd been afraid she would be gone from him. Coming up to get her for a date, the only date they've really gone on in all this time, Nathan and Lexie, Nathan and Audrey, Nathan and Parker (Parker, who continually gives him up because she has been conditioned and programmed to believe that saving people means self-sacrifice and freeing them from her presence).

Light pours out from the glass door, the sheer curtains lending it a softer ambience against the moonlit darkness. The susurration of the surf, the clatter of whoever's cleaning up the closed bar, it blends into the hesitant piano notes spilling out from Audrey's apartment (Lucy peeking out from Lexie's façade and Audrey's eyes, and Nathan wonders if he's a terrible person for wishing for just a hint of Sarah, the one iteration who actually chose him, to also show herself).

Nathan takes a deep breath (feels his rage stir and resettle inside him, mixed and mingled and remade with the shards of hope and the beginnings of cold resignation), and then raps his knuckles firmly against the wood framing of the door.

The piano falls silent.

The door opens.

"I love you," he tells her (the truth he's never spoken, the one thing he's kept back from her because he thought it was what she wanted). "So by your logic, that means you going into the Barn was my decision—one you took away from me."

"Nathan." She's exasperated (afraid), trying to ask him why he's there (as if he's the ambiguous one), if anyone followed him. Nathan's not listening (she's had her chance to talk and she used it to tell lies; now it's his turn and he can only counter by telling truth).

"Which means," he says over her, "that you owe me this choice. At least a say in it. After everything, you owe me that."

It's strange. He can hear his own breathing, ragged and heavy, as if he's done more than just put to words what's been boiling inside him since she told him her time was limited and that was that (since she gave up the way the Barn programmed her to).

"I'm not killing you," Audrey says after a long moment. Her shoulders sag. "I can't."

And it's Audrey, here in front of him, Audrey as she hasn't let him see (all her facades stripped away). Tired and small and wrung out and exhausted, desperate and panicked and frantic. She's been lying to him for a long time (lying to them both), but it has cost her in ways she never really let him see until now. (He cannot help but wonder if he's been similarly exposed before her with his own released truth, his scars raw and pulsing under her tentative gaze.)

Carefully, Nathan eases into the apartment until the door is closed behind them and they're both sitting on the couch, a foot of distance between them (for all he understands her now, his anger is still too close to the surface for him to risk being any closer).

"I'm sorry," he offers. "I know this isn't an easy thing to ask of you—"

"Do you?" she interrupts, her eyes flashing above the dark hollows staining her cheekbones. "You have no idea what it's like to stand over your body, Nathan. To know I could have prevented it. To know it's my fault—"

"I have no idea?" he asks incredulously. "Do you even hear yourself? You have no idea, Audrey, okay? For months I thought I was responsible for your death! I know I'm responsible for James', for Howard's, for thirty-five people who died because of me, because I couldn't let you go! You…" The words halt, stuck in his throat behind something he can't feel.

Audrey's there, suddenly, standing in front of him (when did he move from the couch?), her hands on his arms (safely over his sleeves so he only feels a distant sort of pressure, like thunder for lightning lost to the distance).

"You were dead," he whispers. "The Barn fractured into a million pieces and you were just gone. The sky was on fire and everywhere I looked there was blood. I couldn't get away from the screams. And every day, it got worse. Every day, I saw just how much my selfishness cost everyone. Duke came back. You…you're here. But James? All those innocent people caught in my crossfire? I can never make up for that. But maybe…"

"Nathan." Her voice is soft, soothing, and the look in her eyes is knowing. She knows, somehow, understands in some way his pain (though how can she, he wonders, when she has always been and always will be a savior, not a destroyer like him). "Shh, I'm here, Nathan. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

And even though this isn't what he came for (isn't even something he'd considered or imagined), Nathan feels himself crumpling. From the inside working its way out (like cracks in the ground opening up into chasms), he finally stumbles and falters under the weight of guilt and pain and grief he's been carrying for over half a year. And he feels every second of it, the shaking in his hands as he clasps Audrey's, the heat of tears on his cheeks as she presses her face to his, the shattering of his heart as he finally sees her heart laid bare and open in her eyes.

She loves him, and he's asking her to kill him (his blood on her hands, his body in her arms, his grave stamped over her future).

She loves him despite everything he's taken from her and cost her (James).

She loves him and this is all they will ever have (a possibility, a potential cut short).

"I'm sorry," he whispers into her ear. "I know this is the hardest thing I could possibly ask of you. I know how much it will hurt you. But…" He breathes her in, lilies and lilac and the powdery scent of her heavy makeup. She loves him and she chooses him, has chosen him over the town (chose him in that Barn, with their son in her arms and the truth in her ears, with the fate of the Troubles only a gunshot away, and she chose to give up everything, over and over and over again, so he could live; and now he asks her to throw it away because he cannot bear to live with the alternative) in a way no one else has ever done for him before.

And he's selfish, so selfish, because he wants this. He's always wanted it, really, but has rarely let himself really think on it. But now, with her in his arms and their future so short, now he wants.

And he cannot have it. He cannot keep this.

This was never meant for him.

"Duke had to kill his brother," he makes himself say. "And now he has the blood of someone he loved on his hands, and that's on me. And Jack and Aidan have to worry about their son and nephew. And Carrie's Trouble will come back one day. And that's on me, too, too. On us. Because we could end the Troubles once and for all with just one single life voluntarily given."

"One death," she says in a choked voice. And she's holding onto him, her hands in his hair, stroking down along either side of his jaw. "You'd be dead, Nathan, and this time, it'd be forever. No Troubles to bring you back. No Barn to give you a redo. You'd be gone forever and I'd be left here all alone, and it'd be all my fault."

"No. No, Parker, this has nothing to do with fault or with death. Don't you see? This is how I make up for my mistakes. This is how I prove the Guard wrong. This is how we save Duke from the Crocker curse and free Dwight from that vest and ease the Teagues' burden. This is how I can save instead of destroy. How I can finally be your ally instead of your opponent." Her hair is like silk against his fingers, her warmth reminding him of what it is to be cold, and contradictorily, what it is to be warmed and comforted, to be held close and cherished. "And the fact that this will work…that it's you giving me this chance…that you love me… That's the greatest gift of all. If you think about it…this is the most loving thing we could possibly do—how many other couples just as in love as us will we be able to give a chance? A chance to be happy. A chance to be together—"

"A chance we'll never get." Audrey tilts her head up, close, so close that her breath stutters over his lips and her tears are caught against his skin, so close he almost thinks he can feel the patter of her breaking heartbeat even through the barriers between them. "And I do love you, Nathan. I think I've loved you since you first pulled me out of my car and acted like it was no big deal." Her lips graze his, a spark of lightning that illuminates him, sets him ablaze. "Or maybe since you brought me coffee and gave me rides and made me laugh." Her lips trace his face, a touch as purposeful and intense as it is astounding. "Or since you opened your home to me to catch a killer and watched old sci-fi shows with me as if you weren't afraid." This kiss is longer, her lips parting ad catching his, leaving him reeling, gasping for air as he holds onto her hips to keep from stumbling. "Or maybe it was all of it, the way you accepted everything—that old article, Lucy, the Troubles, the Rev, Sarah, the Barn—all of it. I have no idea who I am or what I am, but you—"

"You're Parker." This time, finally, he's brave enough to lean forward and chase this kiss. "I don't care who or what or how." She doesn't run, doesn't shut him out. Instead, she wraps her arms around his neck (he remembers another hug, terror at her kidnapping giving way to blinding relief as she ran for him and leaped toward him, trusted him to catch her). "You're Parker. And I love you."

For a breathless instant, she draws back just far enough to look at him. One finger draws a line down the side of his face, giving shape to the confines of his physical form (and here is his glimpse of Sarah, a flash of her playful side, so drawn to him, so free with him, reaching out and inviting him close). The touch is tiny, nearly infinitesimal, but it seems to free him from his limitations so that he feels as if he could fly and feel and live.

"Nathan," she names him (chooses him) and this kiss is so deep, so hungry, that Nathan knows there's no going back from this. No pretending it away. No ignoring it and letting Haven push them apart yet again. Her lips slide over and between his, sucking and tasting and pulling, and her hands are in so many places he's overwhelmed. On his face, around his neck, down his stomach, and then under his shirt, sliding up until her palm is pressed over his pounding heart and Nathan is abruptly frozen.

He wants this. He is dizzy with wanting, hungry with desire, delirious with greed.

But.

"Parker," he tries to say, tries to move away (they are mirror reflections, each one moving forward only when the other draws back, always connected but never quite connecting). "We shouldn't—we can't—"

"Please." There is something broken in her voice, small and pleading in a way he never realized Parker could be. But there's also something strong and certain, there, as if she's made her choice, in a terrible situation, maybe, but still a choice she knowingly makes. "I just… Just for one night…can't we just be this? I want this, Nathan. I want you." Her mouth is hot and wet, her touch so gentle he strains toward it. "I choose this."

"And then we save Haven?" he asks, though his hands are tight on her hips to keep her from stepping away now that he's stepping forward, closer, tighter, his breath panting between them.

Audrey squeezes her eyes shut (he can only imagine all the lives she's seeing, broken and cut short, playing there in the darkness to lend her determination). "Yes," she whimpers.

And then her eyes flash open and her arms twine around him, pulling him in, running through his hair, mapping the lines of his wakening body. "But tomorrow. Tonight, I want a memory I can hold onto. I want something to remember. Something they can't steal from me. I want you, for as long as I can have you."

"You've had me since the beginning," he murmurs against lilac-scented skin, and then the last of the barriers between them come toppling down.

She's light in his arms as he sweeps her up, warm against him as he sets her down on something solid, eager and questing and so soft, so gentle, so everything he's ever wanted that Nathan is lost in her.

One night, he thinks. This night is theirs. Tomorrow, they can let Haven (with all its needs and its flaws and its frailties) in. But tonight, it's just them, Audrey and Nathan, Nathan and Parker, and in her arms, his Troubles vanish.

In her arms, he's alive.

A/N: Ahhh, I cannot tell you all how happy I am that we've finally made it to this moment. This is actually one of my favorite chapters, all the more so because it's taken so long to get here! Anyway, hope you all enjoyed it, and please feel free to drop a review and let me know what you think of it - and if you were as close to thinking it would never happen as I was!