The Substance of Things Hoped For

Summary: Audrey and Nathan become stranded in the middle of nowhere while in pursuit of a suspect. And there's snow. Lots of it. Audrey/Nathan.
Spoilers: Takes place a little after Spiral, so please expect spoilers for the season one finale.
Note: Look, a plot! This hasn't quite turned out to be a casefile fic that I was aiming for, but here it is anyway, finally rescued from the WiP folder, so yay!

Audrey opens her eyes to find herself surrounded by rocks and pine trees. Snow is literally everywhere - over the trees, over the ground, over her - and it seeps into her jacket and trousers, melting against her skin on contact. Silvery stars are scattered across the night sky. The chilly air cuts into her lungs.

She takes in a few more slow, laborious breaths while fighting a dizzying sense of displacement. She's pretty sure just seconds ago she was running across an empty warehouse through pillars of wooden crates and chasing after Craig Peterson, the murder suspect she and Nathan have been tracking down for days.

Nathan.

She almost slips over a pile of snow, but she puts a hand on the trunk of a nearby tree and manages to get onto her feet.

"Nathan?"

Her lone voice echoes in the dark, unfamiliar forest.

She grabs for her cell in her pocket, but - of course, no signal.

"Nathan!"

Nothing.

The ensuing silence prompts her into action. She finds her flashlight, thankfully still intact, covered in the bed of snow at her feet. She dropped her gun when she tackled Peterson onto the cement floor, but her backup is still in her holster.

She turns on the flashlight, though there is little need for that extra light. Even in the dark, she can still make out the dense growth of trees around her. Snow, frozen and crystallized, glitters quietly, reflecting the moonlight and providing enough light to guide her way.

She forces herself to move faster as she scans for a sign of life between the still trees. Nothing moves. Nothing is heard, either, except for the sound of her feet treading on the snow and the whispers of the wind shaking down the branches. She sets a search grid in her mind and keeps to her track. She is here, wherever here is, so Nathan has to be here, somewhere in this forest.

Along with Craig Peterson.

She still remembers the sound of the gunshot that shattered through the hollow space of the warehouse just seconds before she ended up wrestling Peterson for the gun in his grip. Peterson hasn't been aiming at her. That leaves only one other guess as to who Peterson has been aiming at before a whirl - shimmery, ephemeral and definitely of Haven-variety strangeness - began to form in front of them. When the portal engulfed Nathan along with Peterson, she hurtled herself into the shimmering portal before it faded into the ether.

And here she is. She watches the snowflakes spiraling downward and holds onto her tenuous grip on her emotions so that worry won't easily give way to fear. She will find Nathan. Everything else - like figuring out where they are and how they can go back - can happen later.

In the end, she doesn't have to go far.

She pauses on her track when a shadow behind an upturned tree begins to look more or less like a shape of a person. "Nathan?" she calls out tentatively, turning the flashlight toward the shadow and reaching for the backup gun with her other hand.

The beam of light lands on one edge of a familiar flannel shirt.

Then she is off running, no thoughts or breaths in her until she's finally at her partner's side. Nathan is slanted against the trunk of a pine tree, unmoving and eyes shut. He's either unconscious, or -

She drops the flashlight and her gun and shakes him with her both hands. "Nathan, Nathan! God, please be okay, please be okay –"

She starts to breathe again only when he opens his eyes. It takes a moment for recognition to sink into the familiar blue eyes, but when it does, she sees her own relief reflected back in his. "Hey, Parker."

He sounds as rough as he looks, but she hasn't heard anything that made her this happy this quickly as long as she can remember. "Mornin', sleepy-head. Thanks for scaring the hell out of me."

Her grin is met with a tiny quirk of his lips, which is pretty much the Wuornos version of the same. "Glad to see you, too," Nathan croaks. He slowly comes to, blinking as he registers their bewildering surroundings. "Are we, ah, really in the middle of a snowed-in forest?"

"Unfortunately."

"Okay." Nathan is already moving on to better and bigger things. For a member of Haven PD, this level of strangeness is par for the course. "Peterson?"

She shakes her head. "I woke up a few yards away and found you here, but didn't see him anywhere." She helps Nathan pull himself up against the tree. "What about you? Are you okay? Did he get you with that last shot?"

Nathan takes on the onslaught of her questions with practiced ease. "Yes, I'm fine, and no, he didn't. You?"

She's about to say something along the line of, Well, my butt's freezing, but other than that -, when the evidence that directly bellies Nathan's reassuring words catches her eyes. "No, Nathan, you're most definitely not fine." She reaches out to hold up his left sleeve that's torn at the side.

When he rolls up his sleeve, it reveals an ugly cut on his lower arm, a dark bruise forming over a bony protrusion. He stares at it without much feeling - except maybe curiosity. "Must've happened when he pushed me," he observes clinically. "I broke the fall with this arm."

When he tries to move his left wrist, it falls limply at his side. Like a marionette, she thinks. God. She pulls off the scarf around her neck.

"Audrey, I'm -"

She bunches up the scarf like a mace in her grip. "If you tell me you're fine one more time, Nathan, I swear I can and will inflict pain on you."

The look on Nathan's face falls somewhere halfway between amused and puzzled. "You're mad."

She huffs; in the cold air, the breath comes out white and smoggy. "I wouldn't be if you don't continue to hurt yourself one way or another."

"I don't exactly set out to do this to myself, you know."

"You don't particularly try to avoid it, either."

"Pot. Kettle. Hello." His voice is mild, but his eyes are laughing.

Yeah, all right, so she knows when she's being irrational. And all this says more about her than anything about him, so the sooner she admits that to herself, the better. "This needs to be looked after," she tells him sternly. "Don't argue."

"Wasn't about to."

"Don't lie, either."

He opens his mouth, possibly about to do both, but pauses midway and obediently shuts up.

"Smart move, Wuornos." She cleans the cut as best as she can using a handful of melted snow and puts together a makeshift sling with her scarf. She tucks his hand into the sling, making sure that his hand is wrapped and kept as warm as possible.

Nathan is quiet, as he always is when he's feeling her touch.

"There," she says, forcing a light tone into her voice. "Good as new."

"Thanks." He rewards her with a small, grateful smile before he carefully tests the sling.

"Does it -" she begins, but stops in time. No, of course it doesn't hurt. He doesn't hurt. And yet he does. It always seems that her partner always feels more, feels more deeply, because he can't.

"I really am fine, Audrey." He sounds far more assured than he should've been able to at his state.

Before she can argue otherwise and renew her threat of pain, he takes a sweeping look at the forest. "Since it's still only midnight" - he checks his cell, and of course, no signal for him, either - "I don't suppose he had the time to knock us both out, drive out, and dump us here."

He's either suddenly remembering, or trying to take her mind off his injury. Or both. It's not an entirely bad tactic, she thinks, and now that she knows that Nathan is safe, they need to try and figure this out together.

"So, then," Nathan starts, rather resignedly, "it has to have been that portal...thing back at the warehouse. Peterson can somehow teleport himself." For his credit, he doesn't sound as dismayed as she feels.

"I guess now we know how he managed to escape capture, twice. Because, really, a garden-variety serial killer would've been just too easy." Audrey takes another look around - there is nothing familiar about the landmark, not that she can see anything else except the trees. "Which leaves us with - where do you think we are? Iceland? Nunavut? Narnia?"

Nathan reaches over to her and turns off her flashlight before glancing up at the sky. "I think we're still in Maine. Somewhere near the mountains, probably."

"And you know this how?"

"If we were in, I don't know, the Northwest Territories, we'd probably be seeing different star constellations. Unless time-travel or world-hopping was involved, in which case, your guess is as good as - well, better than - mine."

Her eyebrow moves upward on its own volition. "So there has been some stargazing on the roof with the Rev's daughter."

"Well," he looks sideways at her, "along with some other activities."

"Why, Wuornos, which stargazing activities could you possibly be referring to?" He question manages to bring a flush to his face, so she counts it as a success. She thinks for a moment. "White Mountain National Forest apparently just had a fresh dump of snow."

He looks at her with a question in his eyes.

"Couldn't sleep last night." She shrugs. "Did a Weather Channel marathon." She doesn't really want to discuss what's bothering her, though she suspects he already knows. She isn't who she's always thought she was. That's a pretty damned good reason for insomnia, as far as she's concerned.

He doesn't press for details; he never does when he knows she's not ready to share. "Let's find a higher ground," he suggests instead. "If we're really in White Mountain, I can probably tell where we are."

Audrey gets up first and helps him onto his feet.

"You okay?" he asks as they make their way toward a rocky formation just above the hill. "This must be freezing for you."

She rubs her palms together as she takes brisk steps forward. The cold is more bearable when she is on the move. "I'm fine for now. You'd better be careful too, Nathan. Not feeling the cold doesn't mean you can't get hypothermia."

He stops on his track briefly to take her hand with his free hand. "Your hand is cold," he says, quiet.

She, too, pauses. "Yours isn't."

She welcomes the warmth of his hand, and not just because it brings some feelings back to her hand.

He doesn't freeze at the feel of her touch anymore, but tentativeness is ever-present, this restrained reticence that he seems to impose on himself whenever she's near him. She's not sure whether it's because he's afraid that this sudden blessing he's discovered - being able to feel something, anything again - might be taken away from him at a moment's notice, like so many others things have been.

Or, maybe because he's afraid that a single touch just might not be enough.

Truth be told, she understands both sentiments pretty acutely herself.

"You were right," he says, starting back on the track again with her hand still firmly in his. "Peterson really was troubled - just in more ways than one."

She hasn't wanted to be right. Every time they come across another Troubled person, she hopes to find that one piece of information that would put all of the mysteries together, for the answer that would unravel her past and future. Yet, more often than not they find a Troubled individual as the culprit responsible for many mishaps, some of them pretty much intentional, or for murders, which are definitely intentional.

This line of thoughts is the textbook definition of unconstructive, so she forcefully makes herself focus on the case at hand. "So, if he can actually teleport, or instantly travel through space, or whatever it is that he does, wouldn't this be a strange place for him to be coming to? If you could just instantly go anywhere, why would you choose to end up here of all places? Personally, I would vote for the Bahamas."

There's a short pause as Nathan considers the possible implications. "Maybe this is the only place that portal leads to. Or, it could've been a mistake. Not a lot of the Troubled have a good grip on their powers, at least not right away."

"He managed fine the last two times," she points out. "He must have, right? He did come back and show up in Haven afterward."

"Maybe he dumped us here and went back to Haven by himself."

"Well, there's a happy thought."

"There's still that time travel possibility, if it makes you feel any better."

"Right." She doesn't suppress a groan. "Another thing we want to add to our resume: time travel."

"Or world-hopping." For a moment, there is little sound except the noise of their boots trudging in the snow. "I'm beginning to realize," Nathan muses, "I should've been more invested in the science fiction and fantasy section of the library."

"Ah, but luckily for you, Nathan, I have read -" Audrey suddenly falters, tripping over the use of "I" in this context. It isn't entirely accurate. Yes, Audrey Parker has certainly read a lot of books. It's also Audrey Parker who's been open and susceptible to different possibilities. She isn't Audrey Parker. She doesn't know who she is. She doesn't know if any of her thoughts actually belongs to herself.

When she looks up, her partner is watching her, quiet and as always seeing far too much.

"You've changed things here," he tells her, calm and still. "Most of them for better, and not a single one for worse. No matter what we end up finding out about who you are, you should know that I'm," he breathes out, "grateful for you, to have you here."

He meets her eyes. There's no deceit there, there never has been. And just like that, and just as always, her self-doubt recedes into the background, dimmed and muted.

She doesn't know how to thank him, so she just tightens her grip on his hand.

He doesn't smile, but he doesn't have to, because she can read him just as well anyway.

"Here we are," he says, his eyes still on her and nodding at the direction of a wide clearing in front of them.

There's a giant rock forming a natural ledge that is high enough to afford a great view of their surroundings. They hike over it together, and she thanks whatever high power there is in the world when she sees that there are glittering spots of light not too far below from where they are.

Nathan leans over and points at a group of flickering lights just below the hill. "That should be southwest." He considers for a second. "I think that could be Bethel. Couldn't be more than a couple of miles."

"A couple of miles? Are you sure?"

"Nope."

"Okay, then." She almost grins. "Lead the way, Nathan."

Together, they make their way into the stillness of the night. The snow, particularized by the moonlight, renders everything brighter than one would ever expect or imagine. It's almost breathtaking, the way everything around her is vivid, untainted white, which something she doesn't get to see often.

And that just may be the only consolation, because their way down is curved in downward slope, which makes it even more difficult to move forward. Nathan doesn't show any noticeable trouble with walking, but with his one arm broken, she can see his balance isn't exactly in the best condition. Her boots aren't made for trudging around in heavy snow for a long period of time, either, and the air up here feels thin, which is slowly taking a toll on her breathing.

Two miles. She tries not to rattle her teeth. Okay, she can do two miles, even if it's so cold that her skin seems almost insensate.

Okay, not a great choice of word.

"All right," she kicks at some random snow, not minding that she's acting like an overtly grumpy teenager, "from now on, we're carrying a supply belt packed with energy bars, heat pads, and other survival gears whenever we're chasing after a suspect."

"Guess it could come in handy." Nathan helps her over a particularly slippery rock covered in - what else? - snow. "We can bring up the idea at the next departmental meeting."

Even Nathan's deadpan humor fails to improve her mood. She sighs and kneads arms with her hands once they make some more headway into the slippery path. "I'm sorry, Nathan."

He raises an eyebrow at her. "For?"

"We should've waited for the backup."

"You had a point, Audrey. If we had waited, we wouldn't have caught up with Peterson."

Sometimes she wishes her partner is actually more begrudging about things, so she could feel a little less guilty about getting them into trouble. "And we wouldn't be out here in this lovely weather freezing our asses out, either. It was a rather idiotic move, barging into the warehouse not knowing exactly what he's capable of."

"It was rather," he readily agrees. "Then again, he seems to have been intending to shoot me on sight anyway, so I appreciate your intervention. Just, try not to do that too much."

"As long as you try not to get shot at too much."

"Never going to let that one go, are you?"

"You know me very, very well, Nathan."

He must be able to see how deflated she feels even through her joking tone, because he bumps his shoulder with hers. "While we're in Bethel, we can always check out the largest snowman in the world," he suggests cheerfully.

She looks over at him. "Bethel has the largest snowman in the world?"

"Mm-hmm. On the record, for several years."

"Okay." She sounds rather dubious even to her own ears. "How come it doesn't, you know, melt?"

"Yet another mystery to solve for you."

"Hey, maybe it's a Yeti." And maybe she's a tad bit too gleeful about the possibility, but at least free speculations keep her mind off the cold. "Or, maybe it'll turn into a Sasquatch before spring and terrorize the people of Bethel. Or, there's always Jack Frost. You know what? We should definitely check it out when we get to the town."

"I don't think you should kill the unsuspecting snowman just to be sure it isn't a Yeti, Parker."

Nathan is giving her a serious look of mock disapproval, and she laughs. She thinks he's about to lose the fight and actually crack a grin himself, just before he freezes on his track.

Nathan places his hand over her flashlight. "Hold on."

They're nearing a river bank crusted with ice and rocks, and Nathan turns around on the small pathway they have been navigating around the last few minutes. She follows suit and takes a quick look around. She can only see trees and their shadows over the snow under the moon.

She leans closer and whispers, "What is it?"

For a long moment, there's nothing but the sound of their breathing. "Thought I heard something." Nathan's eyes remain on the darkness behind them for another moment. Then he shakes his head. "Probably just wind. Let's go."

She takes a few gingerly steps, more carefully lighting their path now. On the edge of her periphery, she catches something like black stain over a patch of snow. She turns her flashlight over it. Red blots are stark against the white.

Blood.

She whirls around, just as the realization hits. "Wait, Na-"

Nathan, a few steps ahead of her, turns at the sound of her voice, so he doesn't see it when an arm stretches out from behind the trees and hooks around his neck. Nathan loses his balance and falls backward, just as the other arm comes up to choke him.

Her breath catches even as her hand reaches for the gun in the holster. "Nathan!"

It's Peterson, she realizes, who has Nathan in a tight grip around his throat. Nathan digs his elbow into the man's chest and grapples for leverage, but Peterson doesn't budge an inch.

Still, Nathan stops struggling only when a barrel of a gun is pressed against his temple.

It's due to sheer willpower that the grip on her gun, now aimed at Peterson, remains steady.

Peterson is a large man, taller than Nathan, but there's something inherently threatening about this man more than just his size - like the crazed recklessness in his eyes and the unsettling twitches of his hands. He's shed his jacket at one point and is only in his sleeveless shirt, but he doesn't seem to feel the cold. There's a familiar, tell-tale blue tattoo engraved over his forearm, and blood is dripping from his hand holding a gun to Nathan's head.

Peterson gives her a wide and terrible grin. "This feels familiar, doesn't it?"

Nathan struggles to his feet, but even with a gun to his head and an arm around his neck, he looks calm and unafraid, if a little tense. She wishes she shares his calm. Every time Peterson presses the gun a little closer into Nathan's temple, she feels each move like a laceration across her chest.

The cold she feels now has nothing to do with temperature.

"Let him go," she tells Peterson, "or you're dead." She can't meet Nathan's eyes, and she can't bring herself to be surprised at the chill in her own voice, or at the fact that she means it.

Peterson's hand stills over his revolver. "You wouldn't."

Wordlessly, she clicks off the safety of her own Glock. The sound echoes and disturbs the silence of the forest.

Peterson stares back at her with a look of genuine confusion. "Why, why, why would you try to stop me from doing what's necessary?"

"Necessary?" she blurts out, angrily and unthinkingly.

Nathan shakes his head, very slightly so that it goes unnoticed by Peterson, and Audrey bites down her lips and restrains from retorting.

"Why was it necessarily to kill Andy Larson and Joan Turner?" Nathan asks Peterson, his tone carefully conciliatory. "What did they do?"

He's trying to keep Peterson talking, and it works. Peterson turns to Nathan, as if he's momentarily forgotten about the man he's been holding hostage. "They wanted to help me. Make me better, they said, but all they wanted to do was stop me."

"So you killed them." She tries her best to keep any hint of emotion out of her voice.

"I didn't want to, all right?" Peterson huffs in frustration, like it's Audrey who is lacking the common sense. "But they were in the way, and they had to be removed." He nods at Nathan. "Just like you need to be - you're in the way."

It hasn't been a coincident, Audrey realizes suddenly. Back in the warehouse, it wasn't a coincident that Peterson was waiting for them. He's wanted Nathan dead.

Almost imperceptibly, she tightens the grip on her gun. Her chest tightens along with it.

If Nathan understood what Peterson meant, he doesn't show it. "In the way for what?" His voice is almost mostly steady.

"For the end. The end of all this."

There's a shiver travelling down her spine at the granite certainty in his tone, that inexplicable surety that defies all logic or reason.

"Look, we really don't know what you're talking about," Nathan continues, cautious and non-threatening, "so why don't you just take some time to explain it to us? Help us understand?"

For a moment, Peterson appears to consider Nathan's suggestion. His disconcerting eyes shift to Audrey. "You see? Her? She's supposed to make all this go away. She's supposed to help us get better, help us become normal again."

She shakes her head. "I won't help you, not if you hurt my partner."

"You think you have any choice in that? You have to - that's why you're here! To make all of this go away and turn us back to normal! Why can't you see that? We are all running out of time!"

Peterson is trembling uncontrollably, fine tremors seemingly tiding in and out throughout his body. His hand over the gun and his arm around Nathan's neck are shuddering and quivering, and this - this can't go on. She shares a quick look with Nathan, who nods back grimly in understanding.

"Look, okay, you're right," she spreads her hands, slowly taking her fingers off the trigger, "I will help anyone who needs help, but I don't know how. Why don't you help me find it? Why don't you teach me how, so that I can help?"

Peterson relaxes a tiny bit, but he's still taut like a bowstring. "Then you'll do what you're supposed to do?"

"Yes, of course I will. I will, so just, please, just let my partner go."

"But don't you see?" Peterson cries out suddenly, wildly gesticulating and illustrating his frustration. "He's in the way. You won't help, not with him in the way. He won't let you sacrifice yourself."

He's swinging his arms like giant, heavyset pendulums, and she feels it the second Nathan sees his chance, just when Peterson's gun wavers away from Nathan's head.

Nathan twists out of the death grip, and she dives forward, reaching for the gun in Peterson's grip.

She doesn't have time to wonder at this déjà vu, because the moment she jerks the gun out of Peterson's hand, a sudden, violent convulsion overtakes his body.

For a second, she's shocked into stillness. But once she sees Peterson is seizing and coughing blood, she drops to her knees and puts her hand on his chest, trying to contain the seizure. Nathan is immediately at her side, and they both try, ineffectually, to stop Peterson from hitting his head against the frozen ground.

"Audrey," Nathan says in a low, urgent voice, when the shaking seems to die down.

Then she sees it, too. A white whirlwind is forming right behind them, weakly blinking in and out of the existence. She takes a step back; so does Nathan. It grows larger, edging out and blurring out the shapes of everything else around them.

She hears a strained groan, so she turns back to Peterson, whose eyes are now open and focused intently on the portal. His arms and legs are twitching with effort. There's blood trickling down from his nose and from between his lips.

"Peterson, Craig, you need to stop! You can't -"

Abruptly, Peterson utters a short, horrified, "No."

The portal flickers once. Twice. And then dissipates altogether.

There is a sudden, unnatural absence of any sound.

For a second, no one moves.

So, Peterson's eventual hysterical laughter startles both her and Nathan.

"It's too late," he whispers, torn between laughter and tears, "everything's too damned late."

Somehow, this resignation is more unsettling than the mad rage she's seen in him before. She tries not to shiver. "Craig, I may still be able to help, if you let me."

Peterson isn't listening anymore. "You don't know what you and your accursed kind would bring," he says, between one sobbing breath and another, a hand clutching at his chest, "because the war is already upon us. It's over. It's all over."

Then he topples over, like a string holding him together has just snapped.

She gasps, "No -"

Nathan reaches for him, but it's too late. Peterson lies flat in the snow, motionless.

Nathan checks for the pulse and shuts his eyes briefly before looking up. He doesn't need to tell her anything, because his stricken expression says it all: Peterson is dead.

She takes a long, raspy breath and runs down a hand over her face.

"Why?" she asks, though no answer is expected. "Why would he -"

She can't finish her question, and Nathan doesn't expect her to. He's frozen over the body, his head hanging between his shoulders.

She sinks on a nearby rock and watches Peterson's blood seeping into the snow and dyeing it red.

For a long moment, there's only bitter chill.

The war is already upon us. It's over. It's all over.

She shivers again. Nathan notices.

"You're shaking." He comes to her side and sits down. "Come on."

He puts an arm around her shoulder and rubs his hand down her arm to pass on whatever heat he can spare.

"There's nothing we can do for him now." He's shaking too, she thinks, but his voice is quiet and determined, and just the sound of him calms her down. "We'll come back for him."

She runs her hands down her face again. Breathes in. Out.

Get yourself together, Audrey, she tells herself. This isn't the first time the bottom fell out on you. In fact, you should be used to this by now.

"You almost managed to get yourself shot, Nathan, again." She's meant to say it teasingly, but it comes out more plaintively, betraying the emotions in her voice. She tries again, "You really should do something about that. I might not be around to watch your back all the time, you know."

Nathan is watching her closely. "You planning to go somewhere?" he asks mildly.

She looks away.

After she's found out she is Lucy Ripley but isn't, after she's found out she is Audrey Parker but isn't, she's spent all her waking and sometimes not-so-awake moments trying to figure out what this all means, if there was even a meaning to her existence.

When you have to question your own existence, there is little meaning to be found.

She's not fooling anyone, not Nathan, and definitely not herself.

"I already looked, Nathan," she confesses. "There's no trace of Lucy Ripley left anywhere. She's just vanished back when, along with the Troubles. And I don't remember - I don't remember anything at all about being Lucy. Do you know what that tells me? It tells me that this me, this me as Audrey Parker, will also be just gone, vanish, just like Lucy, once the Troubles are over."

He knows what she means. She knows he must have thought of this possibility even before it's been stirred into surface by Peterson, but Nathan shakes his head. "That's not going to happen."

He doesn't know that, he can't know that, but that isn't the point. "Don't you want this back?" She reaches for his hand. She knows all of his habits and gestures, and she knows the way he unconsciously leans into her touch like it's the only well left after a hundred years of drought. "This, all of this, back, so you can feel again?"

"More than anything," he says. "But not if the consequence is losing you."

He speaks so simply, so resolute in his honest conviction, and she wants to believe it, wants to believe him.

They both know what they're not saying to each other.

He won't let you sacrifice yourself.

Peterson doesn't have to spell it out for her. She's always known that. She's known that better than anyone else.

"It might not be up to you, Nathan."

The words are still caught her in chest even after she's said them out loud.

"Audrey -" Nathan rubs at his neck, more of a habitual gesture than anything else. He looks tired and drained. "We won't, we can't, let that happen. That's all there is to it."

"If what Peterson said is true -"

"What if it is? What if it isn't? If he knew anything, he's not going to be able to tell us now."

She shakes her head. That's not good enough. "There might be others who also know what all of this means."

"Yes, there might. Audrey," he says, and then hesitates. His eyes are on his hands, not on her eyes, and somehow she knows this is not going to be something she wants to hear. "If Peterson is right, it also means that I'm in the way of ending all this, and that some of the Troubled will think -"

"No," she cuts him off. She knows where this is headed, and no, she's not going to let him go there. "That's not going to happen. Not to you. They won't touch you. I won't let them."

She hears the echoes his words in hers, but she doesn't wince at her hypocrisy, because it's the truth. She won't let them hurt him. She won't let them take him from her. She won't.

He gives her a small, rueful smile. "It might not be up to you."

Her own words are still caught in her chest, and his smile breaks her heart.

To her, everyone and everything in and out of Haven - Duke, Julia, everyone - are drawn in haze, shrouded in memories that she can never be sure of. But there's Nathan. There's always Nathan, the only exception. He's the only certainty in her life now, this stable, unshakeable presence at her side. She is, possibly for the first time, made to understand what it means to have that certainty in her life where nothing else is certain.

She won't lose him, whatever the circumstances or consequences.

That is the only other thing that she can be certain of.

He reads whatever emotions she must be leaving behind in her expressions. "Hey," he says gently, and bumps their knees together. "We'll figure it out. We always do. Meanwhile, we should find our way down before you turn into one giant icicle. We can continue this very conversation where it's somewhat warmer, possibly with some blankets, and maybe even hot chocolate."

Despite the maelstrom of feelings she's battling at the moment, she smiles. He's right. Of course he is. She studies him for one more moment and squeezes his hand.

"All right," she answers in the same light tone that he's used and stands up, "but you're buying."

He takes her offered hand and pulls himself up, too. But, the next moment, he has to visibly steady himself, his breathing suddenly rough and uneven.

His palm feels sweaty, she notes. "Hey, you okay?"

"Yeah, fine," he says, looking a little dazed. "It's just -"

She barely catches his arm before he collapses onto one knee, the other soon following. And then he just crumbles.

She's instantly at his side. "Nathan, what -" Panic is painfully clenching her chest all over again. "What is it? What's wrong?"

He is looking up at her, seemingly as disoriented and perplexed as she is. "Nothing," he breathes out uneasily, "I'm fine. I think I just lost my footings."

That's really not it, she thinks, still half submerged in blind panic. His face, up close, looks flushed. She puts her hand over his forehead and on his cheek. They're warm, and her heart sinks. "You have fever."

"Fever," he repeats, rather wonderingly. "I don't get fever."

"You idiot," she says, with feeling. "You can still catch a common cold, just like the rest of us." Or, his wound could've been infected. Or, maybe it's the plain old hypothermia in action. Or, Peterson has inflicted some serious damage that Nathan hasn't noticed. The details don't really matter. What matters is that he isn't well, but he can't feel it enough to tell exactly how sick he is.

She's not sure who she's actually mad at – Peterson, for bringing them here in the first place, for trying to kill Nathan; Nathan, for being so careless with himself; or herself, for not noticing earlier.

She can feel his ragged breathing against her hand. The blame game can start later. "Hold on. Hold on, Nathan. We're going to get out of here."

She grits her teeth and hauls him up. He's wobbly on his feet, but eventually they find some semblance of balance between two of them, with her one arm around his waist and his good arm around her shoulder.

Making their way down wasn't easy before, and it most definitely is worse this time around. She thinks she has a pretty good height on most women, but Nathan is tall, and with every passing step, he seems to be growing weaker.

"We didn't survive Peterson just so you can get sick on me, okay?" She injects cheer into her voice even as she strains to move their steps forward. She thinks she's seeing a flickering light somewhere between the trees across from a large growth of trees they are passing by, but then it's also possible that she's actually seeing things. "We'll get through this, trust me. Just hold on."

"I believe you," he says, sounding alarmingly faint. "Really."

She needs to keep him thinking, talking. "By the way, I think you just told me, yet again, that you were fine, when you were distinctly not. Remember what I told you before?"

There's a weak smile on his face, but it's better than nothing. "There will be inflicting of pain, then?"

"Oh, yes, just you wait."

Just then, she catches a trickle of light, moving in a dotted line and snaking in and out between the trees. She hopes desperately it's what she thinks it is.

Then, she hears the sound that confirms that unlikely hope.

She leaves Nathan leaning against a tree and runs and runs until she's almost rolling downhill. She's practically sliding by the time she hits the dirt road set between the trees.

A spot of light is coming closer and closer.

She jumps into the middle of the road, frantically waving her flashlight.

"Hey, hey! Here! Help!"

There's one particularly thrilling second when she thinks the truck is going to hit her dead, but it comes to a screeching halt a few feet from her.

The driver rolls down the window and blinks at her, like he's just been jostled awake. "Uh, you need a ride?"

"God, yes. We've been stranded for hours, and my friend's been badly hurt. We have to get to the nearest hospital."

She says all of this in one breath, which seems to be enough to convince him to help her pull Nathan into the truck. Once they settle into the backseat of the truck, the driver even secures some warm, dry blankets for them to use.

"Bethel is pretty close," he says kindly. "There should be a doctor who can help your friend."

She thanks him and wraps the blankets around Nathan tightly. The truck is almost uncomfortably warm, and some feelings are returning to her arms and legs, but Nathan's shivering badly and almost unaware that he's doing it.

Still, she can breathe a little easier now. "Get some rest," she nudges him. "We'll get to a doctor soon."

"Go easy on me later," he murmurs, his eyes closed.

The tight knot in her chest loosens. It doesn't completely dissolve, but it's whittled down into a manageable size, one that she can afford to handle later, once Nathan gets better. She puts her arm around him and lets his head fall on her shoulder. "Not a chance, Nathan."

She thinks she sees a smile on his face.

The road unfolding in front of them is rough and bumpy, the tires grinding against every little pebble and skidding on frozen snow. It occurs to her that this is not so unlike what's coming for her, and Nathan.

You don't know what you and your accursed kind would bring.

The war is already upon us.

Maybe it is; maybe it isn't. She will find out soon enough. But if it is, losing is unacceptable. Because there is a hand in hers, and she won't lose it. Everything else, for the first time, ceases to matter.

She waits for Nathan to slip into an uneasy sleep and tightens her grip on his shoulder. "You'll be fine," she murmurs into his hair. "You're going to be fine, because I'm not going anywhere."

She doesn't let go of his hand. She won't.

Outside, she can see the sun is still a long time coming. Another question answered, several more formed, and while future is still shaped in nothing but mysteries, she's still here, and so is Nathan.

The moon sinks low, and as she watches, the dark slowly gives way to the oncoming dawn.

END

Footnote: The world's biggest snowman does exist in Bethel, Maine, or so I have been told. I doubt, however, it has anything to do with a Yeti.