Spoiler Warning: Spoilers for all of Haven up through and including the end of S3, although this story does not follow exactly the storyline of S3. I've borrowed some episode dialogue where appropriate. One may also notice references to BSG, Doctor Who, Farscape, the Time Traveler's Wife, Buffy, The West Wing, various Nora Roberts novels, and anything else that's influenced me. The title of this piece comes from a line from John Green's book The Fault In Our Stars. Chapter title comes from the song "I Dare You to Move" by Switchfoot.

Acknowledgements: Haven belongs to SyFy, Sam and Jim, etc. Thanks to all the Havenites on Tumblr and Twitter who continue to give me such great support, as well as all the reviewers here and at AO3. Huge shout out to my dear LadyCallie for betaing everything I've written for the last 13 years - she has been instrumental in shaping and guiding this piece. her encouragement, fine editting and storytelling skills, and support have been invaluable. Also huge thanks to my MamaK, the venerable rutsky, who encouraged me to write this and who has been reading this piece throughout it's development. Finally, HUGE thanks to Kitty Chandler and Adsartha Hammett, whose"Murderboards" blog has been instrumental in my research of this piece. Seriously, if you've never been there, their in depth analyses of the characters, locations, mythology, and episodes of Haven are genius. Also, they get 100% credit for the phrase "Fucking Haven."

Notes: For anyone who saw the picture Emily posted of her new look, I totally called the hair thing when I wrote this chapter back in January.

The woman woke slowly and with a groan. She was nowhere near ready for it to be morning. She felt as though she'd just had the worst, but somehow the deepest sleep of her life. Her body felt weighed-down, like she had been sleeping at the bottom of a pit under heavy sand. At the same time, she felt as though she had hardly slept at all. It was was a feeling half-hangover, half-sleep deprivation, all unpleasant. What time had she gone to bed? What had she been doing last night that she should feel so over-tired, so unrested? Maybe she was coming down with something, she thought. Her stomach felt a little queasy and her mouth was a little dry.

With a yawn, she scrubbed a hand over her face and reluctantly cracked an eye open. Immediately wishing she hadn't, as the room was blindingly bright, she screwed her eyes shut again. Too early, she thought, whatever time it was. Her alarm hadn't woken her, so she knew it was No Way In Hell O'clock - too early to get up. Stretching her body to shake out some of the heaviness, and with the hope of getting better sleep until her alarm forced her to wake up and face the day, she rolled over to settle back to sleep.

Her hand brushed over his bare chest as she rolled and in sleep, his arm automatically came around her. With a contented sigh, she settled her head on his chest and felt his fingers scratch lightly at her scalp as he encouraged her to go back to sleep, even though he was still mostly asleep himself. She threw her right leg across his and let the scent of him, the feel of him, lull her back to sleep. In her ear, his heartbeat sounded, strong and steady and reassuring. His breathing was slow and easy, and she waited for it to help her fall back asleep. She breathed him in, sleep and sweat and fading soap and anti-perspirant. She thought she smelled sawdust and rainwater, and the metallic tang of blood. Wrinkling her nose, she made a note to herself to never again before bed drink...whatever in the hell it was that she'd drunk that had made her feel like hell and imagine he smelled like rain and blood. With a sigh, she held him tighter, tried to burrow more closely to him in a bid to get back to sleep.

At night, she couldn't fall asleep like this; neither of them could. They would try, almost nightly, to settle in wrapped around each other, but inevitably one of them would roll to their side, the other to their back, and they would fall asleep that way. Mornings like this, though, when one of them woke up far too early for human decency, they would tangle themselves up in one another and sleep the always too-short twilight sleep that was inevitably interrupted by an alarm clock.

It's his turn to make the coffee, she thought as she drifted in that place that was neither asleep or awake. His turn to make the coffee and her turn to make dinner, if the day's events got them home at a reasonable hour. Otherwise it was her turn to pick the takeout they would share, or hoard for themselves as they poured over their case notes, clues, leads, evidence. Evidence. Police work. FBI. Haven. The Troubles. The Colorado Kid. JamesTheBarn. RandallFlagg. TheGuardArla. TattoosTheSkinwalker. Clairedead. Eleanordead. Arladead. Eviedead. Garlanddead. StoptheTroublesDoNotFailstopstopstopstop!

With a gasp, she sat up like she'd been shot out of a cannon. "Oh my God!" she exclaimed loudly.

Her cry woke him fully, and he bolted to sitting beside her. "What? What's wrong?" His blue eyes squinted against the light of the room and as he adjusted to the light, he took stock of her.

Her wild blue-green eyes met his and in them he saw shock, and maybe a little bit of fear. Her face was pale, her hair still mussed from sleep. He could see the tiny creases the pillow case had left on her skin while she slept. He shook his head to clear the last of the drowsiness, blinking at the very-bright sunlight that filled the room.

"Who are you?" she demanded, her body rigid, in fight or flight.

His stomach sank. Oh shit. "Nathan," he said slowly, like you were supposed to speak to wounded, terrified, potentially rabid animals. You bastards, he thought. They'd sent him back as he was, but she was repeating the pattern.

"Oh thank God!" she exclaimed, and launched herself into his arms. Nathan found himself surrounded by laughing, weeping, shaking, vibrant woman, and couldn't help but feel as though it had been years since they had seen each other. It probably has been, he thought as he buried his face in her hair and just breathed her in. She smelled clean - lilies and lilacs, oddly enough, vanilla, sawdust and wood smoke. Her hair tickled his nose but he disregarded it. He was here and she was here and they were together and alive and whole, and she knew his name and he knew hers - all of them - and that was the only thing in this world or any other that mattered.

"Audrey?" he asked tentatively, just to be sure, his lips brushing her neck lightly as he spoke.

She pulled back from him slightly, nodding. Her face was flushed with relief and happiness. "We're home," she whispered. "We made it." She ran her fingers over his bare torso, feeling the planes and textures of him, the hardness, the softness. She couldn't quite believe they were really back, that this wasn't another construct of the Barn. She touched his shoulder, where she knew, based on the time she felt had elapsed, there should have been a raw, newly-healing bullet wound. Instead, it was healed, another old scar he would carry for the rest of his life.

"Yeah," he replied with a smile as he moved to kiss her. He could see the myriad of emotions swarming on her face as she tried to process everything that had happened to them. "Welcome back to Haven, Audrey Parker." He brushed his lips over hers, soft and gentle.

For him, she smiled. "Welcome back to Haven, Nathan Wuornos," she replied against his mouth before she returned his kiss, reveling in the familiarity of him, in the comfort of one of the few constants in her life: this man and his devotion, love, friendship, loyalty. One person she could absolutely trust. If anything, it was even truer now than when she'd first uttered those words to him.

They had done as she asked, the women who were herself; Howard, the Barn itself. They had sent her and Nathan back as themselves. They had spoken of rules, but had somehow found a loophole to grant their request. Send me back, whole, with this man, as we are, she'd begged them. And they had.

Gently, Audrey broke the kiss and pulled away from him slightly. Resting her forehead against his, she found that she couldn't stop touching him. She ran her hands idly over his arms, his back; she needed an anchor. She brushed her fingers through his hair and frowned.

"What?" he asked, nuzzling her cheek. He was wrapped up in her, lost in her. Wherever and whenever they were, he wanted to take a few moments to savor her, to savor this. He sent up a silent prayer of thanks to whatever gods were listening, and to the women who had come before the one in his arms, who smelled of sleep and sweat, rain and wind, sawdust and flowers.

"Your hair is longer," she told him, and laughed when he jerked upright and began tugging at it to try to see. "I mean, it's not Duke-long, but it's definitely longer than it was yesterday."

He looked at her. "Your hair is longer too," he said, reaching out to touch it, to show her. "It's halfway down your back."

Audrey glanced awkwardly over her shoulder at the thicker, longer, slightly wavier curtain of blonde. "They couldn't resist sending us back with a few alterations, I guess." She sighed, having a feeling it was Howard messing with them for his own amusement. She scooped a hand through said hair to work out some of the sleep tangles. "I guess we need to figure out how many yesterday's we've missed."

Looking around, they finally took stock in their surroundings. They had been too wrapped up in each other to notice or care where they were, other than somewhere warm and safe. The bedclothes were unfamiliar, but the wrought iron headboard was a familiar sight. One large room with a galley kitchen, an old but comfortable couch, an upright piano and a large stone fireplace; they knew immediately where they were.

"The Gull," Audrey said with a smile.

"It's as good a place as any, I guess," Nathan said, wondering what had happened to his house since they'd been gone, to his father's. He watched as she climbed out of bed and pulled on the robe that had been tossed casually over the footboard. "Your clothes are still here," he observed, vis a vis the robe. "We can't have been gone that long."

"No," she said, moving aside some curtains to peer out the window. "I've never seen this robe before in my life." Besides, she thought, the last time I saw this place it was trashed. She turned to him. "I think this is like our hair. It's part of being sent back."

At his puzzled look, she explained. "I've been thinking about it. The day Howard came to my apartment in Boston, tasked me to come up here - I'm assuming that was my first day out of the Barn. But I had clothes, books, furniture. It may have been a replica of the original Audrey's apartment, but I had clothes to pack and bring up here for that first case."

He climbed out of bed and padded, barefoot across the cold floor to join her at the window, naked but for a pair of flannel pajama pants he'd never seen in his life.

"Whatever else the Barn is," Audrey continued, "It sets me up with what I need when I come out." She squinted in the bright morning light. The cove, the dock, the houses up the street looked the same as when she'd last been here, even if they hadn't even covered with a foot of snow then, as they were now. "Well, it's clearly winter but other than that, I've got nothing. No flying cars or anything."

He grinned at her. "Flying cars?"

"2037," she said, returning the smile. "They've been calling flying cars a sign of the future since I was Sarah."

She started to wobble, her eyes going glassy. Sarah loves to get sodas from the Jerk on Main Street after a particularly long day. Lucy hates seafood, which is a problem in Maine. Anna is a governess to two children, a boy and a girl. Peggy has a single room in a women's boarding house on the corner of Winthrop and Beech. Evelyn works as a cigarette girl in the underground jazz club. Hannah is a school teacher and loves the smell of chalk dust.

Nathan grabbed her arm and she blinked. "New memories," she observed. "Okay, that's weird."

"Do you have everyone's memories?"

"I dunno," she replied. "Maybe, some. I mean, I can't tell you what Grace had for dinner the night she went to take on Flagg, but there's some stuff there, yeah." It was different than her previous memory flashes, which had been violent and brutal, but faded and murky. These memories were vivid and bright, but steady, like a memory of how one's backyard looked in childhood or the arrangement of a beloved grandmother's parlor.

Her head was cocked to the side and her eyes were distant, unseeing or fixed on some faraway point. She looks like a stranger, he thought. Then she shook her head and like an old tv coming back into focus, she looked like his Audrey again.

"That might come in handy," he said with an easy smile to hide his discomfort at what had just happened.

"The more you know," she quipped.

A strange, loud noise startled them both. They stared at each other, horrified. Then Audrey started giggling uncontrollably. "Was that your stomach or mine?"

"No idea," he replied. "But I'm starving. Let's see if they sent us back with supplies to make pancakes, since it's possible we haven't eaten for twenty-seven years."

He started walking towards the kitchen, but Audrey grabbed his bare arm, alarmed and excited. "Wait, you're hungry?" she asked delightedly. "You can feel?"

Nathan smiled and began heading for the kitchen. "Didn't I mention that?"

"No!" she exclaimed, chasing after him to slap at his bare arm. When he let out a small "ow," she smiled. "So maybe the Troubles haven't started yet."

"I dunno," he replied, rattling around in her cabinets for supplies. "Howard said you usually come out of the Barn when your...battery runs out." He frowned at the analogy. "Which is what makes the Troubles start up again. Your battery was never run this time, but you weren't in the Barn all that long either." He set a bag of chocolate chips on the counter, knowing they were her favorite, and chuckled when she reached out and opened it to eat a few.

"We don't know how much time passed," she pointed out. "We were in there for - it felt like a couple hours, max. Maybe that's how I don't age." She popped a few more morsels into her mouth as he pulled eggs and buttermilk from the fridge, items she knew hadn't been in there when she'd left. "Time moves differently in the Barn than out here. I'm never here more than a year, and from my perspective I'm only in the Barn for a couple hours."

Nathan kicked a cabinet shut with his heel and set a heavy cast iron skillet on the hot plate and turned on the heat . "So what, you've only aged..." He quickly did some math in his head. "Six and a half years in the last 320 years?"

"Could be almost 350 now, for all we know," she said absently, walking over to switch the TV on, in hopes of finding out some information as to when they were.

As he set about mixing batter, he frowned after her. "Audrey, is it weird for you that -"

The rest of his question was cut off by the front door being flung open. A tall man, backlit by the bright morning sun, stood just outside of it, on the porch. He had kicked it open.

"I don't know who the hell you are," he said, voice booming as he stepped into the doorway. "But I just rented this place out and - holy shit!"

Audrey squinted against the blinding whiteness from outside. "Duke?"

Tall and lean with hair longer than when they'd last seen him, wearing a big blue parka and heavy snow boots, Duke Crocker stood gaping at the pair of them. "I just rented this place!" he complained, stamping his foot, half tantrum, half practicality - he had an inch of snow caked to his boots.

A grin spread slowly across his face. "Well I'll be damned." His two closest friends, lost to time and the universe, who he'd last seen sucked into the Barn in the middle of a November hurricane, stood before him, looking like a regular couple who'd just rolled out of bed. They're a couple of something, he thought, amused and still reeling from the shock of seeing them.

"Shut the door!" Nathan called, interrupting Duke's reverie. The icy winter wind whipped up snow and blew it through the open doors. "It's fucking freezing out there." He winked at Audrey before fixing a scowl on his face.

Duke frowned. "You can feel?" Processing that, he stamped the remaining snow off his boots and stepped into the apartment, shutting the door behind him.

"Yeah," Audrey said, crossing to him. "He can." She flashed him a bright, grateful smile.

Duke whistled, "Well, maybe it is a brave new world."

Impulsively, Audrey rose on tiptoe and wrapped her arms around him. "It's so good to see you," she whispered in his ear when his arms came around her.

"Yeah," he said gruffly. "You too, Aud." He breathed her in, remembering the last time she'd held him; her farewell in the police station amidst blood and death and destruction. He'd thought of that farewell every day since she'd left, had thought of both of them every day. Sometimes the door to the Gull would open and he'd expect them to come walking in, looking for a drink or a quick meal. He never stopped leaving the coffee pot to brew a fresh batch every morning, as he'd done for Audrey when she was his tenant. He'd missed them.

Nathan approached them as Audrey stepped out of the hug. "Duke."

Duke eyed him warily. "Nathan."

Audrey rolled her eyes. Men. "Oh for Christ's sake, you're happy to see each other, admit it." An indeterminate amount of time had passed, and she was hungry and in desperate need of coffee. They would do well not to mess with her, she thought, eyeing them both.

Without commenting, Duke extended his hand to Nathan. With only a little suspicion, which in and of itself was mostly for form, Nathan reached out and clasped Duke's forearm solidly, in friendship. The other man pulled him into a one-armed hug. They were friends, the oldest of friends and the closest either had to a best friend, save for Audrey. They'd been enemies once, but the way you could be an enemy with someone you loved, who'd hurt you.

"After all this time, I suppose it's not so bad seeing your ugly mug either," Duke said with a smile as they pulled apart.

"How long have we been gone?" Audrey asked as she headed towards the kitchen to make some coffee.

"Three years, ish," Duke said haltingly, following her. "It's 2013. New Year's Day, 2013."

"Happy New Year," Nathan muttered as he resumed making breakfast.

"Could've been worse," Audrey remarked as she set about making coffee. "I was prepared for it to be 2037."

"Oh it is," Duke jested. "I'm just very well preserved."

"Pickled, more like," Nathan muttered.

"Hey!" Duke snapped, pointing his finger at the other man and schooling a stern look on his face. "Just cuz you can feel now, don't think I won't kick your ass."

"The only way you could kick my ass is if you were amped up on some Troubled blood," Nathan countered.

Audrey chuckled at their banter, watching the coffee drip into the pot. It was mesmerizing, and gave her time to gather the courage to ask about the elephant in the room.

She set three mugs on the counter, then met Duke's eyes. "Are the Troubles back?" Her voice was quiet and serious.

"Well, if they weren't before," Duke said, helping himself to some chocolate chips. "They certainly are now." His voice wasn't accusatory, but matter-of-fact.

Audrey sighed. "People aren't going to be too happy to see me. This time it really is my fault."

While Duke frowned, Nathan stepped over and squeezed her shoulder. "It'll be fine."

"It won't," Duke replied, understanding that time in the Barn had done nothing for Nathan's woefully over-developed sense of optimism in regards to the town's opinion of Audrey. "But who cares?" he continued, watching Audrey fill the mugs with coffee. "How is it your fault?"

She sighed as Nathan began to plate three servings of breakfast. "It's kind of a long story."

"I got time," Duke replied, carrying flatware over to the ancient dining table. There was a center piece on it that hadn't been there the last time he'd looked in on this apartment - two days ago, with his new tenant. Fucking Haven, he thought.

Audrey exchanged a worried glance with Nathan as they brought breakfast to the table. It wasn't that she thought Duke would react negatively to what they'd learned, but his might be the most positive response they'd get, and would be a barometer of how hard the year they'd been given was truly going to be.

One year. One trip of Earth around the sun is all you have to get it done, her sisters had told her. One year to stop a cycle she'd set in motion three centuries earlier. One year to find and destroy - and she couldn't believe this is the direction her life had taken - a demon whose essence had been poisoning the town for centuries, kept only at bay by the vestiges of power her first self had given.

I'm a witch, she thought. It was new information, and yet something she'd always known, and had continually forgotten. I was a witch and a governess and a nurse and a reporter and a school teacher. I am a former FBI agent. I am a cop. I am the mother of James Cogan, the Colorado Kid. I like cupcakes and bubble baths and the smell of the steam radiators in old buildings. I am in love with Nathan Wuornos. Duke Crocker is my friend. I have loved and lost and cannot lose this time around. I am strong. I can finish this.

She knew Nathan and Duke watched her patiently, both of them giving her the time she needed to collect her thoughts. She was so lucky with these men, these men who loved her and were loyal to her, who would protect her and be protected by her; who knew when she needed to laugh, knew when she needed to cry, knew when she needed a good kick in the ass. They were more than their biology, more than their legacies - Nathan, eschewing any vestiges of the life he might've had as Max Hansen's son, a life Garland Wuornos had saved him from; Duke, determined to break generations of habit, to be more than his own family legacy. They were both, every day, the pair of them striving to be more, to be better, to have a life among, or in spite of the Troubles.

Troubles she had caused. Troubles she now had to stop.

Audrey set down her fork. She took a deep breath, met Duke's eyes...

And began her story.

The End.

Thank you for reading, for your support and reviews. They have meant more to me than you know. There is a sequel being written, but it's in the early stages. Still, I hope to start posting in a month or so.