Haven, Maine, Monday (Fandom time)
Feb. 22nd, 2021 10:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
betterthanaplanAfter months of trying to get her on the phone, it was a little weird to be dodging Claire's calls. Duke couldn't explain it even to himself, but in the few days he'd been back, he'd gotten into the habit of sending her to voicemail, where she left him increasingly annoyed messages about looking after his mental health — or at least explaining what this 'time-locked' business was.
Every time his phone rang, his heart jumped hoping it was Octavia or Lucifer. Not that either of them tended to call rather than text first, but still. Maybe that was it. Maybe he was mad at Claire for not being them. Mad at her for being time-locked and then for not being the people he really wanted to talk to. Sure, that sounded totally rational and healthy. Definitely not a sign that she was right, and he needed therapy to keep from going completely downhill into outright craziness. . . .
Instead of calling her back, he flew to Baltimore.
As he'd expected when he made the decision the morning he told Audrey about the Hunter, he'd swung wildly back and forth between determination to grit his teeth and stick it out in Haven until Fandom let him back in, and a need to fling himself bodily against the barriers of the multiverse and demand to get back. His attempts to find the causeway to the island had all been unsuccessful, as had trying to reach Portalocity and request transport. The Portalocity app wouldn't even load on his phone anymore.
He wasn't getting back to Fandom until the multiverse was good and ready to let him.
He flew back to Haven dejected, spent an evening wallowing in misery at the bottom of a bottle, and then picked himself back up in the morning to try and make the best of things.
"Audrey, it is your neighbor Duke, so please don't shoot me!" He arrived at Audrey's apartment fairly early, still faintly drunk from the night before, bearing a couple mugs. "I brought you coffee." Audrey was inside, door open to the oddly warm — oddly fall — air, rushing through her morning routine. Duke raised the bottle of Bailey's he carried in his other hand. "One shot or two?"
Audrey glanced over at him, and shook her head. "I've got to go to work, Duke."
"A triple then."
"No, no thanks." For all her protest, she looked amused at least, and Duke congratulated himself for being able to cheer her up.
(Both Claire and Octavia would likely have an opinion on the way that cheered him up. To say nothing of Lucifer.)
"Coffee, sunrise, best view in Haven," he said, gesturing out at the water glittering past the edge of her deck. "It's exactly what you need."
"I don't want to be here, Duke," Audrey said. She was bustling around the little apartment, tugging on her jacket, grabbing her wallet, badge, and gun. "I want to go to work. I want to help the troubled. It's the one thing I know — I know I want to do. . . ." She patted her pockets with a frown. "Car keys."
Duke's heart sank just a little, though he knew he should have been prepared for this. Audrey was going to Audrey, which meant dealing with her workaholism. No matter how tempting the rest of the world was. "Audrey, look, I'm just saying," he tried. "If I knew I were going to vanish in 46 days, I probably wouldn't be heading off to the grind." He paused, then made a show of deciding. "Okay. I will take you to my secret oyster field. Have you ever had blue point oysters drizzled in absinthe?"
That was what he'd made Lucifer and Octavia for Valentine's Day last week. And here he was offering it to Audrey. Octavia had slept with other people when she'd been stuck at home, but it was a pretty safe bet she hadn't tried to woo anyone less than a week into her seven year stretch back on the Ground.
Duke was clearly a terrible person.
"Not today, thanks," Audrey said, entirely oblivious to his internal conflict. Which was how he liked it. He definitely wasn't disappointed in her for not noticing — well, pretty much anything about him, really.
What did it say about him that that kind of made him want her more?
He noticed something glinting on the hearth and scooped them up as Audrey turned back towards him. Her car keys.
"Audrey, come on." He dangled them from his fingers as she sighed.. "I mean, don't you just look around this mad house sometimes and think 'I'm gonna grab the first flight out of here. I'll go to some secret island where nobody does anything. Or wears anything!'" Audrey reached for the keys and he wrapped his fingers around them, holding them a little higher. "And nobody turns into anything unnatural."
Audrey rolled her eyes, but there was no heat in the gesture. Faint annoyance, but not heat. "Sometimes."
She held out her hand. Duke made a show of hesitating, then dropped her keys into it.
"You know," he said. "You'd think even Chief Wournos would want you to take a little vacation time."
Audrey wouldn't look him in the eye as she headed for the door. "Yeah, I gotta go. Nathan's waiting for me."
Duke trailed after her, giving her a measuring look. "You haven't told him."
"No."
"What are you waiting for?"
"The right time."
Right. That couldn't possibly go horribly wrong. Duke sighed. "Okay, Audrey, I — I really couldn't handle living in this town with Nathan if you disappeared and he didn't know why."
It was the wrong thing to say, and he knew it the minute it left his mouth. Her eye rolls were no longer amused. "I'm sorry it's going to be so hard on you, Duke. Why don't you just go back to Maryland if you're so stressed about it?"
Duke opened his mouth to respond, but nothing came out. He reached for her, but she was already turning the corner of the deck, heading for the stairs. He shoved his hand into his hair instead.
If only it were that easy.
He almost called Claire after that. Instead, he puttered around the Gull's kitchen for a couple hours, hovering over the shoulders of employees he barely knew, and generally making a nuisance of himself, before heading to the station to clear the air.
Audrey didn't look at all happy to see him.
"I just — wanted to apologize," he said, getting right to the point. "What you tell Nathan, it's honestly none of my business."
"No, you were right." Audrey wasn't looking at him. He couldn't tell if she was actually super focussed on a case, or just still pissed. "I told him."
Huh. He hadn't expected that. (Almost no one ever thought he was right about things.) "How'd he take it?"
"He's confused. Guess that makes two of us."
Duke moved in closer, hoping to ride that 'you were right' and maybe get through to her. He lowered his voice; neither of them needed the whole station hearing this. "Don't do this."
Audrey glanced up, then away. "What?"
"Don't just blindly accept what's supposed to happen to you." Duke reached for her hand. "Nobody knows better than me what it's like to have some crazy destiny dropped on you. I mean, hell, I'm supposed to be out running around all silver-eyed killing people, ending their family's troubles."
Audrey looked up at him properly, finally. There was something in her expression he couldn't entirely read. "But you're not."
"No. Because I choose not to give in to my fate. I choose the life I live. And you can, too."
She pulled her hand away. "Lucy didn't have a choice. And Sarah either, all right? So what makes you think that I do?"
Duke shook his head. He'd pushed too hard. He backed off again, slipping his hands into his pockets. "I'm sorry, Audrey. I mean I-I want to help you, I honestly just don't have any idea how to do that." He was proud of himself for that. For admitting it out loud. He wondered if Claire would be, too. "Look. You call me if you need — anything." He flicked her a small smile. She barely glanced up at him. He nodded faintly, then turned to go.
Well. At least he'd tried.
If she were Octavia, they would have bounced awkwardly off each other for another week before eventually managing to have a halfway decent conversation and find a new normal.
Audrey called in a little under two hours.
And — sure, okay, it was to help with canvassing for a case. Still. Someone actually reaching out to him felt like a nice change of pace.
Apparently they were on the trail of what had to be the absolute most horrifying trouble to date: a man who was hunting down his own children in order to rip their organs out through their throats. And to make sure he had plenty to choose from, apparently he'd managed to father 29 in Haven alone.
And Duke thought his dad was bad.
"You know, when I said that I would help you, I was thinking, in my mind, something fun." Duke climbed out of Audrey's car at the third house on their list. The fact that Nathan hated that Audrey had chosen to ride with Duke was a nice bonus, but this still felt vaguely sisyphean. "Maybe involving, like, fruity mixed blender drinks —"
"Listen. If you don't want to do this. . . ." Audrey started, Duke cut her off.
"Hey. I'm here." He watched her head down the hill to the house, then followed after, a faint smile on his lips. "You know the freaky thing about you, Audrey, is finding some guy who's hunting his kids is your idea of fun."
"That's the freaky thing about me?" She knocked on the door, reviewing the details on the kid as she did so. Duke scanned the street and frowned as he spotted someone who fit her description to a T. "Is that her?"
The kid, a teenager with long brown hair, was frowning at a middle aged man by the trunk of his SUV. Even if it wasn't the kid they were looking for, Duke would probably want to intervene anyway.
"Sea Dogs," Audrey said, reading the back of the man's jacket. That fit the limited description of their perp.. "Let's go!" They both broke immediately into a run, Audrey pulling her gun as the girl screamed. "Police!"
The man in the Sea Dogs jacket flung the girl to the side and jumped into his car. Duke dropped down to help her as Audrey tried to stop the killer from speeding away, firing several shots at his retreating bumper.
The girl was in bad shape, clearly suffering some kind of shock. Which seemed fair, if a guy had just tried to kill her out in the open like that. She shook in Duke's arms, hardly seeming to notice he was even there.
"Can you hear me?" he called. "Are you okay?"
"She's not going to be." Duke looked up. Audrey stood over him, her phone out as she called for an ambulance. She looked grim. More so even then when Duke himself had been dying, under the influence of Beattie's siren trouble
Right. She'd mentioned something about the kids' own trouble getting triggered if they survived the attacks. Their organs would fail, driving them to search out their own relatives for messy, horrifying transplants.
If they didn't solve this somehow, this kid was screwed.
Audrey managed to get a hit on the car's license plate: the killer, one Harry Nix, lived in town. They headed to his house, but found it deserted. Audrey grabbed some photos inside for the APB.
Family photos. The guy had a wife and three kids. Two girls and a boy. Even more fresh meat to feed his organ addiction.
Nathan and a new guy, some detective up from Boston named Tommy, had dug up more information on Nix while Audrey and Duke were checking in on the kids.
"Nix's whole family disappeared when he was 21," Nathan told them. "1983."
Duke nodded. "Last time the troubles were here."
Tommy gave him a sharp look. "You too, huh?"
Duke flicked him a blank one in return. "It's contagious." He looked back at Nathan. "And he probably killed them."
Nathan nodded, apparently now perfectly willing to work with Duke. Though compared to the bumbling new guy, probably anyone with trouble experience looked good. "One of his organs is failing, he's not getting far without getting another one."
Audrey stared down at the map of Haven she had spread over the hood of her car. "If I'm him, I go for my nearest donor."
Tommy looked between the three of them, bewildered. "So he can suck out their organs with his demon tongue?" He laughed, pulling out his phone. "That's it. I'm calling the feds, tell 'em to put a net around this guy."
Nathan snatched the phone out of his hand. "Feds wouldn't know how to handle this. We do."
"And every second we stand here arguing about it," Audrey said, "Nix gets further away."
"You want that on your head?" Nathan asked.
Tommy sighed. "You're lucky I hate the feds. If this guy gets away, it will be the least of your worries."
Nathan nodded and turned back to the map. "Closest offspring are here and here."
Duke looked up at him. Was he kidding? "The guy packed a damn lunch."
Audrey shook her head. "I don't think he's gonna go after his own kids first. Not unless he has to."
"They're his last resort," Nathan agreed. Duke was going to admire their faith in the sanctity of parenthood when he continued. "Otherwise he would have killed them already."
That was a fair point. Duke swallowed.
"Alright," Audrey said. "So we play our odds. Duke, you and I are going to take Draper street."
"We got Curry." Nathan gestured to Tommy. Duke wondered why he let the guy tag along, if he wasn't even a trouble believer. He'd have to ask, later. "Let's go."
They hit paydirt on Draper. Nix's minivan was parked outside the house, his wife sitting impatiently in the passenger seat. Audrey called it in to Nathan, then opened her door. "We can't wait for them."
Duke shot her a frown, but climbed out as well. He was starting to get a sinking feeling about this guy, and Audrey's urgency didn't help.
"Haven police department!" Audrey called as she walked up, flashing her badge at Nix's wife. While she questioned her, Duke scanned the back seat.
Only two kids.
He leaned into the passenger side window. "Your son," he asked the woman. "Where is your son?"
Mrs. Nix looked shaken. "They just went for a pit stop in the woods, that's not illegal, is it?"
Duke heard Nathan's Bronco pull up as he turned towards the woods. Audrey caught Nathan up on the situation hurriedly as they all rushed into the woods.
It didn't take long to find Nix. He'd only brought his son in deep enough to get out of sight of the road. They'd made it in the nick of time; Nix had the boy pinned to the ground, and a strange, snake-like thing straight out of a Ridley Scott movie was coming out of his mouth. Nathan didn't hesitate, tackling the man off his son. Duke went to the kid, helping him up and away. He eased him onto the trunk of a nearby tree, half supporting the kid as he shook.
"This kid's going into shock," he said, glancing up at Audrey. "Just like the others."
Nix lay flat on his back on the ground. Either Nathan had taken him down harder than Duke had thought, or the man had held out as long as possible before going after his own son. "Help," Nix moaned. "I-I-I don't wanna die. . . ."
Audrey tucked her gun away, leaning in towards Nathan. "Get Tommy and the boy out of here, please?"
Nathan didn't look at her. "Why?"
Audrey paused a moment before answering. She spoke slowly when she did, quietly. Like she knew just how they'd react to what she had to say.
"I only need Duke."
Duke's stomach didn't so much sink as vanish, leaving a hungry, gaping vacuum in its wake. He listened with half an ear as she and Nathan argued, hoping against hope to hear her say she wasn't saying what she was very clearly saying.
"You should have told me."
"You would have tried to stop me."
"You don't know where this ends."
"I know that it saves lives today, Nathan. And countless others down the line. Please, just take them and go."
No no no no no no. . . .
Nathan moved towards Tommy. Tommy protested faintly, but let himself be drawn away. Nathan tugged the boy right out of Duke's hands, and Duke was so busy chanting denials in his head, he couldn't even stop him.
And then he and Tommy and the boy were gone, and it was just Audrey and Duke and the killer dying on the ground.
Duke slowly stood, still hoping to hear some explanation that wasn't Audrey using him like this. Aiming him like a gun, just like the Rev had wanted to do.
"I'm sorry, Duke," she said. "I really am."
no no no no no no no . . . .
Duke stared down at Nix, who seemed too out of it now to understand anything that was happening. "You didn't need me to help find him," he said, because one of them had to name this atrocity out loud. "You needed me to kill him."
"There are scores of other kids out there," Audrey said. "That aren't just going to die, they are going to kill their families too. And you are the only one who can stop that."
no no no no no no no no
Duke couldn't breathe.
"You have no right put this on me!" he hissed.
"His organs are failing." Audrey sounded desperate, on the verge of tears herself. "He's going to die, there's nothing we can do about that. But you can kill his curse before he goes."
She held her gun out for him. Duke stared at it.
"What is that?!" He smacked her hand aside. The gun went flying. "No!"
Audrey just looked at him. Eyes wide and wet. Like she was depending on him to be on her side, even after — "The entire time that I was helping you, you were planning this."
She shook her head. "No. Not at first. But then I saw those photos of all those kids at the fertility clinic, all of those kids that would die or worse, and I knew . . . I knew that you were the only answer. So I thought if you could see the kind of monster that we were dealing with —"
"That I would want to become one too?" Duke backed up a step. Wishing he could back up all the way to Fandom, all the way to last week, when his biggest worries were wacky, harmless magic and finding Octavia a therapist.
Octavia, who had killed countless people, in the name of saving countless more. And was a barely functional husk of who she once had been as a result.
"This wasn't your decision to make."
Audrey stared at him, then nodded. "You're right. Walk away. Whatever happens I'll deal with it."
Duke hesitated, then wrapped his righteous fury around himself like armor. Or a blanket. "Yeah," he said. "You're damn right you will."
And then he turned and walked away.
If only it could have been that easy.
Duke didn't get far. He'd made it to the edge of the woods before the fury ran out. And then he saw Mrs. Nix clutching her son. Clinging to him and sobbing, begging him to answer her. With no idea that she was clinging to a ticking time bomb.
That boy, all of maybe ten years old, was going to die. Soon. But not until after he attacked and maybe killed his mother and sisters, in a desperate, animal attempt to survive. The whole family would be destroyed, and that'd still only be the beginning.
He turned and headed slowly back into the woods, hoping he wasn't too late.
Nix lay just where he'd left him, on his back, panting up at the sky. Duke knelt slowly down beside him, staring into his face. Audrey had called him a monster, but that wasn't it. Duke had met true monsters, back in Fandom. Nix was just a man.
Which honestly just made him even worse.
Duke didn't hesitate again, didn't even pause to consider his options. He was armed, of course, he was always armed, but this wasn't an act of self-defense. This wasn't a battle. If he was going to do this, it would be with his bare hands.
He pressed his hand over NIx's mouth and nose. Stared into the man's eyes as he struggled, desperate and fruitless and weak.
It was over quickly.
It also took forever.
When Nix's eyes had closed, when he'd stopped moving, when Duke could no longer feel the echoes of the bronchial spasms under his palm, he pulled his hand away. There was blood on his palm, from Nix's failing lungs, or stomach, or — it didn't matter where. It only mattered that the blood seeped into Duke's skin.
The wash of his trouble after a kill was gentle, not the overwhelming wave that it was in the heat of battle, when he still needed to subdue his prey. It was warm and soothing — and awful, because it wasn't awful at all.
It felt like coming home.
Duke didn't think he'd ever feel at home again.
"Can I get one of those?"
He'd known she'd come. Audrey couldn't help herself. And he hadn't made it hard for her, heading to the Gull instead of his boat, though he told himself he'd done it because he didn't have the same stock of liquor on the Sanguine Moon that he kept on the Rouge.
He set down his glass and reached for the bottle. Refilled his own glass, set the bottle down. Sipped, and refused to look at her.
She sat down next to him anyway.
"I got some good news. Stan's nephew recovered. And so did Conner and Zoe and Miriam. But I bet you already knew that." A brief pause. Duke stared at the wall behind the bar, the meaningless bits of art and kitsch he'd chosen, because who'd ever heard of a bar with empty walls?
He didn't really see them, anyway. Everywhere he looked, he just saw Harry Nix's eyes.
"Duke. What happened back there?" Audrey's voice was soft. Kind. Faintly pleading.
"I-I-I don't wanna die. . . ."
Duke finally looked up at her. Held that hopeful, helpful gaze. Thought of Octavia back home, cold and stilted, unable to connect to anything around her. Of Octavia, deliberately setting off his trouble and begging him to kill her.
Of how warm he'd feel if he did. How safe and soothed.
Audrey stared back, looking stricken. He wondered what she saw in his face.
He set his glass down with a thunk, slowly stood, and walked out. Leaving her sitting at the bar alone.
[NFB, NFI, OOC welcome. Adapted from Haven episode 3x03, "The Farmer". Warning: The trouble du jour is deeply fucked up. There's body horror, organ theft, manipulation, murder. . . .]
Every time his phone rang, his heart jumped hoping it was Octavia or Lucifer. Not that either of them tended to call rather than text first, but still. Maybe that was it. Maybe he was mad at Claire for not being them. Mad at her for being time-locked and then for not being the people he really wanted to talk to. Sure, that sounded totally rational and healthy. Definitely not a sign that she was right, and he needed therapy to keep from going completely downhill into outright craziness. . . .
Instead of calling her back, he flew to Baltimore.
As he'd expected when he made the decision the morning he told Audrey about the Hunter, he'd swung wildly back and forth between determination to grit his teeth and stick it out in Haven until Fandom let him back in, and a need to fling himself bodily against the barriers of the multiverse and demand to get back. His attempts to find the causeway to the island had all been unsuccessful, as had trying to reach Portalocity and request transport. The Portalocity app wouldn't even load on his phone anymore.
He wasn't getting back to Fandom until the multiverse was good and ready to let him.
He flew back to Haven dejected, spent an evening wallowing in misery at the bottom of a bottle, and then picked himself back up in the morning to try and make the best of things.
"Audrey, it is your neighbor Duke, so please don't shoot me!" He arrived at Audrey's apartment fairly early, still faintly drunk from the night before, bearing a couple mugs. "I brought you coffee." Audrey was inside, door open to the oddly warm — oddly fall — air, rushing through her morning routine. Duke raised the bottle of Bailey's he carried in his other hand. "One shot or two?"
Audrey glanced over at him, and shook her head. "I've got to go to work, Duke."
"A triple then."
"No, no thanks." For all her protest, she looked amused at least, and Duke congratulated himself for being able to cheer her up.
(Both Claire and Octavia would likely have an opinion on the way that cheered him up. To say nothing of Lucifer.)
"Coffee, sunrise, best view in Haven," he said, gesturing out at the water glittering past the edge of her deck. "It's exactly what you need."
"I don't want to be here, Duke," Audrey said. She was bustling around the little apartment, tugging on her jacket, grabbing her wallet, badge, and gun. "I want to go to work. I want to help the troubled. It's the one thing I know — I know I want to do. . . ." She patted her pockets with a frown. "Car keys."
Duke's heart sank just a little, though he knew he should have been prepared for this. Audrey was going to Audrey, which meant dealing with her workaholism. No matter how tempting the rest of the world was. "Audrey, look, I'm just saying," he tried. "If I knew I were going to vanish in 46 days, I probably wouldn't be heading off to the grind." He paused, then made a show of deciding. "Okay. I will take you to my secret oyster field. Have you ever had blue point oysters drizzled in absinthe?"
That was what he'd made Lucifer and Octavia for Valentine's Day last week. And here he was offering it to Audrey. Octavia had slept with other people when she'd been stuck at home, but it was a pretty safe bet she hadn't tried to woo anyone less than a week into her seven year stretch back on the Ground.
Duke was clearly a terrible person.
"Not today, thanks," Audrey said, entirely oblivious to his internal conflict. Which was how he liked it. He definitely wasn't disappointed in her for not noticing — well, pretty much anything about him, really.
What did it say about him that that kind of made him want her more?
He noticed something glinting on the hearth and scooped them up as Audrey turned back towards him. Her car keys.
"Audrey, come on." He dangled them from his fingers as she sighed.. "I mean, don't you just look around this mad house sometimes and think 'I'm gonna grab the first flight out of here. I'll go to some secret island where nobody does anything. Or wears anything!'" Audrey reached for the keys and he wrapped his fingers around them, holding them a little higher. "And nobody turns into anything unnatural."
Audrey rolled her eyes, but there was no heat in the gesture. Faint annoyance, but not heat. "Sometimes."
She held out her hand. Duke made a show of hesitating, then dropped her keys into it.
"You know," he said. "You'd think even Chief Wournos would want you to take a little vacation time."
Audrey wouldn't look him in the eye as she headed for the door. "Yeah, I gotta go. Nathan's waiting for me."
Duke trailed after her, giving her a measuring look. "You haven't told him."
"No."
"What are you waiting for?"
"The right time."
Right. That couldn't possibly go horribly wrong. Duke sighed. "Okay, Audrey, I — I really couldn't handle living in this town with Nathan if you disappeared and he didn't know why."
It was the wrong thing to say, and he knew it the minute it left his mouth. Her eye rolls were no longer amused. "I'm sorry it's going to be so hard on you, Duke. Why don't you just go back to Maryland if you're so stressed about it?"
Duke opened his mouth to respond, but nothing came out. He reached for her, but she was already turning the corner of the deck, heading for the stairs. He shoved his hand into his hair instead.
If only it were that easy.
He almost called Claire after that. Instead, he puttered around the Gull's kitchen for a couple hours, hovering over the shoulders of employees he barely knew, and generally making a nuisance of himself, before heading to the station to clear the air.
Audrey didn't look at all happy to see him.
"I just — wanted to apologize," he said, getting right to the point. "What you tell Nathan, it's honestly none of my business."
"No, you were right." Audrey wasn't looking at him. He couldn't tell if she was actually super focussed on a case, or just still pissed. "I told him."
Huh. He hadn't expected that. (Almost no one ever thought he was right about things.) "How'd he take it?"
"He's confused. Guess that makes two of us."
Duke moved in closer, hoping to ride that 'you were right' and maybe get through to her. He lowered his voice; neither of them needed the whole station hearing this. "Don't do this."
Audrey glanced up, then away. "What?"
"Don't just blindly accept what's supposed to happen to you." Duke reached for her hand. "Nobody knows better than me what it's like to have some crazy destiny dropped on you. I mean, hell, I'm supposed to be out running around all silver-eyed killing people, ending their family's troubles."
Audrey looked up at him properly, finally. There was something in her expression he couldn't entirely read. "But you're not."
"No. Because I choose not to give in to my fate. I choose the life I live. And you can, too."
She pulled her hand away. "Lucy didn't have a choice. And Sarah either, all right? So what makes you think that I do?"
Duke shook his head. He'd pushed too hard. He backed off again, slipping his hands into his pockets. "I'm sorry, Audrey. I mean I-I want to help you, I honestly just don't have any idea how to do that." He was proud of himself for that. For admitting it out loud. He wondered if Claire would be, too. "Look. You call me if you need — anything." He flicked her a small smile. She barely glanced up at him. He nodded faintly, then turned to go.
Well. At least he'd tried.
If she were Octavia, they would have bounced awkwardly off each other for another week before eventually managing to have a halfway decent conversation and find a new normal.
Audrey called in a little under two hours.
And — sure, okay, it was to help with canvassing for a case. Still. Someone actually reaching out to him felt like a nice change of pace.
Apparently they were on the trail of what had to be the absolute most horrifying trouble to date: a man who was hunting down his own children in order to rip their organs out through their throats. And to make sure he had plenty to choose from, apparently he'd managed to father 29 in Haven alone.
And Duke thought his dad was bad.
"You know, when I said that I would help you, I was thinking, in my mind, something fun." Duke climbed out of Audrey's car at the third house on their list. The fact that Nathan hated that Audrey had chosen to ride with Duke was a nice bonus, but this still felt vaguely sisyphean. "Maybe involving, like, fruity mixed blender drinks —"
"Listen. If you don't want to do this. . . ." Audrey started, Duke cut her off.
"Hey. I'm here." He watched her head down the hill to the house, then followed after, a faint smile on his lips. "You know the freaky thing about you, Audrey, is finding some guy who's hunting his kids is your idea of fun."
"That's the freaky thing about me?" She knocked on the door, reviewing the details on the kid as she did so. Duke scanned the street and frowned as he spotted someone who fit her description to a T. "Is that her?"
The kid, a teenager with long brown hair, was frowning at a middle aged man by the trunk of his SUV. Even if it wasn't the kid they were looking for, Duke would probably want to intervene anyway.
"Sea Dogs," Audrey said, reading the back of the man's jacket. That fit the limited description of their perp.. "Let's go!" They both broke immediately into a run, Audrey pulling her gun as the girl screamed. "Police!"
The man in the Sea Dogs jacket flung the girl to the side and jumped into his car. Duke dropped down to help her as Audrey tried to stop the killer from speeding away, firing several shots at his retreating bumper.
The girl was in bad shape, clearly suffering some kind of shock. Which seemed fair, if a guy had just tried to kill her out in the open like that. She shook in Duke's arms, hardly seeming to notice he was even there.
"Can you hear me?" he called. "Are you okay?"
"She's not going to be." Duke looked up. Audrey stood over him, her phone out as she called for an ambulance. She looked grim. More so even then when Duke himself had been dying, under the influence of Beattie's siren trouble
Right. She'd mentioned something about the kids' own trouble getting triggered if they survived the attacks. Their organs would fail, driving them to search out their own relatives for messy, horrifying transplants.
If they didn't solve this somehow, this kid was screwed.
Audrey managed to get a hit on the car's license plate: the killer, one Harry Nix, lived in town. They headed to his house, but found it deserted. Audrey grabbed some photos inside for the APB.
Family photos. The guy had a wife and three kids. Two girls and a boy. Even more fresh meat to feed his organ addiction.
Nathan and a new guy, some detective up from Boston named Tommy, had dug up more information on Nix while Audrey and Duke were checking in on the kids.
"Nix's whole family disappeared when he was 21," Nathan told them. "1983."
Duke nodded. "Last time the troubles were here."
Tommy gave him a sharp look. "You too, huh?"
Duke flicked him a blank one in return. "It's contagious." He looked back at Nathan. "And he probably killed them."
Nathan nodded, apparently now perfectly willing to work with Duke. Though compared to the bumbling new guy, probably anyone with trouble experience looked good. "One of his organs is failing, he's not getting far without getting another one."
Audrey stared down at the map of Haven she had spread over the hood of her car. "If I'm him, I go for my nearest donor."
Tommy looked between the three of them, bewildered. "So he can suck out their organs with his demon tongue?" He laughed, pulling out his phone. "That's it. I'm calling the feds, tell 'em to put a net around this guy."
Nathan snatched the phone out of his hand. "Feds wouldn't know how to handle this. We do."
"And every second we stand here arguing about it," Audrey said, "Nix gets further away."
"You want that on your head?" Nathan asked.
Tommy sighed. "You're lucky I hate the feds. If this guy gets away, it will be the least of your worries."
Nathan nodded and turned back to the map. "Closest offspring are here and here."
Duke looked up at him. Was he kidding? "The guy packed a damn lunch."
Audrey shook her head. "I don't think he's gonna go after his own kids first. Not unless he has to."
"They're his last resort," Nathan agreed. Duke was going to admire their faith in the sanctity of parenthood when he continued. "Otherwise he would have killed them already."
That was a fair point. Duke swallowed.
"Alright," Audrey said. "So we play our odds. Duke, you and I are going to take Draper street."
"We got Curry." Nathan gestured to Tommy. Duke wondered why he let the guy tag along, if he wasn't even a trouble believer. He'd have to ask, later. "Let's go."
They hit paydirt on Draper. Nix's minivan was parked outside the house, his wife sitting impatiently in the passenger seat. Audrey called it in to Nathan, then opened her door. "We can't wait for them."
Duke shot her a frown, but climbed out as well. He was starting to get a sinking feeling about this guy, and Audrey's urgency didn't help.
"Haven police department!" Audrey called as she walked up, flashing her badge at Nix's wife. While she questioned her, Duke scanned the back seat.
Only two kids.
He leaned into the passenger side window. "Your son," he asked the woman. "Where is your son?"
Mrs. Nix looked shaken. "They just went for a pit stop in the woods, that's not illegal, is it?"
Duke heard Nathan's Bronco pull up as he turned towards the woods. Audrey caught Nathan up on the situation hurriedly as they all rushed into the woods.
It didn't take long to find Nix. He'd only brought his son in deep enough to get out of sight of the road. They'd made it in the nick of time; Nix had the boy pinned to the ground, and a strange, snake-like thing straight out of a Ridley Scott movie was coming out of his mouth. Nathan didn't hesitate, tackling the man off his son. Duke went to the kid, helping him up and away. He eased him onto the trunk of a nearby tree, half supporting the kid as he shook.
"This kid's going into shock," he said, glancing up at Audrey. "Just like the others."
Nix lay flat on his back on the ground. Either Nathan had taken him down harder than Duke had thought, or the man had held out as long as possible before going after his own son. "Help," Nix moaned. "I-I-I don't wanna die. . . ."
Audrey tucked her gun away, leaning in towards Nathan. "Get Tommy and the boy out of here, please?"
Nathan didn't look at her. "Why?"
Audrey paused a moment before answering. She spoke slowly when she did, quietly. Like she knew just how they'd react to what she had to say.
"I only need Duke."
Duke's stomach didn't so much sink as vanish, leaving a hungry, gaping vacuum in its wake. He listened with half an ear as she and Nathan argued, hoping against hope to hear her say she wasn't saying what she was very clearly saying.
"You should have told me."
"You would have tried to stop me."
"You don't know where this ends."
"I know that it saves lives today, Nathan. And countless others down the line. Please, just take them and go."
No no no no no no. . . .
Nathan moved towards Tommy. Tommy protested faintly, but let himself be drawn away. Nathan tugged the boy right out of Duke's hands, and Duke was so busy chanting denials in his head, he couldn't even stop him.
And then he and Tommy and the boy were gone, and it was just Audrey and Duke and the killer dying on the ground.
Duke slowly stood, still hoping to hear some explanation that wasn't Audrey using him like this. Aiming him like a gun, just like the Rev had wanted to do.
"I'm sorry, Duke," she said. "I really am."
no no no no no no no . . . .
Duke stared down at Nix, who seemed too out of it now to understand anything that was happening. "You didn't need me to help find him," he said, because one of them had to name this atrocity out loud. "You needed me to kill him."
"There are scores of other kids out there," Audrey said. "That aren't just going to die, they are going to kill their families too. And you are the only one who can stop that."
no no no no no no no no
Duke couldn't breathe.
"You have no right put this on me!" he hissed.
"His organs are failing." Audrey sounded desperate, on the verge of tears herself. "He's going to die, there's nothing we can do about that. But you can kill his curse before he goes."
She held her gun out for him. Duke stared at it.
"What is that?!" He smacked her hand aside. The gun went flying. "No!"
Audrey just looked at him. Eyes wide and wet. Like she was depending on him to be on her side, even after — "The entire time that I was helping you, you were planning this."
She shook her head. "No. Not at first. But then I saw those photos of all those kids at the fertility clinic, all of those kids that would die or worse, and I knew . . . I knew that you were the only answer. So I thought if you could see the kind of monster that we were dealing with —"
"That I would want to become one too?" Duke backed up a step. Wishing he could back up all the way to Fandom, all the way to last week, when his biggest worries were wacky, harmless magic and finding Octavia a therapist.
Octavia, who had killed countless people, in the name of saving countless more. And was a barely functional husk of who she once had been as a result.
"This wasn't your decision to make."
Audrey stared at him, then nodded. "You're right. Walk away. Whatever happens I'll deal with it."
Duke hesitated, then wrapped his righteous fury around himself like armor. Or a blanket. "Yeah," he said. "You're damn right you will."
And then he turned and walked away.
If only it could have been that easy.
Duke didn't get far. He'd made it to the edge of the woods before the fury ran out. And then he saw Mrs. Nix clutching her son. Clinging to him and sobbing, begging him to answer her. With no idea that she was clinging to a ticking time bomb.
That boy, all of maybe ten years old, was going to die. Soon. But not until after he attacked and maybe killed his mother and sisters, in a desperate, animal attempt to survive. The whole family would be destroyed, and that'd still only be the beginning.
He turned and headed slowly back into the woods, hoping he wasn't too late.
Nix lay just where he'd left him, on his back, panting up at the sky. Duke knelt slowly down beside him, staring into his face. Audrey had called him a monster, but that wasn't it. Duke had met true monsters, back in Fandom. Nix was just a man.
Which honestly just made him even worse.
Duke didn't hesitate again, didn't even pause to consider his options. He was armed, of course, he was always armed, but this wasn't an act of self-defense. This wasn't a battle. If he was going to do this, it would be with his bare hands.
He pressed his hand over NIx's mouth and nose. Stared into the man's eyes as he struggled, desperate and fruitless and weak.
It was over quickly.
It also took forever.
When Nix's eyes had closed, when he'd stopped moving, when Duke could no longer feel the echoes of the bronchial spasms under his palm, he pulled his hand away. There was blood on his palm, from Nix's failing lungs, or stomach, or — it didn't matter where. It only mattered that the blood seeped into Duke's skin.
The wash of his trouble after a kill was gentle, not the overwhelming wave that it was in the heat of battle, when he still needed to subdue his prey. It was warm and soothing — and awful, because it wasn't awful at all.
It felt like coming home.
Duke didn't think he'd ever feel at home again.
"Can I get one of those?"
He'd known she'd come. Audrey couldn't help herself. And he hadn't made it hard for her, heading to the Gull instead of his boat, though he told himself he'd done it because he didn't have the same stock of liquor on the Sanguine Moon that he kept on the Rouge.
He set down his glass and reached for the bottle. Refilled his own glass, set the bottle down. Sipped, and refused to look at her.
She sat down next to him anyway.
"I got some good news. Stan's nephew recovered. And so did Conner and Zoe and Miriam. But I bet you already knew that." A brief pause. Duke stared at the wall behind the bar, the meaningless bits of art and kitsch he'd chosen, because who'd ever heard of a bar with empty walls?
He didn't really see them, anyway. Everywhere he looked, he just saw Harry Nix's eyes.
"Duke. What happened back there?" Audrey's voice was soft. Kind. Faintly pleading.
"I-I-I don't wanna die. . . ."
Duke finally looked up at her. Held that hopeful, helpful gaze. Thought of Octavia back home, cold and stilted, unable to connect to anything around her. Of Octavia, deliberately setting off his trouble and begging him to kill her.
Of how warm he'd feel if he did. How safe and soothed.
Audrey stared back, looking stricken. He wondered what she saw in his face.
He set his glass down with a thunk, slowly stood, and walked out. Leaving her sitting at the bar alone.
[NFB, NFI, OOC welcome. Adapted from Haven episode 3x03, "The Farmer". Warning: The trouble du jour is deeply fucked up. There's body horror, organ theft, manipulation, murder. . . .]