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betterthanaplan"Hey," Audrey said. "Come to Colorado with me for a few days."
So he did.
He probably should have seen it coming. When on the trail of the Colorado Kid, where else were you going to end up? Audrey, he learned, had been remembering things. Little flashes of her past life as Lucy Ripley. Enough to remember the Colorado Kid's face, and then, thanks to the haunted house, which she and the Kid had apparently visited together in the 1980s, his name.
James Cogan.
He'd been reported missing in 1983 by his parents. His father had since passed away, but his mother, June, was still alive, in a town called Nederland. Audrey was determined to talk to her, and Nathan had to hold down the fort back home. So Duke was her next best choice to bring along.
He tried not to be too disappointed by that. Audrey might be the most important person to him in Haven, but he wasn't the most important to her. He was used to that, or should be. Octavia had spoiled him.
God, but he missed her. So much. He wondered what she and Lucifer were doing. If they'd made it off the Rouge, or had somehow managed to sail it. To Aruba, or back to Fandom, or somewhere else entirely. It felt strange, leaving Haven and not going to Maryland, not trying to find Fandom. What if whatever force had sucked him across time and space tried to do it again, and couldn't find him?
What if he was missing his chance to ever go home?
That was ridiculous. It had found him on a relatively tiny boat at sea. It'd be able to find him on a plane, or in a rental car, or on the front steps of a little house in a small town in Colorado. He was in Haven — metaphorically — so he had to stay in Haven. Metaphorically. Focus on the present. On helping Audrey.
"Hey," he asked her softly, as they headed to the front steps of June Cogan's last listed address. "Why are you so nervous?"
"I've been, what, at least three other people?" Audrey said, looking straight forward. "And one of them was in love with the Colorado Kid. And he could be on the other side of that door. And all I can think is . . . I should have worn my other pants."
Duke gave her a little grin. "Audrey, you are officially a girl. Look . . . let's just pray that he doesn't have a unibrow."
She laughed and knockd on the door.. A man answered, maybe their age — or Duke's at least, who knew how old Audrey really was. He claimed never to have heard of the Cogans, and closed the door on them. Duke looked at Audrey, wondering what she'd want to try next, then spotted something over her shoulder that made his jaw lock. A carving of a stylized circular maze, with human figures at the compass points.
The symbol of the Guard. The last thing he'd apparently see before he died.
"What the hell is that death omen doing in Colorado?"
"What?" Audrey asked, and turned. Duke reached for the door again, pounding on it this time. When the house's new owner opened it, he grabbed the man by the collar and thrust him against the wall.
Fear, Claire's voice said in his head. Turned into anger. Turned into aggression.
Which leads to the dark side, yeah, yeah. Duke couldn't bring himself to care just now.
"How about we have an honest conversation about what the hell that thing is doing on your front porch?!" he hissed.
"Hey," Audrey's voice was level and calm. She grabbed his arms and pulled him back off the owner, then questioned him again, her tone stern. The Guard, as it turned out, was much more widespread than any of them had guessed. They were scattered around the country, locating and funnelling troubled people into Haven, the symbol used to let people know that they'd be safe in the house. Like an underground railroad for wacky killer curses.
It'd be sweet, if it weren't also going to end up killing Duke.
The Cogans no longer lived there. Paul, as they'd read, had died, and the man had taken over the safehouse. June had moved into an assisted care facility across town. Audrey thanked him and turned to leave. Duke followed after a moment, resisting the urge to tear that damned symbol down off the porch and smash it to pieces.
Look. Maybe sometimes "the dark side" could be good, okay?
They found June, but she was too far gone. Locked into her own head by Alzheimers. She couldn't keep track of who they were, of how old James was meant to be. She mistook Audrey for Sarah and got very agitated, pleading with her and crying that she'd promised never to come back. As a nurse rushed in to usher then out, Duke slipped a photo album off the side table and into his pocket. Maybe they couldn't get all the answers Audrey wanted, but that didn't mean they had to leave empty handed.
The hotel was — not what either of them had expected. Instead of a double room, they'd ended up with a single queen. Audrey had stared at it uncomfortably and Duke had gone to try and sort things out with the front desk.
Audrey was just finishing up with Nathan when he got back.
"How's Officer Grumpy?" Duke asked.
"Grumpy." Audrey shook her head. "Any luck finding us another room?"
"Aaaaaahhhhhh no." Duke shrugged. "This is the last one in the house. Apparently there's a, uh. Lumberjack tournament in town." She gave him a skeptical look and he continued. "I'm not making that up. That is a real — it's really a thing here. I swear. And worse, there's no bar, so. . . ."
Audrey looked away with a resigned nod. "Alright, well, uh. At least you have a couch to sleep on."
Duke looked at said couch. It was tiny. Not nearly long enough for his six-feet-and-change. "Lucky me."
"Okay." Audrey either didn't notice his sarcasm, or chose to ignore it. She was still wrapped up in the reason why they'd come out here in the first place. "So I was Lucy in the 80s and Sarah in the 50s. And when I was Lucy I loved the Colorado Kid and when I was Sarah. . . . Maybe I helped relocate troubled people? But why did June think I was Sarah and not Lucy?"
"Maybe . . . Sarah and Old Lady Cogan knew each other from way back," Duke offered.
"Yeah, but there's only one person who could help us with that, and that's June Cogan. And her memory's about as cooperative as mine."
"Her memories, maybe," Duke said, reaching into his pocket. "But not her momentos." He pulled out the photo album and held it up. "I, uh. I lifted this. From June Cogan's night table."
"You took a photo album from an old woman?"
Duke looked at the album and grimaced. "It sounds much worse when you say it like that." So much for 'Criminals Anonymous'. He'd have to turn in his two-week chip. He held the album out to her. "You can scold me later."
"No way." Audrey gave him a fond, amused smile. "This is the sweetest form of thievery ever."
Duke smiled back with a shrug. "I'm a sweet thief."
The album was full of photos of James, clearly a well loved and cared for kid. They flipped through, watching him grow up through the 60s and 70s, and into the early 80s. There were school photos, sports teams, dances, and graduations.
And a wedding photo.
"The Colorado Kid was married," Audrey said, pressing her fingers to the woman — clearly not Lucy — standing next to him in a big white dress. She pulled the photo out and flipped it over. "His wife's name was Arla."
Well. At least they'd found another lead.
Duke wasn't sure where Audrey got all the paperwork she managed to dig up and spread across the room's only bed. Maybe it was some special cop powers or something, that let her speed past the red tape even when all the local offices were on the verge of closing for the day. Either way, while Duke went out and got them beer and snacks, she was out grabbing everything she could find on Arla Cogan. Who'd apparently committed suicide not long after the Colorado Kid had gone missing.
There was no sign at all of any torrid, extramarital love affair. With Lucy or anyone else.
"This whole thing," Audrey said, tossing the sheaf of paper she was looking over to the side. "This is ridiculous! When I first showed up to Haven, I was an FBI agent. I was looking into a case. I knew who I was. Life was good, it was good. Then I found out that I had not one, but two — two past lives. That I know of. Nothing is what I thought it was. The first past life I was completely wrong about, and the other one . . . the other one's still a mystery to me."
Duke watched her for a long moment. She hopped up, grabbed a beer, and popped it open.
"You know," he said. "You want something stronger than that, I saw funyuns in the vending machine."
"Funyuns!" Audrey cried. She climbed back onto the bed on her knees. "Yes, funyuns."
"Yeah," Duke said. This was a side of Audrey Parker he hadn't seen yet. He liked it. A lot.
"And, and, and pizza!" she said. "And, and hand rolled cigars, and, uh, skydiving, and those little candy, that you, the dispenser thing. . . ." She held up her hand like she was flicking at a dispenser.
"Pez," Duke offered.
"I never experienced that before!"
"I get it." Duke shook his head. "Okay? I've been saying that for a month."
"A month?"
"You want cigars? I can get Cubans for you, easy."
"A month." Audrey laughed. It sounded faintly hurt. "This is hilarious, right? You tell me about this Hunter meteor storm thing. You explain to me what it is, that I — that I go away, and I waste a whole month doing . . . what?"
This was less fun. "You didn't waste anything," Duke told her. "You know, you . . ." He looked around, picking up one of the pieces of paper. "You solved the Colorado Kid mystery. And you can beat — we can beat this Hunter thing."
Audrey's laugh was more than a little pained now. "Come on, Duke. Now I have to beat a Hunter thing?! No. No. I got, uh, what, 20 days left? No. I just . . . I want to live my life."
Duke nodded slowly, his heart aching for her. "Okay," he said softly. "However you want to do it. You know, you want to. . . . help the troubled, you want to live your life. . . . I'm in."
"You." Audrey's expression went soft, crumpling around the edges."You are an amazing friend."
Duke shook his head a little. What kind of friends had she had before, that this was amazing? "I'm just saying, you have choices."
"No no no no no," Audrey said. "It's more than that. You're here. You . . . you just left everything and you got on a plane, and you came here to Colorado with me."
Duke watched her for a long moment. He thought about Octavia and Lucifer on the Rouge (he'd left everything), about Claire sitting across from him on the Sanguine Moon (he felt everything). He opened his mouth, unsure what he was even going to say, other than that it would be the truth.
"Audrey, I'd do anything you need me to. I'd hunt down your past . . . I'd fight your future."
Audrey took her own slightly shaky breath, staring back at him. "The past is gone," she said slowly. "And the future . . . thank god, is not here yet. All we have is . . ."
And then she was kissing him.
For a moment, a long, agonzing, beautiful moment, she was the only thing in the multiverse. And the only thing in Duke was his need to touch and be touched. To press skin to skin and share heat and strength and peace. There'd been a time in his life when this, making out with someone, sharing their bed, had been the only time he felt safe. Part of him would always crave it, and it'd been a month, a painful, almost deadly month, since he'd last had it.
And then she was pulling away.
"Uh." She let out an uncomfortable laugh, pulling her hoodie back over her shoulders. Duke hadn't even realized he'd started taking it off her. That safe feeling in his stomach turned immediately sour. "20 days, that's not long enough for me to fix our friendship if I screw this up." She gave him a pained little shrug. "And — and you're with two other people, so. . . ."
Duke swallowed and nodded. What the fuck had he just done?
"I'm going to get some air!" Audrey declared. And burst out the door. Leaving Duke to his beer and his guilt.
They didn't talk again that night. Duke made a point of being sacked out on the couch already by the time she came back in, his arm flung over his eyes. He pretended to sleep as he heard her settle into the bed, though in reality it was the furthest thing from his mind.
When it did come, it was cramped and restless, filled with dreams of sad eyes and people slipping through his fingers.
He went for coffee while she checked them out, and he found her out by the rental car. He handed her a cup and forced out a little laugh, letting her know there were no hard feelings for the night before.
It wasn't quite a lie. His feelings were complicated, but not hard. At least, not towards her.
(Claire was going to have a field day with this, the next time they spoke.)
"I just confirmed our flights back to Haven," he said. Audrey nodded.
"It's beautiful here. Maybe that's why Lucy and Sarah came. Because of the scenery."
Duke chuckled. "Knew you had a sense of humor in there." He tilted his head and watched her. It was raining, just a little, and the beads of water in her hair shone faintly in the gray light.
"What?" she asked. "What are you looking at?"
"Just imagining you as a redhead," Duke lied. "It's hot."
"Flatterer." Audrey shook her head, then her eyes went wide. "Duke, you're a genius!"
"I know!" Duke nodded, as much to himself as to her. See? Accepting compliments. " . . . Why?"
Apparently his little deflection had given her an idea. She dragged him back to the nursing home where June Cogan lived, this time with a detour to a wig shop. The red hair, however awkwardly worn, triggered something in the old woman, and they soon found out just how it was that Lucy had loved James.
The Colorado Kid was her — Sarah's, and thus Lucy's and Audrey's — son.
And Duke thought his family was fucked up.
It took them hours to get home. Two different flights, with a — brief, thankfully — stop over in Chicago. They chatted occasionally along the way, little inane observations about the planes, the airports, how air travel measured up compared to boats. Duke slept a little in the air, leaving Audrey to her thoughts. It wasn't until they got a flat heading back into Haven proper that he took the chance to actually try talking about what they'd learned.
"Home sweet Haven. Potholes and all." He gave her a little tilt of his head. "Hey. I'm sorry we didn't get anything else out of the old lady."
Audrey shrugged it off, like she hadn't clearly been thinking about it the whole trip back. "She told me the important part. I don't think she'd be able to remember where the Colorado Kid is anyway."
"You know," Duke said. "We didn't really talk about it on the plane back here, but . . . I mean, how do you feel knowing that you have a — a son?"
Audrey shook her head. "I don't even know how to begin to process that information."
That was fair. Duke hadn't really begun to process his own kid, and he'd at least had a conscious hand — however involuntarily — in making her.
"Hey," he said. "It'll be our secret."
Audrey gave him a faint smirk. "Got a few of those, I guess."
Duke looked away with a short laugh. Her phone rang, and she answered it, stepping a few feet away.
"Saved by the cell," Duke murmured, and went to finish putting the tools for the tire away.
[NFB, NFI, OOC welcome. Adapated from Haven 3x07, "Magic Hour part 1". THERE'S ONLY ONE BED.]
So he did.
He probably should have seen it coming. When on the trail of the Colorado Kid, where else were you going to end up? Audrey, he learned, had been remembering things. Little flashes of her past life as Lucy Ripley. Enough to remember the Colorado Kid's face, and then, thanks to the haunted house, which she and the Kid had apparently visited together in the 1980s, his name.
James Cogan.
He'd been reported missing in 1983 by his parents. His father had since passed away, but his mother, June, was still alive, in a town called Nederland. Audrey was determined to talk to her, and Nathan had to hold down the fort back home. So Duke was her next best choice to bring along.
He tried not to be too disappointed by that. Audrey might be the most important person to him in Haven, but he wasn't the most important to her. He was used to that, or should be. Octavia had spoiled him.
God, but he missed her. So much. He wondered what she and Lucifer were doing. If they'd made it off the Rouge, or had somehow managed to sail it. To Aruba, or back to Fandom, or somewhere else entirely. It felt strange, leaving Haven and not going to Maryland, not trying to find Fandom. What if whatever force had sucked him across time and space tried to do it again, and couldn't find him?
What if he was missing his chance to ever go home?
That was ridiculous. It had found him on a relatively tiny boat at sea. It'd be able to find him on a plane, or in a rental car, or on the front steps of a little house in a small town in Colorado. He was in Haven — metaphorically — so he had to stay in Haven. Metaphorically. Focus on the present. On helping Audrey.
"Hey," he asked her softly, as they headed to the front steps of June Cogan's last listed address. "Why are you so nervous?"
"I've been, what, at least three other people?" Audrey said, looking straight forward. "And one of them was in love with the Colorado Kid. And he could be on the other side of that door. And all I can think is . . . I should have worn my other pants."
Duke gave her a little grin. "Audrey, you are officially a girl. Look . . . let's just pray that he doesn't have a unibrow."
She laughed and knockd on the door.. A man answered, maybe their age — or Duke's at least, who knew how old Audrey really was. He claimed never to have heard of the Cogans, and closed the door on them. Duke looked at Audrey, wondering what she'd want to try next, then spotted something over her shoulder that made his jaw lock. A carving of a stylized circular maze, with human figures at the compass points.
The symbol of the Guard. The last thing he'd apparently see before he died.
"What the hell is that death omen doing in Colorado?"
"What?" Audrey asked, and turned. Duke reached for the door again, pounding on it this time. When the house's new owner opened it, he grabbed the man by the collar and thrust him against the wall.
Fear, Claire's voice said in his head. Turned into anger. Turned into aggression.
Which leads to the dark side, yeah, yeah. Duke couldn't bring himself to care just now.
"How about we have an honest conversation about what the hell that thing is doing on your front porch?!" he hissed.
"Hey," Audrey's voice was level and calm. She grabbed his arms and pulled him back off the owner, then questioned him again, her tone stern. The Guard, as it turned out, was much more widespread than any of them had guessed. They were scattered around the country, locating and funnelling troubled people into Haven, the symbol used to let people know that they'd be safe in the house. Like an underground railroad for wacky killer curses.
It'd be sweet, if it weren't also going to end up killing Duke.
The Cogans no longer lived there. Paul, as they'd read, had died, and the man had taken over the safehouse. June had moved into an assisted care facility across town. Audrey thanked him and turned to leave. Duke followed after a moment, resisting the urge to tear that damned symbol down off the porch and smash it to pieces.
Look. Maybe sometimes "the dark side" could be good, okay?
They found June, but she was too far gone. Locked into her own head by Alzheimers. She couldn't keep track of who they were, of how old James was meant to be. She mistook Audrey for Sarah and got very agitated, pleading with her and crying that she'd promised never to come back. As a nurse rushed in to usher then out, Duke slipped a photo album off the side table and into his pocket. Maybe they couldn't get all the answers Audrey wanted, but that didn't mean they had to leave empty handed.
The hotel was — not what either of them had expected. Instead of a double room, they'd ended up with a single queen. Audrey had stared at it uncomfortably and Duke had gone to try and sort things out with the front desk.
Audrey was just finishing up with Nathan when he got back.
"How's Officer Grumpy?" Duke asked.
"Grumpy." Audrey shook her head. "Any luck finding us another room?"
"Aaaaaahhhhhh no." Duke shrugged. "This is the last one in the house. Apparently there's a, uh. Lumberjack tournament in town." She gave him a skeptical look and he continued. "I'm not making that up. That is a real — it's really a thing here. I swear. And worse, there's no bar, so. . . ."
Audrey looked away with a resigned nod. "Alright, well, uh. At least you have a couch to sleep on."
Duke looked at said couch. It was tiny. Not nearly long enough for his six-feet-and-change. "Lucky me."
"Okay." Audrey either didn't notice his sarcasm, or chose to ignore it. She was still wrapped up in the reason why they'd come out here in the first place. "So I was Lucy in the 80s and Sarah in the 50s. And when I was Lucy I loved the Colorado Kid and when I was Sarah. . . . Maybe I helped relocate troubled people? But why did June think I was Sarah and not Lucy?"
"Maybe . . . Sarah and Old Lady Cogan knew each other from way back," Duke offered.
"Yeah, but there's only one person who could help us with that, and that's June Cogan. And her memory's about as cooperative as mine."
"Her memories, maybe," Duke said, reaching into his pocket. "But not her momentos." He pulled out the photo album and held it up. "I, uh. I lifted this. From June Cogan's night table."
"You took a photo album from an old woman?"
Duke looked at the album and grimaced. "It sounds much worse when you say it like that." So much for 'Criminals Anonymous'. He'd have to turn in his two-week chip. He held the album out to her. "You can scold me later."
"No way." Audrey gave him a fond, amused smile. "This is the sweetest form of thievery ever."
Duke smiled back with a shrug. "I'm a sweet thief."
The album was full of photos of James, clearly a well loved and cared for kid. They flipped through, watching him grow up through the 60s and 70s, and into the early 80s. There were school photos, sports teams, dances, and graduations.
And a wedding photo.
"The Colorado Kid was married," Audrey said, pressing her fingers to the woman — clearly not Lucy — standing next to him in a big white dress. She pulled the photo out and flipped it over. "His wife's name was Arla."
Well. At least they'd found another lead.
Duke wasn't sure where Audrey got all the paperwork she managed to dig up and spread across the room's only bed. Maybe it was some special cop powers or something, that let her speed past the red tape even when all the local offices were on the verge of closing for the day. Either way, while Duke went out and got them beer and snacks, she was out grabbing everything she could find on Arla Cogan. Who'd apparently committed suicide not long after the Colorado Kid had gone missing.
There was no sign at all of any torrid, extramarital love affair. With Lucy or anyone else.
"This whole thing," Audrey said, tossing the sheaf of paper she was looking over to the side. "This is ridiculous! When I first showed up to Haven, I was an FBI agent. I was looking into a case. I knew who I was. Life was good, it was good. Then I found out that I had not one, but two — two past lives. That I know of. Nothing is what I thought it was. The first past life I was completely wrong about, and the other one . . . the other one's still a mystery to me."
Duke watched her for a long moment. She hopped up, grabbed a beer, and popped it open.
"You know," he said. "You want something stronger than that, I saw funyuns in the vending machine."
"Funyuns!" Audrey cried. She climbed back onto the bed on her knees. "Yes, funyuns."
"Yeah," Duke said. This was a side of Audrey Parker he hadn't seen yet. He liked it. A lot.
"And, and, and pizza!" she said. "And, and hand rolled cigars, and, uh, skydiving, and those little candy, that you, the dispenser thing. . . ." She held up her hand like she was flicking at a dispenser.
"Pez," Duke offered.
"I never experienced that before!"
"I get it." Duke shook his head. "Okay? I've been saying that for a month."
"A month?"
"You want cigars? I can get Cubans for you, easy."
"A month." Audrey laughed. It sounded faintly hurt. "This is hilarious, right? You tell me about this Hunter meteor storm thing. You explain to me what it is, that I — that I go away, and I waste a whole month doing . . . what?"
This was less fun. "You didn't waste anything," Duke told her. "You know, you . . ." He looked around, picking up one of the pieces of paper. "You solved the Colorado Kid mystery. And you can beat — we can beat this Hunter thing."
Audrey's laugh was more than a little pained now. "Come on, Duke. Now I have to beat a Hunter thing?! No. No. I got, uh, what, 20 days left? No. I just . . . I want to live my life."
Duke nodded slowly, his heart aching for her. "Okay," he said softly. "However you want to do it. You know, you want to. . . . help the troubled, you want to live your life. . . . I'm in."
"You." Audrey's expression went soft, crumpling around the edges."You are an amazing friend."
Duke shook his head a little. What kind of friends had she had before, that this was amazing? "I'm just saying, you have choices."
"No no no no no," Audrey said. "It's more than that. You're here. You . . . you just left everything and you got on a plane, and you came here to Colorado with me."
Duke watched her for a long moment. He thought about Octavia and Lucifer on the Rouge (he'd left everything), about Claire sitting across from him on the Sanguine Moon (he felt everything). He opened his mouth, unsure what he was even going to say, other than that it would be the truth.
"Audrey, I'd do anything you need me to. I'd hunt down your past . . . I'd fight your future."
Audrey took her own slightly shaky breath, staring back at him. "The past is gone," she said slowly. "And the future . . . thank god, is not here yet. All we have is . . ."
And then she was kissing him.
For a moment, a long, agonzing, beautiful moment, she was the only thing in the multiverse. And the only thing in Duke was his need to touch and be touched. To press skin to skin and share heat and strength and peace. There'd been a time in his life when this, making out with someone, sharing their bed, had been the only time he felt safe. Part of him would always crave it, and it'd been a month, a painful, almost deadly month, since he'd last had it.
And then she was pulling away.
"Uh." She let out an uncomfortable laugh, pulling her hoodie back over her shoulders. Duke hadn't even realized he'd started taking it off her. That safe feeling in his stomach turned immediately sour. "20 days, that's not long enough for me to fix our friendship if I screw this up." She gave him a pained little shrug. "And — and you're with two other people, so. . . ."
Duke swallowed and nodded. What the fuck had he just done?
"I'm going to get some air!" Audrey declared. And burst out the door. Leaving Duke to his beer and his guilt.
They didn't talk again that night. Duke made a point of being sacked out on the couch already by the time she came back in, his arm flung over his eyes. He pretended to sleep as he heard her settle into the bed, though in reality it was the furthest thing from his mind.
When it did come, it was cramped and restless, filled with dreams of sad eyes and people slipping through his fingers.
He went for coffee while she checked them out, and he found her out by the rental car. He handed her a cup and forced out a little laugh, letting her know there were no hard feelings for the night before.
It wasn't quite a lie. His feelings were complicated, but not hard. At least, not towards her.
(Claire was going to have a field day with this, the next time they spoke.)
"I just confirmed our flights back to Haven," he said. Audrey nodded.
"It's beautiful here. Maybe that's why Lucy and Sarah came. Because of the scenery."
Duke chuckled. "Knew you had a sense of humor in there." He tilted his head and watched her. It was raining, just a little, and the beads of water in her hair shone faintly in the gray light.
"What?" she asked. "What are you looking at?"
"Just imagining you as a redhead," Duke lied. "It's hot."
"Flatterer." Audrey shook her head, then her eyes went wide. "Duke, you're a genius!"
"I know!" Duke nodded, as much to himself as to her. See? Accepting compliments. " . . . Why?"
Apparently his little deflection had given her an idea. She dragged him back to the nursing home where June Cogan lived, this time with a detour to a wig shop. The red hair, however awkwardly worn, triggered something in the old woman, and they soon found out just how it was that Lucy had loved James.
The Colorado Kid was her — Sarah's, and thus Lucy's and Audrey's — son.
And Duke thought his family was fucked up.
It took them hours to get home. Two different flights, with a — brief, thankfully — stop over in Chicago. They chatted occasionally along the way, little inane observations about the planes, the airports, how air travel measured up compared to boats. Duke slept a little in the air, leaving Audrey to her thoughts. It wasn't until they got a flat heading back into Haven proper that he took the chance to actually try talking about what they'd learned.
"Home sweet Haven. Potholes and all." He gave her a little tilt of his head. "Hey. I'm sorry we didn't get anything else out of the old lady."
Audrey shrugged it off, like she hadn't clearly been thinking about it the whole trip back. "She told me the important part. I don't think she'd be able to remember where the Colorado Kid is anyway."
"You know," Duke said. "We didn't really talk about it on the plane back here, but . . . I mean, how do you feel knowing that you have a — a son?"
Audrey shook her head. "I don't even know how to begin to process that information."
That was fair. Duke hadn't really begun to process his own kid, and he'd at least had a conscious hand — however involuntarily — in making her.
"Hey," he said. "It'll be our secret."
Audrey gave him a faint smirk. "Got a few of those, I guess."
Duke looked away with a short laugh. Her phone rang, and she answered it, stepping a few feet away.
"Saved by the cell," Duke murmured, and went to finish putting the tools for the tire away.
[NFB, NFI, OOC welcome. Adapated from Haven 3x07, "Magic Hour part 1". THERE'S ONLY ONE BED.]