Haven, Maine, Wednesday Fandom time
Mar. 3rd, 2021 10:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
betterthanaplanThey were running out of time to figure out how to prevent Audrey from going into the barn, and everyone was on high alert. Especially when Audrey called and asked them all to meet her at an old warehouse on the water, on the outskirts of town. There was crime scene tape all around it, and what looked like the beginnings of an excavation on one side. Lucassi and a handful of techs and uniformed officers were gathered around it. Duke thought he saw a flash of bone in the pit and looked away as Vince and Dave pulled up in Vince's old '50s sedan.
Duke gave the thing a hefty side-eye. He wasn't sure he'd be able to look at a 50s car the same way again.
"She called you too?" Dave asked as they walked up to join him.
"Of course she did, Dave." Vince gave Duke a small nod. "We're all her trusted confidants."
Yeah, Duke wasn't so sure about the two of them, but that was Audrey's call. Lucassi looked them over and waved them in.
"This is a need-to-know crime scene," they heard Nathan saying as they found their way to the creepy room he and Audrey were occupying. Claire was already there. Duke bit back a snarky comment when he saw her. She'd been dodging his calls since before the time travel incident. Which was either some sort of payback for how he'd dodged hers when he first got back into town, or — Or he was too messed up to fix and she'd given up on him.
Or maybe she was just a shitty therapist. He didn't know. He just knew he was pissed.
"What exactly do we need to know?" Vince asked.
"The, uh, creepy coroner guy outside said we were on the list," Duke said, jerking his thumb in the direction of the door.
Then he spotted the tanks. And the extra creepy human skins floating inside them.
". . . Oh."
This was going to be one of those cases.
"Our paper gets the exclusive, right?" Dave asked. With all the grace of a water buffalo.
"This isn't about a story or volunteer cops," Nathan said.
"It's about the bolt gun killer," said Audrey.
Duke stiffened. Audrey reached into the tank and shifted the skin, so they could get a good look at the creepy, empty face.
"Tommy Bowen."
Duke swallowed bile.
"Oh my god," Vince said. "That's his . . . I thought Tommy was the bolt gun killer!"
"So did we," said Nathan. "The real Tommy was murdered and skinned several weeks ago. The killer assumed his identity"
Trust Haven to put a whole new spin on identity theft.
"There's a . . . a skinwalker in Haven?" Dave asked.
Duke was all set to tell them to stop using native myths as trouble shortcuts. Then he remembered how hard it had been to find a description for Nix's trouble in the journal, and swallowed it down.
Wasn't like they'd listen to him, anyway.
"So where is he?" he asked, shifting away from the tank with Tommy's skin in it. "The real killer?"
"Who is he?" asked Vince.
"We don't know." Nathan's expression was hard and blank. It pissed him off that he didn't have better answers for them. Or rather, for Audrey. "He escaped. But we have an idea on a way to find him."
Audrey nodded. "The thing is, Tommy made a series of rookie mistakes. I hardly noticed them at first but when you add them all up there's no way he could be a trained cop."
Duke couldn't help himself. He raised his hand. "I, uh, I would just like to note that — I told you so. I told you so!"
They all ignored him.
"The skinwalker sounds and looks like his victims, but he doesn't know what they know," Audrey said.
.
"It's a performance," said Nathan. "He can steal their voice, their appearance, but he can't steal their minds."
"So we can catch him using secrets, memories," Claire mused. "It would be like a test."
Duke flicked her another glance, thinking of how many secrets he'd shared with her over the last several weeks. That wasn't helpful at the moment, though. "Well, hot damn kids," he said. "Sounds like one hell of a plan. When do we start?"
"I already have." Audrey looked each of them in the eye in turn. "The killer picked Tommy. He was someone who was already in our circle."
"We know he's looking for information on Audrey and the Colorado kid," Nathan said.
"He's been with us the whole time and I bet he still is," Audrey said.
Claire frowned. "What are you saying?"
"When we're done here I need you all to go down to the station," Audrey said. "One of us could be the skinwalker."
Duke held up a finger. "Including you?"
Audrey nodded. "We're all suspects."
A dog started barking outside. Audrey and Nathan hurried out. Duke, Vince, Dave, and Claire trailed after, eyeing each other with suspicion.
Well. Wouldn't this be a fun day.
Audrey brought him into one of the interview rooms in the station. Duke tried not to think of all the other times he'd been dragged in here.
At least she wasn't putting him in cuffs. And she wouldn't have to. Unless she was the bolt gun killer, and managed to convince everyone else that he was the liar.
Claire sat next to her, looking bright-eyed and expectant. She and Audrey, Audrey explained, had already tested each other. They were in the clear. Duke nodded and tried to believe them.
"Well," he said, after a long moment. "This is awkward."
"Not for long," Claire said cheerfully. "You have the easiest test ever, Duke. We're just going to use a drop of troubled blood."
Duke frowned, resisting the urge to physically pull back. Claire knew as well as anyone how much he hated having his trouble triggered. "I don't think that's a good idea."
"Well, assuming you are Duke. . . ." Claire said. "You'll just go all silver-eyed and get super strength. But don't break anything and don't throw me across the room."
Duke tried to remember if he'd told her about the other effect of his trouble. The way it made him feel. He was pretty sure he had, at the very least back in Fandom, when they were still doing phone sessions. Had she forgotten? Why was she being so cavalier about this?
Duke tore his eyes off her and looked at Audrey instead. "Audrey? Is this what you want?"
"We need to be sure," Audrey said. "It has to be something unique to you."
Duke nodded. He studied Claire again and then turned back to her, leaning forward just a little. He hadn't told Claire about this. He hadn't told anyone. He was willing to bet Audrey had kept quiet about it, too.
"That night in Nederland. After we found out about Arla Cogan, the Colorado Kid's wife. . . ." He tilted his head. "You want me to keep going?"
"Yes," Claire said, looking eager. "Yes she does."
Duke put his arms on the interview table, ignoring her. Eyes locked on Audrey's. This was his test for her, too. "You remember how confused you were?" he asked.
"You could have guessed that," Audrey said.
"And you remember how you were questioning everything?" Duke continued. "And I told you that I would help you do whatever you wanted to do."
Audrey bit her lip. She remembered. "And then what happened?" she asked softly.
"And then you kissed me."
Claire's mouth dropped open. "No way. Did you two. . . ?"
Audrey gave him a soft, fond smile. "Okay, Duke. You're good. You're not the skinwalker. You can. . . ." She sat back with a little sigh. "You can go now."
Duke nodded back. And he was sure she wasn't the skinwalker, either, now. Though he wasn't sold on Claire yet.
But . . . he trusted Audrey. And if she still trusted Claire, that'd have to be good enough for him. "Alright."
"I'm kind of happy you two spent a minute in make out town before this whole barn situation happened," Claire said, looking between them. Duke couldn't hold back his temper anymore.
"I find most of what you say mildly amusing," he said, brushing past all the times he'd actively leaned on her for support. She'd since undermined those, whatever else was going on, and she wouldn't be getting that trust back. "But stop talking about this barn situation like it's a done deal. It's not."
"No one's given up on Audrey yet, Duke," Claire said firmly, sounding more like a therapist again, and less like an excited teenager. "But we have to face the reality."
"And the reality is that if I go into that barn when the hunter meteor storm hits Haven," Audrey said softly. "The troubles disappear. For 27 years, they're gone."
Duke looked away with a small nod. If that was what she wanted — he didn't want to promise her anything in front of Claire, though. So he just nodded. And left.
He didn't hear how the other interviews went. He hung around the station for a while, then finally gave up and headed to the Gull to bury himself in bartending and micromanaging his kitchen staff. He saw Audrey get in that evening, but she looked so wrecked from her day that he decided against bothering her for information. He'd just keep a careful eye out, and wait until she was ready to talk.
He'd never find out exactly what happened the day after the interviews. He got up in the morning as usual, did a few boat chores, and went to head into town — and then woke up, sometime before sunset, sprawled on the dock by the Sanguine Moon. He was freezing cold, his fingernails faintly purple, and damp with the spray off the water, one arm dangling over the edge of the pier.
He'd passed out, apparently. As had any number of other people he saw pulling themselves to their feet, along the docks and on their boats. His head ached — nothing new around here, considering how many times it ended up getting smacked or cracked or otherwise knocked around by a trouble — and rumor around the docks was that there'd been some sort of townwide gas leak.
Which meant it had been a trouble. A big, nasty one. But one that had been cleared up, if no one was calling him in to play cavalry. He was just going to have to chalk it up to one of those "Haven things".
He missed Fandom things. At least those mostly just involved him waking up in the wrong body or convinced he was the long lost heir of a duchy or something.
Audrey called them in again, the last day before the Hunter storm and the barn were set to arrive. They all gathered in her office at the station, Duke sprawled out on Nathan's old chair while the others crowded in around her at the computer.
"We got you together because you're the only people we know we can trust," she said. Duke looked around with a frown, counting off who was present as Nathan spoke.
"We discovered the skinwalker was stealing parts of women's faces."
There was Nathan. Vince. Dave.
"We started a computer program to piece together what the skin would look like with the parts assembled. Now that we just got the final ID of the woman buried near the cannery —"
Duke. Dwight.
"We can finally get a picture of who the skin walker's been building!" Dave declared.
Duke raised his hand. "'Scuse me. Um. . . . Why isn't Claire here for this?"
Audrey looked down. "Claire . . . . Claire's dead."
"Skinwalker took her," Nathan said.
And suddenly, everything matched up. Why Claire had been so insistent that he track down Moseley, and then disappeared the minute he got back. Why she'd been dodging him ever since, and snarking instead of actively helping Audrey during important meetings.
The bolt gun killer had killed her. Taken her place. Duke wondered how many others of her clients had been left hanging in the wind for its sick game.
It certainly didn't top murdering and skinning people to assume their identities on the thing's list of crimes, but fucking with people's mental health was still a really shitty thing to do.
"We need to get that son of a bitch," he said darkly, swallowing down his rage and grief.
"We will," Audrey promised. She was in the same spot. She'd opened up to Claire too, and Duke knew that hadn't been easy for her. She had to be feeling a similar level of betrayal.
"And it's gonna pay," Dwight said. Duke wondered if he'd gone to see her, too.
Nathan nodded to the computer. "Program's almost finished."
"That's impossible." Audrey stared at the screen, eyes wide. "Arla Cogan?"
"Who?" Dwight asked. Duke leaped to his feet to come peer over Audrey's shoulder.
"No, it can't be." But it was. The facial composite was a dead ringer for the woman in James Cogan's wedding photos.
"When Duke and I were in Colorado," Audrey said. "We found out that James Cogan was married."
Nathan shook his head. "The skinwalker's building your son's wife. Why?"
"Maybe it always was her," Duke said. "After James died, nobody in Colorado ever saw Arla again." They'd thought she committed suicide, but well. She was clearly capable of faking her death. She'd done so as Tommy, too.
"Maybe she came to Haven with James," Nathan said. "Never left."
"We'll go through the archives," Dave offered.
"See if there were any women skinned 27 years ago," Vince said.
"See if some of your business connections might know something," Nathan told Duke. Duke nodded.
"Yeah, they just might. Let me spread the word." He left them to their research, his phone already out and ready. He'd been neglecting his contacts while in Fandom, but had had plenty of time to build them back up over the last six weeks. Even when he was still pretending to be an honest man for a while. If Arla had been spending the last 30 years in hiding, then he just might know some of the folks who had helped her do it.
He didn't find any leads on Arla that morning, but he did manage to get a great deal on some liquor for the Gull. He was really hoping that once the barn business was dispensed with, he'd be shuttled back to Fandom, so he was doing his best to get the place set up to run without him again for a while.
"Here's the last case," he called to Manny as he brought it in. The lunch rush was in full swing. "I'll be back later. Got some stuff I gotta take care of."
"Duke!" A large, pretty blonde woman with frizzy hair looked up from her cocktail and waved to him. "There you are, it's Jeanine!"
Duke shook his head. "I'm sorry, I, uh. . . ."
"Come oooon," she cooed. "It hasn't been that long, has it?"
Ah. Right. Yeah, that coo was faintly familiar. ". . . Jeanine!"
"Yessss!"
It was starting to take shape in his head. Senior year, a pink and purple room. Haven High's future prom queen slipping her panties down over her hips. . . .
"Right," Duke said, blinking away the memories. He remembered the banners he'd seen around town, the invite that had shown up in his P.O. box. "The uh, the reunion. I'm sorry." He tried not to glance obviously at the door. "How . . . how are you? It's been a long time."
"I'm doing gooood," Jeanine cooed. She clearly thought that was still a sexy move. It didn't work quite as well on a 35 year old woman as it had on an 18 year old girl. "I like your plaaaace. Do you. . . ." She stirred her drink, peering up at him through her lashes. ". . . Run it with your wife?"
"No. No . . . no wife for me."
"Really!" Jeanine brightened, flashing him a broad smile. "The way all those girls used to chase you. . . .."
Duke laughed uncomfortably. This woman was clearly trying to gauge if she had a chance at getting in Duke's pants. He wasn't sure why he was being so careful to let her down easy.
"If I remember correctly," she said, giving him a knowing smirk. "I think I caught you once or twice."
"Yeeeeeah," Duke agreed. "Those were . . . crazy times back then."
"That's the good thing about reunions. A chance to make some new memories."
"But the old ones were so nice!"
"Excuse me." A hand landed on Duke's shoulder and he turned, happy for the excuse to escape that awkward conversation. Until he saw who it was.
"Hello Duke," the woman said. "You know who I am?"
Duke swallowed. "Arla."
She glanced down at the coat draped over her arm. And the gun tucked just inside it.
"Can we talk privately?"
"Duuuuke?" Jeanine called. "Aren't you going to introduce us?"
Duke turned back towards her, entirely too aware of the gun still pointed at his back. "No. Jeanine, drinks are on me. It was nice to see you."
He left her behind, scoffing at the bar, and led Arla across the room to a table in the corner.
"There's an awful lot of people in here," Arla noted. "And you know what I'm capable of. So I suggest you hear me out."
Duke lowered himself carefully into the seat across from her. Why the hell had she come after him?
"So. Arla." He flicked her his best shark smile. "What do you want?"
"Oh you know, what everyone else wants." She smiled. "Love, life, pursuit of happiness. And Audrey, I want her to find the barn."
"Why?"
"Same reason you should want her to. So we can all go back to being normal."
Normal. Right. "Yeeeeah, but. It's going to be a much longer journey back for some of us."
Arla scowled. "I didn't ask for this, Crocker. Any more than you asked for your family legacy. But together we can make it stop."
"By trapping my friend inside a supernatural building for the next 27 years?"
Arla rolled her eyes. "Yes, I know how you feel about Audrey. I was Claire, remember? You know what? She loves Nathan. You really want to spend the rest of your life killing troubled people? Wondering which Guard has that tattoo you see just before you die? And all for a woman you can never have."
Duke bristled. His stomach rolled. He'd told Claire so much. Just how long had Arla been running around in a Claire suit? "You're not wearing Claire," he said. "So you're not allowed to shrink me."
"Audrey going back in the barn is just a part of the cycle. You know, like Lucy and Sarah and who knows how many others. But they all go back in the barn."
Duke shrugged. "So then why are you so worried that Audrey won't?"
"You and Nathan. You're thinking about stopping her, right?" Duke huffed and shook his head, and she barrelled on. "It's the way that it has to be! And deep down, you know that that's true."
Duke shifted, leaning forward across the table. Okay. He'd play her little game. Maybe he could find some clue as to how this whole thing was going to go down.
"What exactly do you want from me?"
Arla grinned.
For someone who had so carefully thought out her whole 'murder dozens of women to steal parts of their faces and make myself a new me-skin' plan, Arla's plot for the barn was almost painfully simple.
Apparently Audrey was the one who had to bring the barn. So she would do whatever she had to do to get Audrey to summon it, and then force her inside. She just wanted Duke to back her play. He'd nodded along, then sent her on her way and called Audrey to give her a heads up. Then he'd gone out onto the deck to get some air, found a random locker sitting on the Gull's little boat dock, found a snake in said locker, got conked on the head again, then thrown into the water.
And surfaced as an eighteen year old.
Well. At least this time his brain was still 34.
He headed for the station as soon as he knew what had happened. Apparently one of the returning Haven High alums had some sort of de-aging trouble, and was turning their former classmates into their teenage selves and then murdering them. Duke was the only survivor thus far. Duke suggested Jeanine — she'd been pretty pissed when he'd turned her down at the Gull — but when Nathan talked to her, she told him she already had a different trouble, so it couldn't be her.
He got to see said trouble later, when she turned her hors d'oeuvres at the reunion dance into a big slice of chocolate cake. Duke hurt for her poor metabolism. Then hurt for himself when she dragged "Duke Jr." off to flirt and dance. No amount of protesting that he wasn't into older women seemed to help.
This woman was in desperate need of therapy.
Audrey and Nathan managed to work out that Robbie, Haven High's former favorite target for bullying, was the culprit, but didn't manage to talk him down before Arla shot him. He was a threat to Audrey, Duke guessed, and Audrey had to be alive to go into the barn, so she'd decided to take him out. Nathan tried to go after her, but came back empty-handed. Audrey helped Robbie, who'd had no idea what he'd been doing.
Reunions did that to people, Duke supposed. Brought back all the old resentments. He wondered what he'd have thought of it all if he weren't so busy worrying about Audrey and the barn, and getting back to Fandom. And if he hadn't just been sixteen again a few months ago back in Fandom.
Duke himself had apparently been targeted because of a snake he'd left in Robbie's locker back in school. Duke shook his head.
"I told you. I didn't even know that was Robbie's locker!" He gave Nathan a knowing look. "I thought it was yours."
Apparently, turning down Jeanine hadn't helped, either. It turned out Robbie had a crush on Jeanine in high school, and grown up Robert still thought she was the bees knees. Jeanine admitted to thinking he was cool in high school, but not being brave enough to say anything because he was so unpopular. The moment they held hands again, Duke felt his body shiver, and shift itself back into his proper, grown up shape.
Jeanine and Robert could have their little happily Haven ever after. And Duke could get back to Fandom eventually without worrying about suddenly being too young to hang in his partner/s bar. .
They all headed back to the Gull to celebrate one last solved trouble before — whatever was going to happen next. The meteor storm would start shortly after midnight. Tomorrow promised to be a long, strange day, no matter what happened.
"Everything okay?" Nathan asked, as Audrey came down from checking over her apartment.
"Yeah," she said. "All clear upstairs."
"Down here, too," Duke confirmed.
"Dwight's taking Jeanine and Robert somewhere safe," Nathan said. Duke wondered just how much Dwight had stomped on the Guard's territory, shuttling people around after Audrey had finished with them
Audrey sipped her drink. "Being together and finally being able to accept each other for who they really are. . .. I think that should help Robbie from appearing again."
"Cheers to that." Duke raised his beer. "And to . . . being able to legally drink again."
"You were cute as a teenager."
Duke gave her a little nod. "Yes. I was."
He finished his beer and got up to grab another. He glanced at the clock as he went. 1:30 am. The Hunter would be starting any minute now.
They'd run out of time.
"I'm not going to let this be our last night," Nathan said to Audrey. "I'm not giving up." He didn't so much as look at Duke as he came back over. "When that barn appears, we need to be there. So we'll go back to the station, and we'll put together search parties. Contact the Coast Guard, maybe they'll let us use their satellite surveillance."
"Just so happens I know a guy," Duke said.
Nathan flicked him a smile. "Figured you might."
Audrey watched the two of them, her eyes soft. "It's good to know that my guys have my back."
"Hey." Nathan reached for her hand. "You need to rest, but — we're going to find that barn before it finds you."
Audrey looked up at Duke, and he nodded. She looked between them again, and slowly offered a nod of her own. She pushed to her feet, looking exhausted.
"Good night."
Duke and Nathan both wished her goodnight, and watched her head out
"I'm going to have Manny stay here and watch the apartment," Duke said.
"You trust him?"
Duke nodded. "Yeah, he's okay." He hadn't known the man that long, but he had a good feeling about him. He'd do right by Audrey. He headed back to the bar to start closing up. Dwight came in through the doors and Duke kept an ear out for him as he cleared the tables.
Nathan moved to greet him. "I assume since they didn't card you at the door, Jeanine and Robbie got settled alright."
"I'm not here about that," Dwight said, voice serious. "I spoke to Kirk earlier and he told me that the Guard wants Audrey in that barn tomorrow. And they'll make sure it happens."
"Audrey goes into the barn, it's over my dead body."
"I figured as much. Be careful, Nathan."
Duke watched him head out, then came over to Nathan again.
"What did he want?" Was Dwight actually with the Guard? He'd always seemed separate from them, and he didn't have the ink that Duke knew of, but he'd always struck Duke as sort of an enigma. And he definitely kept his finger on the pulse of the town.
"I'm not sure," Nathan said. Duke watched him for a moment. Nathan looked almost as tired as Audrey had.
"I'm going to close up," he said. "We'll meet here early tomorrow, alright? You two aren't in this alone."
Nathan looked up at him, seeming a little startled, then nodded. Duke saw the hint of a smile on his face, and wondered when Nathan had started to like him again
"Yeah," he said. "Thanks."
Duke smiled back. "Any time."
[NFB, NFI, OOC welcome. Adapted from Haven 3x11 and 3x12, "Last Goodbyes" and "Reunion". Almost there!]
Duke gave the thing a hefty side-eye. He wasn't sure he'd be able to look at a 50s car the same way again.
"She called you too?" Dave asked as they walked up to join him.
"Of course she did, Dave." Vince gave Duke a small nod. "We're all her trusted confidants."
Yeah, Duke wasn't so sure about the two of them, but that was Audrey's call. Lucassi looked them over and waved them in.
"This is a need-to-know crime scene," they heard Nathan saying as they found their way to the creepy room he and Audrey were occupying. Claire was already there. Duke bit back a snarky comment when he saw her. She'd been dodging his calls since before the time travel incident. Which was either some sort of payback for how he'd dodged hers when he first got back into town, or — Or he was too messed up to fix and she'd given up on him.
Or maybe she was just a shitty therapist. He didn't know. He just knew he was pissed.
"What exactly do we need to know?" Vince asked.
"The, uh, creepy coroner guy outside said we were on the list," Duke said, jerking his thumb in the direction of the door.
Then he spotted the tanks. And the extra creepy human skins floating inside them.
". . . Oh."
This was going to be one of those cases.
"Our paper gets the exclusive, right?" Dave asked. With all the grace of a water buffalo.
"This isn't about a story or volunteer cops," Nathan said.
"It's about the bolt gun killer," said Audrey.
Duke stiffened. Audrey reached into the tank and shifted the skin, so they could get a good look at the creepy, empty face.
"Tommy Bowen."
Duke swallowed bile.
"Oh my god," Vince said. "That's his . . . I thought Tommy was the bolt gun killer!"
"So did we," said Nathan. "The real Tommy was murdered and skinned several weeks ago. The killer assumed his identity"
Trust Haven to put a whole new spin on identity theft.
"There's a . . . a skinwalker in Haven?" Dave asked.
Duke was all set to tell them to stop using native myths as trouble shortcuts. Then he remembered how hard it had been to find a description for Nix's trouble in the journal, and swallowed it down.
Wasn't like they'd listen to him, anyway.
"So where is he?" he asked, shifting away from the tank with Tommy's skin in it. "The real killer?"
"Who is he?" asked Vince.
"We don't know." Nathan's expression was hard and blank. It pissed him off that he didn't have better answers for them. Or rather, for Audrey. "He escaped. But we have an idea on a way to find him."
Audrey nodded. "The thing is, Tommy made a series of rookie mistakes. I hardly noticed them at first but when you add them all up there's no way he could be a trained cop."
Duke couldn't help himself. He raised his hand. "I, uh, I would just like to note that — I told you so. I told you so!"
They all ignored him.
"The skinwalker sounds and looks like his victims, but he doesn't know what they know," Audrey said.
.
"It's a performance," said Nathan. "He can steal their voice, their appearance, but he can't steal their minds."
"So we can catch him using secrets, memories," Claire mused. "It would be like a test."
Duke flicked her another glance, thinking of how many secrets he'd shared with her over the last several weeks. That wasn't helpful at the moment, though. "Well, hot damn kids," he said. "Sounds like one hell of a plan. When do we start?"
"I already have." Audrey looked each of them in the eye in turn. "The killer picked Tommy. He was someone who was already in our circle."
"We know he's looking for information on Audrey and the Colorado kid," Nathan said.
"He's been with us the whole time and I bet he still is," Audrey said.
Claire frowned. "What are you saying?"
"When we're done here I need you all to go down to the station," Audrey said. "One of us could be the skinwalker."
Duke held up a finger. "Including you?"
Audrey nodded. "We're all suspects."
A dog started barking outside. Audrey and Nathan hurried out. Duke, Vince, Dave, and Claire trailed after, eyeing each other with suspicion.
Well. Wouldn't this be a fun day.
Audrey brought him into one of the interview rooms in the station. Duke tried not to think of all the other times he'd been dragged in here.
At least she wasn't putting him in cuffs. And she wouldn't have to. Unless she was the bolt gun killer, and managed to convince everyone else that he was the liar.
Claire sat next to her, looking bright-eyed and expectant. She and Audrey, Audrey explained, had already tested each other. They were in the clear. Duke nodded and tried to believe them.
"Well," he said, after a long moment. "This is awkward."
"Not for long," Claire said cheerfully. "You have the easiest test ever, Duke. We're just going to use a drop of troubled blood."
Duke frowned, resisting the urge to physically pull back. Claire knew as well as anyone how much he hated having his trouble triggered. "I don't think that's a good idea."
"Well, assuming you are Duke. . . ." Claire said. "You'll just go all silver-eyed and get super strength. But don't break anything and don't throw me across the room."
Duke tried to remember if he'd told her about the other effect of his trouble. The way it made him feel. He was pretty sure he had, at the very least back in Fandom, when they were still doing phone sessions. Had she forgotten? Why was she being so cavalier about this?
Duke tore his eyes off her and looked at Audrey instead. "Audrey? Is this what you want?"
"We need to be sure," Audrey said. "It has to be something unique to you."
Duke nodded. He studied Claire again and then turned back to her, leaning forward just a little. He hadn't told Claire about this. He hadn't told anyone. He was willing to bet Audrey had kept quiet about it, too.
"That night in Nederland. After we found out about Arla Cogan, the Colorado Kid's wife. . . ." He tilted his head. "You want me to keep going?"
"Yes," Claire said, looking eager. "Yes she does."
Duke put his arms on the interview table, ignoring her. Eyes locked on Audrey's. This was his test for her, too. "You remember how confused you were?" he asked.
"You could have guessed that," Audrey said.
"And you remember how you were questioning everything?" Duke continued. "And I told you that I would help you do whatever you wanted to do."
Audrey bit her lip. She remembered. "And then what happened?" she asked softly.
"And then you kissed me."
Claire's mouth dropped open. "No way. Did you two. . . ?"
Audrey gave him a soft, fond smile. "Okay, Duke. You're good. You're not the skinwalker. You can. . . ." She sat back with a little sigh. "You can go now."
Duke nodded back. And he was sure she wasn't the skinwalker, either, now. Though he wasn't sold on Claire yet.
But . . . he trusted Audrey. And if she still trusted Claire, that'd have to be good enough for him. "Alright."
"I'm kind of happy you two spent a minute in make out town before this whole barn situation happened," Claire said, looking between them. Duke couldn't hold back his temper anymore.
"I find most of what you say mildly amusing," he said, brushing past all the times he'd actively leaned on her for support. She'd since undermined those, whatever else was going on, and she wouldn't be getting that trust back. "But stop talking about this barn situation like it's a done deal. It's not."
"No one's given up on Audrey yet, Duke," Claire said firmly, sounding more like a therapist again, and less like an excited teenager. "But we have to face the reality."
"And the reality is that if I go into that barn when the hunter meteor storm hits Haven," Audrey said softly. "The troubles disappear. For 27 years, they're gone."
Duke looked away with a small nod. If that was what she wanted — he didn't want to promise her anything in front of Claire, though. So he just nodded. And left.
He didn't hear how the other interviews went. He hung around the station for a while, then finally gave up and headed to the Gull to bury himself in bartending and micromanaging his kitchen staff. He saw Audrey get in that evening, but she looked so wrecked from her day that he decided against bothering her for information. He'd just keep a careful eye out, and wait until she was ready to talk.
He'd never find out exactly what happened the day after the interviews. He got up in the morning as usual, did a few boat chores, and went to head into town — and then woke up, sometime before sunset, sprawled on the dock by the Sanguine Moon. He was freezing cold, his fingernails faintly purple, and damp with the spray off the water, one arm dangling over the edge of the pier.
He'd passed out, apparently. As had any number of other people he saw pulling themselves to their feet, along the docks and on their boats. His head ached — nothing new around here, considering how many times it ended up getting smacked or cracked or otherwise knocked around by a trouble — and rumor around the docks was that there'd been some sort of townwide gas leak.
Which meant it had been a trouble. A big, nasty one. But one that had been cleared up, if no one was calling him in to play cavalry. He was just going to have to chalk it up to one of those "Haven things".
He missed Fandom things. At least those mostly just involved him waking up in the wrong body or convinced he was the long lost heir of a duchy or something.
Audrey called them in again, the last day before the Hunter storm and the barn were set to arrive. They all gathered in her office at the station, Duke sprawled out on Nathan's old chair while the others crowded in around her at the computer.
"We got you together because you're the only people we know we can trust," she said. Duke looked around with a frown, counting off who was present as Nathan spoke.
"We discovered the skinwalker was stealing parts of women's faces."
There was Nathan. Vince. Dave.
"We started a computer program to piece together what the skin would look like with the parts assembled. Now that we just got the final ID of the woman buried near the cannery —"
Duke. Dwight.
"We can finally get a picture of who the skin walker's been building!" Dave declared.
Duke raised his hand. "'Scuse me. Um. . . . Why isn't Claire here for this?"
Audrey looked down. "Claire . . . . Claire's dead."
"Skinwalker took her," Nathan said.
And suddenly, everything matched up. Why Claire had been so insistent that he track down Moseley, and then disappeared the minute he got back. Why she'd been dodging him ever since, and snarking instead of actively helping Audrey during important meetings.
The bolt gun killer had killed her. Taken her place. Duke wondered how many others of her clients had been left hanging in the wind for its sick game.
It certainly didn't top murdering and skinning people to assume their identities on the thing's list of crimes, but fucking with people's mental health was still a really shitty thing to do.
"We need to get that son of a bitch," he said darkly, swallowing down his rage and grief.
"We will," Audrey promised. She was in the same spot. She'd opened up to Claire too, and Duke knew that hadn't been easy for her. She had to be feeling a similar level of betrayal.
"And it's gonna pay," Dwight said. Duke wondered if he'd gone to see her, too.
Nathan nodded to the computer. "Program's almost finished."
"That's impossible." Audrey stared at the screen, eyes wide. "Arla Cogan?"
"Who?" Dwight asked. Duke leaped to his feet to come peer over Audrey's shoulder.
"No, it can't be." But it was. The facial composite was a dead ringer for the woman in James Cogan's wedding photos.
"When Duke and I were in Colorado," Audrey said. "We found out that James Cogan was married."
Nathan shook his head. "The skinwalker's building your son's wife. Why?"
"Maybe it always was her," Duke said. "After James died, nobody in Colorado ever saw Arla again." They'd thought she committed suicide, but well. She was clearly capable of faking her death. She'd done so as Tommy, too.
"Maybe she came to Haven with James," Nathan said. "Never left."
"We'll go through the archives," Dave offered.
"See if there were any women skinned 27 years ago," Vince said.
"See if some of your business connections might know something," Nathan told Duke. Duke nodded.
"Yeah, they just might. Let me spread the word." He left them to their research, his phone already out and ready. He'd been neglecting his contacts while in Fandom, but had had plenty of time to build them back up over the last six weeks. Even when he was still pretending to be an honest man for a while. If Arla had been spending the last 30 years in hiding, then he just might know some of the folks who had helped her do it.
He didn't find any leads on Arla that morning, but he did manage to get a great deal on some liquor for the Gull. He was really hoping that once the barn business was dispensed with, he'd be shuttled back to Fandom, so he was doing his best to get the place set up to run without him again for a while.
"Here's the last case," he called to Manny as he brought it in. The lunch rush was in full swing. "I'll be back later. Got some stuff I gotta take care of."
"Duke!" A large, pretty blonde woman with frizzy hair looked up from her cocktail and waved to him. "There you are, it's Jeanine!"
Duke shook his head. "I'm sorry, I, uh. . . ."
"Come oooon," she cooed. "It hasn't been that long, has it?"
Ah. Right. Yeah, that coo was faintly familiar. ". . . Jeanine!"
"Yessss!"
It was starting to take shape in his head. Senior year, a pink and purple room. Haven High's future prom queen slipping her panties down over her hips. . . .
"Right," Duke said, blinking away the memories. He remembered the banners he'd seen around town, the invite that had shown up in his P.O. box. "The uh, the reunion. I'm sorry." He tried not to glance obviously at the door. "How . . . how are you? It's been a long time."
"I'm doing gooood," Jeanine cooed. She clearly thought that was still a sexy move. It didn't work quite as well on a 35 year old woman as it had on an 18 year old girl. "I like your plaaaace. Do you. . . ." She stirred her drink, peering up at him through her lashes. ". . . Run it with your wife?"
"No. No . . . no wife for me."
"Really!" Jeanine brightened, flashing him a broad smile. "The way all those girls used to chase you. . . .."
Duke laughed uncomfortably. This woman was clearly trying to gauge if she had a chance at getting in Duke's pants. He wasn't sure why he was being so careful to let her down easy.
"If I remember correctly," she said, giving him a knowing smirk. "I think I caught you once or twice."
"Yeeeeeah," Duke agreed. "Those were . . . crazy times back then."
"That's the good thing about reunions. A chance to make some new memories."
"But the old ones were so nice!"
"Excuse me." A hand landed on Duke's shoulder and he turned, happy for the excuse to escape that awkward conversation. Until he saw who it was.
"Hello Duke," the woman said. "You know who I am?"
Duke swallowed. "Arla."
She glanced down at the coat draped over her arm. And the gun tucked just inside it.
"Can we talk privately?"
"Duuuuke?" Jeanine called. "Aren't you going to introduce us?"
Duke turned back towards her, entirely too aware of the gun still pointed at his back. "No. Jeanine, drinks are on me. It was nice to see you."
He left her behind, scoffing at the bar, and led Arla across the room to a table in the corner.
"There's an awful lot of people in here," Arla noted. "And you know what I'm capable of. So I suggest you hear me out."
Duke lowered himself carefully into the seat across from her. Why the hell had she come after him?
"So. Arla." He flicked her his best shark smile. "What do you want?"
"Oh you know, what everyone else wants." She smiled. "Love, life, pursuit of happiness. And Audrey, I want her to find the barn."
"Why?"
"Same reason you should want her to. So we can all go back to being normal."
Normal. Right. "Yeeeeah, but. It's going to be a much longer journey back for some of us."
Arla scowled. "I didn't ask for this, Crocker. Any more than you asked for your family legacy. But together we can make it stop."
"By trapping my friend inside a supernatural building for the next 27 years?"
Arla rolled her eyes. "Yes, I know how you feel about Audrey. I was Claire, remember? You know what? She loves Nathan. You really want to spend the rest of your life killing troubled people? Wondering which Guard has that tattoo you see just before you die? And all for a woman you can never have."
Duke bristled. His stomach rolled. He'd told Claire so much. Just how long had Arla been running around in a Claire suit? "You're not wearing Claire," he said. "So you're not allowed to shrink me."
"Audrey going back in the barn is just a part of the cycle. You know, like Lucy and Sarah and who knows how many others. But they all go back in the barn."
Duke shrugged. "So then why are you so worried that Audrey won't?"
"You and Nathan. You're thinking about stopping her, right?" Duke huffed and shook his head, and she barrelled on. "It's the way that it has to be! And deep down, you know that that's true."
Duke shifted, leaning forward across the table. Okay. He'd play her little game. Maybe he could find some clue as to how this whole thing was going to go down.
"What exactly do you want from me?"
Arla grinned.
For someone who had so carefully thought out her whole 'murder dozens of women to steal parts of their faces and make myself a new me-skin' plan, Arla's plot for the barn was almost painfully simple.
Apparently Audrey was the one who had to bring the barn. So she would do whatever she had to do to get Audrey to summon it, and then force her inside. She just wanted Duke to back her play. He'd nodded along, then sent her on her way and called Audrey to give her a heads up. Then he'd gone out onto the deck to get some air, found a random locker sitting on the Gull's little boat dock, found a snake in said locker, got conked on the head again, then thrown into the water.
And surfaced as an eighteen year old.
Well. At least this time his brain was still 34.
He headed for the station as soon as he knew what had happened. Apparently one of the returning Haven High alums had some sort of de-aging trouble, and was turning their former classmates into their teenage selves and then murdering them. Duke was the only survivor thus far. Duke suggested Jeanine — she'd been pretty pissed when he'd turned her down at the Gull — but when Nathan talked to her, she told him she already had a different trouble, so it couldn't be her.
He got to see said trouble later, when she turned her hors d'oeuvres at the reunion dance into a big slice of chocolate cake. Duke hurt for her poor metabolism. Then hurt for himself when she dragged "Duke Jr." off to flirt and dance. No amount of protesting that he wasn't into older women seemed to help.
This woman was in desperate need of therapy.
Audrey and Nathan managed to work out that Robbie, Haven High's former favorite target for bullying, was the culprit, but didn't manage to talk him down before Arla shot him. He was a threat to Audrey, Duke guessed, and Audrey had to be alive to go into the barn, so she'd decided to take him out. Nathan tried to go after her, but came back empty-handed. Audrey helped Robbie, who'd had no idea what he'd been doing.
Reunions did that to people, Duke supposed. Brought back all the old resentments. He wondered what he'd have thought of it all if he weren't so busy worrying about Audrey and the barn, and getting back to Fandom. And if he hadn't just been sixteen again a few months ago back in Fandom.
Duke himself had apparently been targeted because of a snake he'd left in Robbie's locker back in school. Duke shook his head.
"I told you. I didn't even know that was Robbie's locker!" He gave Nathan a knowing look. "I thought it was yours."
Apparently, turning down Jeanine hadn't helped, either. It turned out Robbie had a crush on Jeanine in high school, and grown up Robert still thought she was the bees knees. Jeanine admitted to thinking he was cool in high school, but not being brave enough to say anything because he was so unpopular. The moment they held hands again, Duke felt his body shiver, and shift itself back into his proper, grown up shape.
Jeanine and Robert could have their little happily Haven ever after. And Duke could get back to Fandom eventually without worrying about suddenly being too young to hang in his partner/s bar. .
They all headed back to the Gull to celebrate one last solved trouble before — whatever was going to happen next. The meteor storm would start shortly after midnight. Tomorrow promised to be a long, strange day, no matter what happened.
"Everything okay?" Nathan asked, as Audrey came down from checking over her apartment.
"Yeah," she said. "All clear upstairs."
"Down here, too," Duke confirmed.
"Dwight's taking Jeanine and Robert somewhere safe," Nathan said. Duke wondered just how much Dwight had stomped on the Guard's territory, shuttling people around after Audrey had finished with them
Audrey sipped her drink. "Being together and finally being able to accept each other for who they really are. . .. I think that should help Robbie from appearing again."
"Cheers to that." Duke raised his beer. "And to . . . being able to legally drink again."
"You were cute as a teenager."
Duke gave her a little nod. "Yes. I was."
He finished his beer and got up to grab another. He glanced at the clock as he went. 1:30 am. The Hunter would be starting any minute now.
They'd run out of time.
"I'm not going to let this be our last night," Nathan said to Audrey. "I'm not giving up." He didn't so much as look at Duke as he came back over. "When that barn appears, we need to be there. So we'll go back to the station, and we'll put together search parties. Contact the Coast Guard, maybe they'll let us use their satellite surveillance."
"Just so happens I know a guy," Duke said.
Nathan flicked him a smile. "Figured you might."
Audrey watched the two of them, her eyes soft. "It's good to know that my guys have my back."
"Hey." Nathan reached for her hand. "You need to rest, but — we're going to find that barn before it finds you."
Audrey looked up at Duke, and he nodded. She looked between them again, and slowly offered a nod of her own. She pushed to her feet, looking exhausted.
"Good night."
Duke and Nathan both wished her goodnight, and watched her head out
"I'm going to have Manny stay here and watch the apartment," Duke said.
"You trust him?"
Duke nodded. "Yeah, he's okay." He hadn't known the man that long, but he had a good feeling about him. He'd do right by Audrey. He headed back to the bar to start closing up. Dwight came in through the doors and Duke kept an ear out for him as he cleared the tables.
Nathan moved to greet him. "I assume since they didn't card you at the door, Jeanine and Robbie got settled alright."
"I'm not here about that," Dwight said, voice serious. "I spoke to Kirk earlier and he told me that the Guard wants Audrey in that barn tomorrow. And they'll make sure it happens."
"Audrey goes into the barn, it's over my dead body."
"I figured as much. Be careful, Nathan."
Duke watched him head out, then came over to Nathan again.
"What did he want?" Was Dwight actually with the Guard? He'd always seemed separate from them, and he didn't have the ink that Duke knew of, but he'd always struck Duke as sort of an enigma. And he definitely kept his finger on the pulse of the town.
"I'm not sure," Nathan said. Duke watched him for a moment. Nathan looked almost as tired as Audrey had.
"I'm going to close up," he said. "We'll meet here early tomorrow, alright? You two aren't in this alone."
Nathan looked up at him, seeming a little startled, then nodded. Duke saw the hint of a smile on his face, and wondered when Nathan had started to like him again
"Yeah," he said. "Thanks."
Duke smiled back. "Any time."
[NFB, NFI, OOC welcome. Adapted from Haven 3x11 and 3x12, "Last Goodbyes" and "Reunion". Almost there!]