My unicorn got run over by a tractor

Audrey was avoiding him. Considering their last conversation had been over a box of murder weapons and a note from Duke's dad telling him to murder her . . . that was at least a little bit fair.

It was also pissing Duke off.

He tried telling her that he wasn't going to do it. The only decent thing his father had ever done for him was arrange for him to get his boat before he died, so yeah, Duke was happy not to live up to that legacy.

Or any legacy, in fact, that required him killing people in cold blood.

She dodged him with a blase joke. Duke was very familiar with that particular defense mechanism. Hell, it was one of the reasons he liked her so damn much (loved her, apparently, judging by what had slipped out in that last conversation). That didn't stop it from getting on Duke's nerves when she aimed it at him.

Nathan spent all his time vacillating between hating Duke and trying to save him. Now Audrey could barely even look at him. With Octavia gone and Evi dead, Duke was rapidly running out of people in Haven who were even nominally on his side.

Maybe he should just give up. Head back down south. Try and patch things up with Octavia. He still had no idea what he'd say to her, how to get past the things he knew now about her, but — well, his past wasn't all that much better, was it. He was a liar, a cheat. A petty thief at the end of a long, long, long line of murderers. There were more descriptions of kills in his father's journal than Duke wanted to think about, going back hundreds of years. Every generation, a new period of active troubles. Every generation, a new Crocker to try to kill them all.

He hopped into the shower, trying to clear his head, but it didn't help. Just made him wet and conflicted. He was just slipping his old whistle back over his head when a voice came out of the shadows.

"Very impressive, Duke."

Duke froze, every muscle in his body locking up.

No.

"Like what you've done with my place."

He stood in the middle of Duke's galley, looking around like he belonged there. Like he belonged anywhere but at the bottom of the grave they'd dumped him in, after fishing his corpse out of the water.

Duke swallowed. "Dad?"

( This was not a happy reunion )

---

( A Jersey boy walks out of a cafe. . . . )

[NFB, NFI, OOC welcome. Adapted from 2x12, "Sins of the Fathers", with special guest hatesparadise! ONE MORE POST TO GO.]

Duke didn’t know it, but all the clothing on the Rouge that wasn’t currently on his body vanished the moment he crossed into Fandom waters.

What he did know was that going from April 2010 to July 2020 was a much more obvious transition than it had been the other way around. It was like sailing into a vat of hot jello. He squinted into the sun, then stripped off his overshirt, letting it fall to the floor of the wheelhouse.

The overshirt vanished, too. That he noticed.

". . . Yeah, I'm definitely back in Fandom."

He sailed into port without managing to lose any more clothes, but the ones he was wearing (an undershirt and a pair of fairly threadbare cotton shorts) were rapidly going damp in the face of the sweltering, cloying air. He was hard-pressed as he dropped anchor and tied the Rouge down at her usual slip not to strip off the rest of his clothes and just dive straight into the water. He sent out a few texts, then flopped onto the deck to splay out like a starfish.

"Swear to god, if this place got invaded by a clothing-eating heat demon while I was away I will turn this boat around and go right back to Maine."

Well, no. He wouldn't. But he'd really want to.

[open! work is going to do its best to break me today, so some SP will be in effect BUT I NEED DISTRACTIONS]

So the incense good mood from that morning had worn off, and Duke had started to get anxious. The idea of Octavia hanging out in Baltimore attending community outreach meditation courses had stopped making sense again. Unless maybe she hit her head and was looking for something familiar? He headed to the mainland a little bit earlier than was strictly necessary to attend the tai chi class Jim had said Octavia would be coming to this evening, hoping to get some answers.

Jim was seated on the floor when he arrived, surrounded by thin, hungry looking older women, who all turned beatific smiles on Duke when he walked in.

"Duke!" Jim greeted. "Come in, come in! We were just finishing up a group chakra cleansing!"

Warning bells were (a bit belatedly) going off in Duke's head. "Chakra cleansing. Right. Cool."

That was not a thing. What the hell had he gotten himself into, here?

[NFB. For the one expected, and more cult-fighting hijinks. . . .]