WHO: Audrey Parker, Nathan Wuornos WHEN: Backdated to April 10. WHERE: Medical. WHAT: Nathan & Audrey find each other again, discuss what the hell is going on. WARNINGS: None. It's pretty tame.
______________
Composed as he’d appeared, the truth was that Nathan was going out of his mind with worry. He could think about almost nothing but Audrey being sick, being combined with Mara. It was happening at home, and he was here, and there was nothing he could do about it. She had promised him she would keep fighting, but he knew it was going to be a struggle. She would need his help, and he wasn’t there.
Trying to figure out how to get back had gotten him nowhere. He needed to go outside, but the weather had been keeping him in. Having experienced it firsthand on his arrival, he knew better than to go out there into the storm again. It would have to wait. He’d been distracting himself by talking to people, trying to help them, but it wasn’t going to be enough to last him forever. At least, he’d figured, Remus’s project would dovetail nicely with his own desire to explore the place a bit more.
But now Audrey was here. He’d been happy and relieved, at first, and then worried a moment later, when he’d realized it could be Mara. He didn’t want to have to deal with Mara here, which would no doubt be a difficult task-- trying to keep her from hurting anyone, and having to defend her against retaliation if he didn’t succeed. She had caused no shortage of trouble-- pun intended-- and he really, really just wanted it to be Audrey. Only, if it was just Audrey, she’d be sick, and her mother wasn’t here to help her.
It sounded like Audrey, but that did very little to ease his mind, especially with the concern for her health. He rushed to medical, found her bedside, and was surprised to see that she looked… well, healthy. Relatively speaking. That should have been a good sign, but instead it was a worrisome one. Had they been combined already? Which person was he talking to?
“Hey, Parker,” he said, trying to keep his thoughts from showing on his face. If she was Mara, she was pretending to be Audrey, and if Audrey had been combined with Mara again, she needed to be treated like Audrey anyway. There was no point in not going along with it. He took her hand, and he could feel her skin against his. Something had definitely happened, but he wasn’t sure what it was. “I’m here now.”
--
She gripped his fingers between hers with a slight smile. Audrey wasn't feeling particularly ill, but there was something queasy about waking up in a hospital with no memory of how she'd gotten there. She was wearing the clothes she remembered wearing in the cave beneath the lighthouse, but there was a headache beginning to form at her temples and she was starving. It hadn't been that long since she'd eaten. Had it?
Audrey shifted around so that she could pull herself up and cross her legs. She wasn't an invalid. Was there something wrong with the blood work they took? Crap, she was going to have to ask for that back. She did not want that falling into the wrong hands. Or Mara's hands. If something happened to cause Mara to surface. She'd felt it those few times, when she'd been messing around the Aether. Mara was someone that Audrey didn't like and did not want to become (again).
"You've got worried face. Is there something behind worried face?"
--
“Besides the fact that we’re here?” Nathan asked, wryly. He took a seat on the side of her bed, taking her hand in both of his. Whatever it meant, for the moment, he just wanted to savor the fact that he could feel her again. If he had to be able to feel only one thing for the rest of his life, he didn’t think he’d mind it too much.
He was watching her closely, scrutinizing her face for signs of Mara. So far he hadn’t seen any, which was promising. But Mara had done a convincing job of impersonating Audrey before, so it might be a little while before she gave herself away. “What’s the last thing you remember before waking up in a pod?”
--
It was foggy, but only from the haze of having been drugged. The weird, glowing portal between worlds had just opened. Jennifer was no longer standing, Duked asked for help, and William… William actually looked scared. Audrey herself had been terrified. Everything was leading this direction, but finding out that she (and William) had been the cause of the Troubles in Haven? It was a burden on her, having that proof. She had hoped that she was good, and then to find out that ultimately, she was some thing from somewhere else who thought it would be fun.
"The lighthouse." Audrey shrugged a shoulder and looked upward. "Well, the cave underneath the lighthouse."
--
“I remember the lighthouse,” Nathan said. It felt long a long while ago now, but he could remember the state Audrey had been in then. Mara had been close to the surface, but hadn’t taken over yet. “You said you were… lightheaded.”
He’d assumed that was code for something, or at the very least, a gross understatement for her actual condition. But if she was from before she’d been split from Mara, it meant she wasn’t dying. And she appeared to be in control, but she couldn’t be far from the tipping point. He’d just have to make sure she didn’t reach it.
--
"Whatever they doped me up with to get me here without me knowing it," Audrey answered. A hand brushed the hair away from her temple as she struggled to remember anything in between waking up here and there. It was blank. She couldn't even tell you how many days it had been. "You remember the last time I ate? Not really agreeing with the whole sleeping drug thing."
She gave him a quick once over, not fussing much so much as just using her FBI training to suss out a few things. Namely that he wasn't wearing what she'd last seen him in. Judging by their conversation while he was on the way, he'd been here a few days. So had she been out for those few days? That'd explain the empty stomach and the lightheadedness. "How long have I been out?"
--
“Nothing to do with…” Nathan trailed off, not knowing if he really needed to say the name. Or if he should, considering the fact that thinking about Mara might bring her closer to the surface. Instead, he said, “Well, if you hadn’t told me to rush over here, I might’ve been able to stop and get you something to eat.”
He noticed her looking him over, and wondered what she made of it. For him, it had been months since the lighthouse. He didn’t know exactly how different he looked to her, but she was observant. It wouldn’t take much.
“I don’t know,” he said honestly, in answer to her question. “I didn’t know you were here until you posted on the network.”
--
"You okay?" Tired. That's what he looked like to her. He looked worn down too, and Audrey had to resist the urge to pull him to her.
She pulled her phone out of her hip pocket, an awkward movement that required some shuffling around on the bed, and swiped the screen. The date and time was still the same as it was down in the cave. No text messages or calls. No reception. This was going to be the worst. She tossed the phone down. "Why do I get the feeling that something's off?"
--
She hadn’t answered the question that he hadn’t asked, but it didn’t really matter. The benefit of being ahead of her in the timeline meant that Nathan already knew how this went. “I’m fine,” he said, with a slight smile. “But you’re right. Things are a little off.”
He paused there, because he really didn’t know exactly what was off, or how it had happened. All he could do was try to explain the facts. “I remember the lighthouse,” he said. “That was a couple of months ago, for me. But it’s not important. I’m just glad you’re here.”
--
"What?"
Audrey hadn't been expecting months. A day, a few days… Those were things she could cope with, but being out for a few months was an entirely different mess. That much was clear by the completely shocked expression she now wore, and the way her hands and arms went limp. The last time she'd lost months had been because she was in the barn. What happened this time?
"No, that -- are you sure? It's been months?" She paused, staring off into space for the briefest of instants. "How could I be out that long?"
--
“You weren’t,” Nathan said, realizing only belatedly that his explanation had fallen short. “You were there for all of it. I remember you being there.” It didn’t seem necessary to mention that some of the time, Mara had been in control. Audrey had still been in there, he’d never lost faith in that, and she’d continued to prove him right. “I don’t remember you going missing after the lighthouse, but… that seems to be the time that you’re from. There’s some time travel involved here.”
He gave a slight smile, and then added, “On that note, has anyone told you that it’s the year 2150 and we’re at the end of the world?”
--
"Time travel." Audrey gave a bemused laugh with a roll of her eyes. It wasn't as if there hadn't been some of that back in her world. They'd had a son because of it. "Say no more."
Of course, there was more to say, and Audrey threw off the blanket and swung her legs over the side of the bed. Her shoes were… somewhere around here. Under the bed maybe. She bent over, searching. (Where was James? If the barn was destroyed, and he was in the barn…) "So we've somehow traveled to the end of the world, in the future. Are we still in Haven, at least?"
--
At this point there wasn’t much that they couldn’t just shrug off. Nathan was relieved that it meant he didn’t have to answer more questions about her future. He would have answered them-- he always told Audrey everything eventually-- but it really wasn’t what he wanted to get into right now.
She started moving around and he wasn’t really ready for that, still wanted to hold onto her hand, her hand that he could feel, which meant that she was whole. In danger, but whole and well and not slowly wasting away. (Slowly was the wrong word. It was happening way too fast.) But that meant they had time now, he reminded himself. Or at least, he hoped they did.
“No, not in Haven,” he said. He got to his feet, too, and watched her search for her shoes. “This is Mount Weather.”
--
That pulled Audrey up short. She stopped searching and stared at Nathan. End of the world? No problem. End of the world seven hundred, fifty miles away? Apparently, that was just too much to ask of Audrey Parker.
"Mount Weather?" Audrey had been FBI in another life (someone else's life), and that name automatically struck her as just wrong. How did they even get here? Mount Weather wasn't open to the public. That made no sense. What could have possibly have brought them here? "You mean the classified base for end-of-the-world scenarios?"
--
“No,” Nathan said, “The other Mount Weather. Of course it’s that one.” He shrugged, and said, “I guess it could all be created by someone’s Trouble. But no one I’ve talked to is familiar, and none of them seem to know anything about the Troubles.”
Which didn’t mean that they weren’t around, and both he and Audrey knew it. But it was definitely strange. He didn’t really know what to make of it. “It might’ve been classified once, but I think the end-of-the-world scenario changed that.”
--
"Alright," Audrey said, reaching down and tugging a shoe on. Her eyes had that far away look they took on whenever she was deep in thought about a Trouble. "So we'll treat this like any other Trouble. We'll talk to people, find out what they know, see if we can't figure out any weirdness, any loopholes going on. That usually leads us to the person causing all of this, right?"
The other shoe was jerked over her heel, then she stood up. She really needed to eat something. They'd given her a cookie or something, and that tide her over for a little while. Audrey needed something more substantial though, and for some reason, she was craving pancakes. "For now… let's go to -- they said there was a mess hall?"
--
Nathan nodded. It was a good plan, as their plans went. He’d been a bit thrown off by this whole place, by worrying about Audrey, but he’d tried to do a little bit of investigation of his own-- exploring the bunker, investigating the pods-- but now he could dive into it wholeheartedly.
“We’ll figure it out,” he agreed, with a small smile on his face as he looked at her. Everything would be easier to handle with Audrey here.
Reaching out, he took her hand again, gently drawing her closer to him. “I’m glad you’re here,” he said. “If I haven’t mentioned that already.” He leaned in, and pressed a light kiss to her lips. “There’s a mess hall. Let’s go and get you some food.”