The Sky is Falling

Nathan wakes up in a cell, with Jordan.

The meteor shower is a constant background rumble, one he realises he's been aware of all along through a kaleidoscope of twisting, dark dreams, vivid and unpleasant. The last thing he remembers that he at least thinks actually happened is stumbling down the hillside, intending to head back to Haven. With two, maybe three bullets in him, it's not so surprising he passed out.

He blinks slowly. He's lying on his back. He knows that ceiling and this isn't even a new perspective on it. He got the couch put in his office after the Chief caught him kipping in the cells one night while working late and gave him what amounted to a lecture on appearances. He isn't in any pain, which might go without saying, except he's pretty sure that in at least one of his dreams he could feel and everything hurt. That's not a new experience either. Sometimes he wonders if his body remembers the things his brain missed; if they all filter through in the night.

He's not sure he should move, but figures it won't do any harm to turn his head. That's when he sees Jordan, on a second bed that's been dragged in there for her. She's lying still and looks to be out, but he can see from the infinitesimally subtle rise and fall of her chest that she's not dead.

It washes over him then, like a shower of ice if he could feel ice. Duke shot her. Shot her. Nathan makes no conscious decision to roll over and get up, but the next thing he knows, he's on his knees at her side. There's blood on her clothes, and her wounds have been left unattended. What the hell? Fury takes him unexpectedly. Someone's provided a first aid kit, on the floor at the foot of her bed, but it's hardly something he's adapted for -- a man who can't judge pressure isn't a good choice to attend the injured. He turns out his pockets, but his cellphone is gone with his gun, though he still has his wallet and badge, for all the use they are. He rocks on one knee and clamps a hand to the bars to lever himself up. One leg's not working very well, there's a stiffness in his back, and something keeps catching, breaking up his movements. Just in case they're not actually locked in, it does occur to him to test the door before he starts yelling.

Stan sticks his head in, looks halfway between relieved and nervous, and also singed at the edges and all kinds of hell. He ducks out again with a quick mumble of, "I'll get the Commander."

Commander? Nathan thinks, and wonders what rabbit hole he's fallen into.

That feeling doesn't go away when Stan brings back Vince Teagues.

"Commander?" Nathan asks sourly.

"We're in the middle of a wide-scale disaster. Haven is under the charge of the town militia. Sorry, Nate." Vince shrugs. He's still big and old, ambling and slow, but a sharpness is alive in him that was always veiled, dormant before. He smells of smoke, and his hands are blackened with grime, but he doesn't look tired the way Stan did. He looks like these exertions are only feeding that new spark. "Ooh -- careful, you've got a, got a bullet stuck in your lower back there, probably shouldn't do that." He waves a finger as Nathan slams the bars in his annoyance.

"Your militia? This town is under the control of the Guard?" He'll have to live with Nathan's lack of faith in that concept.

"We've had some rogues and strays." Vince eyes Jordan, then shrugs. "With the meteors falling it was pretty obvious this wasn't Normalsville anymore. Someone who knew what the heck was going on needed to take charge!"

Nathan snaps, "I know what's going on. Let me out of this goddamn cell."

"No can do. Sorry, Nate."

"Why not?" He knows exactly what he did but to the best of his knowledge, Vince should not.

"Because you got a bullet in your back nobody fancied to dig out under these conditions." The big old man huffs breathy laughter. "Your Dr Lucassi says, we let you out, you move around too much, maybe finish yourself off for good. Better you stay here."

At that, he remembers why he called for someone and snaps, "Dr Lucassi -- you need to bring him. Jordan... Damn it, nobody could spare a moment to give her medical attention? She should be in a hospital!" By the sound of things, so should he, but he's damned if he'll emphasize that part, and him at least they patched up.

"Hospital's full to busting. We weren't going to spring on them the crazy lady whose touch hurts people, as well. Besides--"

"For God's sake, Vince! Someone could have bandaged her injuries. They wear surgical gloves!"

"...That's a problem." Vince offers, with a trace of apology. "Gloves don't work any more. One touch and --zap--. It's all we could do to get her here. You need about three layers, and even then. Well. We figured best put her in with the only person who might be able to do something about it."

If he could feel it, Nathan's sure his head would be pounding. "Jordan's curse is worse?" He already touched her, checking her injuries, so he knows it still doesn't affect him. Wait, does that mean he's even more numb? The thought makes him snort quietly to himself. It's not really like his Trouble is quantitative.

Vince's mouth sets in a grim, fierce line. All that time, the geriatric buffoon was hiding a lion. "All the curses are worse," he shares. "It's not just the meteors causing a problem. Troubles are going haywire. New ones triggered, old ones... exacerbated. You should count yourself lucky you're in that cell. Not very nice out there."

"Vince, I don't." This is his town, this is his fault, at least in part, even if not on purpose, and he should be the one dealing with it. But one look at Vince's face is enough. "You're... not going to let me out of here, are you?"

"Nope. Town might still need you later to pick up the pieces." That's an exercise he can barely contemplate from his current perspective. "People like you, they'll follow you -- even most of the ones that aren't cursed. No matter what you did." His eyes go hard a moment. So he does know, or guesses.

"I tried--" No. Damn it. No excuses. "That doesn't matter now. I need to make this right."

"You can make right later. I'll tell Dr Lucassi to come back." Vince turns his big, sloping shoulders and ambles for the door. So many things haven't changed that it's still utterly disorienting to witness him in this role.

"Wait." Nathan follows him the best he's able, stumbling along gripping the bars. "Do you know anything about the Barn? Audrey? Duke?"

Vince shakes his head. "Gone. All gone. Only thing we found up there was the two of you."

Nathan remembers something else pertinent, and tips his head towards Jordan. "You know she's the one who shot me. You're going to leave us in the same cell?"

But Vince just snickers and shakes his grey curly locks like an old loon. "She hasn't got a gun now. Less threat to you than anyone else. Hell, I figured you shot each other! A funny sort of foreplay, but you never can tell what turns some folks on." He's still chuckling as he shuffles out of the door.

Nathan sags against the bars, resting his face in the gap between them. There's enough information from his working faculties to know his body hates him for all the moving around.

He stumbles back to Jordan's side, catching himself by reflex alone as his body plunges and hitches from damage he can't feel; kneels down and starts trying to peel her clothes from the wounds. He's forced to conclude he needs to get her out of her jacket. Its zips and fastenings resist his numb fingers, clumsier than usual, and lifting her to pull the thick fabric free likely doesn't do his own injuries any favours. She's smaller and paler than he remembers, pale because too much of her skin spends too much time covered up. That thought sparks a twinge inside his chest, psychosomatically feeling her pain even now. He tears the thinner fabric of her shirt at the collar where the bleeding is the worst. The sink looks miles away, so he uses antiseptic wipes from the kit to soak clear the places where her blood has set and embedded the fabric. The most damaging of the bullets entered her shoulder and seems to have ricocheted off bone to exit at an upwards angle almost ninety degrees from the direction she was shot. If it had hit an artery, she'd be dead already, but the blood loss still looks alarming. He can't see any obvious bone fragments in the wound and isn't capable of any deeper explorations, so he cleans and dresses it, trying to pack gauze and bandaging on it tightly enough to stem the remaining blood flow.

She moans while he's doing that and he stops, remembering that for most people pain is an important negative factor. Uncertainly, he takes out the vial of liquid painkiller and a needle from the kit, and reads the instructions carefully. It's no job to attempt without a sense of touch, he concludes, and then administers it anyway, because Lucassi still isn't there and he can't know when he will be, and he doesn't want Jordan to wake up like this.

The second bullet scraped a rib and drew a long gash, which is simpler all around, though he has to almost strip her to get to it.

He's just finishing Lucassi's job when Lucassi finally shows up.

Nathan sits back and glares at him.

"Now, don't look like that, Nathan," Lucassi fusses, looking infinitely more hassled than usual, bone-deep weary with his white coat stained by blood and soot. "I had other casualties to deal with. Officers and militia coming in for treatment who are going straight back out to keep helping the rescue effort. I came as soon as I could."

Nathan shakes his head angrily and jabs a finger at Jordan as he swings to his feet -- and almost goes straight down again. His saving lunge to catch the bars is awkward and obvious. Lucassi opens his mouth and extends a hand in an aborted stalling motion, but Nathan shouts over his protest. "You left her like that. Call yourself a doctor?"

Lucassi looks quashed. He waggles his hands helplessly. "Three pairs of surgical gloves and a sheet, and I still creased over in agony. More than that and I couldn't even get purchase to remove her clothes. I could have done it... eventually, but we're on triage medicine here. I opted not to. I'm sorry. Now, please... You really shouldn't be moving around."

Dr Lucassi is a good man, who values life and who would risk his own for the health of others, and Nathan reminds himself carefully of these things and tries to understand that the decision was probably reasoned, balanced and in the interests of everyone, but it still makes him mad. He shuts that away, because he needs to deal with Lucassi now. He meets the doctor's plaintive insistence stubbornly. "Jordan first."

He tells the doctor what he's done so far, and in return gets varying degrees of nods and some other suggestions. Lucassi takes equipment from his own kit and passes it through the bars, giving instructions for Nathan to follow until they're sure that Jordan is as comfortable as they can make her. Lucassi thinks that the wounds aren't bad and she'll live.

"Now you," he says, and his hands wring together in worry. "You should at least be lying down."

"Vince told me I'm in here on your advice," Nathan replies darkly. He used to think the strange coroner had a more relaxed attitude towards his condition than the rest of the medical profession.

"Don't get me wrong," Lucassi responds with a small, awkward cluck of a laugh. "I'd love to have you out of there and in charge. But you've a bullet in your back. I can't take it out under these conditions, and you can't tell me what hurts where, and the hospital are in no position to perform the scans we badly need to tell us that information. So I'm afraid that until we can deal with that problem, any mad heroics are... totally out."

"Mad heroics," Nathan repeats, pained in a purely metaphorical sense. Dr Lucassi, then, doesn't know.

The doctor just nods. "I'm starting to wish we had tied you down. You don't want to encourage that bullet to shift."

"Do you have a mirror?"

With a fair amount of grimacing, Lucassi supplies a small one from his surgical kit. With it, Nathan goes over his back, where he can't see, though the doctor winces at the craning and twisting this involves. But there's a need to know -- he can't tell where the injuries are; he can't work around them if he doesn't know. Once he's seen the pads of gauze taped over his shoulder blade, to the small of his back, the longer strip on his thigh, he knows at least what he needs to be careful of. He's used to dealing with injuries he can't feel.

Nathan agrees to meet Lucassi halfway, then, and sits down on the bunk. Now that he's stopped, now that the panic over Jordan is quelled, the room spins slowly and he suspects he has indeed overdone it. He makes an effort to focus through the distracting motion. "How did Vince end up in charge?"

Lucassi shrugs. "He just rolled in, surrounded by people with guns. Most of them with that tattoo. The place was... in chaos, frankly. No-one was in a position to argue. I can't say he's doing a bad job, but like I said, I'd much rather it was you. And, no. I'm sorry, but if there are no more medical demands, I have to go. I'm sure someone else can answer the rest of your questions, but I must be needed elsewhere by now."

That's just great. But recognising truth when he hears it, Nathan doesn't try to keep the doctor any longer -- even though he's been sidelined, locked up, and apparently put at the bottom of everyone's list of priorities.

Lucassi left the mirror, so when he's gone, Nathan takes it out again and contrarily peels back the edges of the dressings to get a better idea of what he's dealing with. The hole in his back looks tiny to be causing so much hassle, and it's hardly bled.

Nobody else comes to replace Lucassi. Listening, he can hear shouting and activity, problems he should be in the middle of and trying to fix. He feels useless. He can hear distant rumbling, taste and smell smoke on the air, but the cell doesn't have a window to see what it's like outside.

He shot Howard to save Audrey, to stop this, because repeating the same damn game every twenty-seven years is bullshit, and someone had to try to stop this. He didn't expect to make things worse. Then again, he wasn't thinking too much on consequences at the time. Jordan shot him, and he didn't know if he had only seconds to live, thought he might not have time to get any better answers, so he did the only thing he had left. Something nobody could take back, that ought to change things -- he'd seen that much in Howard's face the moment he made the threat -- no matter what happened to Nathan, afterwards.

Well, well done him. It turns out it's not him paying the price.

He can't imagine what Audrey would think -- or he probably could, but it wouldn't do him any favours -- but she's gone, now; gone, and the pieces are all he has left.

His vision sways and he realises his shoulders have slid down the wall. He can't seem to muster the will to straighten up again. He can't feel the small discomforts any more than the big ones, only notice flat symptoms like the drag of his body resisting commands, his inability to keep his eyes fully open, or how his vision keeps sliding even though his shoulders seem to have hit the hard mattress of the bunk and stopped. He dispassionately figures out he's losing consciousness just before he does.

Jordan wakes up to pain and the sound of the world ending. She's being jolted and tossed around on the surface where she's lying and the movement sparks agony from a smoky haze of lower-key pain. It feels... everything feels drugged, numbed, and she's aware from unremembered nightmares that the pain has been worse. She also knows her thoughts usually string together better than this. Dragging open her eyes, she barely registers or cares about the things shaking around her, beyond the fact they are shaking, until her panicked gaze lands upon a long, lean figure sprawled awkwardly on a cell bunk.

Shit. Nathan Wuornos? Why is he here?

She was supposed to be done with him. He was supposed to die. Audrey Parker was gone, so it should be over. Jordan meant to stop Nathan doing anything that might interfere with that, and permanently seemed better. She's not a hundred percent sure she didn't come back for revenge anyway, but when he threatened the Barn's avatar, she--

An emptiness swamped her the moment she shot him. She didn't know if he was alive or dead -- if he'd survive the injury -- and the only way to resolve the intolerable uncertainty had been to keep shooting. That and because, damn him, shooting him didn't stop him. He still pulled the trigger. That black man probably wasn't any more real than Audrey fucking Parker, and what would happen if he died, when the Guard had long had orders that they could not, under any circumstances, touch Audrey? Everything happened in the same instant, one single blur, and she remembers Crocker catching Nathan in his arms and-- Ow. She wishes she couldn't feel and absolutely resents that Nathan can't.

Unless... it worked after all, and the Troubles are gone, in which case he'll feel it all. God, she hopes. Then she can touch again, without screams, without gloves.

Speaking of gloves, those are still in place, but the rest of her is barely dressed. She still has her bra, and she's lying on a few rags of her shirt. She calms her rising nausea at the thought of someone undressing her without her knowledge or will by focusing on the bandaging, the signs that someone did this to take care of her. As for her modesty, the only person around is Nathan, who's seen everything before.

Nathan's body jolts with the rumbling. He's twisted awkwardly on the bunk, his shoulder all but wedged behind the thin mattress, his legs sprawled. She thinks some of the movements are caused by his own fitful restlessness, as noise and if they're lucky, sensation breaks through his unconsciousness.

"Nathan," Jordan says sharply. "Nathan!"

His eyes blink open. He looks... horribly confused, a dozen different expressions flashing across his face, but he doesn't look surprised to see her. Sluggishly, he pulls in his overlong limbs, levers up from the bunk. He tries to stand and gets knocked back down, so startled his expression is actually pretty comical. Until she figures out he doesn't understand the room is shaking. That means he can't feel it. Damn! He realises only when it begins to calm down, and says, "the meteorites", with his usual level of understatement and verbosity, then looks at her.

The meteorite storm is still happening?

How? What happened after she went down? Her, Nathan, Howard...

More immediately relevant, she also thinks that last strike must have been very close.

"What the hell is going on?" she asks Nathan, because there's no-one else around and even if that cell door isn't locked, she doesn't actually think she can get up to so much as test it, let alone find anyone else she's happier to talk to.

"The Barn's gone. Howard's dead. The meteorites didn't stop." He's good for information, so long as you don't hope for too much in the way of embellishment. That much was always true.

He manages to get up, this time, executing jerky movements like a puppet, back straight, limbs fixed. He lurches from the bunk to the bars and there tests the door for her. Yes, it's locked. Some genius locked her in here with Nathan -- she can assume he didn't have anything to do with that decision himself. Don't they know she's the one who shot him?

Nathan thrashes at the door, clenching both hands around the bars and wrenching with his whole body weight. She watches him silently, furrowing her brows as he ransacks his pockets next. Finding nothing, he falls down to one knee and grabs at a first aid kit that's half strewn over the floor. He finds safety pins in there, mangles one between his blunt, numb fingers and lurches upright again to attack the lock with it, reaching both hands through the bars.

Still watching him, she lets it all float through her mind. The last month... The preparations for the Hunter, for the day it was all supposed to end. Twenty-seven years where they could be normal again. Maybe a little less for people like her, but long enough for a lifetime, free from the prison of the last three years where she hasn't been able to touch without a scream... Meeting Nathan, who she was told would be coming and that it was all planned for. Him, the spanner in the works this time around, the major threat -- Crocker, too, but then Crocker was expected, always expected. She was tasked to keep Wuornos on-mission, use him to their benefit if she could. She didn't know he'd be able to touch her, until he did, but someone knew and left her exposed and vulnerable in the face of it, someone she's pretty sure she knows the identity of now, and is going to have a very painful conversation with if the opportunity ever presents.

That had to be part of the plan, too; fixing up the man who couldn't touch with the woman who couldn't touch anyone. Hoping for a connection the Guard could use, maybe even one deep enough to divert his attention from Audrey Parker. They are, after all, a perfect, unique fit. If there's one thing Jordan can't stand, it's being used.

Her opinions divide. The real manipulator wasn't either of them, so on the one hand, shooting Nathan was unfair. Also pointless, if he survives, since he's clearly still Troubled and the pain of his injuries irrelevant to him -- but the point is, they both used the other equally. It wasn't really even dishonest, because they knew it all along, whatever words their mouths shaped. But there was undeniably something else there as well, damn it all; the thing that made her feel hollow and twisted when she thought she might have killed him.

Now he'd damned them. Whatever happened must have started with Howard. Nathan's fault -- him, all along, the one game piece reason and logic wasn't going to prevail with. She hated him more than ever for loving Audrey Parker.

He gets nowhere with the door and eventually throws the twisted safety pin on the floor, then he looks across to her with abrupt inspiration. "Jordan--" His voice falters. His eyes trace her prone state and he sighs.

It must be difficult to pick a lock without being able to feel what you're doing. Jordan fails to care, except that Nathan probably shouldn't be moving, and perhaps at this rate he'll manage to finish himself off yet.

It angers her that her feelings should still be mixed on that prospect.

She gathers enough wits, and the will to bother speaking to him, to ask, "Why would they lock you in? This is one of your own cells, isn't it?" But the look he gives her is thunderous and he opts for silence, which is his favourite response anyway. So she continues, "Someone else take exception to murder, Chief of Police or not?"

This time he snaps, "You'd know." A moment later, he defends himself, mixed emotions and profound frustration overspilling the words. "He wasn't a man. Just some -- some smug creation of that damned Barn."

Jordan asks slyly, "You mean like Audrey Parker?"

For a moment, she thinks he's going to hit her. She'd welcome that, because then she'd have everything she needs to hate him unambiguously. He doesn't. He says, "Audrey was real. I know... that Audrey was real."

She snorts and turns her face from him, studying the patterns on the bare wall.

He says, "I know we had our problems, but I don't understand why you'd shoot me."

What is this? Nathan wants to talk it out?

"I had to stop you ruining everything," she seethes, wrenching herself up as she turns back to him. Hovering pain descends and hits her hard, but she's angry enough to blaze through it. She's sitting up now. Since he's barely standing, and only because he's still holding onto the bars, that makes them almost even. Except his clothes are just askew, and the top half of her-- Where the hell are her clothes? "The Barn, the cycle, the cure. We would have been normal again!"

"I won't use Audrey for that."

It's crazy, and he's crazy; that he'd rather be like this -- this human blank, this staggering mannequin, forever, than let Parker make the choice she was going to make anyway. For the greater good! Doesn't he understand it's for the greater good? Just one person -- if she even is a person -- and the Troubles end. Until the next time. Jordan doesn't care about the next time. She seethes and can't put words together before he speaks again.

"If you wanted to stop me, you had a lot better chance by talking."

"Then I wanted to shoot you," she hisses, shifting position, unable to find a way to sit that doesn't hurt, but now that she's up she's damned if she's lying down again.

Nathan looks upset. He lets go of the bars and jerks back to sit on his bunk, which is solid wood and fixed to the wall. Jordan has instead a folding camp bed that's obviously an addition to the cell. Its flimsiness makes things difficult for her when she's already struggling to move and really needs something more stable to lean on.

"All right," she says, "We both shot someone... so I guess I know why they'd want us locked up. What I don't understand is why they'd lock us up together."

He grimaces and gets a surly, determined face that's ominous to her, because she can tell he knows she won't like whatever's coming and maybe it even gives him a tiny bit of guilty pleasure, for all that he's a self-righteous bastard. "Your injuries. No-one else could deal with them. Gloves don't work anymore."

"What?" Jordan asks, the question coming out a breathy gasp. She didn't hear that right, or she's misinterpreting it. She lifts her hands and stares at them. "My gloves--?"

"Won't work. Nor the gloves on the EMTs who tried to fix you up. The Troubles are worse." He adds, with extra venom, "We made them worse."

Him. Her. This is her fault now? She's caught outraged, for a moment, but she still sees the unavoidable chain. She shot Nathan and he shot Howard, all restraint lifted, all options narrowed to a fine point. There's another distant rumble as she stares at him in horror and the walls shake again.

The Troubles are worse. The meteor storm is destroying Haven. And this, this, is the work of their own unique, perfect collaboration.

Jordan goes quiet after he tells her about the change in her curse. It doesn't make Nathan feel proud of himself but it does give him more space to think.

Unfortunately, the thought that scatters all others given the slightest opening is that Audrey's gone. She's gone -- shit, even Duke is gone, and for all he knows they're not coming back, in twenty-seven years or ever. Maybe they're even dead. He could have lost her to Duke, or someone else, anyone else... or no-one else if that was what she preferred. He couldn't stand the thought that he'd be somehow using her, as a bandage for his Trouble -- not even for everyone's Trouble. You can't do that with a person. That devil's choice that was no choice at all... Of course she said yes. No one worth anything could refuse, and she was going to choose to save everyone. He knew that. He didn't even need the proof that she'd already done it countless times before.

He'd give up his own life. But not Audrey's.

Now he has to figure out what he's going to do when they're all gone anyway, and the Troubles aren't, and it's all his fault.

Jordan breaks her silence and spits it out right on cue. "You did this."

Nathan coughs a laugh and rolls his head and nods slowly, and he smiles back wryly at her, because he can't return her hate with any of his own. He's run out. Of anger, passion, even despair. Now, he's just tired.

"Don't smile." Jordan takes exception to that, too.

"You got any great ideas about what else to do?" He gestures around the locked cell and suspects he might be high on blood loss, because it's true that the sheer scale of his failure does all of a sudden seem very funny.

Jordan's eyes narrow and she balls the bloodsoaked remnant of her shirt tightly between her hands and hurls it at him. She arranges her right arm so it's tight against her ribs, presses her good hand over both, then pushes off from the bed, rising with a sharp cry. This is going to be an interesting fight, crosses Nathan's mind as he dubiously watches, but she staggers a moment on her too-large heels before stabilizing her balance enough to aim herself at the sink and toilet in the corner.

"Don't look," she snaps, and apparently trusts him to heed that. He wouldn't have looked anyway, but for the sake of her modesty averts his face and holds a very visible hand up to block that side of his vision. She leaves the water running and after a while he's pretty sure it's only been water running for a long time and she just hasn't bothered to tell him he can look back. He thinks he hears her drinking from the tap.

He puts his hand down, wary of losing circulation whether he can feel it or not, but keeps his eyes at the front. "I don't much like having my back to you," he tries after a few more minutes. "Not to be ungentlemanly, but how do I know you won't try to kill me again?"

He risks a peek. She's slumped at the sink, on her knees with her arm crooked over the porcelain, and that's the only thing keeping her somewhat close to upright. Nathan curses.

"Don't you dare," she says thickly as he starts to get up. Her eyes emerge from under her tangle of hair as she shifts to glare at him. They're darker than usual, with more than just thick make-up scoring shadows around them. "I don't want your help. I can do it. I'm just... resting a moment... bastard." She groans as she drags herself up, gaining strength from his scrutiny. "Besides. You're injured worse than I am. You just don't feel it." She sounds pleased, and then contemptuous, and adds from pure spite, "Maybe you'll never feel again. Anything. At least I can touch myself." Jordan leans against the wall and slides her hand crudely over her crotch as she taunts him.

Out of a multitude of more hurtful things he could say, and granted the perfectly good option of silence, Nathan picks, "Honestly? It's not the most pressing thing on my mind."

She snorts and chews the fingertips of her gloves. "You don't know I won't try again," she says finally, answering his question from an aeon ago. "Guess you'll just have to keep watching your back, Nathan."

He stares at her, stifles a groan and hates this.

Maybe it would've been better, less bitter, less a betrayal on both sides, if they hadn't made love in the week leading up to that fiasco with the kid. Did she think she had to do that to seal the deal with him? As if his loyalty could be bought with her body, made strong enough to survive the revelation of how the Guard planned to use him, or use the kid to use him? Or did she really want to -- did she somehow think it wouldn't matter? She knew what was coming and she chose to commit that far anyway. Nathan can't see how she could ever have thought he'd not find out, sooner or later.

They were only intimate a few times. Just starting out, slow, awkward, gentle -- special, he thought. She hadn't had sex since the incident that first triggered her Trouble. He'd never really done it while unable to feel. He let Jordan take charge and followed her instruction; sensed that she got a kick out of that, beneath the nervousness, the odd shyness and moments of giddiness. He fed off her own pleasure at being touched, surmounting his Trouble vicariously as he conquered hers. It was hell of a high, and it worked -- he was able to make love to her.

He feels guilty about Sarah, though in a way what happened with Sarah gave him the confidence to broach the issue with Jordan. He feels guilty for Jordan, too, since Audrey -- Sarah -- all of her, had sort of been there first. But hell if he knows where he stands with Audrey, and he figures there have to be allowances in the rules, somewhere, for goddamn time travel. Except maybe he really was just that much of a heel, giving in to the rush of having a girl in his arms who he could actually feel.

When he thinks about how far Jordan allowed things to go, perhaps she did expect that when the shit went down it would be enough to hold them together. He can't share her goals or her methods, but can concede that the betrayal probably stung keener from the other side.

"You think I picked Audrey over you," he says slowly. "It's not true." It probably won't help to add that the dark side of her drove him away all on its own. Jordan wrinkles her nose in obvious disbelief, anyway.

He didn't even know Audrey wanted him. Still doesn't, really -- she did, she didn't, or half the time it seemed she only did when they were saying "goodbye", and what the hell did that indicate about them? But he didn't have to be with Audrey to love her or fight for her.

And he wonders, with just the smallest spark left of hope -- if the meteors are still here, if the Troubles are still here, maybe that means some part of his last-ditch act of craziness worked. Maybe somewhere, Audrey and Duke are still out there, intact.

"Stop thinking about her! She's gone," Jordan snaps. At his wild look of askance she says, "That smile when you think about her. I hate that you can be in a room with me and still wearing that damn smile, you... liar."

Nathan closes his eyes despite the heavy load of irony that word bears, coming from her. "I'm sorry you felt betrayed, but Audrey... really was first my partner."

It's easy for people to underestimate what that means; to think romantic love is so much more elevated than working and fighting and risking together. He also can't deny she's right that he loved Audrey all the time he was with her. But when it comes to choosing, he only chose not to be with Jordan. And for damn good reason, which she seems all too ready to forget.

They're interrupted as the room jolts itself sideways, which he sees and also feels as his balance tips. The floor rushes up to meet him and he pushes out his arms, managing to catch himself. From behind him, there's a thump and a gasp from Jordan.

"Are you alright?" Nathan asks, carefully lowering himself the rest of the way, since he suspects he's better off staying on the floor. His vision is still quivering and he at least thinks it's the police station shaking to its foundations and not him. She doesn't answer, but that doesn't necessarily mean she isn't all right, considering she's also monumentally pissed at him. He can hear her panicked breaths as the shaking continues, longer than any of the previous times. When it finally subsides, it doesn't go completely. There's still a low-grade rumble that makes the hairs on his skin stand on end, and even if he has no tactile sense of the pressure change, it's doing strange things to his inner ear, making his hearing fluctuate.

Dwight bursts through the door outside the cell as Nathan is cautiously picking himself up, soot-smudged and ragged and clearly exhausted of the better part of his considerable physical power. "Are you guys all right?" he breathlessly asks.

Nathan grabs for the bars to haul himself straight at the door. "Dwight! Quick, get me out of here."

Instead, the big guy shakes his head dubiously. "Doc said it was best to leave you be."

Another! Nathan's hands fly up in frustration and he slumps back on the edge of his bunk. "What's going on out there?"

"Meteor just clipped the top of the building." Dwight watches Jordan lift herself to all fours tortuously. She's spotted her jacket, crumpled under the camp bed, and edges herself over to pick it up. "There's a fire, but it's under control. If it turns into a problem, I will come back and let you out."

"Dwight," Jordan gasps, and lurches to the front of the cell, clutching her jacket against her front. "Open the damned door. There's no reason for me to be stuck here, with him." Her voice is pleading. Nathan knows they worked together on the Grady and Tommy business, but there's more familiarity here than he expected.

Dwight takes a step back of a nervous quality that speaks volumes about just who managed to get Jordan from the island to the police station in the first place. "Everything I hear says that's not so. Sorry, Jordan. Chief." He nods at Nathan, then ducks back outside. Smoke wafts in before he slams the door shut again, and the background tapestry of noise becomes clearer, for a moment, where they can pick out individual voices and screams.

Jordan angrily and painfully drags her jacket on. "Where's the pin you were using on the door?" she demands, holding her hand out for it.

Under the bunk somewhere, probably, but Nathan fishes a spare from his pocket and doesn't miss how careful she is, taking it, not to touch him at all.

She hunches down and tackles the door, stripping her gloves off to get more tactile feedback from the lock. He watches her bowed, dark head with only faint hope and tries to calculate how long they could have been in here. It must have taken a couple of hours to transport them, unconscious, and maybe a few more hours passed after that. Though the time has crept frustratingly slow and he can't be sure how long he spent unconscious on either occasion, he doesn't think it can have been more than six hours since he first woke up, and his body clock is pretty sure it's the middle of the night. His guess is ten hours, in all, since the Barn... imploded, since the meteors began. No wonder Dwight looks wrecked.

Shifting on the bunk, Nathan is conscious that it's become harder to maintain his position, and his vision is starting to swim at the edges. Clues that mean there's something wrong with his body, or okay, more wrong than before. He leans carefully and tries to find Lucassi's mirror among the sheets to check his wounds. Instead, he discovers a small puddle of blood amid the folds. Cursing, he finds the mirror and angles it at his lower back. The dressing, white and clean earlier, is red.

What? He's been moving around, sure, and he's taken a couple of falls, with all the shaking about, but he doesn't remember anything that could exacerbate the injury like that. Something... his thoughts have gone sluggish... something must have struck him without him knowing. Did Jordan do it? He does suspect her, blinking hard at the back of her head as she works on the lock, but it seems to him that if she had then she wouldn't turn her own back on him afterwards. She can't move quickly or quietly... surely he'd have heard her.

Nathan tries to catch the edge of the dressing with numb fingers and peel it back. Perhaps not a good idea. A new surge of blood pulses out. His senses spin and he can't keep his grip on the mirror. He grabs a corner of the blanket and presses it to the wound, but his vision's greying at the edges. He pins what's left of his focus on Jordan's bowed head, not more than three feet in front of him. He groans, knowing she won't care, wondering if he's dying, and just manages to speak her name before the world disappears.

"Jordan..."

"Not now, Nathan." She has only once successfully picked a lock, and that was her parents' closet door when she was ten years old, two weeks before Christmas, but she thinks she's almost got it. Wonders if he's having second thoughts about letting her try. Well, he can try and stop her. Jordan's pretty sure she's in better shape than Nathan is right now, even if he doesn't have to suffer the pain. There's nowhere to go once she gets out, but nowhere is better than being stuck in close quarters with Nathan Wuornos in a building that's on fire.

A faint thud draws her attention around. She cranes her neck and freezes when she sees Nathan collapsed on the bunk behind her. She wants to turn back to the lock, but there's something about that quick glimpse of him, unsettlingly still, some terrible absence that her subconscious notes and apparently gives a damn about even if the rest of her doesn't. She looks again, and this time registers that he's not breathing.

No, because he's dead. She killed him after all.

Jordan feels her heart lurch like it's about to jolt its way right out of her chest.

It's not triumph.

Before she knows what she's doing, the lock is forgotten and she's standing up at the bars, shouting for someone, anyone, to bring the doctor. Someone who looks too damn young to be wearing a police uniform peeks in, goes pale, and then runs off after holding up a mutely acknowledging hand. Useless. Useless...

Jordan abandons the bars and painfully turns Nathan over on the bunk, hauling on his shoulder. She sees blood and a sodden, useless dressing pulled off and discarded in the sheets, and curses. She bunches the blankets beneath him, pushing them up against the wound and hoping his weight will apply pressure enough that she doesn't squeeze too much more of it out of him. The bunk, with its thin mattress, is probably hard enough to at least try CPR from this position, and she doesn't think she can get him on the floor or bend down over him there without passing out.

She pulls at the back of his neck with her bare hand and presses her mouth over his. It's a really long time since she's done this. No-one, these days, asks her to brush up on emergency resuscitation. Two breaths. She finds the spot on his chest, just below the sternum, and starts compressions, counting quickly. Each push brings sharp agony to her shoulder and ribs, but it barely registers. She finishes the count, stops and breathes for him twice more. The door opens outside as she pulls back from the first breath, but she has no time for that, or even for the blaze of hate that comes with her realisation of who is there, plunging in for the second.

"Jesus," she hears, gruff and amazed. "That would just about finish off anyone else."

Vince. Bastard! "He's not breathing."

"You know CPR?" Vince is fumbling at the door, and the weird police doctor is finally coming in behind him.

"You think that's funny?" Jordan cries, starting on the chest compressions again. Nathan isn't moving beneath her hands, his body dead and compliant. She's seen it before, except he came back that time.

This time too? It does occur to her to wonder why she's trying.

"...Jordan? Jordan, get back from him." The doctor -- Lucassi -- who can't touch her. His hands hover off her shoulders, not daring to venture closer. She's too focused, barely cares, and dives in for the next two breaths anyway.

Nathan gasps, his sudden voluntary intake of breath pulling all the air from her lungs, and Jordan chokes as she breaks away from him. His eyes are wide open. There's something startled, weird and wild in his expression.

Her motivations scatter into confetti. She didn't kill him, but she didn't do that either. "That wasn't me--" She wavers, fixed on Nathan. He seems like he's almost still out. There's no awareness behind his eyes. Apprehension freezes her. What's wrong with him?

Why was she trying to save him?

Nathan's body jerks on the bed. Vince is close enough to try holding him down. Jordan pulls away, not wanting to be close; let the two of them deal with this. She doesn't care if Nathan lives or dies. Does she?

"Nathan... try not to move." Vince struggles to press him back to the mattress. "Oh, dear..." Nathan's shoulders buck and he twists sideways, half throwing Vince off. The doctor darts in and tries to staunch the bleeding from his back, pushing a wad of new white dressing to it. Nathan shouts a raw, incoherent denial and shoves the wad away. The wound in his back is moving. Jordan feels her face twist in revulsion. It's as though something inside is squirming, trying to get out.

She's seen too many horror movies, because what does slide out, slowly as the flesh around pushes it, is the small, black nub of a bullet. The doctor mutters incredulously and scrabbles in the bloody sheets to claim it in shaking fingers. With his other hand, he tentatively wipes the wad over the injury, removing the worst of the blood, so they all can see-- Before their eyes, the wound in Nathan's back is closing.

It's not instant, or even particularly fast. But it is fast enough to watch, if you watch close enough. The flesh is knitting. Maybe in a few hours it'll be impossible to tell there was any damage at all.

"What the hell...?" begins Jordan. Great. She gets more layers, more gloves, even less contact with the outside world, and he gets this?

Nathan grunts. His voice is very rough when he asks, "Is it done?" He sounds worn down, his words slur, and his form is limp, utterly without energy. He doesn't even seem to be able to turn around of his own accord to face them, though his arm shoves a few times at the sheets like he's trying.

Oblivious to his patient's wants, the fascinated doctor gently teases Nathan's right arm out of his shirt to bare his shoulder, exposing a dressing over the shoulder blade. Peeling back the bandage, he wipes off dried blood to reveal that the skin is clean. He and Vince exchange wondering, wide-eyed glances.

"He's got another one in his thigh," Vince points out, the dithering old man again.

"I think we can safely assume," the doc says, a bit wryly, looking at Jordan. He puts Nathan's shirt back and pats his arm apologetically, like he doesn't even realise how pointless that is, although he seems to have returned to the world of propriety and remembered Nathan isn't a science project.

"What?" demands Nathan, his irritation stronger than his body is. He rolls his head, but it seems to loll. Vince takes pity and hauls on his shoulders until he's lying on his back again and can see them.

"Your injuries," the doctor says. "They're healed, or... healing, at least. It looks like your Trouble has evolved, too."

Nathan doesn't look pleased, he looks disgusted, and Jordan can get down with that. He's even more of a freak. But his expression tightens as he takes it in. Yeah, they can still use this, both of them. No-one (else) can ever touch her now. In a way, she's truly safe. And if anyone ever needed a mutant healing factor, it's Nathan.

Her own hurts vanished in the rush of adrenaline as she tried pointlessly to save him, but they're returning now. Also, the door is open and no-one's stopping her... no-one's even looking at her. They're all too engaged with what's happened to their Chief. So she creeps for the exit and starts to slip through.

"Jordan, no." Vince lunges for the barred door, not her, and slams it fast enough to catch her in it.

She yells and then chokes curses at him. Bastard, he's a bastard, and as soon as she has a chance, she's going to--

The last time she decided she was going to kill a man for revenge, it didn't end well.

"What do you think you're going to do out there?" he asks, drawing a gun and jerking it to indicate she go back to her half of the cell. "Fall down, and die 'cause there's nobody can help you if you do, that's what! Foolish girl..."

If his aim is to save her life, the gun is laughable, and she doesn't need criticism or... concern, if that's what it is, from the old bastard. She makes a grab for his wrist, thinking if she does nothing else she'll at least give him the full taste of all that she is now -- but he withdraws from her reach, and overextending herself almost causes her to fall. She has no choice but to stagger back to her bed. She sinks down there and watches the three of them resentfully.

"...You're not going to ask to come out again, too?" Vince asks Nathan warily, prodding at him with a stubby finger, to which of course he doesn't react. His eyes keep drifting shut but this time his breath remains strong, causing his chest to rise and fall evenly.

He coughs a small, ironic laugh.

Nathan can't move. It could be that he doesn't even have the energy to speak, but then again.

"Right." Vince nods, satisfied. "Then we'll get back to what we were doing. No shortage of that." He hmphs. His eyes twinkle and the edge of his mouth cracks something of a smile. "Good to know it seems you'll pull through, Chief."

Nathan looks up narrowly (because he doesn't trust Vince any more than she does) and he snorts (because he's Chief of just what, right now?). The other two men retreat from the cell and then through the outer door. There's less yelling and panic outside than earlier, in that second before the door shuts. Jordan hasn't been as aware of the rumble of the meteor strikes for a while, but that could be due to other distractions.

She sits back and focuses on counting the seconds between the strikes and tries to ignore Nathan's presence. Which is easier than it should be, and only partly because he's quiet and she thinks even almost asleep. So maybe she doesn't hate him as much as she thought. Maybe she doesn't want him dead. Maybe they're both culpable in that disastrous endgame. But she's not ready to forgive him yet either. She's happy that his Trouble's left him drained to uselessness. As she sits and counts -- and also listens, on and off, to the faint sound of Nathan's breathing; dragging her down into other, unwilling thoughts -- Jordan becomes convinced of at least one thing:

The intervals between the meteorite impacts are getting longer.

Nathan floats in and out, never very far from the border between unconsciousness and waking, but lacking energy or will to push for consciousness. For a while he knows that Jordan is somewhere behind him, still a somewhat unnerving place for her to be, and then he's aware of her over by the door again, where he could see her if he could be bothered to turn his head. At the moment, it doesn't even seem worth trying.

It's like he used up his body's last reserves... healing himself, a thought that's going to take some getting used to. As if he wasn't already convinced enough that nothing will ever be the same again. He wonders dimly if he can even die now, or if a good, fast shot to the head or heart would put him down anyway. Supposes it's one of those things he'll find out when it happens.

For a while it seemed it was going to be a very short new world, but the sounds of the meteors are dying down. If he's not inclined to trust his own ears, he watches the tension drain out of Jordan's face and her clasped hands and tight shoulders and knows she's sensing the same quieting of activity outside that he is.

Movement comes back to him by slow increments. He pushes his sluggish, heavy body, watching his fingers curl in the folds of the blanket, their pressure distort the surface of the mattress, and achieves locomotion by tortuous inches. He eventually manages a position resembling sitting. His body's never fought him so much in his life. He thinks he could eat and drink now. Unfortunately, feeding them is probably the last thing on Vince Teagues' mind.

Jordan watches him, her gaze direct and burning, eyes refusing to blink while he's looking back. "I guess you're feeling--" He thinks it an honest slip of her tongue, before the moment she catches it and then curls her lip "--better."

Keeping the irony unacknowledged, Nathan responds, "I feel like I lost an argument with a steamroller." Flattened, scraped up, inflated and pushed out on his way again, like some incompetent cartoon villain.

Jordan sits, glares, and offers, with reluctance dragging at her words, "I've changed my mind about wanting you dead."

"Good to know." Especially knowing how determined she is; capable of acts she abhors in pursuit of the final goal.

She startles him by staggering onto her feet and crossing to his bunk, where she sits next to him, leaving maybe twelve inches between them. Nathan doesn't have to quash his impulse to move away, but only because he still isn't up to sudden movements.

He's staring, incredulous, at her face -- pinched and pale, never more serious -- and when he looks down, he realises she's taken his hand. It's pressed between both of hers, snuggled in her lap. He's... disturbed almost beyond reaction. He can't imagine why she would do that, let alone wait so calmly for him to notice, when yesterday she was angry and hating as she tried to gun him down. As soon as coherent thought resumes, he tries to pull his hand back.

"Don't," she says. She has that look on her, like the contact with another person is all that's holding her together. But she also looks like she's thinking something over, with underlying calculation and emotion in equal parts.

Nathan has been aware all along that there is a lot going on inside Jordan's head. They both thought they were so clever, such manipulators, but circumstance -- and Vince, of all people -- played them both.

"Why not?" Maybe she's thinking that if the Troubles never leave, he's the only chance of human contact she has left, ever, which would be a sobering thought, and more so with them placed on opposite sides.

"She's gone, Nathan. Audrey Parker is gone." Translating as, There's no reason for us to be apart, and not, Nathan thinks, that he has no equivalent chance left of his own. He watches her fingers press and knead the flesh of his hand, feels none of it, and remembers how obsessed he was those first few weeks after discovering he could feel Audrey. It's been no longer than that for her, finding out someone has a power to surmount her cruel curse. He does know how much it messed with his head. Allowances are... possible.

Aside from that -- though it's hazy as hell -- he knows she did try hard to save his life, after being the one to put it in danger in the first place.

He says flatly, "Ginger Danvers," and meets her eyes with challenge. The tips of his fingers are just shy of breaking the contact altogether, and as he continues to pull -- not quite as hard as he might -- she continues to clutch.

Jordan rolls her head, turns up her chin to stare at the ceiling instead of him. Moisture glitters in her eyes. "I wouldn't have hurt the kid..."

"You had a gun to her head." With that memory, he does yank his hand clear, but she grabs after it and foils the escape.

"It was a mistake. I would have done anything..."

Although she didn't, did she? Didn't hurt Ginger, didn't go that far, but that she was willing to use the kid at all was a stopping point for him. Her intent to use him he could probably have forgiven, in time. Nathan looks at their hands. "You seriously think that this is going to work again? You said it yourself. We're both screwed up."

"And yet in a weird way..." She takes a deep, shuddering breath as she lifts his hand to her lips. He can't feel her breath or the moisture of her mouth on his battered fingers, but the thought of them there excites him as much as ever it did. Perhaps more, with the guilt and treachery out in the open, with the chance to do this... well; he's forced to admit to himself it will likely never be honest. Which means he shouldn't, and yet trying to do the right thing hasn't worked too well for him so far. "I know where I stand with you, right now," Jordan concludes, hushed. Her eyes flash with anger despite her attempts to turn it into a quip as she adds, "And right now, I don't much feel like trusting anyone else."

Without him, without the Guard, he wonders how many allies she actually has left.

Nathan thinks about how there is no reprieve for him, if Audrey's gone. He's not convinced what he and Jordan have can ever be healthy, even at its best, but it's certainly a temptation, especially faced with the gut-punch truth that Audrey... may never know.

The geography of their lives has been rearranged at one blow. Can he go back to being Chief, with Vince and the Guard out in the open, with the inevitable whispers and rumours of what he did, and without Audrey Parker spurring him on to fill a role that he never was a good fit for anyway? Can Jordan return to the Guard, after their betrayal of her, after she defied them? They've both changed. The town has changed -- he hasn't yet seen the scale of the destruction, but even from the sound and the chaos witnessed inside their cell, the damage has to be cataclysmic.

He looks at Jordan caressing his skin and thinks about being Audrey; about at least someone getting their absolution from an unasked-for curse. Some part of him notes equally that there's a self-centredness in Jordan that can give a damn about a thing like touching when the world is falling in. Maybe that's fair match for the part of him that said screw the rest and determined to do anything to save Audrey Parker. In the scheme of things, his trouble doesn't matter anymore, but they're still a pair.

Nathan sighs, slips his other arm across her shoulders, and pulls her closer. When she leans into him, her smile is soft but her eyes still calculating. That's okay, so long as they both know, this time. It's not the worst thing in the world if they're held together by convenience and damage. If they're both set on using the other as well as, in spite of, anything and everything else they might feel.

He leans back carefully, settling her against his chest, curling her head into the crook of his neck. Thinks about her hair against his bare throat and collarbone, and the slide of her fingers over his captive hand. Her brooding, calculating gaze is out of his sight.

About an hour later, Dwight stumbles through the outer door, bleary-eyed, moving like the brink of exhaustion is dangerously close. A set of keys jangle in his hand. He stops and stares at the sight of them. Jordan's been asleep for a while, but shifts and starts to come around at the sound of the keys.

"You've both changed your tune," Dwight comments.

Nathan grimaces back -- he might have made his choice, but he's not ready to defend it, so takes refuge in silence. Dwight goes to the door and the keys sing lightly as he moves to open it. Nathan stands up, supporting Jordan and teasing her back to wakefulness by gently patting her face. She's still injured, and has pain to contend with, which is audible in her moan as she re-enters full consciousness. Enough of Nathan's strength has returned to support her weight, but she makes an effort to do so herself when she sees the door is open and they're free.

Dwight's expression is shifty as he holds back the door. "I'd suggest you take time to reconnoitre and regroup before tackling the issue with Vince," he advises, keeping his voice low. His whole demeanour has a furtiveness suggesting he's not here with his allies' knowledge or approval. "People trust you. Enough of the town will make the choice, if you're in a position to force it. No-one's happy Vince was keeping a secret fighting cell up his sleeve. Even most of the Guard aren't happy they were never told." His eyes flicker to Jordan, acknowledging.

Nathan isn't sure that Vince meant to fight him, from his words earlier, but it can be hard to relinquish control, so he nods, and decides to trust Dwight's judgement. He probably isn't up to much at the moment, anyway. "Thanks, Dwight. I appreciate it." He grips the big man's shoulder.

"Get out of here," Dwight says. "The quicker the better."

They know from the noises that the meteors have stopped. Jordan pulls away, determined to walk on her own as they step out of the cell, but despite that deliberate pool of distance, their hands have found each other's halfway before they're even out into the corridors of the police station. Nathan is aware of Dwight's presence at their backs, as the other man silently shepherds them to the front door. It's a protection detail. In the still-smoky corridors, the people they pass are drained and their bodies battered, and both the recognised and the unknown shift with uncertainty when they look upon him. Nathan doesn't have much strength left for fighting if any decide to try stop them.

They don't. Maybe Dwight's silent presence is unnecessary, or maybe it's just enough.

"Good luck," Dwight says when they stand before the door. Jordan barely manages to reflect his words back at him before he's dematerialised his bulk in that uncanny way of his.

Nathan sets his hand to the door and stops. He looks at the woman -- 'the wrong woman' is not a thought for today, maybe ever again -- with her hand locked in his. "You ready?"

Jordan swallows and nods. Her grip on his hand tightens; he sees the tension in her arm muscles change as it does.

They step outside into the morning to find out what, in the wake of the meteor storm and the two of them, is left of Haven.

END

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