5 Times Jordan McKee Killed Nathan Wuornos

Contents
1. Three Day Record (Unbroken)
2. Christmas Present to Self, December 25th 2010
3. At the Barn Door
4. The Day We Never Met
5. (Happy Ever After) Until the Next Time

It had not been easy to find a living blood relative of Nathan Wuornos.

It had, however, been a lot easier to activate Harold Hanson's Trouble once Jordan had him in her hands and it had been pretty damn easy for Wade to kill him, because Wade loved that shit, the weird, twisted fuck.

And now...

They'd let Nathan walk around town grinning for a few days. Let him build up a false sense of security and stop waiting for the other shoe to drop. Let him enjoy. He'd find out the flipside of no longer being afflicted soon enough. Nathan's distraction, after that, made it ridiculously easy, even though Duke Crocker was still looking for Wade and Nathan and Dwight were supposedly still looking for her. They snatched him off the street in broad, sunny daylight and bundled him into the back of a van, where they bound and gagged him. Jordan already had her gloves off for the snatch, so he finally got to feel a little of what he'd been missing, all those times he caressed her skin.

She regretted that a little as they headed home to the background music of thumping and muffled shouting from the rear of the van, because it would have been better to introduce that experience to him under more controlled circumstances. Wade's grin was wide, next to her, though she didn't know why. Did he actually think she was going to let him have this one? Even if Nathan had still been Troubled... Oh, no. This one was hers. He knew that. A couple of love taps on the chin later would ensure that he didn't forget it.

They'd established an effective method of communication. She let him know when he crossed the line. In return, if he hadn't killed anyone in a few days and started getting restless, she'd draw him a little of her blood. She even thought he kind of liked the pain, though, which was a first. She'd tried masochists, before, years ago when her Trouble first kicked in: they'd all run away fast.

So she wasn't too worried about not having the desired effect on Nathan, once they got him back to the cellar of the isolated shack they were using as a hideout. All right, he'd not felt pain in at least three years, but even if that had rewired him screwy, she was pretty sure she was potent enough to cut through any unusual bullshit. There couldn't be too many Wade Crockers in the world, after all.

He screamed unreservedly through the first session, when she only used his and her hands and face.

Wade came by as she was drinking wine and smiling softly to herself afterwards. "Enjoying yourself?"

"Mm," she said. "Very much so."

He pouted and said, "But you wouldn't let me join in."

"He's not bleeding, Wade," she pointed out. "And it wouldn't interest you any more if he was. I'm not bleeding. You'd be -- bored. Very, very bored."

He stroked her face with a gloved hand but his own face stayed like stone. "Only right now, I'm feeling very, very jealous."

"Oh?" She felt her smile spread wide. "So you think he's enjoying my affections?"

"I don't know who couldn't," he said, tilting his head, and she felt warmth flood through her.

"You're sweet," she told Wade. "And Nathan's still mine."

The second session took place a few glasses later. Jordan stripped both of them of clothing, article by article. With her naked hands, she peeled garments from Nathan, who already shivered, hanging from his tied hands, and she finally told him their secret: "Do you know why your Trouble went away? We did that for you, Wade and I."

She trailed a hand down his naked body, letting her fingertips linger over his sex, and he jolted and trembled, but typical Nathan, when she took her hand away, he managed to spit raggedly, "You killed someone?"

Priorities. Oh, Nathan.

"That's what we do." She kissed him gently on the cheek with the reminder. "Didn't you notice?"

She wondered if he'd last as long as Scotty, who'd done three days but still never actually recovered from it yet, so really, that wasn't much for a record. Nathan wasn't used to feeling anything, least of all pain. She didn't think Nathan was going to last three days. Part of her was disappointed.

The third session, the second day -- Wade brought her a bribe of breakfast in bed, croissants which he must have risked a trip into town to buy, the frivolous idiot, and no, he still wasn't getting in on this -- she cut Nathan down and laid him out on the floor, where she fucked him. As best she could, anyway, with his body trying to shrink from her at the same time as it responded. He was all nerve endings, and it was a delight. Although perhaps she should have covered him up again, last night, because his cold, clammy skin chilled hers and made the process annoyingly uncomfortable for her, which was very much not the point.

Also, possibly, she should feed him something. At least if they were going to try for a four-day record.

"You can do that, can't you?" she asked him, as she fed him a leftover croissant. One bite at a time, being careful not to touch his skin with her fingers as she delivered each morsel into his mouth, though he flinched every time, all the same. "Four days. It's not so hard. Two down already. I suppose that's technically one and a half, though, since today isn't over yet."

He flinched again at the promise of more to come, but what he hoarsely asked was, "Who did you kill?"

"Max Hanson's little brother. Pay attention, Nathan." She slapped his face and he coughed up the last piece of croissant in agonised reflex. "We started halfway through yesterday, so really, I suppose that's only one day. You have a long way to go."

"I didn't even know I had an uncle still alive."

"Well, you don't," she reminded helpfully. "But he gave you this wonderful gift. Now you can feel the sunshine and the daisies and all the wonderful things that make life worth living."

He heaved a disgusted breath. "Even if you hadn't done it just so you could do this... I still wouldn't choose feeling over a man's life. You're sick, Jordan. You need help."

Jordan put a blanket over him and went to play with Wade. Even in agony, Nathan was hair-trigger enough to leave her unsatisfied, and Wade needed some placating and reassurance. That might get to be a problem if Nathan did last as long as four days.

"Why do you even need him?" Wade complained, his fingers moving in her as she straddled his fully-clothed knee. Her gloved fingers stroked him in return through his agape zipper. "You've got me now."

"Baby, I don't need him," Jordan said, her voice hitching as electric sensation pulsed through her with each fierce push. Wade was never gentle. She arched over him and tried to remember to keep her hand working. "I... need him suffering."

"You mean you don't need me suffering?" he asked in his jealous voice.

She leaned over and licked his face. "No, Wade, I just enjoy it."

He came all over her glove.

Later that day -- they'd had some other business in town, which satisfied Wade and got him off her back -- she returned to Nathan with a heavily sugared coffee and a box of donuts. "Cop-food," she said brightly. "In case you miss it."

He'd somehow unfixed himself from the iron ring in the floor and got his hands in front of him, but they were still securely bound, so she let him feed himself. Because she was tired of doing it anyway, and really, she'd taken her clothes off at the door and already dodged his one attempt to cover her with the blanket and jump her as she walked in, so he wasn't getting away.

"How's Wade?" Nathan asked, legs bent up to his chest, shivering. She'd put the blanket outside.

"Super," Jordan told him. "He killed lots of people this afternoon, so he's having an extra-special good day."

"And you're all right with that." It was still the tiniest bit of a question, but not much. Only a little bit of something in him was still asking if there was anything left in her to save. There wasn't. She had given herself over to being a monster, faced with the choice between that or running, when she realised what she'd created in Wade. "I get why you're mad at me, but Jordan -- the rest of them, why?"

She poked him in the armpit and was ready to catch his half-finished coffee and set it on the floor as he convulsed. "Simple. What did any of them ever do for me? You. Vince. I tried to help, and what did it get me? Nothing. No -- used. It got me used. So now I'm with Wade, and what makes Wade happy, makes me happy."

"This isn't you," he tried. "You wanted to help Troubled people."

"You destroyed the Barn," she pointed out, annoyed. "You ensured the Troubles can't be helped any other way. So now we're ending them. Together. One Trouble at a time."

"You know who comes last on that list."

She shook her head. "No, no. I'm his emergency store of the good stuff. Kill me, and... no more super-powered rush on tap. I won't be last, Nathan. I'm the keeper." She pressed her finger over his lips. His hand dropped what was left of the last donut, spasming, and she kicked it out of the way as she straddled him. Her boots combated the cold of the floor, this time, and she'd figured she could countenance the loss of that much skin contact between them for a bit more comfort. "Come on, Nathan. We're not here to talk. Time to saddle up and ride again."

She pushed him back to the floor, uncurling him with her smaller body weight but, mostly, with his reflex to move away from wherever she touched. She caught his tied hands and pulled them to her, rubbing them between her breasts. She lowered herself onto him, wet and waiting, marvelling that excess of sensation kept him hard despite the fact that the greater part of it was pain. She watched the slits she could see of his eyes turn white as his head rolled back. She curled her hand down between their bodies. "Show me you can do better than last time, Nathan."

He choked and came in less than two minutes anyway.

Just in case he was doing it on purpose, getting off early to get off early, as it were, she lingered, stretching further caresses over his skin, leaning forward to seal her lips over his mouth and kiss him thoroughly around his protests.

She tasted vomit and tore back, spitting. Grabbed for his abandoned coffee and rinsed her mouth out with it.

All right, she wasn't going to do that again.

"Asshole." She stuck her fingers in his mouth and didn't move them until she was pretty sure he would suffocate around them if she didn't.

Nathan was still alive and coherent on day three. Jordan had decided she could be generous and call it day three, between the intensity of the last session and the fact that Scotty hadn't started bright and early on his designated day one, either.

"Why don't you just kill me?" he asked dully. He'd retrieved the blanket she shoved back through the door the night before and the way he'd wrapped it around himself, she couldn't see his hands, which made her wary despite the hopelessness of his tone.

"Because I want two more days out of you." She feinted one way and went another, and so managed to elude this morning's trick with the blanket, too. She grabbed onto his wrist and held it until his knees buckled. She manoeuvred him onto his back by waving the threat of her fingers before his skin. "If you can't put things to their proper uses, I'll take them away from you again." She wadded up the blanket in her hands and considered lobbing it into a corner, but pushed it under his head instead. If she let him keep his tricks, he might last longer. Hope was a fine spur.

"When they find you, you're both finished."

No need to ask who they were.

"They won't find us in time for you."

Silence. Nathan knew that.

Jordan sighed dramatically. "I'm tired of sex," she said. "Let's just cuddle today." And she curled up on his chest, ear flush to the feverish heat of the skin above his heart, listening to its pounding, to its rhythm as it raced and broke and laboured, struggling to keep up with pain no-one's body could surmount. After a while, she wrested the circle of his arms over her head and shoulders and felt them, shivering, curled tightly around her.

"Jordan..." His protest was faint, thready, breaking up in a final exhale.

His heart pounded one last time underneath her. And then nothing.

So Nathan didn't last four days, or even three, and Jordan was still standing over him, toeing his chilling corpse and sighing in unaccountable depression, when Wade finally plucked up the daring to come down and disturb her, however many hours that was later.

"He's dead," she said, her voice thick and slow. "Heart attack, I think." She felt like she'd become stone. "I guess he really wasn't used to all that sensation." She hadn't expected him to just die.

"So it's done," Wade concluded impatiently. "Come on, I've other things I want to do today, and there are always more where he came from."

It's in the last week of the run-up to Christmas that the resolve starts to form in her; as Jordan realises she's spending another Christmas Troubled, and alone, where this year should have been the year to end all of that.

It snows in Haven, thick, endless swathes of white that bury the ground and make the roads impassable or treacherous at best, and the timing of the seasonal weather brings festive cheer out in force, despite everything else that's been happening in the town. Jordan sees other people out shopping with their families in the white-daubed streets, women holding their children's hands in the place of forgotten or lost gloves, red-blushed skin eased by human warmth in the cold. Jordan is just cold. Even the freakin' Guard throw a Christmas party. Nancy MacDonald smooches Vince Teagues under the mistletoe, skin against skin blushed red, this time, by too much punch, and it's almost like that's the last straw.

In her shed of an apartment behind the Gun & Rose, the weather is almost as much a curse as the rest of Haven's curses. Jordan has no-one to curl up to on a night, and Troubled as she is, there's only one person whose warmth she could share. The cold makes it easy to hate. Easy to start to plan. All of this is Nathan's fault, and he ran, and he needs to pay. Enough is enough. It's when she decides she's going to give herself the Christmas present she's been craving.

First, Jordan pays a visit to the Teagues. "Where is he?" She has a gun, and she's shivering because it's cold and most of her upper body is bare skin. She's not fucking scared of Vince Teagues.

"Where's who, Jordan?" he barks, looking merely cross and offended by the sight of the gun. "Goodness gracious, put some clothes on!"

"No, thanks. Nathan, asshole. I know one of you has to know where he is. One of you knows everything that goes on in this freakshow of a town. The only question is... which one it is."

"Nathan's on the run," Dave burbles. "Nobody knows where he is. We tried to find him already."

"I don't believe that."

They're two old men with about the strongest wills she's ever seen, when it comes down to it. It takes two days and pretty much burning all her bridges in Haven, by the time she's finished with the pair, but she finally gets an answer from Dave about where Nathan Wuornos was last seen, what he's doing, and where he's likeliest to be now.

"I can't believe you were actually protecting him," she spits. "Why? He destroyed the Barn, left us with the Troubles -- maybe forever!"

"Our oldest friend's son," Dave moans.

"And the son of one of our oldest enemies," mumbles Vince. It's a sort of correction. She honestly can't tell if Vince knew as well. If his disapproval is for Dave knowing, or for Dave's disclosure.

"Well. Thanks." Jordan tosses her hair and leaves them, tied up and clamouring, and Vince is cursing Dave behind her. She wonders how much of a head start she has. It would be longer if she killed them, but they're two old men, and Haven needs them now more than ever, and she's not a killer. There really is only one man she has in her sights.

She leaves Haven on a crisp, white morning three days before Christmas. There's snow in the air again and warnings to avoid using the roads, and she packs extra blankets and a thermos and prays the wheels of her SUV continue to bite as she traverses icy tarmac and sporadic drifts.

She doesn't know what she expected. That he'd leave the country? He's a Maine boy at heart, and she can't see him on some tropical island, or working on some Mexican ranch. He's just trawling bars in New England, staying under the radar by hiding with the dregs and the dirt.

Jordan gets a couple of positive IDs in the first bar she tries, the one Dave quoted as the last definite contact. She has photographs of Nathan, taken in the Autumn, at Halloween and after. Photographs of the two of them together, smiling, happy. His hands on her face; he's kissing her, she's turning her cheek so he misses her mouth, embarrassed. Nathan's cheeks are pink, also embarrassed. Crocker took the picture. They're in the corner of Crocker's bar, and Audrey Parker was there too, somewhere, but she's not in this snap.

Jordan hates the reminder of those few weeks where they were happy. In between the Troubled house debacle and Nathan dying, before the fiasco with the girl.

The people she asks, the ones who don't jeer, think it's sweet that she's looking to hook up with her long lost lover. It doesn't seem to occur to anyone that she could be looking for him for another purpose. They have no reason to lie when they tell her the direction he went when he moved on.

She catches up with him at last on Christmas day. This is a time of year when people notice a wanderer, someone who's not local, who doesn't belong. Especially one offering Nathan's sort of 'counselling', and she snorts softly when she hears about that. Oh, Nathan. Does he really think that constitutes 'staying inconspicuous'?

When she finds him, he's in a self-contained cabin at the back of a motel in the middle of -- and this is being kind in her description of it, mark you -- Sweet Fucking Nowhere.

She pulls her SUV into the lot and offers a winning smile and a sob story to the attendant who doesn't want to be working on Christmas Day. He tells her what number Nathan is in, though she can't quite con him far enough to let her have a key to give him a real 'Christmas surprise'.

It hardly matters. Jordan goes back to the SUV, checks over her shoulder at the view from the office. The blinds are down, and even if the attendant was paying attention, she knows he can't see much through them. It's not late, but it's getting dark. Clouds are heavy in the sky, promising further snow. She takes her shotgun out of the car, slams the door, trudges across the lot, following the numbering on ugly, green-painted sheds.

She hammers on Nathan's door, and he incautiously shoves it open, his voice rough and muttering ahead of the moment they both see the other's face, "I paid up, damn it--"

Jordan lets him have both barrels in the chest.

The noise resounds around the motel lot, the grim, green sheds. She throws the gun through the door and pushes inside while Nathan's still falling. With the door closed behind her, even if anyone does bother to come out and investigate, she doubts they'll guess where the shot came from. She also doesn't really care.

She steps over Nathan, gulping on the floor, his midsection raw meat seeping blood. He's still alive, but she doubts that will last for long.

Shouts sound outside, and well, hell. But if anyone calls the police she'll deal with that, too.

Jordan sprawls into a threadbare armchair, hooks her arms over its sinking backrest, and crosses her legs. She draws in a long, satisfied breath, easier and fresher than any breath she's taken in a long time, even though the room smells strongly of cigarette smoke, Nathan's B.O. and whiskey. She closes her eyes, just for a moment, then opens them again to glance around the sad little room, the stained sheets, grubby walls, TV that's chained down, and smiles. She offers to the dying man an ironic observation: "How far we've both come."

Nathan's eyes blink at her; slow, sluggish and fading. He moves his lips, but apparently isn't capable of speech. His blue, blue eyes glaze over, fixed on her as they see for the final time.

The moment stretches. And maybe, just a little bit, it starts to sour.

Jordan stands up. She crosses to the nightstand by the bed, where a bottle of Jack Daniels sits, open, half-emptied already, his own sad, meagre Christmas present to self. There's no tumbler anywhere in sight to drink from.

She catches sight of snow, begun to fall thick and fast past the window, a thick curtain of white. The police probably won't get here tonight, but she won't get out, either. Inside the cabin, Nathan's blood spreads slowly across the floor. The world is red and white and cold. But those things are festive, right? Just about perfect for the season.

She picks up the bottle and toasts Nathan's corpse. Her hand trembles, and her throat wants to close up rather than frame the words:

"Merry Christmas, Nathan."

At least she isn't spending it alone.

She swigs from the bottle where his lips have touched, and shares with him one final drink.

She just shoots him. She's fast enough, accurate enough, that Nathan only wings Howard as he's already falling.

Jordan notices in that moment, when Howard's still standing holding onto his arm looking stunned, that maybe there's something close to horror mixed in his expression. He's so appalled, aghast, that anyone might dare what Nathan came so close to, that it makes her wonder what would have happened if Nathan succeeded.

But Howard's not the one lying on the grass, dead.

The men she persuaded to return with her are restraining Crocker, who's roaring like he just lost his best friend, for all that they used to fight, and Howard casts his unfathomable eyes over everyone left, his face under control again, nods slowly once, then retreats through the door into the Barn. It closes, then the Barn is gone. Audrey Parker is gone. And Nathan is--

In all honesty, throughout any of that, Jordan's eyes have never left the figure lying prone in the grass.

Vince arrives at a shambling run and makes the men release Crocker, who stumbles half a dozen steps and falls on his knees next to Nathan, putting a hand out and rolling him over onto his back. Blood smears Crocker's skin, and stays stark and red on his fingers.

"Is he--?" Vince quavers.

Crocker looks up with his eyes filling. Shakes his head.

Jordan hears a low cough, then a sort of whisper, from Darren -- he came back with her, and he can't talk without deafening everyone around him. An instant later, his experimental noises become a shout of joy, a celebratory cry that echoes around the grassy slope -- but leaves all eardrums intact -- as he throws down his gun and clasps the man beside him on the shoulder.

"Troubles are gone," says Crocker, looking and sounding like he doesn't give a shit. He lurches to his feet and jabs an accusatory hand at Jordan. "You -- you're gonna pay."

Vince grabs him and hauls him back. "That won't help now." He also looks at Jordan. She wants them both to stop.

She flings her gun down and turns and walks away, leaving them all.

Making her way home takes longer than it ought. She keeps stopping, sitting, leaning, just standing in her tracks, unaccountably losing the will to move. One time she finds herself on her knees and can't remember getting there. By the time she manages to get home, she's also mostly arrived at the fact of what she's done, but she's working on convincing every part of her to quite believe it.

She's not a murderer. She never killed anyone before. Scotty -- who deserved death -- is not exactly enjoying his current state of life, but he's still alive.

She thinks about Nathan and about the look on Vince's face, acknowledging she did the right thing, the necessary thing. But she also thinks about Nathan's hands trailing the contours of her face and can no longer comprehend what made her, in that moment, so ready to shoot him.

That night, alone in her crappy apartment, she gets more drunk than she's ever been. In the morning, she has hazy memories of Crocker coming in, finding her like that and putting a gun in her face, then leaving when she told him: "Go ahead, I don't even care."

Two days later when she finally ventures out again, she puts her gloves on to do it, and it's four months before she brings herself to touch another person, even though she now can.

They were never going to let her forget it was her fault the Fromsley prison break went south.

But even before that, the Guard were already pissed at her for shooting down the original plan. Jordan hadn't cared, at that point. She was so much more monumentally pissed at the Guard, because she'd told them "no" one day and the cop still turned up at the Gun & Rose the next.

Burning with fury, she threw him out: he had no right, no warrant, no cause for suspicion. It wasn't illegal to have a tattoo. Like she'd told Kurt, that bastard, she was done with trying to control and manipulate dangerous men.

Since they'd found another way, she'd hoped that perhaps finally they'd stop harping on about it. She figured they must have got to someone in the police station or the courthouse, because cops had Troubles too. Maybe they'd managed to plant someone with a 'special skill set' that could persuade the right people to arrange the transfer. It wasn't as though they told her all of the details.

Whatever the guy's 'skill set' was, though, it didn't turn out to be so damned special, after all, since the result was a bullet in her arm, half the police in Haven looking for them, and the public calling out for her blood.

Jordan's left arm really fucking hurt. She could still see the gun rising in the security guard's hand behind her eyelids whenever she closed her eyes, even if it was just to blink. She'd thought she was going to die.

"The boss says we need to lie low," Kurt said. "You need to lie low. The cops got your description from the surviving guard. There's a picture. They're already circulating it around half the town. It's going to be in the paper."

She had wondered even then how the 'Boss' knew that. She said, through her teeth, "They were waiting for us. Your guy--"

"We wouldn't have had to rely on him in the first place if you'd agreed to the original plan," Kurt said with hostility, and great. So they were back to that again. Maybe he was right, though. It wasn't as if things could have gone much worse. Jordan hated, absolutely hated, that she'd killed the security guard. It had been reflex and self-preservation that made her stagger those few steps to close the distance between them after she'd been shot. Instinct that made her grab on and cling on, fighting to stay conscious at all. His fingers dropped the gun, then his knees caved, and they'd fallen together to the hard, rough tarmac. The next thing she knew, he was seizing -- he must have had some condition, and fuck, it wasn't like she'd known. And by the time she'd realised it was too late.

She wasn't a murderer. Except now she was, in the eyes of everyone. The police had her face, and it would probably go state-wide, if not national, and she was going to be associated always and forever with that label, in the eyes of the law. And everything hurt, even the fingers of her right hand were shaking and seemed to have a direct connection with the agony up near her left shoulder. She tried to curl them around the gun in her lap, but had to accept that if anyone came for her tonight, she was probably toast.

Instead, Kurt drove her to a shack in the middle of the woods. Kurt stayed that night, and so did the other guy she'd been working with on the prison van grab, but he got moved on the following morning.

The place in the woods was like a bad joke. After the first couple of days where there wasn't much on her mind other than ow, she was bored out of her skull. She was a city girl at heart. Haven was dull as ditchwater half the time. This was fucking limbo. She missed the Gun & Rose. It hadn't been the posting and 'new life' she'd imagined, but she'd grown used to it and it ached like hell to think she wasn't going back there.

On about the fifth day the cops showed up, following Kurt from town on one of his daily check-ins.

They only just got out alive. Jordan had a good view of a woman with blonde hair who got close enough to touch before they split from cover and made a run for it. A bullet skimmed by close enough to snag her jacket. Jordan half turned to return fire, and Kurt pulled her gun hand down with a fierce, desperate, "No." Then they were pelting through trees, while someone whose aim was far too good for comfort shot at them from behind a blue truck parked out front.

"Audrey Parker," Kurt gasped, hand clamped over his bleeding ribs as they pressed behind a big tree to catch their breath. Since it was his fault, this time, Jordan figured it was only fair and fitting he'd been the one to get shot. "That was her. Audrey Parker. Fuck."

"That was--?"

And no, they couldn't afford to shoot her. Kurt had revealed to their cell in a briefing weeks ago that Audrey Parker was going to take all the Troubles away. But Lucy, twenty-seven years ago, had needed some encouragement to do it, and so might her blonde reincarnation. Jordan didn't pretend to understand it, but considering all else she'd seen since coming to Haven, she wasn't in a position to argue about it either.

Jordan heard someone coming through the trees and caught a side view of their unseen shooter, a tall man in bland colours, as they broke left and ran on.

Her boots, damn it, were not made with this terrain in mind.

The Guard took her out of town for a week. Even though her arm wasn't yet healed, she was placed with a team working on a retrieval, getting a Troubled person who saw the future out of a mental hospital. The job was a tedious pain in the ass, she and everyone involved got on each other's last nerve, and by the time she returned to Haven, it was an absolute relief to be back, even if every cop in town knew her face.

The Guard brought her back because they'd decided to take a shot at Duke Crocker, and needed every fighting Trouble they had. More accurately, Kurt was the one who'd decided to deal with Crocker, but she didn't know that until later.

It did not go well. Crocker drew blood and even Arnold Rensher's superhuman strength wasn't a match for him. He threw their team of four around his boat, and even if it gave him pause when he grabbed Jordan and doubled over in agony, that didn't stop him from getting back up and kicking her overboard.

Crocker holed up below decks when his blood-rush ran down and managed to get a call out. The cops arrived like magic. Jordan, scaling the side of Crocker's boat to rejoin the fight, caught a glimpse of a blue truck pulling up, swore, and let go of the rope she'd been climbing. She splashed down into the water and clung close to the hull; heard Audrey Parker's voice, high and tight with worry, and a male voice full of gravel. Jordan's three comrades were swiftly arrested, and she tried not to make a sound as she slipped away along the slimy wall of the harbour. Her clothes were ruined.

She heard Crocker come out and haggardly say, "I threw one into the water," and her heart pounded with the expectation of discovery, but they started looking in the wrong direction first, and she didn't dawdle or look back, just got the hell out of there.

Audrey Parker was an inconvenient saviour. And for a saviour of the Troubled, she had strange friends.

Vince Teagues was furious, and yeah -- Vince Teagues, of all people, because that was when the secret of who was really in charge of the Guard came out. Jordan was still dripping like a drowned rat as Vince raged, and the walls of Kurt's little apartment above the auto shop didn't seem big enough to contain his anger. Even though it was Kurt's fuck-up, Kurt's fault, and it wasn't as if he'd God damn told any of them that his orders hadn't come from above, it seemed her shit luck was still running true, because Vince wasn't making that distinction.

"We've got three of our members in jail, and the cops have everything they need to hold them. That's what you've accomplished," Vince finished furiously.

Jordan started to offer, "Let us fix this. We can get them--"

"I'll arrange to get them out," the old man huffed. "As for you -- the cops still have your picture. You're no use to anyone. The rest of you--" That was Ellie Henderson, whose Trouble worked from a distance, and Garrett Vesson, who had only been involved in planning the attack, and Kurt himself. "There's a serial killer walking around wearing our badge. Do something about it, and leave Crocker alone."

He slammed out of the room, and Jordan turned around, spreading her hands and opening her mouth, because what the hell? But words wouldn't come and she just gaped at the others dumbly. They had nothing to offer, shuffling on the spot, sitting down heavily, and in Kurt's case, heading for a bottle of vodka. Like that was going to be of any fucking help.

She worked on the serial killer case anyway, because she hadn't been reassigned and what was left of her cell were working on it, and Vince Teagues didn't reappear to shout any more arbitrary orders. Cops were working on it, too, but Jordan couldn't go near the police station. They had to send timid Ellie to mine that information source instead. She came back with snaps of a notice board, and Jordan poured over the pictures, blown up huge on Kurt's computer, trying to read the writing on the photographed papers and cursing the omissions where pages overlapped.

"I almost got caught by the Chief." Ellie started shuddering when they raised the issue of her going in again. "He gives me the creeps. Don't send me back."

They waited for the right opportunity, which turned out to be a day of confusion when they received conflicting reports from their spies -- first that Chief Wuornos was dead, and then that he wasn't -- and the cops were out in force on separate manhunts. Jordan put on a blonde wig and took off her gloves, and went into the police station to learn what she could. There weren't many cops left around to threaten with her touch.

It still didn't get them anywhere.

Until they found Grady's body and matched it to the security footage with the watch. Though that didn't get them much of anywhere, either, except that the killer, even if he didn't really have the tattoo, still wasn't anywhere near normal.

Just like them.

The idea repulsed her. She'd been thinking of him as an interloper, not really one of them -- not wearing the tattoo honestly, anyway.

Kurt saw it and mocked her with a snort. "Wouldn't have thought you of all people would be so shocked by the idea of a Troubled killer."

Had she been so inclined, Jordan could have murdered him for that remark alone. "Fuck you. That security guard was an accident, and you know that."

Not that the protest made her any less the Troubled pin-up of the Haven police department, thanks to that fucking picture.

It all finally turned to complete shit when they tried to bring the kid into town. Ginger Danvers was just a little girl, but word was that she could play a unique role in the endgame. She could make sure Audrey Parker went into the Barn. Something to do with Duke Crocker, Jordan had heard -- a lot of Guard members had been on-hand to witness how Audrey Parker had reacted to the attempt on his life.

Only they lost the kid, lost two people trying to get her back, and even when they did get her back, the cops were close on their tail.

They could have used the girl to send away the cops, if Jordan thought Ginger was going to do anything but tell them all to die the instant she took her hand off Ginger's mouth. After what else Jordan had seen that day, she was acutely aware of the consequences of such an order.

Really, they might as well just let the kid go, because there wasn't any way they were ever going to be able to trust what came out of her mouth next, not after all of this.

She said that and Kurt glowered and roughly reached around her gloved hands to gag Ginger with a torn strip of cloth. "We'll figure something out using the father." The little girl made a noise of scared protest. The van hit a bump, throwing them all about, the unmistakeable sounds of bullets slammed past the window, and Jordan pushed the girl to the floor. Kurt was pulling aside canvas sheeting to reveal a pile of weapons. He put a gun in Jordan's hand.

"Wait--" She leaned forward to ask Garrett, driving, "Who's behind us?"

"Blue Ford truck," Garrett said, and Jordan swore.

"Audrey Parker! Damn it, Kurt, you know we can't afford to shoot!" She grabbed his arm as he was reaching for the back doors. "If we kill her, the Troubles might never end."

A moment later, a bullet blew out one of the tyres, and the next Jordan knew she was on her head. She scrambled out of the untidy heap, dizzy and hurting. The gun Kurt had given her was on the floor, and she automatically retrieved it as she stood. A tree was buried about a foot deep in the front of the van, Garrett was unconscious or dead, and Kurt had the girl under one arm, a gun in the other, and was making hampered attempts at the door handle.

He got it open and surged outside, where Audrey Parker ran across holding a pistol levelled, shouting fiercely, and the two entered an angry standoff. Jordan surreptitiously pulled off her gloves. She slipped out of the van even as a man rounded the open door from the other side, leading with two bare hands clutched on a gun.

Jordan grabbed his wrist and nothing happened.

Hand clamped stupidly around unconcerned skin, she was so slow to react that she almost got shot. The man started to compress the trigger, but hesitated. "You."

She knew him. Audrey Parker's fucking partner was the guy from the Gun & Rose, all those weeks ago. The one who, if she'd only led him on and played nice, they could have used to do that prison break the easy way. And then none of this... would ever have happened.

How the hell could he touch her?

The moment stretched as they stared at each other.

Then Kurt moved and Audrey Parker barked out a fierce warning. The cop moved, too, and Jordan would swear, she'd swear he was about to shoot her. She only realised then that she was still holding a gun. It was thoughtless and automatic to pull the trigger.

In the commotion that followed, she grabbed Kurt, pried his fingers off the girl and shoved her little sobbing body toward Audrey Parker. Then she shoved Kurt forward into the trees and they were running, feet pounding and sinking and catching in the uneven grass. No-one followed, even though she was waiting for it, expecting it.

What felt like an hour later, as they were resting, her lungs heaving and aching like she'd never catch her breath again, Kurt grunted sourly, "Well, you've done it now. Shooting down the chief of police."

She stared at him.

Jordan just kept remembering the way Audrey Parker's face had changed when the guy fell: how she'd forgotten all about Kurt, and the kid, and two guns on her, even though she didn't know that she wasn't a target. The way his -- Wuornos, Jordan thought, call him by his fucking name -- the way Wuornos' eyes had gone blank so fast that there was no doubt Jordan was a murderer twice over now. And this one, she couldn't even claim as an accident.

Kurt said, "We need to get you out of Haven tonight."

It takes a year and a half after Audrey Parker goes into the Barn and the Troubles go away before Nathan sets foot in the Gun & Rose again. Eighteen months, the last twelve or so of which Jordan has seen him around town occasionally with a brunette. Though she tried to shrug it off and bite her tongue, she really wasn't able to deny her resentment. But she's been busy, too -- although she's finally stopped picking up any idiot with a dick just to feel them enjoy the touch of her skin and is, in fact, on a deliberate break. She had forgotten, while they were forbidden fruit, that most men are still assholes whether you can touch them or not.

She looks up at the sound of the door and swaps her expression for one of hostility. "What the hell are you doing here?" It seems he hasn't forgotten the quiet times he can sneak in and see her uninterrupted, though.

"Jess left," he says, shoving his hands in his pockets. It's weird to watch him fidget, but he does that, now that he can feel. He grimaces and adds, "Again."

Jordan tips her head. "Boo hoo." She takes out a bottle from the back and slams it on the counter. "That'll be twenty dollars." She adds a shot glass next to it. "Tell me you came here for anything other than a drink, 'Chief', and I'll put out your eyes."

He quietly passes the money over, sliding it across the surface of the bar and taking his hand off, so their fingers don't have to touch, and he sits down and pours the cheap whiskey.

Three fast drinks down the line, Nathan says, "She thinks I'm no fun."

Jordan, who has been trying her best to ignore him, looks over her shoulder. "I like fun, too, Wuornos."

"You like work," he points out. "Whether it's... Guarding the Troubled, or..." He looks around and shrugs. It probably is the cleanest dive bar in three states. He drinks. "Okay, I'm not fun. But at least I'm reliable."

She laughs, quite a lot. "You are not reliable."

He gives her a hurt scowl. She manages to remember in time to feel peeved that she let him make her laugh, and turns away from him again. All the same...

"All right," she speaks to the shelves, "even if you weren't a cheating bastard who'd loved someone else from the start, you never got a call on your phone you were ready to ignore. I can't even remember if we made it through a date that didn't get interrupted."

Nathan shuffles in his seat. "Sorry."

"You should be."

She sees movement out of the corner of her eye, and he's fallen silent in a way which strikes her as ominous. Jordan turns to see that he's holding his hand out to her over the counter, a small, apologetic smile on his face, hopeful but not all that hopeful. He looks like he expects to get kicked. She's aware that he's just drunk rather a lot rather fast. The bottle is a third empty and he's not been there twenty minutes. "I've... never felt your touch," he explains, half-heartedly, his fingers closing and his hand already starting to retreat.

She always kind of wondered what it did for him. Sure, she could touch him, but nothing about her Trouble made him feel her any more than he could anyone else. It had plagued her more afterward. Was it some kind of sensation-by-proxy, or really just some twisted little head-game?

She can't really explain why she moves so quickly that she almost trips, trying to put her hand down on top of his before the opportunity is lost. Except she's been waiting eighteen months and longer for Nathan Wuornos to feel her.

"So," he rasps, his hand warm and rough, his thumb moving slowly over the back of her hand, "the Troubles are gone. Audrey's..." His voice breaks up. "Gone. The Guard..."

"I don't run in those circles any more."

"I heard." His smile is soft and approving. She snorts, incredulous. It's not like there was any great moral stance in that choice. The Troubles are gone in Haven, but if she leaves Haven, she's still a human taser, and the Guard would have her continue to use her oh-so-useful 'gift' to help extricate Troubled people from situations in the world outside. Fuck that.

She doesn't say that to Nathan.

"So," he says, "how do you feel about giving a boring, unreliable man another chance?"

She pulls her hand back and tells him to return tomorrow and ask her again when he's sober.

It takes another five years for them to get married, and they only mostly do that because Nathan wants to adopt and has ideas about stability. Jordan never really saw herself as a bride in white, and honestly suspects that the big church wedding, so far from anything she would expect Nathan to push for, is his very expensive way of saying fuck you to the anti-Troubled crowd. The Troubles still run deep under the fabric of Haven, even while they're not around. The enmities do, too.

She has a moment, on the day itself, when she realises every one of her five bridesmaids is or was Troubled, and the same for most of the guests, and just how pissed Rev. Driscoll's latest replacement, Reverend Carlton, looks when he thinks no-one's watching. From that point onward, the day stops being a stressful pantomime to make Nathan happy and becomes an illicit joy. She indulges and plays it up for everything that she's worth.

She doesn't even mind that Nathan made Duke Crocker his best man.

There's more potential pain than point in trying to travel anywhere for a honeymoon, but they both take some time off work. Afterward, Jordan resumes life with her husband, not so different to life when he wasn't her husband until, one by one, the adoptions are worked through. Nathan wants to adopt older children or teenagers, as much in memory of Garland Wuornos as for the fact that -- and she knows Nathan, so knows exactly what he's thinking -- probably no-one else will take them. There are also other reasons for that. Their first child, twelve year old Rebecca, is Troubled, and their eight and fifteen year olds, Theodore and Janine, who arrive later, come from Troubled families.

There are more orphans than average in Haven.

It's a gradual, patchy process, not without snags along the way, but their family comes together. With that there is school, and parent/teacher meetings, and teenage acting out, and more duty than she ever realised she was signing up for. The years are busy, and happy, and they fly. Janine graduates school and goes to the University of Maine, and phones crying in the middle of the night in her first week because her Trouble activated so far from home. They've prepared each of their children for what might happen; told them what the general rules are insofar as they both know, what they should do, how Troubles are so often linked to emotions so above all, not to panic. None of that prepared Jordan for having that conversation. She spends the entire night on the phone, convincing Janine it's manageable and she can do this, and frets her way through most of the next three years; except it doesn't end when Janine comes back and starts working for the newspaper, it's endless. Because it's a conveyor belt of growing-up-woes and-- damn it, Nathan, what the hell did you sign me up for?

She asks that aloud just the once, and he only smiles because he knows she wouldn't trade.

Rebecca leaves school and joins Haven PD, and Jordan hopes like hell that her ability to see around corners will give her enough of an edge against ending up dead when the Troubles return.

Shortly after Nathan's fiftieth birthday, Dave Teagues dies, last of the Teagues brothers, last of the old conspirators, and Janine takes over the Haven Herald. It worries them both what other secrets she might have taken over with it.

A few years later, Duke Crocker goes on a boating trip and disappears for five months. Nathan reverts to his very worst mood for all five of them, until Crocker finally returns, alive, well, and married to a girl from the Caribbean who's half his age and has the town whispering about the scandal of it for weeks.

Nathan and Jordan are both the wrong side of sixty by the time the signs start turning up again. Nathan's workload rises, his cases get weirder even as tattooed men haunt the Gun & Rose and old contacts try to renew acquaintance out of nowhere. They exchange significant looks between them for each incident, but neither of them speaks the words.

And one day, when they're dining at a new restaurant and bar that's opened in the town, Jordan looks up halfway through dessert to see a woman wearing the face of Audrey Parker smiling out from behind the counter.

She sees her again later that night in the hospital corridor. Jordan's hands are clutched around a cup of hospital coffee in a thin, plastic cup, too hot against her ungloved skin -- and she's going to need to do something about that now. It's been too many years and she'd almost forgotten. No, it's been twenty-seven years and she had forgotten, and she shouldn't have. She should have been prepared. Both of them should have considered it might happen this way.

"Hey." The same voice. The same eyes. Different hair. Different accent, a loose drawl. Different clothes. Body jewellery, short skirt. Audrey Parker wouldn't have been seen dead dressed like that. But this isn't Audrey Parker. She's calling herself Lexie DeWitt. "I'm... really sorry. I just got off-shift, and I heard. I mean, I'd only just met you both, my first friends in town and all. And your husband -- who seemed really nice, by the way -- he said he had something he wanted to talk to me about. I make a point of not upsetting chief cops." She tries to smile and it's awkward, uncomfortable, and trying so, so hard. Impulsively, she reaches out to pat Jordan's bare arm.

The reflexes of twenty-seven years ago flood back, too late, and Jordan spills her coffee trying to dodge the touch. "Don't!"

Of course, Lexie DeWitt's fingers touch her skin and rest there, harmlessly.

"I'm sorry," the girl says, retreating. She is a girl and it's insane -- half Jordan's age, now, she looks so damned young. Jordan wants to throttle her. "You haven't had time to process, and here I am sticking my nose in. I'm... really sorry about your husband. The Chief."

"Nathan," Jordan says hoarsely.

"Nathan," Lexie-Audrey echoes, and there is not the slightest bit of recognition jumping the chasm of her unfathomable multiple lifetimes, not even the tiniest trace of grief commensurate to what they'd once been to each other, before Audrey Parker stepped in that Barn and disappeared, leaving Nathan inconsolable but eventually, when all the scattered pieces had finished falling, able to return to a normal life. "Everyone back in the restaurant just called him 'the Chief'."

Twenty-seven years.

Once upon a time, Jordan thought it would be enough.

It could never be enough. How stupid had she been to blithely watch, knowing it was there all around her and not doing a damned thing -- the Troubles were gathering again, but as yet, the two of them remained, together and untouched... They'd said nothing. They'd done nothing. Even though they both knew it couldn't last.

"It was a heart attack in bed, right?" Lexie says. "Well, shit. That sucks. I'm sorry. Okay, I am done saying that, and now I am gonna go leave you to--"

"You killed him," Jordan says, breathlessly, choking. She's held it in so far, anger and grief both, or maybe it's just taken until now for her to really feel it, like she's been -- ironically -- numb for the last two hours.

"--Beg your pardon?" Lexie's hand, bedecked with about as many rings as could possibly fit on a hand, rises to her mouth, in astonishment and disbelief at the accusation. "I...?"

"You killed him!" Jordan shouts. "Get away from me! Get away from me and drop dead, Audrey Parker!"

And she doesn't give a damn who hears.

The Troubles are back. Her Trouble is back.

She just wishes that Nathan's Trouble could have outpaced hers.

END

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