#hcp3nightmares

He remembered that he had to leave or was it to come back? Nothing seemed certain anymore. Mist was now rising from the ground, making it easier to trip on overgrown roots or hit his tired feet on a rock. He didn't feel the pain or the obstacles but he had to pick himself up each time, hoping to find his bearings and finally getting out.

 The bag he was holding was slipping from his mud covered hand and as he brushed each palm against his ripped pants he realized how sweaty they were. He had to stop and take stock of his state of being, he might be headed for a heart attack and not even know it. Still, the eerie noise rushing through the leaves of this dark forest was too stressful to stop now and off he was again, dodging low hanging branches, looking for a place to hide, running as fast as he could.

 It's with a gasp that he sat.

 The bed was drenched with his sweat, the sheets completely entwined around his lower limbs, his heart beating a staccato and his eyes locked on Duke's.

 Nathan stopped breathing for a moment. Where was he? Still in the void? Was Duke back? Was he dead?

 It was a minute, or an hour later, he couldn't tell, but somehow he found himself engulfed in an embrace so tight he wasn't certain he was still breathing, and then it hit him. The smell of Sea salt and sandalwood, all Duke! He had to verify, so without any thought he let his tongue dart out and lick a small path on the skin right there, in the crook of the neck almost smothering him and he felt alive again.

 The scent and the pressure were real, so he just needed to get his bearings back. "Duke?" the call was raw, the voice broken, the sound barely a whisper but he needed reassurance.

 "Yes Nathan, I'm here. Just breathe, okay?"

 The hold on Nathan reduced in pressure but now he could feel Duke large hand going up and down his back. Part of his t-shirt was bunched around his middle and stopped the soothing movement. He wanted to wiggle out, try to be more comfortable but it meant that he could lose the contact and right now, it was the only one that showed him that he was alive.

 The door opened and so much cold air came thru, he could feel the shiver going through Duke and the goosebumps rising on the surface of the skin. He couldn't resist, he dropped a kiss right there, and then another one. He wouldn't get distracted from the only thing that felt real.

 And then something else soothed his frayed mind, a hand going through his hair and a voice he'd recognize anywhere, Audrey. "You are home Nathan, you are safe" she was saying and naturally his head bent to the side and let her fingers scrap his scalp, anchoring him in a way he could never describe.

 He tried to open his eyes to get a better sense of his surroundings, not much to see except a corded neck, a red plaid shirt, dark curls.

 They were talking over his head. "Can you too get on the sofa? I'll change the sheets?" "Shouldn't we get some liquid in him? He is burning!" "I brought everything you asked" "Well I suppose, one thing at a time"

 "Hey buddy, Nate, we are going to move. Can you walk?" He recognized Duke tone, one of concern. Yet, he didn't feel like moving, or testing the waters, or whatever. He was perfectly content, right where he was. He burrowed further and refused to answer.

 They all moved at once. He wasn't even sure how it was possible but Duke pushed himself up and with Audrey at his back he felt him putting an arm under his bent knees and try to shove the sheets away. It took two tries but he ended up nested against Duke' torso

and without the stress he would have assumed it would take to carry him they had reached the sofa.

 Duke let himself fall and settled Nathan on his lap, bringing him close. Nathan still couldn’t feel him without Audrey’s hands on him s he did the best next thing, put his nose just behind Duke ear, close enough to smell him, see him breathe. He’d like to hug him back, but it will simply be a social gesture, he wouldn’t get the full effect of it.

 He could hear Audrey busying herself around the apartment and that reassured him slightly. He really was home, and the void was a thing of the past.

He drifted off, using the slow breathing of Duke to let his mind rest. He didn’t want to think. Or remember. Or make decisions. Or fight another battle. He just wanted to be here. In the now. With the two people he needed. 

He went to the rail, curling his hands around it to steady them; they were still trembling slightly in the aftermath of the dream. He let himself concentrate on the contrast, pale skin against dark metal, until his eyes slid out of focus, and then he just stood, listening to the waves lap against the hull. Tabula Rasa rose and fell gently, moving with the water, low against the dock with the ebb tide. It was soothing, almost meditative, and Nathan let himself be lulled, trying to push down everything the dream had stirred up.

He was half asleep on his feet when a glass entered his field of view; it took him a moment and a sharp whiff of alcohol to realize that it was scotch, and he reached up to take it.

“You’re having nightmares again, aren’t you?” Duke’s voice was quiet, steady, barely enough to be heard over the lapping waves and the constant drone of frogs and bugs.

“How’d you know?” Nathan asked, taking a sip of the scotch and wishing he could feel the burn of it.

“Well, my first clue was that you’re standing up here, in the dark, by yourself, in your boxers, being eaten alive by mosquitos, instead of asleep in our very comfortable bed,” Duke said, the words dry and droll. “But it could just be intuition.”

Nathan glanced down at the reference to his boxers, grateful to see that Duke had at least paused to pull on a pair of pants before he’d come up. He probably should have done the same- Duke wasn’t wrong about the mosquitos, even if Nathan couldn’t feel them. Audrey would fuss at him when she saw the bites. He took another sip of his drink, and turned his attention back out over the water.

“Hey, no, turn-” Nathan’s head turned, Duke’s hand on his chin, his brows drawn down. “You even notice you bit through your lip?” Duke asked, soft and frustrated.

“Knew I’d bit somethin’, tasted blood,” Nathan said, shrugging, and Duke grimaced, moving his hand but not drawing back. Something about that sent up a warning cry, low and distant, a frisson of fear Nathan couldn’t make sense out of. He brushed Duke’s hand away from his face, away from the blood, and wondered why it bothered him so damn much that Duke didn’t seem shaken by it.

“Should’ve woken us up,” Duke said, letting his hand fall, and Nathan felt guilty, knowing Duke had taken his movement as a rebuff. “Don’t like waking up without you.”

“Didn’t want to bother you,” Nathan said softly, trying to inject apology into the words. “Got work in the mornin’.”

“Yeah, so do you, and I’d rather go to work tired than leave you up here thinking yourself in circles. Talk to me, Nate.”

“Just-” Nathan started, and he shook his head. “It doesn’t bother you?”

“What doesn’t?” Duke asked, before his eyes went narrow. He tapped the rail of the ship, brows lifting, and Nathan thought that even with everything he couldn’t remember, he must’ve always loved the way Duke could just- understand, could communicate so much with, and from, so little. Tabula Rasa, Duke’s ironic joke of a suggestion, the name they’d given the home they’d settled on after their weeks of fruitless wandering searching for some kind of answers. Nathan nodded, and Duke shrugged. “Of course it bothers me, sometimes.”

“Only sometimes?” Nathan asked, and he shouldn’t, this was ground they’d gone over dozens of times, and as much as it could frustrate him, feeling like he was the only one of them who couldn’t let it go, there were moments, in the quiet, when he wasn’t sure he wanted to understand why. When the dread rose up, strong enough to choke him, and he thought maybe he should just leave it alone, because maybe not knowing was better.

“...Look, Nate, it’s- yeah, only sometimes. When I let myself think about it too long. But I try not to think about it, you know? I don’t-” Duke exhaled sharply, the angular planes of his face rearranging into something serious and distant for an instant, something full of shadows that made Nathan’s chest ache with phantom pain. “I don’t know why I remember... more, than you and Audrey do, why I’ve got years you don’t. I don’t know why I can remember you, why I can know we grew up together, but I can’t- but there’s nothing there. I don’t know- there’s a lot I don’t know, and yeah, it drives me nuts, but it’s not about what I don’t know. It’s about what I do know. And what I know, is that this, what we’ve got here? There’s nothing that I could have forgotten that’s better than this.”

“What if-” Nathan started, his voice cracking, and he couldn’t finish the thought, he couldn’t- he didn’t want to. Duke tilted his head, giving him an appraising look, and reached out, taking back the glass of whiskey he’d offered and setting it aside. He pulled Nathan in, and Nathan let him, folded in against his chest and listened to him breathe, soaked in the scent of skin and sleep and salt and sandalwood, and that, he remembered. That he knew, deep and familiar.

Duke didn’t say anything, just held Nathan close and waited, and the rest of the thought slipped out unwelcome and unbidden.

“What if it’s not real?”

“What’s real?” Duke asked, his tone almost teasing, before he sighed and Nathan heard the movement of him shaking his head. “Look, whatever, whoever, we were before... Who we are now is real. Because it’s all we’ve got, and these are the choices we’re making now. And maybe it doesn’t match choices we made before, but... I’ll take these choices.”

“No, not- that’s not what I mean,” Nathan said, frustration welling up. He didn’t know how to explain, didn’t want to explain.

They were just nightmares. They had to be. Duke was there, right there, present and alive and so vital Nathan could be overwhelmed by the sense of him. He had to be real.

“...I’m not letting you watch sci fi movies any more,” Duke said, after a long pause, and he sounded like he was caught between amusement and frustration. “I know it’s frustrating, Nate. Believe me. Audrey and I aren’t any happier about this whole thing than you are. But you gotta move past it, and you can’t do that if you let yourself build it into something it isn’t. We’re not living in the Matrix, here, we’re real.”

“...Yeah,” Nathan yielded, trying to make himself believe it. Trying to force down the crawling, irrational sense of isolation. “Just. Lettin’ things get to me.”

“You know, you ever wanna talk about it-”

“No,” Nathan said, sharp and anxious. “No, ‘s just- they’re just dreams. Doesn’t matter.” He couldn’t, he couldn’t just- the last thing he needed to do was tell Duke what he dreamed about.

“Just sayin’, you don’t have to deal with this alone.”

“‘M not alone,” Nathan pointed out, shifting his weight forward, and he heard Duke’s feet shuffle on the deck, saw the movement of his arms out of the corner of his eye as he adjusted his grip. He ignored the voice at the back of his mind calling him a hypocrite, telling him he was a liar, reminding him that he didn’t believe it.

He didn’t have to believe it, it was true. Duke was right there. Audrey was below, probably starting to wonder what was taking them so long.

They were just dreams.

“Yeah, okay. We don’t have to talk about it. Just- come back inside. It’s late.” Nathan’s head tilted, and he found himself looking into Duke’s eyes- they were black in the deep shadow, and Nathan couldn’t push down the flare of alarm that burned electric-sharp through his thoughts before Duke leaned in and brushed his lips over Nathan’s, too light for Nathan to register movement but too close for anything else. Duke pulled back, expression shifting to something quizzical and uncertain, and Nathan forced himself to breathe, tried to will away the tension he couldn’t adequately measure in his shoulders.

“Inside,” Nathan echoed, nodding, and Duke didn’t look reassured. “Go on in, just- need a second.”

“...I’m coming back up if you aren’t inside in five,” Duke said, shaking his head, but he picked up the scotch he’d set aside and pressed it into Nathan’s hand before he backed away. “And I’ll bring Audrey.”

“I’ll be right in,” Nathan said, wincing at the threat. “Go.”

Duke went, with a last, lingering look, and Nathan finished the scotch in a single long swallow.

Whatever they were, whoever they were, whoever they had been, Audrey and Duke were everything to him now. Everything he remembered, everything he felt, everything they’d done since finding themselves in a tiny diner in the middle of nowhere that none of them could remember arriving at- all of it was built around the two of them, his friends, his lovers, his touchstones in a world he’d lost the understanding of.

She narrows her eyes at me. “How did you know?” she asks. I want to tell her that she has that look in her eyes, the same look Audrey would get when she wasn’t sleeping or when … whenever things got really bad. I don’t though. “You just look tired,” I say.

For a long time I was so angry; at my father, at Vince and Dave, for not telling us more, for not explaining about the Troubles from the start. But now I have some more understanding of how difficult it must have been for them. Paige remembers being a kid in 1983, and as far as she’s concerned she’d never been to Haven before this year. Who am I to tell her any different?

She nods resignedly, “I am tired,” she tells me. “Between James and the nightmares I’ve hardly been sleeping at all.”

James. Every time I see him, every time she mentions him, my heart misses a beat. Can this little baby really be the child Sarah conceived in 1955? Could he be my son? How could Paige ever accept that? Why should she? If I can’t tell her that her childhood isn’t really hers, I’m sure as hell going to struggle to explain that she doesn’t actually know how her child was conceived, or even when he was really born.

The mention of James throws me enough that I miss a little of what she says, but she’s talking about the nightmares and when I realise what she’s describing, my heart skips again.

“… it’s like I’m stuck in some place, some impossible place, nothing there but slick white walls, no sense of time. And then I’m not there at all, I’m somewhere else, except I think it’s actually still Haven and it’s me that’s different. Like I’m not me anymore, I’m someone else. And then there are all of these impossible things happening. A woman whose emotions control the weather, a woman whose art work comes to life, a woman whose every food she touches turns to cake.”

I try not to look too dumbfounded as she talks. She is warming to her subject and she clearly needs to get it off her chest, so I let her. At the same time I’m trying to work out what it means. Is she remembering? Is this what happens when an overlay personality doesn’t stick?

“But then the nightmare part is that these impossible things keep getting worse and worse, and I supposed to fix it but it’s not possible. And then … there are ways to stop it but they are even worse than the things that are happening, and then the whole town is a waste land, like some apocalyptic movie, and then I … whoever I am in the dream, the me who isn’t me, she dies and she knows she has to go but it’s the hardest thing she ever had to do and god … it just tears me apart every time and it doesn’t even make any sense.”

She takes a big breath in, shakes her head and apologises before taking another sip of coffee. I tell her not to worry, that there’s nothing to apologise for. I say that nightmares can be strange and stressful. But then I realise I can’t leave it at that. I want to tell her for my own sake of course but also, doesn’t she have a right to know what’s happening to her? Doesn’t she have a right to the information that would help her make sense of the nightmares?

“Have you heard of the Troubles?” I ask. She’s been in town a while now, and people are still talking about what they went through. It’s possible.

She shakes her head, surprised by the apparent change in topic. Frustrating though they may often have been, I wish that Vince and Dave were here.

“This town has … legends,” I say. “Stories and myths dating way back, stories of things…’ I hesitate  but there is no going back now. “Stories of things like people whose emotions affected the weather, stories of things like drawings that could kill people.”

She stares at me, unsure for a moment if I’m serious, wondering if I’m laughing at her. I look back and she sees that I mean it.

“Huh,” she says. “But … How am I dreaming about stories I’ve never heard before? Even if such things could be real, what can they have to do with me when I just got here?”

I take a sip of coffee to buy myself some time. If I wanted, I have evidence; photos of Audrey, photos of the two of us together. I have a copy of the Colorado Kid photo; a newspaper with a date on it. The Haven Herald's office is still there across the street. Battered and boarded up, half the archives gone, but still there. Evidence of the 27 year cycle, the historical context. I can back my story up with proof if I want to.

Paige looks at me, curious, confused and looking for answers.

I take a deep breath. I have a decision to make.