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August 1955
The grit of sand, the sting of salt air, the scratch of the wool blanket under his knees. Nathan feels none of these things. All he feels is the press of Her lips, capital H, and the smooth apple of her cheek under his fingertips and the wet drag of her tongue against his teeth. Red hair curls around his fingers and it’s like, like- he doesn’t have a way to describe what it feels like because Nathan barely remembers what thread and silk feel like but it’s something like that, something he doesn’t have a word for.
Sarah gasps against his mouth and he realizes his hand has shifted down to her throat, the impossible alabaster skin of her throat and the gentle slope of her breast. He swears he can feel every pulse of blood through her veins against his palm, every bit of gooseflesh that rises under what must be a cool breeze off the sea.
(Nathan almost remembers what those feel like, having lived by the ocean all his life.)
Later, spread out in the Thunderbird, he imagines what it must feel like when his skin peels off the leather seats but can’t quite picture it, too tied up in the feel of Sarah’s hands yanking at his scalp.
His four other usually elevated senses are drowned out by soft curves crushed to him and the completely indescribable feel of being buried inside her, nothing between them. Still, in the back of his mind, Nathan registers all the other things he loves about sex: the low keening she makes when he shifts her thigh higher on his hip, the acrid taste of perfume on her collarbone, the sight of her perfectly coiffed curls tangled in her eyes and the scent of pine and ashes that’s both Audrey and Sarah (and he supposes Lucy and whoever else but that’s too much for this moment, too much to think about when he can barely think at all.)
He feels eyes on him, like Audrey’s right there watching, but it’s just a bird perched in a high branch, watching this overwhelming little tryst with a remarkable lack of interest. Or maybe it’s his guilt, but is this really cheating? She is Audrey. Right?
Present Day
The Barn is gone; everything’s gone. Audrey, Duke, James, everyone he could possibly bring himself to care about.
That’s not true. Nathan feels the guilt of what he’s done to this town as distinctly as when Audrey touches him.
He rubs his fingers over the carved letters and numbers that sum up the life of The Colorado Kid. His kid. He’s not oblivious, he can hear the footsteps behind him, but he just doesn’t care. He’s in mourning here, can’t Jordan see that?
Except it isn’t Jordan. (Of course it isn’t, Jordan’s lying half-dead in a hospital.) When he lifts his head, it’s Agent Howard standing over him, hands folded calmly and eyes piercing through Nathan’s skull.
Nathan clenches his fists in the grass, ripping a few pieces out by the roots. “How are you here?” he shouts, hoarse. You’re dead. Just like the rest of them. “You disappeared. Bring them back, you son of a bitch!”
“The Barn is dying. They’re gone. I’m just the pilot.” Howard has dark red splotches on his shirt and if Nathan scoots to the left just so, he can see daylight through him, straight through the bullet holes.
It should be more disconcerting than it is.
But Nathan’s crouched in the damp grass around his son’s grave, the son who was born twenty years before he was, and his jeans are soaked and so are his cheeks but he can’t feel any of it. Nothing’s really disconcerting anymore.
“Just one more trip for you, Chief Wuornos.”
July 1956
Nathan wobbles on his feet as he lands in, what? 1955?
“I really don’t like that,” he mutters under his breath, fingers clenching into a conscious fist at his side. He steps out from the trees, (white pine, cottonwood, spruce, all with a different scent), and shades his eyes, gazing out at the sea.
He can’t guess the season by temperature but the woods look lush and green so it’s probably summer. The fog’ll be in by nightfall but it’s sunny and quiet for now.
A sigh escapes his lips, unnoticed, and Nathan turns, shoving his hands in his pockets. Whatever bombshell news is waiting for him here, he doesn’t want to hear it. He doesn’t want Howard’s parting gift, the bastard. Still, he watches the redhead at the end of the beach with uncontrollable interest as she stretches her arms above her head, fingers lacing together. Her joints release with a satisfying pop and she heaves a sigh through her nose.
She hasn’t seen him yet.
It’s then he remembers, she won’t see him. He’s not really here.
Her hair is loose and uncurled around her face and there’s immediately a phantom itch to run his fingers through it. She’s his heroin. Heroine? Heroin.
He wonders if she’s okay, how much longer before the Hunter comes and if she’s still so determined and optimistic, given that she’s a single mother in the 1950s. Then again, it’s Haven and, let’s be honest, she’s not the only woman running around with a mysterious baby.
Still. It’s probably a bit scandalous. He hopes Vince and Dave stick up for her but the Untroubled aren’t always all that accommodating.
A cry splits the peaceful afternoon, vibrating against his eardrums, and his heart lurches in his chest. (That he can feel, because it’s all in his head.) A baby’s cry. James?
So 1956 then. Can’t be long before Colorado.
Sarah turns her back on the sea and picks her way across the sun-warmed pebbles to the porch of a summer cottage. She must have settled in since he last saw her. (Of course she has. Audrey always does.)
He follows her, can’t help himself, (like a goddamn puppy dog, Duke would say), and watches her crouch over a bassinet on the porch. Her smile is as intoxicating as ever and he practically trips across the beach to get closer. Nathan clings to the porch railing, a few feet from her, the love of his life (in a sense?) and their son.
He might have been crying at James’ grave a few minutes ago in the 21st century but this is his boy at the very start of his life, no concept of what’s to come for him, and Nathan sinks to the wooden floor with a sob.
He might not feel the tears burning his eyes and streaking down his cheeks but he can hear the wrenching gasps for air as his lungs fight against his baser instincts: to mourn, to grieve, to tear his skin off and run into the sea.
All of them, just gone. Audrey, Duke, James, Sarah, and the rest of them stuck in Haven with their curses and their hate. He watches Sarah lift the baby into her arms, humming softly as she cradles him to her chest. That lullaby’s going to be stuck in his head for longer than he can imagine.
“Shh, there there, my love,” she murmurs, sinking onto the porch swing. The baby gurgles and nestles against her body, made to fit right there in the curve of her arm.
Nathan thumps his head against the railing, but he doesn’t have any control over himself. He stands, as much as he wants to run away, fast and far and hell, maybe he’ll let Jordan do away with him when he gets home. The swing doesn’t rock at all under his weight as he sits down: it can feel him as much as he can feel it.
“You’re going to grow up to be big and strong, just like your daddy,” Sarah’s murmuring, her voice gentle and kind and so very Audrey, (but not, because Sarah is her own woman and he’s not deluded enough to believe otherwise.) “And maybe you’ll have exciting adventures, just like him too, and sweep some girl off her feet, my handsome guy.”
He reaches out, stroking a finger down James’ cheek, even as Sarah stares past him at the waves breaking on the shore. The baby though, he looks right at him, and Nathan watches a tear land on the back of his hand. He’ll never get this, never get to sit by the beach with Audrey and their baby, and he doesn’t deserve to.
Then again, Sarah never got to have this either, not really. For the first time, he notices the dark circles under her eyes. Her smile still takes his breath away but he guesses she doesn’t exercise it all that often these days. Nathan wonders how much longer before she takes a trip to Colorado.
He draws a deep, shaky breath and traces James’ tiny fingers with one of his. “Have a wonderful life, James,” he whispers. 27 years is a (painfully) long time, after all, and even though his son should have lived to be an old man, at least he got to live his life for that long. Thanks to Sarah’s sacrifices. “I hope Paul Cogan is the best father you could have asked for.”
Nathan knows something about fathers and blood. The two are unrelated, irrelevant and if he’s going to survive this, where Duke and Audrey and James didn’t, he needs to believe that his son had a good life.
When he opens his eyes, Agent Howard is long gone and his jeans are covered in grass stains. Dwight looms over him, hands on his hips. “Come on, get up. We need to get you out of town. The Guard’s out for blood.”
Nathan drags himself up, even though he wants to lay down right here and let them have him. Then again, a painless death doesn’t really seem fair.