A/N: So it's been SO long and I'm sorry about that. Unfortunately, real life doesn't prioritize fanfiction like it should and I've been super busy. However, I've really been looking forward to getting to delve into season 3, so I've worked on this a bit at a time. I should warn you, however, that because I haven't had time to really sit down and rewatch the whole season, some little things might be wrong-like how many days Audrey has left in what episode and when exactly they learn everything about the Bolt Gun Killer and stuff like that. Hopefully, you'll all be gentle with me and pretend they're very well thought out changes due to this being an AU. :)

It's strongly recommended that you read the first two stories in the Between The Lines series or it might get confusing for you!

I hope you all enjoy, and feel free to let me know what you think of it!

Disclaimer: Haven was created and written by others; I'm just borrowing it because I love it so much! No copyright infringement is intended.

Her head is pounding, there's a bruise blooming on her cheek, and her wrists are screaming against the raw stitching of the glass clutched in her hand. She can't think, can't plan, all her thoughts swimming into a muddled haze shot through with lightning-sharp bolts of pain.

(Nathan. He'll come for her. He won't feel the pain turning her slow and weak. He'll be strong and steadfast and immovable.)

The voice in the neighboring room has gone silent, the steady shaking of a whisper to make her strong and give her purpose accelerated to a climax of terror and then silenced with sickening finality. She's alone. She's shaking. She's afraid.

(Nathan. He'll come for her. He never considers the dangers to himself. He'll walk right into a hail of bullets to save her and he won't care if the cost is his own life.)

If her kidnapper comes back, if he returns with his fists and his blinding lights and his disorienting questions…with Roslyn's blood on his hands…with his shattering revelations… She can't do it. She's not together enough, not cohesive enough, to hold herself together under any more strain. She saws faster with her shard of glass, careless of whether she splits open rope or flesh so long as she's not helpless anymore.

(Nathan. He'll come for her, and she cares. She cares maybe too much. She cares that he'll come because there's nothing she wants more than to be surrounded by his tentative embrace and his maple syrup smell. She cares that he'll bleed and hurt and die for her because she can't lose him. She can't be responsible for his pain.)

When her head lolls back against the wood holding her upright, the room flickers around her, swirls in heavy colors and lingering smoke. The diamond-sharp pain of glass against skin shocks her back to temporary alertness. Then there's a final slash and her hands fall free.

(Nathan. He'll come for her, of course he will, but now she can go to him, and that's safer all around.)

Since she's come to Haven, everything has been crystal clear. Oh, there are a multitude of murky mysteries and a plethora of confusing questions about her past and who she is and how she's connected to the Troubles. But each day in Haven has a startling clarity to it. She remembers everything. She's been mentally present for each situation that occurs. Each Trouble clicks inside her mind with the rightness of a missing piece in an intriguing puzzle.

When everyone else has been dulled, when their memories and perceptions have been tweaked and their surroundings altered, Audrey has always remained clear and level-headed and unaffected. She knows when something's wrong, and has never fallen into the shifting trap of a Trouble. In fact, she's grown so used to being the one who knows what's right (not about herself, not about who she is, but always about Haven and her friends) that she's forgotten what it's like to be disoriented.

To be shaky and uncertain.

To fear for her own life.

She's forgotten that her immunity to the Troubles does not make her invulnerable to a simple concussion, or to shock, or to trauma.

It's been so long since she's done anything but just press 1 to call Nathan that she's afraid (afraid so that her hands shake and she has to crouch as her knees go weak) she won't remember his number.

But no. This is one of the things she always remembers. Something she'll never forget (can't forget, not anything about Nathan, even if she apparently forgot whatever she felt for whoever the Colorado Kid was…is?). Her fingers dance over the phone's digits like drunken ballerinas, but she doesn't even have time to be afraid he won't answer before his voice sounds in her ear.

Taut with tension, quivering with focus, but his voice.

(It's so beautiful that she gasps out a sob of relief.)

"Nathan," she manages to get out past the definite lump in her throat.

"Parker!" he shouts.

And she's not afraid anymore.

(She may not know what she is, but there's one thing she knows above all: Nathan will always come for her.)

He comes for her.

She's barefoot and breathless, then screaming and terrified, a terror that collapses in on itself like a sinkhole when Duke whispers in her ear and takes his hand away from her mouth. And then it all stops. Everything goes quiet and still. The pounding in her head dulls into a distant distraction and the searing pain in her wrists fades. All with one word. One name. His voice.

"Audrey!"

There could be shattered glass decorating the space between them and Audrey still would fling herself forward. The chasm between them shrinks into nothing (he's holstering a gun and there's a glint of gold at his hip; none of it matters next to his solid, steadfast presence) and his arms are open. Enveloping. He smells of pine needles and maple syrup (Maine and Haven; home). He looks as if he breathes his first breath ever when she touches him (there's a bruise on his cheek to match her own and she doesn't care because he's alive and here). His entire body shudders as she goes up on her tiptoes to wrap her arms around him, to sink into him along every inch of her petrified, hurting flesh. He's warm, so warm she wants to burrow under his skin, to be protected by the strong beat of his heart and the unyielding sturdiness of his bones; wants to pour her Trouble-immunity through his veins so that he can feel sunlight and a baby's weight and a dog's fur.

They've hugged three times before this, just enough for her to grow endlessly addicted to the utterly gentle way he closes his arms around her. The reverence with which he enfolds her, the tentativeness with which he spreads his hands over her back. The long head-to-toe shudder that sweeps across his frame, turning him pliable under her touch.

But this hug is different, something extra added to it.

Because when Audrey buries her face against his neck, Nathan bends and folds and turns inward until his face nestles in her hair. Unsteady breaths feather heat along her throat, and she has never felt so safe.

So loved.

(And for just this moment, awash with adrenaline and relief, she doesn't make herself turn away from this feeling. This thought. This admission.)

But Roslyn isn't safe yet. Audrey promised she'd help and she couldn't before, but now Nathan and Duke are here and she can be strong once more.

So she pulls back, and Nathan's arms fall away (he never clings, never resists, never holds on) and she's Audrey Parker, cop and savior and Trouble-whisperer once again. The weight of it all drapes itself over her with the ease of long habit, settling into worn grooves.

And here, a step removed from Nathan (even though her hands grip his arm, unable to completely divorce herself from him), her fear is creeping back in, spilling out of her mouth in long, panicked sentences.

"You have no idea what we went through down there," she says, and wishes she hadn't when Nathan's face goes shuttered and tight.

"You're right, I don't, and I'm sorry," he says. Her hands clench spasmodically over his arm (he can't feel it, doesn't receive the tactile apology, his coat sleeve like a wall between them), but there's no time to fix what she just caused.

"This is Wesley Toomis," Nathan says. "He's Troubled."

Just that, and everything else will have to wait. This, at least, she can do. This is something she knows. This is a task she can accomplish for Nathan, for Duke, for the town.

(It's the only thing about herself she really, truly knows.)

Audrey lets her hands slip away from Nathan as she turns to Wesley.

(But Nathan comes to her once more. He takes the coat off his own back and wraps her in it, and the fear stays manageable.)

But nothing goes as it should.

She can't fix Wesley's Trouble, can't talk him into acceptance, can't do anything but stand there, useless, as Nathan convinces Wesley to give his own life up to impossibility and the unknown. She's mute (struck dumb by both her failure and the return of the concussion's swirling effects) as Duke shoves at Nathan, some latent ferocity crackling between them, undimmed by all the ways she's tried to reconcile them.

She's horrified and guilty and ashamed as the smell of charred human flesh chokes her and floods her mouth with bile.

She promised Roslyn she'd save her. She promised they'd get out. She promised her everything would be okay.

(She lied.)

It's like her kidnapper took her and tied her up and bled her dry of everything she knows. Everything she is. Her effectiveness. Her ability to reach the Troubled. Her fearlessness. The one certainty she had about that old article that first kept her here in town.

With gashes in her wrists and thoughts bouncing aimlessly inside her skull, Audrey wonders if all she is capable of doing is failing.

"Someone should be taking care of you now," Nathan says as he pulls his coat tighter over her shoulders (she wishes he weren't so careful not to let his fingers brush her skin). For just an instant, the coat between them, they stand in a pseudo-embrace. An almost that teeters between them as much as any almost does between them.

Audrey wants nothing more than to tip forward against his chest, just to breathe in his scent and soak up his warmth and bask in his implacable surety. But she is numb and held together only by a breath, swaying so that she feels that one hasty movement will cause her joints to unravel and her bones to crumble and her skin to disintegrate until she falls in a pile of macabre remains to match Roslyn's.

The moment stretches and fades, and Nathan takes a step away.

Before she can pull herself from her strange lethargy, Nathan's led her to a couch and sat her down. When he sits beside her, he keeps a few inches between them. Audrey stares at that space, but for all she tells herself to cross that gulf, she can't make herself move. Words bottle up in her throat, a plea for Nathan to do what she can't, to draw closer, snarling and tangling in on itself until she's trapped in silence and Nathan continues to give her space she doesn't want.

Finally, using all the energy left to her, Audrey ignores the room spinning around her, and she tips her head up to meet Nathan's eyes. His gaze is intent, solid, unwavering, an anchor that tethers her to reality (to consciousness; to sanity).

Then the Teagues burst on the scene and the moment passes, leaving her once more lost and adrift. Dave and Vince talk and talk but say nothing, give nothing away, and a fire crackles to life in Audrey's frozen form (a fire ignited by Roslyn's smoldering ashes).

"Did Lucy love the Colorado Kid?" she demands, and only realizes what she gave away (what she implied; what wall she's built between them) when Nathan goes stiff at her side, his usual quiet transformed into a void sucking down all reaction (but betraying so much more than he probably realizes).

The Teagues lie (they always do, she thinks; she cannot trust them), and for all that she just lost by voicing the question, she gains nothing.

Once again, she fails.

They dig up the grave (the fact that it even exists and its specific location both nuggets of information doled out so sparsely, so strictly and deceptively haphazardly, by Dave and Vince). It's a coffin, and Audrey doesn't remember ever being squeamish, but her stomach twists on itself as they lift up the lid. She doesn't want to see this (body or not, it will shake her already shaky world on its tilting exist). But she doesn't look away (she needs to know if there's a man out there she loved; loves; could love).

It's empty.

Of course it's empty. Of course that article has not run out of ways to rattle her. Witnesses with no memory. Photographers with no camera. A boy who's not what he seems. The primary focus, of course, herself but not her. And now, after all the leads and dead ends, the body itself. The victim. The Colorado Kid.

Alive. Missing.

(The man she loved? A man she could, or should, or does still love, or love again?)

It's too much.

Audrey hates being weak. She despises falling apart when there are still things to do (find her kidnapper) and clues to follow ('find the Hunter' in her own urgent handwriting). But this one time, her wrists stinging, her feet aching, her throat clogged with remnants of smoke, her face bruised…this one time Audrey falters. And then, at Nathan's tentative hand on her shoulder, she crumples.

Just shuts her eyes and lets her balance falter so that she tips back and leans against Nathan's lean form.

He's warm. He's solid. He's enduring.

(How can she possibly love another man when there is Nathan?)

(How can she turn away from her love for the Colorado Kid when she wants to believe that even with another personality, she would still remember and be drawn to and trust Nathan?)

Too much, too much, too much.

Audrey shuts her eyes and pretends that she can let it all go.

The mess her kidnapper made in her apartment is enough to bring Audrey to a halt. Nathan doesn't stop at her side; he just walks straight past her and begins tidying. Picks up the fallen chairs, places broken dishes in the trash and whole ones in the sink, closes her cabinets, rolls up police tape. Audrey watches his efficient movements, admiring his resolve in light of her own momentum fading to nothing, drained of any impetus of her own.

"Why don't you sit down?" he finally says, pausing his clean-up long enough to draw her inside (once more with a hand on her shoulder, his thick coat between them) and close the door on the cold sea air. "Do you want to change?" he asks as he directs her to the couch.

"You still have a guest room," she observes aloud. "Maybe…maybe I could stay with you tonight? It wasn't so bad when we did that before, was it? I mean, apart from the whole psycho killer after you."

Nathan regards her for a long moment before he gives himself permission to sit beside her (that same chasm of distance between them; she wonders when she began noticing just how careful he always is not to push boundaries).

"Parker," he says, and just the sound of her name in his voice is enough to stitch a few pieces of herself back together. (Under that reaction, like a dark shadow, she finds herself wondering what the sound of the Colorado Kid's voice calling her Lucy would do to her. Nothing? Or everything?)

"Nathan," she says abruptly, aware that he doesn't look as if he's ready to stand up and drive them to his small, comfortable home, "I don't want to be here."

"I know," he says. "But you have to come back eventually. You think it'll be any easier if you keep putting it off?"

"Easier on me tonight," she says with a weak smile. But he's right. It will always be hard to reclaim her sense of safety here, today or tomorrow or next week. Still, she longs for the safe haven of Nathan's home, his collection of sci-fi movies and the scent of pancakes and the simple but powerful assurance of his presence.

"You don't let anything stop you," Nathan says, and he sounds so certain, so unerring, that she cannot doubt him.

"Nathan," she says in a soft, blurred tone. She's not even sure, exactly, what she means to say, to ask, to do, but he looks away.

"You should change," he says. "Do the bandages on your wrists need changed?"

"No."

Retreating to the bathroom, Audrey lets Nathan make his own slow retreat back to cleaning (to giving back as much of what was taken from her as he can).

When she steps into the shower, the hot water is cleansing enough to loosen her coiled muscles, though it makes the gashes on her wrists burn. Audrey scrubs off the feel of her captor's fists and the stench of Roslyn's body, charred to ash, and the grimy remnants of fear. Ordinarily, she thinks she might have stayed under the water until it ran cold, but tonight, she's afraid that Nathan will leave if she stays away too long.

(She's afraid that the feel of the hot water will transform into the flames that ate up Roslyn's body, that took her away and ground everything she was into ash and soot and failure; into the flames that once licked at Nathan's skin and left ashen bodies behind like bizarre offerings.)

Nathan looks up from her coffeepot (filled with brewed coffee because apparently he is only confident around her with twin cups of coffee between them) when she emerges from the bathroom. Something in his face both tightens and softens at once in a way that makes Audrey's stomach flutter.

"I guess I could use some more bandages," she finally says, fiddling with the long sleeves of her shirt to keep them from brushing against her scrapes.

Nathan swallows as he nods. Silently, he takes the supplies she gives him and once more sits beside her on the couch. He still leaves a gap between them; Audrey mostly closes it when she angles her knees toward him and offers her wrists.

It's too intense, too private, almost, to watch him as he focuses all his attention on her wrists (or maybe Audrey just isn't used to being able to look at him so long and so closely, accustomed instead to snatching sidelong glances and teasing eye-roll glimpses between sarcastic comments), so she looks around at her place. He's cleaned up most of the mess, though there's a pile of random items stacked up on the counter. She assumes it's the stuff he didn't know where to put.

"Thank you for cleaning up," she says in an attempt to distract them both from the play of his fingertips over her skin. (She remembers a scene almost identical to this one, in her office at the station, her own attention on raw wrists and Nathan's eyes fixed on her so that only her residual terror at seeing him in the Rev's power kept her from blushing.)

"I'm actually glad it was a mess," he says quietly. "If it hadn't been, I don't know if I would have realized right away that you'd been taken. I'm sorry I didn't—"

"No, Nathan." She puts her hand with its neat bandage over his, still working on her other wrist. No apologies. She can't bear to hear him apologize for something that doesn't matter, not now (not next to the fact that he's all that's holding her together).

Only when she takes her hand (reluctantly) off his does he continue working, a muscle in his jaw fluttering. Audrey watches it, hypnotized into a calm sort of lethargy by his delicate touch and the smell of him and the sight of his concern for her. She's not used to being on this side of their dynamic, hurt and vulnerable and reliant on his strength. Strangely, she doesn't mind it so much. She trusts him (unwaveringly). She relies on him (all the time).

She needs him.

But she is, she reminds herself, in a bad place right now, in no proper mindset to make a decision like the one her instincts are demanding, and Nathan is too affected by her. Too open to being dependent. Too vulnerable. If she does as she wants and leans into him, if she wraps her arms around him and buries her face in his neck…how could he turn away? He's always too willing to give her whatever she needs and he's so touch-starved, so hungry for tenderness of any sort… No. She can't do something now (ever) unless she's sure she can follow through on it.

(And if she couldn't save the Colorado Kid, if even running and fleeing Haven altogether didn't let Lucy keep him, then how can Audrey possibly think she can keep Nathan?)

"I'm glad you're here," she finally says, and it's honest even if it's not as much as she wants to say or do.

"I'm glad you're safe," he says, his tone so shaken Audrey knows she's right in not making any rash choices tonight. They're both too unsteady. Too fragile.

When the bandages are tied and she's cradling a cup of coffee in her cold hands, Nathan wavers. It's nothing in what he says, no particular movement or gesture, but he stands in front of her and his customary certainty seems to flag, just for an instant, in the flicker of his eyes.

"What else do you need?" he asks. "Do…do you need me to get Duke for you?"

"No."

Okay, so she won't fold herself into him and wrap his unfailing loyalty around her like armor, but she doesn't have to do nothing either.

He watches her as she stands and digs out an extra blanket and pillow. "Here," she says. She's not especially careful when handing over the bedding, and sees the shockwave of their fingers bumping play out across his face. "I think the couch is comfortable enough."

It's abrupt and not very polite, but Nathan doesn't let it faze him. She's grateful he doesn't make her actually ask, just plants himself on her couch (sets himself between her and whatever dares come after her) and begins to take off his shoes. It's not his place, not inviolate, and yet it's wonderful and close enough that the vise around her ribs loosens enough for her to finally take in a full breath.

She dreams she's on the beach, dark hair blowing in the breeze. The Colorado Kid is dead, propped up like some ancient sacrifice. Her heart is breaking in her chest, there are unfamiliar tears on her cheeks, and she has to see his face. Just once more. She has to…has to…see if his eyes are the same, if his chin is—

It's Nathan. Nathan lying there, limp and lifeless. She brushes aside blonde hair from her eyes, hoping she's only seeing things. No. No, it's him, long legs stretched out in front of him, hands empty and still, eyes staring. For the first time, he doesn't see her.

She couldn't save him.

This is all her fault.

Audrey bolts upright, her heart galloping against the slats of her breastbone.

Nathan's there, lying on her couch, legs hanging off one end, the blanket half-falling off his shoulders. A reflection of the moon, peeping in through her curtains, shines from his eyes as he stares back at her.

Awake. Aware. Alive.

"Parker," he says simply.

Audrey relaxes and gives him a nod.

His calm, even breathing lulls her back to sleep.

In the morning, Audrey wakes to the smell of pancakes. For just a moment (before her bruised cheek twinges and she is reminded all over again of what happened), her lips twitch in a smile, and she feels loose, relaxed. By the time she ducks into the bathroom, dresses, and heads over to the kitchen, her mind is clamoring with fears and mysteries and discrepancies (above all, with the cold knowledge that her kidnapper, Roslyn's murderer, is still alive, still free, still dangerous), all the things she should be doing and leads she should be chasing.

But the sight of Nathan, standing over the stove with a spatula in hand, turning to greet her with a tentative smile and worry clear in the lines between his eyes…this is worth time. This (he) is worth effort. So Audrey chooses to be here, present, with him. Everyone she needs to talk to will still be ready and willing to lie whether she sees them now or in an hour.

"Good thing I stocked up on pancake supplies as soon as we became friends," she says, slipping into a chair at the table.

"You're good on coffee, too," he says, his worry lines easing as he sets a cup in front of her. "Other than that, though, you could stand to do a bit of grocery shopping."

(She can't decide if she's relieved or disappointed that he doesn't pursue the fact that she bought food just for him when, aside from a Christmas party, she's never really invited him inside.)

Audrey raises her eyebrow at him before sipping her coffee. "Didn't I catch you eating cereal once at your desk?"

"A little variety's good for you," he deadpans.

"Pancakes and cereal?"

"They say breakfast's the most important meal of the day. Here, eat up."

Only when the plate of steaming pancakes is set in front of her, dripping with syrup, does Audrey realize just how hungry she is. She doesn't even remember the last time she ate.

"Thanks, Nathan," she says. When she realizes there's a bit too much emotion revealed in those two words, she grins and adds, "I didn't know you catered as well as chauffeured."

"About that…" Nathan sits down with his own plate of pancakes (she doesn't bother to deny just how good it feels to have him sitting across from her; to not be alone). "I might be doing a lot more than that."

She studies him, taken aback by how quickly his teasing has turned into diffidence. "What's going on?"

Nathan straightens and meets her eyes. "Dwight offered me a job. And I took it."

"A job." Audrey remembers him coming into the inn the day before, remembers the gun in his hand and the flash of gold at his hip.

"Yeah." He studies her closely, his head slightly ducked, as if he's afraid of her reaction.

But Audrey's not afraid. She's suddenly not afraid at all. Her growing smile seems to be enough to allay whatever Nathan was afraid of, and his lips curve in the beginning of an answering smile.

"Partners?" she asks him, and his smile grows.

"Partners," he promises.

It's probably too much after yesterday (but Audrey remembers before that, remembers Nathan showing her a gift threaded through his stack of articles, remembers a hug she wished would never end, remembers an address and his eyes burning into her and the feel of his stubbled cheek beneath her lips; she remembers driving away from the Haven Herald, answers ahead of her, but wanting only to go back, to find Nathan and pursue that wealth of devotion secreted in his eyes whenever he looks at her).

So Audrey acts. Just reaches out (so easy) and curls her fingers around his palm.

And he reacts. He always reacts. A tremor in his hand, a lightning burst of shock in his eyes, that instant of pleasure, and then the flutter of his eyelashes as he tries his best to memorize each sensation.

"I told you you'd make a good detective." She does her best to inject a teasing note into her hoarse voice (because Nathan's not the only one who reacts at touch between them, who savors it and leans into it and tries to memorize it just in case).

"Well, it's early days yet. Dwight's got a few more hoops I have to jump through before it's completely official."

"But soon?"

His small nod confirms it. "Soon."

"Good." Audrey gives his hand a final squeeze (not planned, just her last bid to try to hold on when she knows they need to eat and move and get going).

"You're okay with this?" Nathan picks up his own fork even though he's obviously intent on her answer. "If you—"

"Nathan." She waits until he meets her eyes before smiling. "If you need an office, I have an empty desk in mine. Could be a good trade for both of us."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. You get space and I get free coffee. Just keep your strange scent thingies in a drawer, okay?"

"Deal," he says.

They're both smiling when they finally turn their attention to the pancakes growing cold between them.