Julia - Through the looking glass

[moonshadows]

 ((Author's note: I feel like I should apologize for this, but I won't. Season 5 was a lot of Duke getting shafted and I decided to indulge in a little fix-it fic.))

The soundless explosion ripped through the cave, rippled over Haven - and exploded across the Void, carrying the tiny dark-haired woman on its crest. In another Haven, a nearly-identical woman looked up in alarm and reached. Then there were three on the deck of the Cape where there had been two, the newcomer clutching in one hand a cheesy vampire YA novel that seethed to the otherworldly sight of her twin. Overhead, invisible, intangible, the wave passed on...but it would be back.

"She's not breathing," Duke said, alarmed.

"CPR," snapped Julia, reaching for the book. Glowing golden formulae and diagrams crawled up her arms as soon as she touched it, an entire metaphysical device putting itself on display, recognizing the blood that was like a key, unlocking its functions.

One of those was a playback feature. The door, opened in the Void from the Heart of Haven. The shifting of one golden disk to another. A chain of bubble-trapped Troubles, trembling, threatening to burst.

"Duke," she breathed, still blind to the physical world, "I have to go help. Keep her alive-"

"She's breathing now."

"Good. Get her to a hospital. Make sure she recovers. I have the blood portal; I'll come back." She hugged him tightly, desperately. "Your alternate needs help. Keep her safe. I love you."

He kissed her as though he could sear himself into her flesh. "I love you, tiny awesome girlfriend. Go kick ass."

The wave was coming back. Julia lifted the vampire novel and let it catch her.

 *********

"Fuck," she groaned, sitting up from where she was sprawled. The vampire novel lay quiescent beside her, and she scooped it into her purse. Did she have signal? She did, but she did not have a recognized number. Joy. She was on the deck of the Cape still, at least, but Duke was not and she did not have a handy tattoo on this Duke to track him by.

This was going to be fun.

Her first order of business was to retrieve the paranoia gun from under the red bench. Her second was to see if her key still worked - it did - and retrieve a second paranoia gun. And some ammo. Then she locked the cabin and started into town. At the Grey Gull, she dialed numbers from memory but no one was at the Herald, Nathan picked up and immediately disconnected, and Duke's number wasn't the same. Dwight connected to voicemail.

"Hey, Dwight, it's Julia. Kind of. Haven thing. I'm on foot and looking for Duke, so if you see him, let him know that his Julia is okay for me, okay? Thanks."

Julia closed her eyes and focused on the Lightscape, swimming through the undulating and gyrating sea of color, looking for the familiar cluster of sooty blood bubbles. Something else caught her attention: seething sores worn into the metaphysical landscape. The fractured sun was approaching one, but...something was wrong. Julia flexed her Trouble - and the book - and barred the open sore with a mesh of lightning. The tainted sun left, rebuffed, but there were others.

Half-blind because, damn it, she didn't have her map, Julia started hiking towards the other open sore that was easily accessible on foot. The other two would take concentration to seal, but they would also take more effort to get to and the tainted sun couldn't get there immediately. After a few minutes she got impatient and banished the Lightscape before sprinting a block, then stopped to re-orient herself before taking off again. Once she reached the seething sore she sealed it with lightning, then hid inside the building to take care of the other two.

After all the sores had been covered with lightning scabs, Julia rested her head in her hands and wished she'd thought to grab something to eat. The sound of a vehicle pulling up barely registered, and it wasn't until she heard a voice that she checked the Lightscape - because she was feeling too lightheaded to stand - and saw the blood-bubbles of the Crocker Trouble just outside.

"Duke!" When there was no reaction, she coughed, cleared her throat, and tried again. "DUKE!"

"Jennifer?"

Jennifer? Who was Jennifer?

Duke flung the door open and practically threw himself down beside her, pulling her into his arms, against his chest, kissing her frantically. "I thought I'd lost you," he said in a choked voice.

Oh, this was going to be awkward. "Duke, you're sick."

"What? No, I'm fine. You..." He pulled back to look at her with worried eyes, gently brushing hair away from her face.

"You're not fine," she told him firmly. "Duke...you know your Trouble locks away the Troubles of anyone ever killed by a Crocker." On the Lightscape, a half-burst bubble thrashed and screamed, lashing out. "Something happened to weaken it. The Troubles are getting loose."

For a long minute he just stared at her, then he turned and slumped down against the concrete wall beside her. "I'm gonna die," he sighed.

"Not if I can help it."

He turned to her, curious and concerned. "You can stop it?"

"I think so...if my head stops spinning."

That brought the concern back. "Are you okay? In the cave..."

Shamelessly, she flopped against him. "Food first, then talking? I'll be okay, I just...over-did it."

"Alright," he said, kissing her forehead before scooping her up.

 *********

In the truck, Julia devoured cheap take-out, cheeseburger and fries, while Duke watched. How to tell him? "In the cave," she started warily. "Under the lighthouse. How did you get out?"

"I don't know. Woke up on the beach. Vince and Dave got tossed out into the woods - I guess it just sort of flung everyone away."

Well, that was going to make things easier. "I was on the deck of the Cape when I...saw...the wave pass overhead, carrying someone who looked just like me. I pulled her in, but she wasn't breathing."

"Jennifer," he breathed in horror.

"She's okay! My Duke did CPR and got her breathing again. She'll be in the hospital now."

Tension swept out of him in a wave, and he leaned back in his seat for a moment. "But if you're not Jennifer, my Jennifer, then...?" He let the question trail off and looked at her, waiting.

"I'm Julia Carr," she said, blushing slightly. "I took...Jennifer's...book. It's a...device? Kind of? It showed me what happened in the cave and I knew..." Julia swallowed. "I knew I had to come here in her place to help you."

"Julia," he said thoughtfully, weighing this information. "So you...and me..."

"You let me move into the Cape when I came back to town, after Mom died. We got together six weeks later."

Duke glanced away, thinking hard about something.

"Just after Evi tried to seduce you, and before the tree-horror wedding?"

He grimaced. "She did se- I'm not proud of that." A guilty glance at her.

She grinned. "Don't worry, I know the things you did in school. You're not going to offend me. And if...uh..." Julia found herself blushing more. "I...know what my Duke's sex drive is like." Now he was blushing, too. "I don't know if Jennifer..."

"Once," he admitted quietly.

"Forbidden fruit kink?" she asked, looking at him in brief sips. The reaction that got was one she was familiar with: firmly telling himself no. "I'm not forbidden. I am," she said with more confidence, "a very naughty wench with an IUD so if you want-"

The rest of the sentence got cut off by his lips on hers, desperate, drowning, frantic with need and relief. It took some scrambling before she was seated on his lap, admiring the rapture on his face as he slipped inside her, and then she was riding until they both foundered into bliss.

"You sure you're okay with that?" he asked as she put herself to rights again. "I mean...will your Duke..."

"We've talked about alternates, actually," she told him with a grin. "It was a Haven thing. Long story short, you're still Duke so there's no issue. He's probably talking it over with Jennifer. I'd give you a minute and go for round two," she teased, "but we are still kind of in the middle of a Haven thing. Tell me what happened to Audrey?"

Duke sighed and rubbed his temples. "Mara," he spat. Slowly, he explained Mara and William and the aether and how he'd let Audrey give him back his curse. That involved explaining how he'd killed Wade to protect Jennifer, and then he found himself hugged very tightly.

"He was a dick," she muttered fiercely, making him chuckle. "So, tell me about Jennifer. How did you meet her?"

"Broke me out of a hospital in Boston," he said, and that's all he got out before she started laughing. "What's so funny?"

Julia flicked her still-short hair. "When I broke my Duke out of the hospital, I cut my hair to match a woman in Boston named Jennifer."

Duke shook his head at the coincidence. "So, the thin places Mara's looking for...you closed them?"

"Sealed them. I need to see Mara."

"Yeah, I think we all need to get together and talk." He started the truck and tossed her his phone. "Start with Nathan?"

Nathan picked up on he second ring. "What, Duke?"

"Hi, so, this is going to be awkward..."

"Jennifer?"

"...not quite. Haven thing. Jennifer's fine, I left her in the care of my Duke. I'm Julia, and I sealed the thin spots. We need to capture Mara." Carefully, she found the thin spot he was at and located his tattoo.

"How do I know you're telling the truth?" he growled. "How can I be sure you're not some evil twin that came out when Jennifer stopped breathing in the cave?"

Julia covered her face briefly with the hand not holding the phone. "Do you remember Audrey's birthday party at Carpenter's Knot? Chief thought you were the chameleon because Jess Minion bought a scarf instead of a sweater and you woke up tied to a chair."

"Anyone could have told you that."

"You gave Duke CPR when Jean was born." Beside her, Duke did a double-take and swerved back onto the road. Nathan didn't answer. "And you did it because you're afraid of losing the people who define you. You don't actually hate Duke anymore, but you've antagonized each other for so long that you're afraid to let go of that because if you're not in his face all the time reminding him that you exist, you're afraid you won't mean anything to him and that terrifies you." She gave him a minute to think about that. "Also, I have a tattoo Jennifer probably doesn't, which I'll be happy to show off when I see you."

"Fair enough," Nathan said calmly.

"Good, so sit tight and taze Mara if she shows up and I'll call Dwight and explain things to him and we'll be in touch." At Duke's gesture, she passed the phone to him.

"Love you, Nathan," he taunted before hanging up and passing it back. "You know how surreal this is for me, right? You look like my girlfriend but you act like the wee lass who used to hang around only you didn't grow up into someone...afraid of the Troubles and with Eleanor's ethics. The Julia I knew called me a petty crook."

"That's outrageous!" Julia looked incensed on his behalf. "You're an exceptional crook!"

That self-restraining shake again. "Call Dwight before I pull over and stop the truck."

With a wicked laugh, she dialed. "Dwight! Hi. Julia. I left a probably-confusing voicemail for you?"

"Yeah, you mind explaining a bit?"

"Um...I didn't know that my equivalent in this timeline was named Jennifer, and that she wasn't my direct counterpart?"

He thought about that for a minute. "Makes sense. So where's Jennifer?"

"In my timeline, in the hospital. I came here to help because I saw...some disturbing things. Do you need proof that I'm not an evil twin or anything?"

"I just want to know how you can help," he said dryly.

"Fair enough." The last thin spot was way out by the edge; it was easy to find Dwight. "Feel that?" she asked, pressing on his tattoo.

"...yes."

"I can sense and manipulate energy forms within Haven. I sealed the thin spo- oh, watch out, Mara's getting close! Knock her out!"

Dwight hung up. Duke turned around and sped off the way they'd come.

 *********

They found Dwight groaning and picking a bullet out of his vest, the woman Julia assumed was Mara unconscious on the forest floor. Julia was out of the truck before it fully stopped, gun in one hand and book in the other, both of them pointed at the other woman as she approached. Duke climbed more cautiously out, exchanging a glance with the taller man.

"Definitely not Jennifer," Dwight said firmly.

Duke grinned. "I'm not complaining. Cuffs?"

"Yeah, knock yourself out." He tossed them over and let Duke do the honors.

Once Mara had been restrained, Julia put her weapons away. "I suppose someone should tell Nathan where to meet us." She looked at the other two. "So...where should he meet us?"

"Haven PD?" suggested Dwight.

"Sure, if you want everyone to know Audrey has an evil twin. Let's take this party to her apartment, above the Gull."

"Sounds good. Hey, how are you doing? You looked pretty rough when I found you earlier."

"I'm-" Duke broke off at the look Julia was giving him. "-not feeling bad but apparently there's a problem with my Trouble."

Dwight looked the tiny woman up and down. "So you came to our timeline to...help Duke?"

She met his eyes squarely. "In my timeline, we've been together monogamously for almost a year...give or take the six months he was stuck in the Barn."

"Don't look so surprised, Squatch."

"It's just that you've been kind of..." A wavy hand motion. "...recently."

Duke looked away. Julia didn't.

"Were Nathan and Audrey taking him for granted? Demanding that he help, assuming that he'd help, and not thanking him when he did?"

Now Dwight averted his eyes while Duke turned to stare at her. "Yes," he said, as if he couldn't believe he was hearing himself say it.

"Mine stopped doing that a while back," she said fiercely. "Apparently, being told repeatedly when you've been a giant douche to someone you claim to be friends with makes you sensitive to thanking your friends instead of just abusing them."

"That would do it," Dwight said. "I like her."

"Yeah, I can see the appeal," joked Duke. "C'mon, I'll give you a lift back to town...but you'll have to ride in the back with Mara."

 *********

They had her handcuffed to a sturdy chair, legs tied at the ankle to the chair's legs, when Nathan arrived. He took one look at Mara, still unconscious and restrained, before turning to Julia.

"I want to see the tattoo," he demanded.

Julia pushed her right sleeve back to expose her wrist. "My Duke designed it for me shortly after I got him back from the Barn," she said steadily.

That got everyone's attention, and they took turns looking at it.

"I want to talk more about that later," Duke said quietly, running gentle fingers over her skin.

She tilted her head up to kiss him briefly, gently. "I want to talk about yours, too."

Nathan looked...like Nathan. "You're kissing her?" he asked Duke angrily. "What about Jennifer?"

"I'm being hospitable, Nate. This woman has come here to help me with a problem I barely knew about and sure as hell had no way to deal with on my own, and she's done so because in her own timeline, she's married to that version of me."

Four sets of eyebrows went up. From the chair, a voice like and yet unlike Audrey drawled, "Wow. Someone let you put a ring on it?"

"Let me get this," Julia said cheerfully, weaving her way past three tall men in various states of anger to stand in front of the sneering woman.

"And who are you supposed to be?" Mara asked, but Julia wasn't paying attention.

"I think...this one," she said, caressing something no one could see. Then she backhanded Mara sharply.

"Ow! Jennifer?"

"Parker!" Nathan took two steps and found himself held between Dwight and Duke.

"Nathan? Why am I cuffed to a chair? What happened with...with William and the door and...why did Jennifer hit me?"

"She's all yours," Julia told him just as cheerfully. "Damn, I'm good. Got that on the first try."

Duke pulled her into a protective hug and presented her with a congratulatory kiss. "You mean...all that crap William pulled trying to get Mara out, and you just slapped her back down?"

"I don't really know who William is or what he did, but...yes?"

Audrey, now free of the chair, stood up. "Does someone want to tell me what's going on?"

"I think Nathan does," Duke offered. "Squatch, don't you have policework to do?"

"I sure do," Dwight said, heading for the door. "Audrey. Good to see you back. Nathan. I'll be at the station."

"And I will be on my boat with this amazing woman." Still holding Julia, Duke followed Dwight's lead. "If the Cape is a-rockin', don't come a-knockin', okay?"

Before either of them could formulate a protest, Duke shut the door.

"Married?" Dwight asked from where he was lurking on the stairs.

Duke glanced at Julia, who nodded despite her blush. "Yeah. It may not be on paper, there may not be a ring, but if he's anything like me, that's a lifetime commitment and I bet that he..."

"Is wearing my ink," Julia finished.

Dwight looked back and forth between them for a minute. "So you're treating her like her Duke would. But what about Jennifer?"

"I guess we'll talk about that when she comes back." Duke shrugged. "See you later, Squatch."

"Yeah. Later, you two."

Aboard the Cape, Julia tossed her purse into a chair and turned into the hug Duke was in the process of initiating. For a long minute, he just held her.

"It kind of feels like cheating on Jennifer," he said quietly into her hair. "But at the same time...it feels like I'm the one being cheated. Like I should remember being with you, but I can't."

"I'll be here for at least a few days, Duke. I haven't even started to help you, and I need to learn how to use the book so I can bring Jennifer home. Do you want us to pretend that you're my Duke?"

Instead of answering in words, he just groaned and kissed her, deeply. She returned it eagerly, feeling his hardness press against her, and had his pants dropping almost before he was aware of her hands moving. She broke the kiss to pull his shirt off, and got hers off as well by the time he'd kicked free of his boots.

"Couch," she said sternly, taking her pants off while he hesitated. She smiled slyly at him, unhooking her bra. "C'mon, Boss. You've had a hard day. Sit down and let me take a load."

Duke choked slightly as the insinuation hit, then chuckled and sat gingerly. Julia stepped out of her panties and sauntered over to straddle him and pull the elastic out of his hair, running her hands through it, kissing until his hands started wandering, tentatively at first and then greedily, and then she lowered herself down onto him. Just like in the truck, his head fell back in pleasure and she took the opportunity to kiss at his neck. This time, though, he recovered enough to start meeting her halfway, thrusting up as she came down, until she whimpered and he saw stars and they drifted for a few minutes before reality slowly reasserted itself.

“So that’s what it’s like to be married,” he said lazily, kissing her nose as she lifted her head from his shoulder.

She wrinkled her nose and kissed him lightly. “It’s a taste. Make you a deal, Boss. You find me a fine-point Sharpie and I’ll see what I can throw together for dinner.”

“Should I ask what you need it for?”

Another kiss, and she climbed off his lap. He thought she would put her clothes back on, but instead she snagged the white shirt he’d been wearing and slipped it on, where it fell to her thighs. “Temporary tattoo. I’m going to re-create the ink your other self’s wearing.”

That made his heart jump. “You’re serious. You’re really going to act like my…like I’m your Duke, your…husband?”

“You’re Duke,” she said with a shrug. “If your Julia Carr had been like me, wouldn’t she be wearing your ink?”

He thought about the wee lass that had followed him like his shadow. “You really know about the shit I’ve done?”

Julia knelt on the couch and touched his chest lightly. “My Duke has a tattoo right here to commemorate that after almost a year of addiction, he got off of heroin. I helped him through the withdrawal. Didn’t know what I was doing; I thought he had a really bad stomach flu. This one,” she touched his right shoulder, “was for getting free of his mother’s debts. This one was for breaking things off with Evi.”

Duke swallowed. “I didn’t deserve one for the heroin. Took me months of flirting like a coward.”

She kissed him gently. “I know what you did to get some of it.”

“And you still…” He shook his head. “Yeah. If you knew all that and still stuck around, I’d be a married man, too.”

“Get that fine-point Sharpie and you will be,” she teased before sauntering off to the kitchen.

 *********

"Is that it?" Duke asked, looking at the sheet of paper his...sort-of-wife...had been sketching so intently on. The figure perched on an inverted cone looked uncomfortably familiar, but then there was the swirling chain of unconnected bubbles that encircled both shapes, front and back.

"Representation of the Crocker Trouble," she said, nodding. "I worked it out while you were in the Barn." For a moment, she got very quiet and he hugged her to his chest. "I missed you. A lot. I decided that when I got you back, I never wanted to lose track of you again." She tapped the paper with one finger. "I can track this, just like I can track anyone with the Maze tattoo."

He kissed her hair. "That should not sound as reassuring as it does."

That made her laugh. "So, Boss, ready to get hitched to your tiny insatiable girlfriend?"

"Insatiable?" His eyebrows arched in mingled skepticism and anticipation.

Julia laughed again. "That's what you called me when I initiated round six in the same twelve hours. It was an eventful day."

"Really." He kissed her hair again while he contemplated that. "Do I have to let go while you get me hitched?"

"I need your left wrist, and it'll be easier if I'm not drawing upside-down."

With a theatrical sigh, he let her go and got a tender kiss for his pains. "You're lucky you're so cute," he teased as the kiss ended.

"Keep that up," she murmured, kissing him again, "and I'll let you fuck me into the couch before I claim you."

"Is that a threat?" he asked, arms going around her again.

Her laugh was low and wicked, and it shot down his spine like the best kind of lightning. "More like an invitation."

"You," he said sternly, "are a wicked woman."

"Just your type," she replied cheerfully, hands already in his hair, making him groan. He kissed her hungrily, more deeply than before, and she murmured, "I love when you fuck me like you can't control yourself."

"Tiny evil girlfriend," he breathed.

And that was his last coherent thought for a while.

 *********

Duke flexed his wrist, watching the almost-imperceptible blue shimmer coming from what should be black ink. "Nate probably thinks I'm crazy. Sasquatch, too. Probably even Audrey."

"They can go fuck themselves," Julia said defiantly, once again wearing his shirt and sitting on his lap. "Well, not Dwight. He's been pretty understanding, in my experience. I'll have a talk with him tomorrow and make sure he's still okay. But Audrey and Nathan..."

"You're really not happy with them," he said quietly, brushing hair behind her ear.

She didn't meet his eyes. "I know the crap they pulled on you even when I was there to stand up for you. I assume it was worse without me here."

"Julia..." Duke swallowed. It was the first time he'd said her name and it didn't feel like he should have been saying 'Jennifer'.

"I know Audrey shoved you at Nix," she said quietly. "I know how rough it was on you, taking his Trouble. And I know she didn't think about what that cost you. Did she at least feel bad putting your Trouble back?"

He held her close, breathing in the scent of her hair, for a long minute. "She did," he said finally. "Jennifer didn't want me to take it. Sometimes I wish I hadn't, that I'd taken her and the Cape and left them to their selfish bullshit, but..."

Julia leaned back against his chest. "I know." After a quiet moment, she asked, "How are you feeling?"

"A little weird," he answered awkwardly. "Not like it was before the cave, but like it might get that bad again...if that makes sense?"

On the Lightscape, the half-free Trouble thrashed angrily. "It makes sense. Let me...can you find me a flat stone and some kind of sealant?"

"How big?"

"Something between half-dollar and palm," she said, abandoning his lap for the table, the paper she'd sketched on, and the Sharpie. "I've done a lot of thinking about this. I'm mostly sure it will work, I just want to make sure before I do anything permanent."

Duke firmly took hold of the hope that jumped wildly in his chest and shoved it back down. When he returned with a stone of the right shape and size, Julia was examining a sketched pattern featuring angry cross-hatching he'd last seen in leather, suturing a man's eyes shut.

"What the hell is that?" he asked, stone all but forgotten.

"That's the Trouble trying to break free," she said way too calmly. "Stone?"

Numbly, he handed it over. "That was me? I was doing that?"

"Doing what?"

While she sketched precise, angry lines on the surface of the stone, he told her about the man whose eyes had been sewn shut. She didn't seem horrified by it, but then again she hadn't seemed upset by anything that had happened that day unless it had been him, hurt. Finally she lifted the stone up, looked through it somehow, and nodded.

"I need you to bleed on it," she said calmly. "Just a drop or two."

Warily, he cut the inside of one arm, just enough for a few drops of blood to pool. Then he smeared them onto the stone and gasped.

"Does it hurt?" she asked worriedly as she took the stone from him.

"N-no...? It feels...wow," he sighed, shaking his head as the sensation ended. "What did you do?"

"I gave it a new home." Julia carefully put the stone down. "I don't think it can get out, but I want to seal the mark and the blood, just in case."

She gave it a new home. "You mean...you pulled it out of me?"

"Your blood did that," she teased. "I just gave it somewhere else to go. Sealant?"

"Right. Be right back." A few minutes, and he came back from the hold with a smallish brush and a can. Then he reconsidered and rummaged in the spare cabin until he found a bottle of clear nail polish in Jennifer's things.

"I should have thought of that," Julia apologized when he presented it to her.

Duke leaned down to kiss her. "You had other things on your mind. Can you do that with the other Troubles inside me?"

The look she gave him was somber. "I don't intend to go home until they're all out of you. We're going to need lots of stones, and I think the thing diabetics use to prick themselves is going to be easiest on you for getting lots of single drops of blood."

He sat down just a hair too quick to be entirely by choice. "You're serious. You're going to get rid of them all. But there's..."

"I know," she said gently, applying nail polish carefully to the stone. "I can see them, Duke. But when Audrey put your Trouble back...I don't know what happened, but it's not stable anymore. I'm not going to leave you as some kind of Trouble time bomb. And I'm going to have very strict words with the Wonder Twins," she finished in a growl.

For a long minute, all he could do was stare. "But I'm not even your Duke!" he protested.

That got him face to face with a tiny angry woman. "You're Duke, therefore you're mine," she told him in a tone that brooked no argument. "Unless you can tell me honestly that you wouldn't have put this mark on me," she said, brandishing the tattoo on her wrist, "I'm going to treat you as if you were the one that did. Got it?"

Slowly, gently, he reached out and caressed the inked pattern. "I've known you less than a day and I'm almost ready to design you a tat, except another me's already done it." Then he smiled mischievously. "If I keep protesting, are you going to punish me for being a bad boy?"

"I know you, Duke," she laughed, turning back to blow on the stone and cap the nail polish. "Nothing stops you from being a bad boy." She flashed him a wicked smile. "But it makes things more fun. You've got ten seconds to be in bed."

"And if I'm not?" he asked in a vaguely challenging way.

"Then you don't get to see if I really can keep up with you, horny gypsy. Ten..."

Duke hesitated.

"...nine..."

He bolted.

 *********

Duke woke moaning, his hands filled with the breasts of whoever was riding him. When he focused enough to see her face, he nearly called out Jennifer! but the black shape on his left wrist brought back the memory of the previous day.

“Julia?” he asked when the afterglow released him, brushing strands of hair away from her eyes.

She sat up, still straddling him. “Good morning, Boss,” she said cheerfully. “I’m guessing this is a little early for you, so don’t feel like you have to get out of bed. I’m going to do a half-hour workout, then take a shower and make breakfast – probably while wearing one of your shirts because I didn’t exactly have time to pack and I have no idea what Jennifer likes to wear. I usually go do kitchen prep at the Gull before heading to the Herald for nine, but I don’t know if that would upset the other staff although I do plan on talking to Vince and Dave.”

“You are way too awake,” he grumbled.

“I know,” she said apologetically, leaning over to give him a gentle kiss. “It’s okay; go back to sleep and if you’re awake before I leave we can do this again.”

He squinted at her. “Talk, or…?”

“Yes.”

“Tiny insatiable girlfriend,” he muttered as she dismounted and he rolled over to bury his face in the pillow.

When she got out of the shower and paraded through the bedroom wearing nothing but a towel around her hair, Duke was lounging in bed, covered just enough that she couldn’t tell if he was erect or not. Having him ravish her with those dark eyes beneath sleep-tousled hair put an extra wiggle in her step and when she turned around with one of her favorite shirts to steal in her hands, he pulled the covers back in what was either a wordless demand, or a challenge.

 *********

“I’m impressed,” he said as he buttered toast and laid it on the second of two plates while she slid omelets onto them. “And possibly a little jealous.”  

Julia leaned over to kiss him briefly before taking her plate and sitting at the table. “Consider it a cosmic apology for your Julia being a lily-livered scallywag?”

That made him laugh as he joined her at the table. “So, I need to go do kitchen prep at the Gull. Actually, I don’t need to, but if Nathan’s doing the walk of shame this morning I want to be there to see it.”

She thought about that for a moment, glanced down at the stolen shirt she was wearing, and swallowed the mouthful she’d been chewing. “I think I’ll just wear yesterday’s pants and join you.”

“Oh,” he said after a moment. “Forgot to tell you. Dave’s in the hospital. Shot himself trying to shoot Vince with Dwight right behind him.”

“That reminds me, I took the paranoia gun from under the red bench and the one closet to the door. I also grabbed some ammo but couldn’t find your rubber bullets.”

Duke frowned in confusion, confusing her as well.

“…so I can shoot people and not hit Dwight or worry about giving you a silver high if you get splashed?”

“Son of a…why haven’t I been…”

“It’s okay, Boss. You’ve had to do everything yourself. I’ll just put them back; probably won’t need them anyway. I do still have my kidney knife and the book. Which…is something else I need to talk to Vince about,” she sighed.

“Okay. Gull first so I can capture Nathan’s disgrace on video, and then we go to the hospital where you can ask Vince and Dave about things and I can treasure them not knowing everything for once, and then shopping for diabetic finger-prick supplies and finding a hell of a lot of stones because I don’t like the idea that the Troubles inside me are active.” He sighed, fingers curling around hers as she reached out to take his hand. “I didn’t want to believe William when he said that, but…I believe you. Oh, and lunch somewhere in there. Whatever and wherever you like, since you made dinner and you’re going out of your way to help me.”

Her lips curved into a delighted smile. “Do you know how to make blackened shrimp alfredo?”

That surprised him. “I do. So that will be lunch, then. We’ll need to pick up a few things while we’re out. Anything else you want to add to the list?”

“Oh! I’ll need to talk to a doctor and a pharmacist. I’m on a continuous birth control,” she explained. “No periods. Safer all around. And maybe a drawing pad and some pencils? This isn’t my Haven; I don’t work at the Herald and I don’t help out at the Gull in the evenings, so I figure…what?”

Duke shook his head, expression shifting from the weird look he’d been giving her to something more normal. “Nothing. It’s just that…Jennifer works at the Herald. You help out at the Gull in the evenings?”

“Assistant bartender and manager,” she said, blushing slightly. “It was a way to spend time with you, and it’s not like I wouldn’t be helping you out, Boss. It’s just that if I’m on the roster, I can’t argue when you pay me for helping.”

“That was very well thought out of myself,” he said lightly.

She grinned at him. “Yeah, you thought so, too. But anyway, since I’m not on the roster in this Haven, I was thinking I could just sit in a corner sketching Troubles so that when we come back here after closing, I can just knock a bunch out at once. That way I can be where you can keep an eye on me and still get a lot of work done.”

“Yeah, there’s just one problem,” he said, prodding the last bites of his omelet.

Julia’s heart sank.

“…how am I going to repay you for all your help?”

That was a relief. “Sex,” she said almost instantly. “Lots and lots of sex. And really good cooking. But it’s not like I’m not getting anything out of this, either.”

That made him frown. “What are you getting out of this, tiny insatiable girlfriend?”

“If anything similar ever happens to my Duke,” she said somberly, “I’ll not only know how to deal with it, but I’ll already have the troubles sketched out.”

He couldn’t argue with that.

  *********

Nathan crept down the stairs, holding his boots, looking around for any witnesses. It wasn’t until he reached the bottom, shoved his feet into his unlaced boots, and headed for his truck that Duke stepped out from where he’d been leaning against the wall of the Gull.

“Good morning, Sleeping Beauty,” he said with an obscene amount of cheer. “Or would you be Prince Phillip? I’m not sure how that works without a tower.”

“Duke.” Nathan looked disgruntled. “I’m surprised to see you up and about so early. What’s the matter, couldn’t sleep after cheating on Jennifer?”

The slight didn’t seem to have any effect. “It’s amazing how well a man sleeps after doing the horizontal mambo. But you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking bout,” protested Nathan stiffly.

“Oh, I think you do.” Duke took a step closer and leaned conspiratorially in. “Are you a real boy now, Nate? You did use protection, didn’t you?”

Grim-faced, Nathan stalked over to his truck and stopped dead as he finally noticed the tiny woman who had been using it for cover while taking video with her phone. As if he knew nothing he said would make this any less humiliating, he climbed inside without a word and drove off.

  *********

“Visitors,” the nurse announced cheerfully.

Vince looked up, startled, as Duke and Julia stepped inside and closed the door. “Duke,” he said warily. “You found Jennifer?”

“Well…yes, and no.” Duke gestured for the tiny woman to take the floor.

“Julia Carver,” she introduced herself. “Active Carver heir. I saw Jennifer pass through the Lightscape and pulled her in. My Duke’s taking care of her, and I took her book and came in her place to help.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Vince said, “but what in God’s name is a Carver heir?”

That wasn’t what she was expecting. “One of the four families with the Maze? You don’t have those?” she asked when that got a confused look. “How do things work in this timeline? How are you going to end the Troubles for good without the – look, the book showed me four people, two male and two female, opening a door to another world. If those weren’t the four heirs, then…?”

“Four people born in another world,” Duke said quietly. “Audrey, William, Dave, and Jennifer.”

Julia thought about that for a minute before shaking her head. “Okay, I’m just going to leave that for Jennifer to figure out because that is not how things work where I’m from. So, what can you tell me about how this book works?”

Vince shook his head as she brandished the vampire novel. “Nothing. Jennifer was the only who could see anything but a book.”

For a long moment, she just stared at him, incredulous. Then she turned that look on Duke, silently asking him to refute that, but he shook his head. “Seriously? I’m on my own? You’re telling me that I literally picked this thing up and knew more about it than you and Dave combined?”

The guilty look on his face made Duke laugh until he had to lean against a wall.

“I’m not even going to ask what your Trouble is,” Julia told Vince, one hand running through her hair in a gesture of irritation. “If you don’t have the four heirs….I just don’t even know. But hey, while I’m here, I’m going to learn what I can from this book and try to write Jennifer a manual for it. I don’t know how her Trouble works, but the book recognized me so it has to be close and since it took me six months to get this good at using my Trouble…”

“Six months?” Vince asked.

She looked at Duke. “Yeah. The six months my husband was in the Barn. Only he wasn’t my husband yet,” she continued sweetly as Vince put two and two together. “We didn’t get hitched until I brought him back from Boston. But my point is, I am married to Duke Crocker and you will treat him with respect if you haven’t been, and the reason I haven’t gone back to my own Haven yet after bitchslapping Mara back into Audrey and sealing the thinnies she was looking for is because Audrey fucked up royally when she put Duke’s Trouble back and I’m not leaving until I’ve got that fixed. And another thing,” she said in a voice like a concrete wall embedded with broken glass, “the Crocker Trouble has been irrevocably damaged by its inexpert reinstatement. It is no longer a stable or safe prison for Troubles. Duke is not to be used to ‘clean up’ a dangerous Trouble under any circumstance, do I make myself clear?”

“Why are you telling me?” he protested. “I’ve never…asked him to do that.”

“Because you lead the Guard, and I want this change to be understood by everyone. The Crocker Curse is no longer an option. Any Trouble Duke takes in isn’t going to stay there long.”

“She took a Trouble out of me last night,” Duke added quietly. “The one that sewed that guy’s eyes shut. William said all the Troubles inside me had been activated. Crockers’ve been killing a long time, Vince. I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

“He’s a time bomb,” Julia said bluntly. “I can safely remove and imprison the ones inside him now, but once I leave…”

Vince shuddered. “You’ve made your point. I’ll see to it that word is spread.”

Now almost painfully cheerful, the tiny woman clapped her hands together. “Good! Now then, I need to find someone to prescribe my birth control to me because accidentally getting Duke silver-high is the worst way to find out my period’s started.”

That made both men flinch.

“I’ll see if I can find someone,” Vince offered as he stood. Then, avoiding eye contact, he hurried out of the room.

*********

"Je- Julia," Audrey corrected herself as she sat down across from the tiny woman in the back booth that was and was not hers. "I heard a little about you from Nathan, and some from Dwight, but I wanted to talk to you myself." Her eyes fell on he sketchbook. "What is that you're drawing?"

"A Trouble," the dark-haired woman said calmly.

Audrey's eyebrows knit together. "A Trouble? Whose is it?"

Shrug. "I don't know. It's in Duke now, although not for long."

"What do you mean?" Wary and concerned, she glanced towards the bar but Duke's back was turned.

Julia finished the sketch and looked up. "You put his Trouble back, didn't you?" At Audrey's nod, she continued, "The Crocker Trouble is a prison. When you did that, you unlocked all the cell doors."

The look of dawning horror was gratifying beyond words.

"The Troubles are going to bleed out of him, one by one." The end of the pencil tapped the pad. "...unless I do something else with them first. That's why I stayed here after smacking Mara back down."

"Thank you for that," Audrey said, shuddering. "She was...she liked it. So you're...doing what with the Troubles inside Duke?"

Julia fanned the pages of the hardbound sketchbook. At least a dozen bore several palm-sized sigils. "I'm putting them in solitary," she said calmly. "Using his blood as a conduit, I'm trapping them in stones, and I'm not returning to my own timeline until they're all out and he's not a time bomb."

"But..." Audrey looked concerned. "What happens when you leave?"

"Nothing," the tiny woman said with a sharp smile. "Because Duke's not going to take in any more Troubles. He's no longer an option; he's a revolving door. You can't use him to solve your problems for you, or at least...not like that. But you've never had an issue with using Duke to solve your problems, have you?"

"I don't know what you're getting at, but Duke is my friend."

"And he's my husband," Julia shot back coldly. "Or did Nathan not mention that part?"

Audrey looked...uncomfortable. "I thought he was making a joke. I mean, Duke, marrying?"

The smile she got contained a few too many teeth to be sweet. "I can see your confusion. He's a disreputable pirate, a shameless manwhore, what woman would want to be tied to that for the rest of her life, right?"

"Right..." Audrey agreed warily, sensing the trap but not seeing it.

"It's not like he's the kind of guy who would fish an unconscious woman out of the water, let her have his bed until she woke up, wash and dry her clothes, provide her with a replacement for her dead phone, and make her coffee without molesting her, robbing her, unloading her gun, or just leaving her on the dock all night." A beat to let the other woman squirm, and then she deadpanned, "Because geez, it sure would be horrible to endure all that consideration and then not thank him for any of it."

"I woke up naked in someone else's bed," she protested.

"With your gun right there. Nothing quite says I'm not threatening you like leaving your guest with a loaded firearm. But you're right," Julia said, waving it away. "It was a traumatic incident, your first meeting, you didn't know anything about him except what Nathan told you, and you had no reason to doubt the word of a cop, right? Observation is just so unreliable. And you certainly had no way of knowing that there were personal issues between them."

"I'm picking up some sarcasm," Audrey said dryly. "I was new to the town. I didn't know hardly anything about either of them."

All the false humor drained out of Julia. "Then what's your excuse for the Driscoll pressure Trouble?"

Audrey actually sat up in surprise. "What are you talking about? Excuse? Why would I need an excuse?"

"Let's review, shall we?" Without waiting for an answer, she continued in a bright, falsely-cheerful tone. "Some douche gave two Driscolls a Trouble that made them the center of a pressure bubble caused by and directly proportional to the emotional pressure they were experiencing. You and Nathan talked one of them down, figuring out what triggered it and how to control it. Then his brother started freaking out, killing people caught in the pressure bubble and endangering the town. Communication with him was impossible."

"His brother offered to let Duke kill him so that Aiden and his child would be safe," Audrey said softly.

Julia nodded. "And to the best of your knowledge at the time, your other options for resolving that situation were...?"

"Deep-dive equipment which we didn't have access to."

"And?" When Audrey shook her head, Julia continued, "Killing Nathan to permanently end the Troubles, one and all."

"That wasn't an option," she snapped.

"And neither was Duke. Do you remember why?"

Audrey's eyes dropped, but she didn't answer.

"Because Duke killed his brother Wade defending Jennifer when Wade went after her with a knife and the Crocker Trouble, inexplicably, ate itself. And all of a sudden, when you needed an answer that didn't involve personal sacrifice on your part, you and Nathan had no qualms about demanding that Duke murder a man who loved his brother and his town enough that he was willing to die to take out one Trouble. You would have let Haven get crushed by Aiden's Trouble rather than kill Nathan to end them all, wouldn't you?"

"It didn't come to that!"

Julia met Audrey's hot glare with a cool gaze. "Because Duke used his connections to get the deep-dive equipment you needed to go talk Aiden down. And then when Nathan's line sprung a leak, he made sure Nathan got back to safety."

A shaky, wide-eyed nod.

"And you thanked him by...?"

The adrenaline brought by reliving such a tense time dissipated into confusion. "Thanked him?" she repeated, like the words were completely foreign. But given the stories Duke had told that day and things Julia had heard and seen in her own timeline, they might very well have been.

"Yes," she said slowly, patiently. "Thanked him. Because he was under no obligation to help you, to use his connections and get that equipment on such short notice, to suit up and go in, to help your boyfriend back to safety. You expected to use him to be your solution, and when you couldn't use him the way you wanted, he found another solution for you anyway. He saved the town and your boyfriend's life, and you didn't thank him. So. What's your excuse?"

"I shouldn't need to thank anyone for doing the right thing," Audrey said hotly.

The tiny woman leaned back, assessing Audrey coldly. "Of course not. They should just fall over and worship at your feet, throw themselves as offerings onto the altar of Audrey Parker, the satisfaction of having been useful the only thanks they need. God, you've got Mara's arrogance, her selfishness, and - oh yeah - her capacity for doing terrible things to people. Maybe I should slap you back to Mara; there doesn't seem to be much of a difference between you."

The other woman paled. "You wouldn't."

"You're right," Julia admitted. "I wouldn't. But what I would do is smack you back to Sarah and deliver you to Vince and Dave. They were her Duke and Nathan, from what I understand." She gave Audrey a sly smile. "I wonder if she'd look past the sixty years they've aged and treat them as...warmly...as she did in her own time."

Perhaps Audrey might have said something, but before she could string words together into a coherent idea, Duke strolled over from the bar.

"You called?" he said to Julia, smiling.

She smiled back. "I did! I think Audrey has something to say to you."

Duke turned to the other woman, still smiling, but she avoided his eyes. "I have to go," she muttered, squeezing out of the booth past him and practically running for the door.

Bemused, he turned back to the tiny woman still in the booth. "What was that all about?"

"Audrey doesn't want to admit how badly she treated you," Julia sighed. "Sorry. I tried. At least she knows how badly she treated you, now."

He leaned down to kiss her. "You tried," he murmured. "That's more than anyone else did for me. Thank you."

"You sure you don't want to install a lock on the inside of the storeroom?" she murmured back.

Duke laughed. "Don't tempt me, wicked wench. But, since I'm over here, can I get you anything?"

Julia flipped to a new page in the sketchbook. "Na- wait, not Tuesday. Stuffed mushrooms and a strawberry lemonade?"

Another brief kiss. "Coming right up."

"Thank you, Boss."

Duke took a moment to drink in the sight of his tiny borrowed girlfriend beaming before ducking into the kitchen to place her order and emerged a minute later with her lemonade. She tilted her head up to thank him with a kiss, but frowned.

"Are you feeling weird again?" she asked quietly.

That made him blink. "I...no?"

"Okay," she said with more than a hint of reluctance. "If you do, let me know. A new Trouble's started trying to get free." Julia flipped back a few pages before pointing. "This one."

"I'll let you know," he promised. On his wrist, the Sharpie tattoo gave three slow, warm pulses.

I. Love. You.

*********

"This is the last one tonight," Julia said, offering yet another Sharpie-marked stone to Duke, who pressed the lancing device to the inside of his arm and squeezed a drop of blood out before taking the stone, smearing it, and handing it back. She watched while his eyes rolled back, shaking slightly as the Trouble transferred from his body to the rock, drying the blood in the process. While he took deep breaths to ground himself again, she painted clear nail polish over the mark and the blood and set it with the two dozen others to dry. "How do you feel?"

Duke eyed his forearm. "I feel like I've been doing anti-drugs. Don't get me wrong, it's good, it's just...weird. I can't feel the Troubles inside me, but I can feel them leaving, and I don't know if it's just psychological relief or what, but..." He leaned forward to kiss her and press his forehead against hers. "Thank you, Julia. You're going to hear that a lot before you go home again."

"I just wish you'd hear it from more than just me," she replied dryly, straightening the  supplies on the shelf behind the couch.

"Ah, I'm not holding my breath." He stretched in a very distracting way. "I won't be killing anyone; that's good enough for me. So what are you going to do all day tomorrow, since you've got tomorrow night's Troubles already sketched out?"

Julia took a deep breath and blew it out. "Start writing that manual for Jennifer, and maybe sketch some more Troubles. Help in the kitchen or behind the bar, if you'll let me."

"Not a chance," he said immediately, shaking his head. "I'd have to pay you under the table, and my taxes are complicated enough as it is."

"You could pay me in sex," she suggested, giving him a sly smile.

"I'm already paying you in sex, tiny insatiable girlfriend. How much more sex do you think we can have?"

The look she gave him was wide-eyed and full of blatantly false innocence. "Gee, Boss, I don't know. Guess we'll have to try and see!"

Shaking his head again, but grinning broadly in anticipation, Duke stood and scooped her up before carrying her from the room.

*********

"That's uncanny," Duke said from the doorway, a mug of coffee in his hand, watching his tiny borrowed girlfriend navigate morning prep with an ease that bespoke long familiarity.

"Told you," she chirped without looking. "Your other self asked me one morning if I could help with kitchen prep because he had an errand to run. Took him almost a week to wake up early enough to catch me at it before I left for work, and then he decided that just paying me was worth not having to wake up that early and do it himself."

"The only reason I'm allowing this is because I'm already awake and could be doing it myself." He took a sip of coffee. "You really wake him up like that?"

"Every morning," she confirmed. "With the very rare exceptions of circumstances that do not physically allow it."

That had him curious. "Like what?"

"Like when he's had to take in a Trouble and is crashing too hard to feel anything but hurt."

Duke winced at that. "What do you do then?" he asked, morbidly curious.

She flashed him a small smile. "Give him two shots of Nyquil and see how he feels when he wakes up again. Just about done here, and Nathan's on his way."

"How do you know that?"

Julia finished drying her hands and poured herself a mug of coffee before shooing him out of the kitchen. "I told you, Boss, I can see through walls on the Lightscape. It's a little harder to identify Nathan because I have to check which Trouble his Maze tattoo is attached to, but really, is there anyone else who would be coming here alone at this hour?"

"Why would Nathan be coming here at this hour?" Duke retorted, allowing himself to be herded out and then heading to the door. "Nathan," he said as he opened it, gesturing the other man in. "Come in. Sit down. Tell me why the hell you're here this early if you're not picking Audrey up for breakfast or something."

"I want to talk to her." Nathan nodded in Julia's direction, sounding borderline hostile as per usual.

She sat at a nearby table and waved him over.

"Why are you here?" he demanded once he'd sat, ignoring the way Duke was leaning against the bar, watching.

Calmly, she took a sip of coffee. "Because Duke needs help, and if he doesn't get it from me, he's not going to get it at all and people are going to die."

"How do you know that?"

"Which part?" she asked sweetly. "No help? That's obvious because Vince didn't know anything about Jennifer's book, no one wants Mara back, and William's still in the Void. That leaves only me for someone who might know what's going on with his imprisoned Troubles, much less be willing and able to keep them from bleeding out."

For a second, Nathan looked almost grateful or apologetic. Then he snarled, "And what proof do we have that you're telling the truth?"

"I blighted a thirty-foot circle of grass, Nate," Duke said quietly. "Before the cave. I didn't know at the time what was happening. But I found it, in the family journal. The guy whose eyes were sewed shut? That was me. One of my ancestors killed a member of the Barrow family and took their curse. There's a lot of nasty stuff in there, and it's not going to stay in there."

Nathan swallowed. "But what about Jennifer?" he asked in a low voice.

"What about Jennifer? I love her, but if I'm going to be leaking Troubles, I don't want her anywhere near me. Wade killed Jordan, and I killed him. What if her Trouble comes out and I accidentally put Jennifer through that pain? There's no way to shut that Trouble off, you know that. Even if I could forgive myself for doing that to her...Nate, Wade tried to kill her, and she flinched away from me after that. If my touch caused her that much pain, would she ever trust me again?"

"And what if she never comes back?" Nathan asked somberly. "What if something happens to her over there? What if she doesn't want to come back? What if she does come back, but doesn't want anything to do with you because the same day she vanished, you shacked up with her lookalike!"

Duke looked away, not wanting to see what expression his tiny borrowed girlfriend was wearing. After a long minute, he said, "She wasn't breathing, in the cave. If something happens to her over there, at least she'll have been with someone who'd have tried to save her, and I'll still be better off than I would without Julia. If she doesn't want to come back, she'll be better off than she would without Julia, too. And if she comes back but doesn't want..." Briefly, he glanced at Julia and then averted his eyes again. "I still won't be a danger, she'll still be alive, and everyone will still be better off."

"Duke..." Nathan trailed off, unsure of what he wanted to say or how to say it.

"I know the things I've done, Nate," he said softly. "If Jennifer wants nothing to do with me, I won't blame her in the slightest. She's better than I deserve anyway."

For a very long moment, silence reigned in the Gull. Julia held her breath.

"She was right," Nathan said at last. "Julia. She was right. I don't hate you, Duke. But I'm terrified that if you don't hate me, then I'll have lost...someone very important to me."

Arched eyebrows and an incredulous, questioning look were all the response that statement got from the gypsy by the bar.

"...my...best friend," the other man muttered uncomfortably, eyes restlessly wandering over the floor.

Now Duke met Julia's eyes, silently begging for confirmation that the world had gone insane and he didn't just hear Nathan call him his best friend. The smile she was wearing, however, stated definitively that his ears hadn't betrayed him, and he ran his hands through his hair as if touching the strands would ground him in reality.

"You're serious," he blurted. "You've been acting like a dick because you never got past that stage in elementary school where you pick on the kids you like? And you've been hostile to my tiny borrowed girlfriend because you're afraid that she's going to fuck up things with Jennifer because you want me to be happy?"

Nathan glanced up, glanced at Julia, glanced away. "Sure, it sounds bad when you say it like that," he muttered.

"What- why now?" Duke asked, pulling a chair out to join them at the table. "It's been two days."

"Parker and I had a fight," he said almost sullenly. "If she'd just killed me, a lot more people would be alive and you wouldn't have been re-Troubled."

"That's not precisely true," Julia said firmly, startling both men, who stared at her in shock. "I've been looking into that, because that's not how things work at all in my timeline and I wanted to know why they were different. Killing you wouldn't have ended the Troubles."

Nathan looked mildly affronted. "Why not?"

"Because it's not Audrey killing the one she loves, or Lucy, or Sarah, that would end the Troubles." She gave them a moment for that to filter through. "It's Mara, killing William. This is the peril of translation without context," Julia said dryly.

"That...makes more sense," Nathan said slowly. "And, in light of that, I'm glad that Audrey refused to kill me." He gave Duke a guilty look. "But that still doesn't excuse her acting selfish and self-centered in other ways."

"What?" Duke sat back in a gesture of refusal. "No. Tell me you did not get into a fight with Audrey over me."

"We were selfish and took you for granted," Nathan insisted. "I was doing it because I was trying to make sure you hated me, but I know that's not the right way to treat a friend, so...I'm sorry, Duke. I was afraid that there was no way for us to go from...what we were...to being friends, so I ..."

"...gave as good as you got," Duke finished firmly. "I'm not blameless. We gave each other a lot of shit. And I fully intend to keep giving you shit," he said, half-toasting with his coffee mug, "and I expect you to do the same only now, we know that we've got each other's backs. Right?"

Lacking anything to toast with, and having gotten a dirty look from Julia when he glanced at her mug, Nathan nodded. "Right. But if Parker or I don't thank you for doing something..."

"I'll send you a bill," Duke deadpanned. "In fact...I can make up a backdated bill for all the favors I've done you that I never got thanked for. If you want."

Nathan deadpanned back, "What rate are you charging?"

"Best friend special," he answered, toasting with his mug again. "One handwritten thank-you for each item on the list."

"Sounds fair. Send it to HPD and I'll take care of it."

"What about Audrey?" Again, Julia started the other two by speaking up.

Nathan didn't even blink. "She'll have to write her own thank-you notes."

"I dunno, Nate." Duke leaned back, wearing a shit-eating grin. "I think she's going to have to do something different."

"Like what?" the other man asked warily.

"Like...take her boyfriend out on a couple of dates."

"Duke..."

"Hey. You want me to be happy, I want you to be happy. That's the way friendship works. Deal with it, alright?" He took a swig of coffee, grimaced at it being lukewarm, and pushed the mug aside. "This way, Audrey can apologize without actually having to admit she was wrong, I get to make her uncomfortable by dictating the terms of the dates, and you get to go out on dates with her. Everybody wins! So," he said, leaning conspiratorially close, "where do you want to go on your dates?"

While Nathan thought, Julia gathered the mugs and stood. "Celebratory breakfast?" she asked. "Fresh coffee, bacon, the really good maple syrup?"

"Sounds like an excellent idea, kitchen wench. Thank you." Duke grinned at her and got a kiss in return. "If you could just lock the door on your way?"

Laughing, she did just that.

*********

"It's not?" Vince asked, flabbergasted. "Are you sure?"

Julia waved the vampire novel. "Absolutely. Mara and William created the Troubles; the Barn was some kind of prison machine meant to reform her until she realized how wrong she was and killed William, which - there's no words for the physics, just trust me that that would have ended the Troubles for good."

"But Nathan killed Howard," Duke said slowly from the other hard plastic hospital chair while from his bed, Dave quavered, "And we threw William into the Void."

Vince ran pudgy fingers down his face. "Without the Barn, without William, how are we going to end the troubles? I hate to say it, but if only Audrey..."

"That wouldn't have worked," Julia repeated sternly. "I told you, what I found in the book clearly indicates that it's Mara who would have had to kill the one she loves."

"But what about the warning in the Cabot journal?" whined Dave. "That our salvation would be our doom?"

Julia sat casually on Duke's lap. "That was a warning that if William emerged, so would Mara."

The two older men looked at each other. "That does make a lot more sense," Vince said mildly. "But then...how are we going to end the Troubles?"

"I don't have an answer for that," she sighed. "I don't even know how we're going to end the Troubles in my timeline, I just know that there's a way to do it. The Barn wasn't meant to be a permanent solution."

Duke shifted slightly, frowning. "Wasn't meant...by who? Who built the Barn?"

The four of them glanced around at each other. No one knew.

"Who indeed," murmured Vince.

 Julia sighed. “I guess I’ll just have to poke around and see if I can find something.”

“The Barn’s gone,” Duke said quietly.

She looked at him like he was crazy. “No, it’s not.”

“We all saw it vanish when Nathan shot Agent Howard,” quavered Dave, hands twisting in his hospital blanket.

“Yeah, and I was inside it. It was crumbling, falling apart. Jennifer heard William and Audrey talking about it. It’s gone.”

Undeterred, she kissed his nose. “You were inside it for a subjective minute. I studied it for six months. It’s still there; I can see it. In fact…”

The tiny woman trailed off, eyes unfocused, craning her head around to stare at the ceiling as far as the other three could tell.

"Okay that's...so he...but what...aha!" she exclaimed finally, bringing her gaze down to focus on the room again. "Okay, so when Nathan shot Agent Howard, he effectively shot the Barn in the brain. But since it's a machine and not a living thing, all he did was disable it, like taking the battery out of a car or ripping the steering column out."

Duke didn't seem convinced. "Jennifer said William told Audrey that the Barn was dying."

"I don't put it past William to have...stretched the truth," Vince said from across the small room. "Julia, can the Barn be repaired?"

The tiny woman's gaze drifted through the ceiling again. After a few minutes, she made a small sound of doubtful surprise and shook her head. "If it can be," she said, still staring at something they couldn't see, "I don't know how to do it. But I set off some kind of...alarm, or beacon, maybe an emergency signal...? I don't know. But I'm pretty sure whoever set this whole thing up is going to come investigating. " Julia grimaced. "I sure hope Jennifer learns to see the Lightscape by then, because I can sketch out what someone from that world looks like compared to people here, but that does no good unless she can see it."

Dave sat up straighter in his hospital bed. "Do I look different?"

"Not like they do," answered Julia. Then she turned to kiss Duke on the cheek. "Remind me later to add sketches of Audrey to Jennifer's manual, Boss?"

"As you wish, tiny borrowed girlfriend," he replied, claiming another kiss from her lips.

*********

"And this will let Jennifer-"

"Anyone, really."

"-track...me?" Duke eyed the altered compass warily.

Julia carefully capped the bottle of clear nail polish. "You, or Audrey, or Nathan. Depends on which plate is fitted in. Jennifer will have to add her own blood to her plates."

"I really hope we never have to use these," he said, arms going around her from behind, nuzzling her hair. "But if we do...thank you for making them."

"I got abducted once," she said in a small voice. "I woke up and was able to let my Duke know I was alive before he started panicking, but being able to pulse his tattoo only lets me communicate with him. Vince mobilized the Guard into a grid of the town and they were able to find me by me touching the tattoos that were closest to me, but...I never wanted him to feel that helpless again. So I made the compasses."

"He is very, very lucky to have you," murmured Duke. "And I don't think there's anything I can do to repay you for everything you've done."

"I'm not done yet, Boss," she said dryly. "There's still the matter of getting your tiny girlfriend home."

His arms tightened slightly around her. "Even if you can't, for whatever reason, you've made sure that I'm not going to accidentally kill anyone because a Trouble got loose. And you turned my friends into actual friends. Hey," he said gently when she didn't respond. "What's wrong?"

"Which would be worse?" Julia asked, hands spread across the counter's surface. "If everything here went to hell and everyone you cared about died, leaving you all alone...or having a way to get from wherever you are to me, but knowing that my Duke would be there as well?" Something else occurred to her and she added, "O-or that it might not work at all, depending on if we ended the Troubles there?"

One strong, browned hand covered hers, fingers intertwining. "You know me better than that," he said gently. "Even a snowball's chance in hell is better than no chance."

"Then I need you to bleed for me one last time," she said, reaching for a small glass vial.

It took more than a few drops to fill, and then Duke backed away while Julia cut herself and bled into a slightly-larger vial before sticking the small one in, sealing it somehow, and then closing them both into a metal tube on a chain. He didn't need her warning to stay away while she bandaged her cut and swiped everything in the area with a disinfecting wipe. When she was done cleaning up she waved him back over and presented him with the strange pendant.

"It's a last resort," she told him solemnly. "Smash the two vials so that our blood mixes, and as long as I'm still Troubled, it will open a portal between you and me."

"He has one too, doesn't he?" Duke asked as he hung the chain around his neck.

Julia nodded. "So do I. That would have been my ride home if I couldn't figure out Jennifer's book."

"So that's it, then?" He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her to his chest. "All the Troubles are out of me, Jean's foster parents are holding off on adopting her for a few years to see if my 'medical condition' clears up, you're written a very extensive guide for Jennifer, put together the tracking compasses and the blood...portal thing..." He took a deep breath. "All that's left is bringing her back and going back to your Duke."

Silently, she nodded into his chest.

"Can we do that in the morning?" he murmured into her hair. "I want to spend tonight thanking you, however insignificant that is compared to how much I owe you."

That made her grin. "Duke, there's nothing insignificant about your thanks. I'll even let you make waffles in the morning."

"Wicked wench," he breathed as he claimed her smiling lips.

*********  

In an empty field, Julia lifted the cheesy vampire novel while Duke waited a significant distance away, well out of earshot. An enormous white wooden door spun into existence and, holding her breath, Julia twisted the doorknob.

On the other side, her near-double blinked from the couch in the Cape's state room before shouting for Duke, who came running in moments later dressed in jeans and an unbuttoned denim shirt, a pistol in one hand and a shotgun in the other.

"What's wrong?" he demanded, looking around for armed intruders and not seeing Julia or the door.

The woman who had to be Jennifer pointed. "Nothing, I think? But your...Julia...opened a Door right there."

"I don't think he can hear me," Julia said as Duke failed to see her. "Tell him to sit his gypsy ass down for me?"

Jennifer licked her lips nervously. "Uh...she says to...sit your gypsy ass down?"

Immediately, Duke straightened. He directed an incredulous look at the tiny woman in front of him, then in the direction she was staring, then stalked to the other side of the couch and sat, firearms still securely in both hands, glowering protectively as she edged closer to the Door.

"Oh, for the love of - tell him to stop glaring, I'm coming home in a minute and he'll get the harness?"

"She says...stop glaring, she's coming home in a minute and you'll get the...harness?" Jennifer sounded highly uncertain about that, but Duke perked up like a dog being promised a treat and set the guns aside.

"Oh, thank you, tiny pirate queen," he breathed with evident relief.

"I'm not even going to ask," Jennifer muttered to Julia. "So, what's the plan?"

"Should be pretty straightforward," she answered. "We'll cross together and I'll hand you the book as we do, but first...I want to talk to you a minute."

Jennifer looked alarmed. "I didn't- he didn't- we didn't do anything!"

"I wouldn't be angry even if you did," Julia assured her, trying not to laugh. "But listen - Duke, your Duke, he doesn't trust easily and he doesn't get attached to people easily. He's had a really shitty life and been stabbed in the back or abandoned so many times that what he feels for you...it scares him, because he's afraid of losing you. He loves you, Jennifer. You're a bright spot in his life that he doesn't feel like he deserves because of all the things he's done. He's been on drugs, gotten off drugs, smuggled and cheated and stole to survive, killed to save lives, and had a lot of sex with women who meant nothing to him." She paused to give the other woman a moment for that to sink in. "You mean something to him. You mean everything to him, and if you choose to walk away from him he won't blame you because he thinks he doesn't deserve someone as wonderful as you. But if you accept him, spotty past and all..." Julia's eyes drifted to her gypsy, and she smiled. "Well, I expect you've seen how devoted Duke can be."

"He's been a perfect gentleman," Jennifer said primly, turning to hide her blush from Duke.

"He was such a perfect gentleman to me in high school that I thought for years he wasn't interested," Julia told her. "Your Duke was ready to tear Haven apart until he found you. If you asked him to lay the moon at your feet, he'd probably shake all his contacts until he found a guy who could get him an actual moon rock. Just remember that, okay? Nothing he's done with anyone else means as much to him as you do."

"In other words, you had sex with him," she said a little bitterly.

Julia hesitated for a moment before nodding. "He wanted to thank me for taking all those Troubles out of him before they got loose and hurt or killed anyone else. They're all gone; he's safe now, and like I said: he won't blame you if you walk away, but his primary concern was not being a danger to you when I found a way to bring you back to him. I also wrote you some notes on how to use the book; I hope they work with your Trouble."

The other tiny woman stared, her expression softening. "You did all that for..."

"I couldn't leave Duke to suffer, even if he's not my Duke."

"Your Duke bent over backwards to make me comfortable," Jennifer admitted. "And...I guess...my Duke did the same for you."

"He'll do that, and more, for you," Julia said softly. "He loves you. Anything you want, he'll leap to give you. I also had some pretty strong words with Audrey about taking him for granted and using him," she continued in a lighter tone. "Nathan was pretty pissy because he was afraid you'd break up with Duke over having slept with me, but he and Duke talked about it and worked out some of their issues, so that's someone else that will be happy to see you come back."

Jennifer thought about that for a minute. "It's like we switched Dukes for a week," she said, offering a verbal olive branch. "Whatever my Duke did with you, it's okay because he was your Duke for that week."

"That's a good way to look at it," laughed the other woman. "So, you ready to go home and be treated like a queen?"

"Just a minute," she said, holding one finger up before dashing to the couch where she sat herself in Duke's lap and kissed him in a very appreciative way. "Thank you for everything," she told him shyly, blushing, before scurrying back to the Door and leaving him looking astonished. "Okay. I'm ready."

Julia extended the book halfway through the Door; Jennifer grabbed it. Gingerly, they each put a foot on the other's side and rotated around the book until each was standing in her own timeline.

"Thanks for saving my life and fixing my boyfriend," Jennifer blurted.

Julia smiled. "Just make him happy; that's thanks enough. Goodbye, Jennifer."

As she let go and the Door began to close, she heard the other woman say, "Goodbye, Julia."