Haven: After the Gravedigger

[amichan]

I lean against the outside cabin wall as Julia unlocks the door, still both seething and disgusted.

"You gonna tell me what all of it was about?" she asks, "How in the hell you wound up all the way out there? and not getting a ride with the Wonder Twins back into town?"

"I don't even know where to start right now."

The door opens and I duck inside. I can feel myself getting more agitated. The need to pace. Shit.

"I know the dead came back," she says.

"Yeah. I had a reunion with dear old Dad."

"Oh," her tone goes from practical to concerned in short order, "What did he have to say?"

"Just wanted to tell me all about the wonders of our Family Trouble and it's storied and great history." I wave my hand.

Julia follows me through the galley into what passes for the sitting room. This doesn't feel right either. I don't know where I want to be.

"How I'm supposed to follow in his footsteps, start "curing" people." I make the motion with my hands, "Oh! and then the Rev shows up. I guess he knew while he was alive and Evi too, probably, who knows? But that's why he was after me palling up with him, because they love getting rid of Troubled. Curing means killing, by the way, did I say that?" I throw myself onto the couch and put my head in my hands for a moment, didn't we talk about that already? "Did you see your Mom? I should have asked that."

"No," she sits down nearby, "Blessing of having her cremated, I guess."

"Should have thought of that. Doesn't matter now though." I give a half-laugh.

"Duke...what happened?" she leans over to take my hand, but I pull away, too sweaty.

I stand up again. I can't. I can't.

"Duke," she says, sternly.

I look at her and those eyes they would have never have wavered if they'd been at that barn across from me, unlike Nathan so accusatory, or Audrey so nervous and scared.

"The Rev showed up while we were looking for people. His followers had taken Troubled, it turned out. He threatened to send them after Audrey if I didn't go with him, so I followed him out, well, you know where, bunch of his idiots, they'd gathered a mess of Troubled out there, had to be a dozen. Him, Dad...all eager for me to start curing, because I'm apparently just going to turn around and start stabbing people to death because they hand me a knife and go on about the Great Crocker Legacy." I shake my head, "I didn't, by the way."

"I know."

"Then it turns out somehow they've got Audrey and Nathan, and the bombshell gets dropped that the grave digger who is one of the Rev's chief disciples in this nonsense is the reason all the ghosts have come back, and Dad gets ALL excited, oh, now he's going to be freaking out and in denial because that's what they all do and now he's going to be begging you to save him, "put the knife back in his hand, boys, come on," because the grave digger's wife is there and she's got to be at least 8 months pregnant and now he's freaking out that he's baby's going to be damaged. It's a trouble that makes ghosts. Granted they're annoying as Hell, but it's ghosts. It's not like he's burning holes through people or--or melting holes in the sidewalk, or, I don't know causing radiation or something. It's GHOSTS, but he's standing their begging me to stab him and my father is cheering me on like it's little league. I just--no."

Julia gets up and comes towards me, but I can't.

"Duke Crocker! Stop backing away from me!" she scolds, "Or sit down, God damn it and stop pacing. You'll wear a hole through floor into the hold or worse crack the keel."

"He shoved the knife in my hand and threw himself on it." I tell her, "I just--I couldn't...there's nothing I could do."

"You didn't kill him," she says.

"And is wife is--is thanking me for killing him."

"You didn't kill him, Duke. He committed suicide."

I do manage to make it to the bathroom before the churning that's been building up for a while with the shakes expels what little remains in my stomach after I threw up in the woods managed to hold that in until Nathan and Audrey left.

Julia knocks carefully on the door, "You need anything?"

I swill my mouth out with the water from the tap, "I'm...I'm okay..."

I open the door, but wind up leaning in the door way.

"Are you seriously trying to bullshit me, right now?" She narrows her eyes, "I hate to ask you this, but...after he died...how did it feel? The blood absorbed into you, didn't it? Like when you cut, Dwight?"

I go to nod, but it makes her blur in front of me, "Yes, and it was...the best worst thing ever," I can see her searching my face, "I haven't felt anything like that in a long, long time. I could...the colors were so much. It was like I could feel the auras of people around me, sense bird's wings beating and see their songs...not...not good. If I just had that much more everything would be open to me, all of the mysteries." I realize my hand is shaking when I try to reach for her. She takes hold of it firmly, "It really brought home—like we were talking about. Dad being the way—the way he was. I'm not killing anyone. I'm not. Not just because of this."

"No, I know. Come on," she says, "Out of the bathroom door way. You--you must be hurting, you idiot, coming down off that high. You must have been hurting. I would smack you if I didn't think you'd fall over and take me with you."

She leads me back towards the sitting area and pushes me towards the couch. I flop down. I realize saying I'm not and never was a stupid thing. There might be a time I have to. I lean forward. I can hear her moving around in the bathroom and then the kitchen and something rattling.

"What are you doing?"

"Don't worry about it," she says, coming back over and sitting down next to me. She has a pill bottle balanced between her wrists, a glass of water and a bottle of dark liquid. She drops the dark bottle and then the pills onto the couch, "How shaky are your hands?" she asks.

I look down at them trying to determine but she just laughs. In the end I wind up being fed six of the pills and drinking from the bottle until she tells me to stop, once it gets in my mouth I realize it was NyQuil. Then she kisses me, "That should take some of the edge off, you idiot. You don't need to punish yourself. That wasn't your fault. He was a terrified fanatic. It probably wouldn't have mattered if his Trouble was to make flowers grow..."

"I shouldn't have said never," I tell her.

"What?"

"I might wind up stuck between a rock and a hard place. I might...if I have to, if something happens, do what you have to to keep my idiot self okay, okay?"

"What makes you think I wouldn't anyway?" she asks, "I have to protect my investment. Without you I have no place of business or place to live."

I can feel my limbs becoming heavier, and my eyes don't want to stay open, "Wench."

"Whatever you say, Boss." I feel her shifting over on the couch, "Come on, lay down."