I started writing something set in the final moments of episode 5.13, where Charlotte said Audrey would be absorbed into Mara but where she actually chose to prioritise Audrey instead.
But what if it had gone differently? What if it wasn't Audrey who resulted from that merging, and what if it wasn't Mara either? What if it was someone new ...
-
Nathan and Duke ran through the sudden wind to find Charlotte, kneeling on the ground between what looked like Mara and a pile of Audrey’s clothes. The women stood and turned to face them.
“Mara,” said Nathan.
“No,” came the reply.
This was good news, but Nathan heart sank. His heart sank because he could see - in the shake of her head, in the tone of her voice, in the way she held herself - he could see that this was not Audrey.
“What happened?” he said, dimly aware of how numb he sounded.
“Mara and Audrey have been combined,” Charlotte began.
“I am both of them,” the woman beside her agreed. “I am Mara and Audrey. I’m the others too; Lexie, Lucy, Sarah, Veronica, all of them. I’m all of them and none of them.”
Nathan tried to focus on the positives; Audrey was in there somewhere and Mara was neutralised. “What do we call you?” he asked.
“I’m not sure, but we have a more immediate problem,” she said, as she walked past him to Duke. “Mara really did create a bomb.”
She stepped up to Duke, who seemed too stunned by all of this to say anything, and put a hand on his arm as she told him, “Duke, I want you to know that none of this is your fault. What’s happening now and everything that’s happened right back to the beginning of all of it; none of it is your fault. You made better choices and fought harder than anyone else would have.”
Duke watched her cautiously, waiting to see who she would be most like; Audrey or Mara.
“You should know that one of Audrey’s biggest regrets in this whole thing, is what she didn’t do in Colorado.” As she spoke she was aware of Charlotte’s and Nathan’s two very different kinds of curiosity at this, but they would have to wait. Duke was her focus for now.
Duke’s face showed its own surprise. “She was never going to …” he began, and his eyes flicked over to Nathan. She was never going to cheat on someone she wasn’t even quite yet in a relationship with, he meant.
She reached up to his jaw and turned his face back to look at her. “Yes she was in love with Nathan, but her feelings for you weren’t really so different. She didn’t know she could have both of you.”
There were a lot of other things she could have said in this moment. She could have said how sorry she was that it was as Mara (not as Audrey or even Lexie) that she’d slept with him. She could have said that she remembered all of the Crockers who had ever lived in Haven and that he had fought the expectations and pressures of its Curse harder (and more successfully) than anyone who’d come before him. She could have told him that he didn’t deserve any of the shitty stuff that had happened to him, and that he’d had a reasonable expectation of better support from his friends.
She could have said all of that and she hoped that at some future point soon she would have the chance to. But in this moment, right now, words didn’t seem enough.
She leant forwards and kissed him. She pressed her lips to his for just a moment before she pulled away. In a way, it wasn’t much different from the kind of kiss one friend might give another. But in another way, it was a world apart.
star trek is actually told from the perspective of leonard mccoy which is why he’s always on the damn bridge in the episodes. those are just the only ones he’s there for; other exciting stuff happens but he misses it.
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