Title: The Other Side of the Door
Author: Neoxphile

Summary: a set of stand alone drabbles about who might have been on the other side of Audrey's door at the very end of 2x12.

Author's notes: each of these chapters is a self-contained "what if," not meant to connect to the others. I haven't decided if there will be any romance yet, but at the moment I'm leaning towards not.

"Nathan, you're early!" Audrey complained playfully, throwing open her door. Her eyes widened in surprise, because it wasn't Nathan who stood there.

Just before the wire of a stun-gun hit her in the chest, Audrey had time to realize that...

I.

... the olive-skinned man holding the stun-gun was dressed in black from head to toe. He wore a stylish black suit, and his dark hair was mostly covered by a pork-pie hat. His look was grim, as if he wasn't pleased to be in the middle of shooting her.

It was the last thing she thought about for a while.

When she came to, she was sitting in a chair, obviously in the middle of a cheap motel room. She started, surprised to realize that she wasn't tied down like she'd expected herself to be.

"Where am I?" she demanded of the man standing by the window. He was looking out to a covered up swimming pool. A few leaves had collected on the cover, and they were beginning to turn brown already.

"Old Orchard Beach," her capturer replied easily. "It has some historical significance."

"What?" Audrey asked blankly. A faint memory of the name rose up in her mind, but she thought it had only been the location of a story on the Channel 8 nightly news. At least she was pretty sure that she was still in Maine.

"In September of 1976 a man named Herbert Hopkins had an encounter he wasn't supposed to remember, right here in this town."

Audrey shot him an uneasy look. What possible relevance could something that had happened the year after Nathan and Duke's births have to her current predicament? "Did he?"

"He did. A young man came to him and revealed under hypnosis that he'd had a number of encounters with extraterrestrials. That of course, is impossible."

"Of course." Trying not to be obvious about it, Audrey studied the room around her, and had to repress a frustrated sigh. There was nothing in arms' reach that could be used to subdue the man.

"Of course?" he repeated mildly. "You don't believe in aliens, then, Ms. Parker?"

"I haven't given their existence much thought, one way or the other." That was true. She'd been far too busy to contemplate things that weren't causing problems in Haven.

He turned towards her. There was a gleam she didn't like in his flat gray eyes. "But you believe in a great many other things."

"Doesn't everyone?" she asked, pleased that her voice didn't tremble even a little despite the cold feeling his gaze gave her.

"No," the other man said severely. "They don't believe in such dangerous things as you do."

"Oh."

"You'd better stop," he warned. "If you don't, you'll be sorry."

"I don't-"

The man got up and walked over to her. She cringed when he reached into his pocket, terrified that he'd pull out a weapon. Instead he pulled out a shiny disk. It looked like a coin to Audrey, but the writing on it wasn't in a language she'd ever seen before, and she couldn't even begin to make out what the picture was.

He held it in front of her, flipping it between his fingers in a way that didn't seem physically possible. "Do you see this?"

"Yes."

It continued to flip between his fingers, and as she watched it, she became light-headed but she couldn't look away. All of the sudden, it slipped between two fingers and out of existence. "It was here," he said, "and now it isn't. Do you understand?"

Audrey opened her mouth, ready to say "not really" but she hesitated. "Yes."

"This can happen to anything. People, people you care about...they can slip between too. You don't want that, do you Ms. Parker?"

Fear for Nathan welled up in her, and right behind it was worry about Duke. "No, no, I don't."

"You can make them slip away, just like this coin. If you continue to believe those awful, dangerous things, you'll make it happen."

"But I don't want that," she squeaked.

To her horror, he put his hand under her chin and lifted it, staring at her with now dark, dark eyes, eyes that made Duke's look pale in comparison. "No more talk, Ms. Parker. Never tell anyone about the things you've seen. Not any more."

"But I do see them," she found herself protesting.

"Keep them to yourself. Understand?"

"I understand."

He patted her on the head. "Good girl."

With that he turned and walked out the door, leaving a shaken Audrey to watch him go.

As soon as he was gone, she picked up the phone and dialed Nathan's number. There was no answer. Duke's phone didn't pick up either.

Sighing, she thumbed through the phonebook and called a cab company. This time there was an answer on the other end of the line. Getting a ride back to Haven would cost a fortune, but she considered going home well worth the price.

If never speaking about the Troubles kept Nathan and Duke and everyone else safe, that was worth the price too.

The End

a/n: I'm going to have a busy November, but I'll try to update in a few days. fingers crossed.