seaoftroubles | Preplay, ep 4x01 Fall Out

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Preplay, ep 4x01 Fall Out

Duke already did the very first scene, so the trick here will be to connect him -- and Luce and Tavi -- to Jennifer. I'm thinking that maybe, the same way I relocated Duke's mom to Baltimore, Jennifer could be in Baltimore for handwavy reasons, too? And she could go see this new therapist in town. Who listens to her story about hearing voices, recognizes the same things Duke has told her about the meteor storm and the barn, and goes "uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh so here's a thing you probably don't want to hear and I might lose my license but can I put you in contact with someone?" and clues Duke in?

Duke talks to Jennifer, figures she must be troubled, and tries to contact Haven again -- this time getting through only to be told that Duke Crocker's been dead for six months. He calls Dave, who he finally gets to listen, and finds out that Nathan is on the run. He talks Lucifer and Octavia into coming with him and Jennifer up to Maine to see if they can find Nathan and Audrey and find out what's going on

They find Nathan outside a biker bar, letting people punch him for money. Jennifer is apalled. Octavia is, I'm guessing, unimpressed. Maybe Lucifer makes the first move to say "hi" instead of Duke? I can totally see Duke getting ready to go over and Lucifer being all like "NAH LET ME GET A SHOT IN, THEN" and getting Nathan's attention

Arrival in Haven. Jennifer has caught Nathan up on what she heard from the barn bout how to end the troubles forever. There's a welcoming committee in town made up of Guardsmen with guns, led by Jordan. Duke catches Jennifer up on who's who in the crowd as the Teagues and Dwight show up to try to defuse the situation. Nathan tells the Guard that he's going to get Audrey to kill him to end the troubles forever. Enter a MFING TORNADO. Everyone takes cover, Vince convinces the Guard to clear out and let Nathan help defuse the weather trouble, Dwight offers to take folks back to the station to clue them in

I'm picturing the group splitting up here. Duke gets Jennifer to head to the Gull to get something to eat while he and Nathan work on the trouble. Octavia could go with her, show her the way to the Gull, maybe meet Wade? Or would she be unwilling to leave Duke with Nathan and Dwight? I'm guessing Lucifer will go to the station to find it deeply country and lacking in comparison to the LAPD. Anyway, either way, Dwight gives Nathan and Duke (and anyone who tagged along) a rundown on the weather events happening in town. Nathan remembers about Marion and her weather trouble. They decide to go check it out.

At Marion's house. There's a GIANT FUCKING STORM overhead, so it's hard to miss. Nathan, Duke, and Dwight go in to try to talk to Marion, but it's like the inside of an over-clocked meat locker. Ice and frost coat every surface. Dwight and Duke are immediately shivering. Nathan can't feel it though and sends them out so he can talk Marion down. This might be a fun place for Lucifer to step in and help out? I kind of like the idea of freshly capable of saying ILU Lucifer seeing a woman completely freezing up over her loved one's death. Nathan tells her that she has to learn to let go, uses his own example of not being willing to let Audrey go and thus ruining the end of the troubles as an example for this. Lucifer . . . responds like Lucifer? Anyway, Marion is eventually talked down (though not before trying to freeze Nathan solid). Meanwhile, outside, Dwight, Duke, Vince, and Dave watch the storm head towards town and lightning blow up Dave's old camper van

At the Gull: Duke expected it to be closed down since he wasn't around to run things even over the phone for six months (also they think the owner is dead), but the place is hopping. If Octavia has come with Jennifer, then maybe she texted? Maybe the text got lost/delayed due to Marion or maybe Duke is less nonplussed on arrival, either way. Anyway. Wade shows up all "OMG DUKE YOU'RE ALIVE" and Duke is all "oh fuck my brother is here, we have a killer trouble and he's a total nincompoop, he's doomed"

At some point during/after all this, Duke tells Lucifer and Octavia he needs to stick around at least until they find out what happened to Audrey. Nathan is a self-destructive wreck, Haven has lost its collective goddamned mind and appointed DWIGHT as chief of police, it's a shitshow! He brings them to his in-Haven boat (Lucifer is unimpressed with its tininess I'm guessing), and they talk about being stuck in yet another shit situation in someone's homeworld.

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Duke had his hand up, all set to tell Nathan what a terrible plan that was, when Lucifer spoke. "What? Yes, this is what most police stations really look like. LA is . . . an outlier."

"Guys?" Dwight said. "You coming?"

He was standing in the door of the chief's office. The door to the chief's office with his name on it.

"You're the new chief?!" Duke asked.

"Huh," Lucifer said, raising his eyebrows. He took in Dwight again. "And here you seemed determined to plateau at lovable island carpenter."

He knew this Dwight wasn't the same as Fandom's Dwight. But he didn't care.

Dwight looked from Duke to Lucifer and back again. "The hell is he talking about?"

"Don't worry about it," Duke said cheerfully. "Totally different Sasquatch."

". . . Uh huh." Dwight shook his head. "Right, well. After this case . . . I can see where that one wanted to stick to carpentry." He gestured them into the office, towards a full on murder-board full of photos. Including the blown out front window of a bookstore, where it looked like some sort of bomb had gone off, and a human corpse encased in glass tucked into the sand. "Anyway, the Teagues talked me into it. Couldn't have an outsider coming in with all the troubles around, and Nathan, when you disappeared, folks who didn't know about the troubles took it hard. Figured they'd need a familiar face."

[note to self, update Dwight icon]

"Yes, yes, the lumberjack has become the lieutenant," Lucifer said, stalking into the office with the look of a man who was already bored and aching to be distracted. "Ah! A murder board! How nostalgic. Let me see..."

Ooh. A human body, covered in glass? Well, wasn't that novel? "This gives a whole new definition to 'window shopping'..."

"Is he for real?" Dwight asked Duke.

"Oh yeah," Duke said, nodding. "He's actually helped the LAPD sole any number of cases."

"If this was anywhere other than Haven," Nathan said, going up to stand next to Lucifer, peering at the board and tapping the photos of the bookshop. "I'd say this was a bombing."

"No bomb," Dwight said. "No particulates found at the scene. Witnesses said it was like being in the middle of a windstorm only there was no wind outside."

"So yet another freak weather event," Lucifer said, sliding his hands into his pockets. "And I assume there's no handy list of people's mad little powers available?"

“No,” Dwight said. “But that’s not a bad idea.”

Duke, meanwhile, was peering at the photo of the corpse.

“We found that this morning,” Dwight said. “Lucassi said the sand got so hot it turned to glass and the victim was trapped inside.”

“This was here. In Haven.” Duke had been away too long if he had to ask that.

“You recognize it?”

“It’s called a fulgurite. It happens when lightning hits the sand. Doesn’t usually have human bodies in it though.”

Nathan lifted his chin to Lucifer. “More weather. . . . Marion Caldwell.”

Lucifer threw him a glance. "Finally, you say something useful," he said. Beat. "Who?"

"I don't recognize the name from the files," Dwight said.

"That's because there was never any report," Nathan said. "It was Audrey's first case in Haven. Audrey discovered Marion had a weather trouble. Killed someone. But we thought her trouble was under control."

Dwight reached for his phone. "I'll get an address."

Duke let out a soft sigh. "Time to chase after a killer trouble. Home sweet Haven."

Lucifer beamed at him. (He should probably not be beaming right now.) "Oh, cheer up," he said. "Nothing like solving a good crime to get back into the swing of things!"

Honestly, his sheer Luciferness was reassuring. Duke gave him a faintly wan smile in return.

"Right. Let's go see Marion, then."

Marion's house was not hard to find. It was a cute little cape cod on a decent sized plot of land by the water -- and the sky above it was a roiling mass of black clouds that didn't match any of the sky around it.

"I'm not a meteorologist," Duke said, having to yell to be heard above the wind, "but uh. This doesn't look good!"

"At least it's a handy pointer towards our suspect," Lucifer called back. "If a bit drafty!"

He strode past the others towards the door, uninterested in stopping.

"The hell does he think he's doing?" Nathan barked, storming after him.

"He knows he doesn't actually work here, right?" Dwight asked.

"He knows," Duke promised. "He just doesn't care."

And jogged to keep up.

The inside of Marion's house was like the inside of a meat locker. An over clocked meat locker. In Antarctica. Frost coated the windows and crept along the walls, and Duke and Dwight both immediately started to shiver.

"Marion!" Nathan called, undeterred. "Hello?!"

"Mind turning up the thermostat a bit?!" Lucifer called, as he continued his stubborn beesline to... whatever part of the house was closest. This was the hall. Was that the living room up ahead, or the kitchen? "Marion?!"

This felt like it was perhaps not a very healthy temperature for humans.

Maybe he should say that out loud.

"This does not feel like a healthy temperature for humans."

"No k-kidding," Dwight muttered. "It's gotta be t-twenty below zero in here."

Duke bounced on his toes, trying to stay warm. "H-how did, uh, Audrey talk Marion down the first time?" He could kick himself for not checking sooner. Like when they weren't risking frostbite just by standing there.

"She showed Marion that her friend Conrad secretly loved her," Nathan said. He wasn't shivering; his teeth weren't chattering. Though his breath misted just as much as Duke's and Dwight's did, he didn't seem affected in the least.

Just off the entry way, they'd find the living room, where the frost had built up even further. There were two chairs, both occupied, neither occupant looking at the visitors.

"Right, well, if that's all, you lot should probably leave," Lucifer said, frowning as he turned around in the entrance. "Especially you, love. I don't want to risk you freezing the whiskers off that ridiculous moustache."

"Get out of here before you freeze to death," Nathan said, nodding faintly.

"This cold is affecting you just as much as it is us," Duke pointed out, rubbing his hands together furiously.

"I can't feel it," Nathan said. "I'll last longer."

"I really didn't miss your stubborn martyr streak, Nate."

"Get out," Lucifer told Nathan. Helpfully. "Your ability to forget that you are dying is adorable in an insufferable sort of way, but also completely unnecessary, and I don't want to deal with Duke losing someone he inexplicably cares about."

He gave an idle sort of wave with just his fingers. "Shoo."

Nathan bristled. "No, no, she knows me. I should talk to her."

"Dammit, Nathan," Duke said, leaning over how as his body tried to curl up for warmth. "Luce is literally immortal, let him take this one!"

"Marion!" Nathan called again, trying to elbow past Lucifer. "Marion, it's Nathan Wuronos!"

One of the forms in the chairs moved with a crackle of ice as Marion opened her eyes. "Nathan Wuornos," she hissed, soft as a whisper and faintly shuddering. "You came back."

"Marion." Nathan stared down at her. "What happened?"

"My trouble came back too. Because of you!"

"Right, well, she clearly doesn't want to hear from you, that settles it. I'm getting extremely tired of your inability to bloody listen to anybody," Lucifer said, his hands snagging hold of Nathan's jacket with an easy grace. "And by anybody," he added, as he lifted Nathan off the floor, "I mean me."

And with an effortless thrust of his arms, he sent Nathan Wuornos flying through the doorway.

What? At least he wouldn't feel the ground when he hit it.

". . . Wow," Dwight said, and headed after him.

"I really wish I could do that." Duke gave Lucifer a tight grin. "You're definitely getting a kiss when I can feel my lips again!"

And then it was just Lucifer and Marion.

[I will do all the icon things in post, bleah]

"Right," Lucifer said, peering after Duke perhaps a moment too long.

(He wasn't worried. He had-- things to do.)

He turned towards Marion, slowly. "So you're mad at the idiot. I can hardly blame you for that, but is that truly reason enough to set the fury of the weather loose on this previously me-forsaken town?"

No. That didn't make sense.

He took a cautious step into the living room.

The creaking and cracking of ice continued as Marion sat up in her chair. Her breath rasped like her own vocal cords were frozen.

"Who. The fuck. Are you?"

Re: The police station/Marion's house, Duke, Nathan, Lucifer, Marion, etc

Re: The police station/Marion's house, Duke, Nathan, Lucifer, Marion, etc

Re: The police station/Marion's house, Duke, Nathan, Lucifer, Marion, etc

Re: The police station/Marion's house, Duke, Nathan, Lucifer, Marion, etc

Re: The police station/Marion's house, Duke, Nathan, Lucifer, Marion, etc

Re: The police station/Marion's house, Duke, Nathan, Lucifer, Marion, etc

Re: The police station/Marion's house, Duke, Nathan, Lucifer, Marion, etc

Re: The police station/Marion's house, Duke, Nathan, Lucifer, Marion, etc

Re: The police station/Marion's house, Duke, Nathan, Lucifer, Marion, etc

Re: The police station/Marion's house, Duke, Nathan, Lucifer, Marion, etc

Re: The police station/Marion's house, Duke, Nathan, Lucifer, Marion, etc

Re: The police station/Marion's house, Duke, Nathan, Lucifer, Marion, etc

Re: The police station/Marion's house, Duke, Nathan, Lucifer, Marion, etc

Re: The police station/Marion's house, Duke, Nathan, Lucifer, Marion, etc

Re: The police station/Marion's house, Duke, Nathan, Lucifer, Marion, etc

Re: The police station/Marion's house, Duke, Nathan, Lucifer, Marion, etc

Re: The police station/Marion's house, Duke, Nathan, Lucifer, Marion, etc

Re: The police station/Marion's house, Duke, Nathan, Lucifer, Marion, etc

Re: The police station/Marion's house, Duke, Nathan, Lucifer, Marion, etc

Re: The police station/Marion's house, Duke, Nathan, Lucifer, Marion, etc

Re: The police station/Marion's house, Duke, Nathan, Lucifer, Marion, etc

Re: The police station/Marion's house, Duke, Nathan, Lucifer, Marion, etc

Re: The police station/Marion's house, Duke, Nathan, Lucifer, Marion, etc

Re: The police station/Marion's house, Duke, Nathan, Lucifer, Marion, etc

Re: The police station/Marion's house, Duke, Nathan, Lucifer, Marion, etc