Season one catchup preplay

[seaoftroubles]

There'll be more detail in the OCD, but the basic shape is this:

As You Were: Duke and Octavia head back to Haven for Audrey's surprise birthday party (braced for troubles). They head out to a remote island off the coast where everyone's gathered at an old, closed down hotel. The proprietor turns out to be a shapeshifter that kills the people it turns into. Everyone wonders who the baddie really is. The ME dies, Lucifer sends up a demon to possess her body and yell at Duke for dragging Octavia back into his world's bullshit. Audrey is revealed to be the shapeshifter, but didn't die because She's Different. They all go back to the mainland, where Duke reveals that he's the kid in the Colorado Kid murder picture, and Audrey emotionally blackmails him into sticking around longer to answer some questions.

The Hand You're Dealt: Duke and Audrey hunt down and question a couple of the other people in the Colorado Kid photo. Meanwhile, Nathan and Audrey try to track down someone with a fire trouble. Duke's old babysitter turns out to have death visions when she touches people, and after getting blown up by the fire trouble, tells Duke how he's going to die right before she dies herself.

The Trial of Audrey Parker: Audrey talks Duke into hosting a poker game before leaving. Two of the other guests hijack the boat to try and get something Duke's smuggling for a client. Honestly there are a lot of holes in this thanks to the way things are shaping up with Fandom in the mix. Why would Octavia let Duke stick around when now they KNOW someone in Haven is going to kill him? Octavia isn't a good replacement for Julia, Julia's a ninny. Octavia would just beat the shit out of the baddies for being mean to Duke. And getting the boat cracked delays them too much in going back to Fandom. Maybe we should skip this one. It doesn't really add much to Duke's character development that hasn't kinda been covered by Fandom anyway.

Comments

As You Were

[seaoftroubles]

It's Audrey's birthday, and everyone's throwing her a surprise party at an old abandoned hotel on a remote island. Because, you know. As you do. There is a murder. They wonder whodunnit. There's a big storm. It's all very classic noir-horror.

I think we can live-play the scene where they decide to head back to Haven for the party.

Re: As You Were - the boat ride out

[seaoftroubles]

In which Octavia and Audrey have a chance to talk. Or maybe just stare at each other from across a small boat being steered by Old Gus (aka my crotchety old fisherman OC).

Re: As You Were - the boat ride out

[betterthanaplan]

Dr. Carr had already arranged for the boat to take Audrey out to Carpenter's Knot, which was the only reason Duke hadn't insisted on taking the Sanguine Moon out for it, instead. He sat on the back of Old Gus's little fishing boat, feeling the early morning sun and spray against his cheeks, and tried to ignore Audrey's pacing.

"If you two dragged me out here at 8 AM on a Saturday just to watch Duke meditate," Audrey said, kicking him gently in the side of his foot as she went past. "I'm going to be so pissed."

Re: As You Were - the boat ride out

[okteiviakom]

Octavia was sitting down, too, despite her own restlessness. She preferred to keep that to herself.

(From Audrey, anyway. Duke already knew the kind of time she'd been having lately.)

"I wouldn't drag anyone anywhere just to watch him meditate," she rasped, her eyes flicking from Audrey to Duke. "It's not that special."

Re: As You Were - the party gets started

[seaoftroubles]

SURPRISE, AUDREY! It's a birthday party! We meet the suspects:

Nathan
The Chief
Vince
Dave
Eleanor
Julia

and Vaughn Carpenter, the proprietor, who will shortly go off and SHED HIS SKIN AND TAKE SOMEONE OVER.

Re: As You Were - the party gets started

[betterthanaplan]

The hotel on Carpenter's Knot was a grand affair, enormous and sprawling, and surrounded by wild, overgrown gardens. Duke led them all up to the front door and into a small, but well-appointed foyer.

"This place gives me the creeps," Audrey noted. Duke didn't say a word, just stopped at the foot of the stairs an turned in place, looking around.

Re: As You Were - the party gets started

[okteiviakom]

"I've seen worse," Octavia said, with a vaguely, faintly joking tone that Duke was probably more likely to interpret correctly than Audrey - or anyone else in earshot - was.

She tilted her head up, as if to look towards the top of the stairs, but her eyes flicked back down to Duke almost immediately.

Re: As You Were - the death

[seaoftroubles]

After a chance to claim rooms for the weekend and put their stuff away, everyone gathers for the party proper. It starts storming outside, and the power blinks. Audrey is the last to arrive. Julia goes looking for -- I don't know, the bathroom or something? -- and finds Vaughn's shed skin. The Chief infodumps about the local shapeshifter lore.

Re: As You Were - the death

[betterthanaplan]

The storm only got worse as the morning wore on. Though it couldn't be much past noon, the sky was as dark as night in between cracks of lightning. The rain was starting to come down in earnest as the guests began to gather again in the party room. The old men: Vince, Dave, and the Chief; sat around the coffee table, pestering Julia for stories of her travels. Nathan and Duke paced at opposite ends of the room, Nathan playing with a set of plastic party masks. Eleanor bustled about, playing party host.

"Anybody seen Audrey?" she asked.

"Uh." Duke shrugged. "Just long enough to know she was looking for Mr. Carpenter." He glanced back over his shoulder at the hallway, only to startle back a little when Nathan happened to pass by holding a balloon and staring at him from behind a white plastic cat mask.

Nathan had always been extra weird when it came to parties.

Re: As You Were - the death

[okteiviakom]

Octavia wasn't doing much better than Nathan, really. She'd found herself a corner of the room to stand in with a glass in hand, just quietly watching everyone else, figuring out the various dynamics in the room like the outside observer that she was.

... Also the party decor. She hadn't actually seen cardboard hats like that outside of TV.

Re: As You Were - the search part one

[seaoftroubles]

Everyone splits up to gather resources. Audrey, Nathan, and the Chief all go to the boathouse. Duke ends up searching the attic and finds an old radio he thinks he can fix. Vince, Dave, Julia, and Eleanor all peer at each other suspiciously over hors d'oeuvres.

Re: As You Were - the search part one

[betterthanaplan]

It was raining in earnest now as Duke and Octavia made their way up into the attic. The dust was thick on the floor, and all the boxes of old linens and dinnerware and things that had been stored away up here while the hotel was closed.

"Yeah, so," Duke said, looking around with a heavy sort of resignation. "This is not the easy-going, get-your-mind-off-things kind of trip I'd hoped for."

[there's no canon for this, but I figured they could use a spot to chat outside the dictates of the actual show scenes! I can handwave the stuff that doesn't directly involve either Duke or Octavia in the narrative, later.]

Re: As You Were - the search part one

[okteiviakom]

"It's Haven," Octavia rasped, blandly, as she peered into a box. "I don't know what you were expecting."

What either of them had been expecting, really. She hadn't exactly fought him on the idea of getting the hell out of Fandom, after all.

Re: As You Were - the search part two

[seaoftroubles]

Everyone gathers again. The Chief announces there's no boat. The group splits up again, this time to go look for a body. Audrey puts together a theory about the shapeshifter living as Vaughn Carpenter peacefully for years. Duke discovers the boat's been shot up.

Re: As You Were - the search part two

[betterthanaplan]

Audrey, Nathan, and the Chief all came in, shaking excess water off their clothes. Duke looked up from his work on the radio, and took in the serious expressions on their faces.

"Well?" Julia asked.

"No," the Chief said. "No, nothing, there's no -- boat, no raft. Nothing really. Just a, uh. Some old lanterns, and a couple thousand cockroaches."

That was a lot of words from a man who didn't usually babble like that. Duke shot him a narrow-eyed look, then turned back to his radio. "Little better luck on our trip to the attic.

"You two went to the attic by yourselves?" Nathan asked. "I thought we said to stick together."

Re: As You Were - the search part two

[okteiviakom]

"Yeah, and we stuck together, with each other," Octavia drawled, sitting across from Duke. "Come on, Nathan. You think either of us would let the other one get killed by the chameleon?"

Re: As You Were - accusations part one

[seaoftroubles]

Duke accuses Nathan of being the shapeshifter, believing that he's the one who shot the boat. He's found himself an ax, which he's not shy about waving around. Audrey suggests they test people by having her open her presents -- if someone doesn't know what they got her, they're the shapeshifter!

Nathan gets his present wrong, because the woman he recently broke up with decided to get Audrey something else instead. There's a lot of shouting, Nathan gets knocked out (in canon by the Chief, but I can see Octavia doing it instead). Audrey ties Nathan to a chair, then convinces the Chief and Duke to disarm. The power blinks out, and when it comes back, the Chief's gun is gone.

Everyone scatters in a panic.

Re: As You Were - accusations part one

[betterthanaplan]

Duke had taken a break from radio fixing to follow a hunch. He'd slipped up to the rooms and went looking for Nathan's gun, which he said he'd left in his bag.

It wasn't there.

So he went down to the boathouse. It wasn't far from the hotel itself, and while the thunder still crashed with disturbing regularity, the rain was easing up a bit.

What he found there seemed to confirm his theory. So he headed back to the hotel, pausing just long enough to pull the axe out of the stump by the firewood pile next to the docks.

He would go identify this "chameleon". Maybe even end his trouble once and for all, if he tried anything. And then Duke and Octavia were going to sail out of here and never. Look. Back.

Funnily enough, his number one suspect just happened to greet him the moment he walked back inside.

"You stay the hell away from me!" Duke yelled, brandishing his axe.

"What is wrong with you, you freak?!" Nathan yelled back.

He didn't get any points for that. Everyone in Haven knew how he and Nathan fought.

Re: As You Were - accusations part one

[okteiviakom]

Well, that was one way to summon Octavia.

She was both alarmed and steely as she demanded, "What the hell is going on?"

Re: As You Were - MOAR DEATH

[seaoftroubles]

Audrey, Nathan, Duke, and Octavia(?) go to the basement to try to fix the power. Flipping the breakers doesn't work, so they go looking for a generator. Meanwhile, upstairs, Eleanor gets pushed down the stairs. Her scream brings everyone running to see what happened. They find her dead with a broken neck. Vince finds a mysterious crack in the wall of the hallway behind the stairs. While everyone goes to see what's up, Lucifer's demon pops up in Eleanor to yell at Duke.

Re: As You Were - MOAR DEATH

[betterthanaplan]

Duke was officially freaking the fuck out.

There was a part of him that had always trended towards paranoia. A part he generally kept buried under layer upon layer of humor and bravado and liquor. But though he'd kept the bottle he'd grabbed from the party room, the sense that at any moment he could be attacked from any direction was making him twitchy and angry.

He trailed behind Audrey and Nathan as they headed into the basement to trip the breakers, and really wished he still had his axe.

Re: As You Were - accusations part two

[seaoftroubles]

Nathan pulls Audrey aside, asks if he trusts her, kisses her, then shoots her. BECAUSE SHE'S THE SHAPESHIFTER! The shapeshifter asks how he knew, and he tells her quietly that it's because he can feel the real Audrey, but can't feel her. As the shapeshifter dies, it says that it just wanted help, like it got from Lucy Ripley, and when Audrey didn't know how, it took her form in a panic. But she didn't die for some reason!

Nathan and Duke rush off to find her. She's unconscious in a trunk in a broom closet. Julia suggests using amonia as a smelling salt to revive her. She lives! Everyone's okay!

You know, except poor dead Eleanor.

Re: As You Were - accusations part two

[seaoftroubles]

As his father tried to explain the crack, Nathan looked from it to the chair in the corner, where he'd been tied.

Where he hadn't known he'd been untied, until his hands had dropped to his sides.

He rubbed his wrist, unable to feel his own skin, and looked at Audrey.

"Hey, can I talk to you for a second?"

Audrey nodded. "Yeah. Hey, listen, this is gonna get worse before it gets better. So we need to find some way to call for help."

Nathan nodded back, a faint up and down of his head. His vision blurred faintly as tears sprung to his eyes. "Do you trust me?"

Audrey frowned. "Yeah, of course I do."

Nathan took her hand, rubbing it between both of his. Nothing.

"Are you okay?" Audrey asked slowly.

Nathan shook his head. "No. I'm not." He pulled her in for a deep, firm kiss.

Nothing.

He pulled back while Audrey was still reeling ("what the hell are you doing?" she asked) and drew his gun from the back of his pants ("oh no -- please!")

And shot her in the chest.

Re: As You Were - epilogue

[seaoftroubles]

Duke pulls Audrey aside after they get back to the mainland to finally give her her birthday present. It's a locket he got from Lucy Ripley. Because he was the kid in the Colorado Kid picture.

DUN DUN DUN.

(I might do this live on the day, or just write it out in prose, depending on whether or not Octavia wants to weigh in.)

Re: As You Were - epilogue

[betterthanaplan]

Duke had done his best to balance being there for Octavia and giving her her space on the boat back to the mainland, and was pretty sure he'd failed at doing both. He wanted nothing more than to get them back to Fandom, where things at least felt a little simpler, but there was one last thing he needed to do first.

He flicked Octavia a quick smile. "I'll be right back, and then we'll head out, okay? I gotta give Audrey her present."