Chapter Text
It seems like the world is ending. Again. She has a sickening feeling in her stomach that she won't make it through it. Because that seems to be her destiny.
Croatoan: Yes, but I can stop it. I will willingly go into the Barn. If the Void did change me, perhaps this is the way to show you who I once was. The father you loved.
Audrey: Thank you.
That would make everything so much easier. Haven and the world could be saved. Maybe she doesn't have to go. Maybe she doesn't have to sacrifice this one last piece of herself.
Vince: I don't think this is possible. You won't work.
Croatoan: Why? To power the barn you need Aether activated in living form, me.
Vince: I need more for the huge power necessary for a barn. The Aether needs a catalyst, a complementary energy to supercharge it. The same energy it has always needed, love. The energy it needed when she went in as Lucy and as Sarah.
Croatoan: I--
Vince: You do not have that.
Audrey: I do.
Of course it has to be her. She's not allowed to have this. She's meant to pay for her (Mara's) actions, over and over again. She needs to end it, once and for all. There was a part of her that always knew this would be temporary. She didn't want it to be. Oh, how she wants to fight this. But she can't. It's time. It's over.
Audrey: Vince said that if I went into the Barn with my father I could activate the Aether in him to stop the Void and the 27-year cycle. All the troubled would live, and the Troubles would be gone forever. It would be finally over, Nathan.
There is almost a type of relief in that. She can finally stop fighting. Maybe she's finally done. She has nothing left.
Nathan: Really? I was kind of just getting used to it.
She loves this man. This flawed, but good man. She doesn't want to do this to him. Not again. She's done it too many times. She wants to stay.
Audrey: I have to go.
Nathan: You do.
Audrey: And I won't be coming back this time.
Nathan: I know.
She knows Nathan's holding back tears. She isn't. She can't look at him when she breaks his heart. But he deserves to see the pain it causes her.
Audrey: I'm so sorry.
Nathan: What do you have to be sorry for?
He pulls her into a hug, and she doesn't want to let go. She wants to be with this man, know him, love him. She doesn't want to do this. But she has to. She always has to.
Audrey: Leaving you. I wanted us to have more time.
Nathan: We'll always want more time. The trick will be being thankful for the time we had. We had an amazing time.
Audrey: Yeah, we did.
Nathan: And I spent so much of it trying to keep you here, but now I realize the reason I loved you is because you're willing to go. You are an amazing person, Audrey Parker. I never felt anything till I met you. You saved me. You made me real. I love you, Audrey. I will always love you.
Part of her wants him to fight this. She loved him because he refused to lose her. She knows leaving, him letting her go, the way he's refused to so many times before, it's the right thing to do. Maybe they are just too tired to fight it this time. But she doesn't want that to be the end for Nathan. She wants him to live. She needs him to be OK. She can leave as long as she knows she won't leave behind a ruined Nathan. He has so much love to give. He shouldn't waste it on the ghost of her.
Audrey: Nathan, promise me something?
Nathan: Anything.
And there's that tear she's been waiting for. One single tear, that's all he'll allowed himself.
Audrey: I want you to be okay. I don't want you to be alone so promise me that you will find someone, you will find someone that will make you happy, and you will move on.
Nathan: Move on? How could I ever do that? I will think about you every minute of every hour of every day, and that's why I'll be okay. After everything you've done for the people in this town, for me Parker. You'll be with me every time I feel something.
I'll never forget you. You will always be with me, and no matter what happens, I will always love you.
She loves him for his words. They bring her comfort, as Vince brings back the Barn and as she resolves herself to spending eternity (will she live that long? is that what will happen to her?) in this place, with Vince and her father. She sees that Nathan stays way too close to the Armory, and she hopes he won't get hurt. She sees the first Aether leave Nathan (he's whole and fixed now), but it is soon followed by so many others. Part of her wishes she could recognize Nathan's Aether, but that is a silly, impossible wish. And then... she's gone.
***
Audrey has no recollection of being in the Barn after she sacrificed herself. She has no idea how that whole system worked. Lexie was a special situation, and even that period contains memory gaps for her. She was gone from the world for over six months then, but she doesn't know if she was Lexie that long. Magical Bar(n)s are weird that way.
She spends her time learning about her original world from Croatoan. She does not call him father, although he does tell him his original name. She cannot forget that this man has killed so many people, Duke, Charlotte and James being the most personally painful. She is not ready to love him quite yet.
The Barn, or the Armory, as it is now, offers her more stimulation than she would have thought. There are memories. All the women she's been, she could get to know them. She might do that. Some day. Now she is too busy mourning the life she could have had as Audrey to think about what the 20 or so other women's she's been lost.
She learns more about how her rehabilitation program. Because they couldn't create the new Aether core, and Howard wasn't able to adjust the controller, so certain things cannot be changed. She's not quite sure how much time has passed, either for her or in the real world, when she figures it out. She goes to Vince and Croatoan. Powering the Armory has stopped being an issue a while ago.
"I think I could go back," she announces to them without preamble.
"What?" Vince asks flustered. Croatoan looks proud. "How?" continues Vince.
"The old programming. If we can manage to do a couple of things, I think we could use it and I could leave."
"But... the old programming... it would mean accepting a personality change. You do realize that, Audrey?"
Audrey can see that Vince's Barn controller brain is already working out kinks. He looks worried, but he's willing to do this. If she wants to.
All of her choices are shitty. Stay here, as Audrey Parker who lost everything but her identity. Or leave, become someone else, lose her identity, the one she worked so hard to keep, the one she fought for. But she's not sure if she wants to be Audrey Parker here. She is herself, she has the memories she considers her own, but she doesn't have all the other things that made her Audrey Prudence Parker. She's clinging to an identity, when she could become someone else, someone else who might finally be able to be happy and stay and stop fighting... Both choices bring their own hurt.
But she's thought about this. Being someone else... it gives her a fresh start. Maybe it will let her be happy with Nathan. As someone else, which would suck, of course. But she was with him as Sarah. Maybe it would be like that.
"I want to do it. Let the Barn give me another personality, and let me leave. I did my job. Let me be free."
"Dove..."
"Thank you, Dad, for doing this. Maybe we can see each other again, somehow. But I don't want to stay here. I don't want this life. I want to go home. Even if it is as a different person. I've already done that so many times. Hopefully, this will be the last time."
"Yes. I will let you go. Like I promised."
Croatoan pulls Audrey into a hug and it's slightly awkward but genuine.
"Thank you," she tells him before turning to Vince, "Have you figured out how to do it?"
"Yes. But there are a couple more things. I think I could save James. Give him a fresh start too."
Audrey lets out a gasp. James?!?! "How?"
"It's complicated, but I think if we let Croatoan out of the Barn for a minute, he has the Troubles to make it happen."
"I'd be happy to save my grandson. Whatever you need."
"There is something else. You are 600 years old but you still look early 30s. I think there is something I could do about that. Let you go back, with your son and as a as normal human being as you can be. You can also help with the personality."
Audrey wasn't sure it could all be so easy. She could get back home, have her son back, raise him, love him like Sarah and Lucy and her were never allowed to. And she would get to be normal.
The only problem is that she won't be *her*. She won't be Audrey Prudence Parker. She will be someone else. Someone normal, and with a baby boy. Is that what she wants? She takes a long time to think about it.
She looks at these two men who hold her destiny in their hands.
"Do it." She was never allowed to have this. Maybe the final version of her finally is.
And thus, Audrey becomes Paige.