Chapter Text
The pickup rolls into Springfield caked in a hardened shell of dried mud. Hauling an enclosed cargo trailer, the dark gray, out-of-state RAM 1500 creeps down Main Street, looking like a frontline casualty that hasn't found the time to wash off the war. It is battered by the miles, the only clean surfaces on the rig being two sweeping arcs cleared by the wipers across the windshield.
Behind the wheel, the driver wears work pants and a charcoal short-sleeved Henley. Faded scars ghost across his exposed forearms. His dark hair is cropped close, the sides fading into a tight, military buzz against his scalp. The cab's stereo is dialed down to a murmur, spinning Kenny Chesney’s *Knowing You*. The acoustic strumming and nostalgic vocals blur into the ambient hum of the engine, barely a whisper.
It is three in the afternoon, and the streets are practically desolate. Over at the local post office, blinds are drawn halfway against the blinding glare of the sun, though a solitary shadow shifts behind the glass as the truck crawls past. The RAM isn't moving fast, but its sheer mass kicks up a lazy cloud of grit and gravel in its wake.
The county courthouse sits at the end of the block. Levi throws the truck into park beside a rusting, vintage Chevy, grabbing a heavy folder off the passenger seat before stepping out into the sun.
Inside, the administrative office smells of aging timber and freshly heated ozone from the copier. The clerk working the desk is a woman pushing sixty, her graying hair wrangled into an uncompromising knot at the nape of her neck. A beaded chain hangs from the reading glasses perched on her collar.
"How are you doing?"
"Good afternoon. My name is Levi Ackerman." He drops the folder flat onto the worn laminate counter. "Here to pay the property taxes and finalize the farm transfer. The acreage up north."
The woman takes the folder, her eyes scanning the top sheet. "Johnson’s plot..." She nudges her frames higher up her nose. "That farm’s been sitting dead for almost five years."
"I finally have the time to clear it out."
"Mm." She keeps her focus pinned to the paperwork. "Everything's in order here. What are you planning to put in the dirt?"
"What else is there to grow out here besides corn?"
"Could try your hand at soybeans. The state offers decent subsidies for it." She peers at him over the rim of her lenses. "Not leasing it out to a commercial outfit?"
"No. Looking to keep things grounded. Work the dirt myself."
Her gaze lingers on the veteran property tax exemption form clipped to the back.
"Thank you for your service. The Vet Center is just two blocks down from here. They run a gathering every Tuesday. My son usually heads over there."
"Appreciate it."
The heavy rubber stamp comes down—four rhythmic, hollow thuds against the paper. She slides the folder back across the divide. "All set. You'll have to call the local electric coop to turn the power on." Sweeping the beaded chain of her glasses over her shoulder, she offers a polite nod.
"Welcome to Springfield, Mr. Ackerman."
---
The sun hangs a fraction lower when he steps back outside, its light slanting sharply across the pavement. The breeze carries a dry, choked aroma—toasted corn stalks and pulverized topsoil. He climbs into the cab, hits the washer fluid to sweep away the fresh grit, and cuts the wheel toward the Route 66 Café midway down Main Street.
A brass bell chiming above the door marks his entrance. The place is sparse. Three high-stools at the counter sit empty, and a young couple lingers in a window booth over a stack of pancakes. Overhead, a ceiling fan churns the heavy air, a slow rotation that blends the rich grease of fried bacon and griddled potatoes with the sharp tang of brewed coffee.
Levi takes the stool furthest from the door. The owner walks out from the back kitchen to greet him.
"What can I get started for you?"
"Tea. Unsweetened."
"And to eat?"
"Just a burger with fries."
"You got it."
The tea comes out first, steaming in a heavy ceramic mug. He adds a splash of milk.
The bell chimes again. Two middle-aged women who slide into a booth near the entrance with practiced familiarity. The owner exchanges a quick nod with them before heading off to fetch their usual iced teas.
"...so I'm telling you, that kid hasn't had it easy," the one in the floral dress murmurs. Her voice is hushed, but the diner is quiet enough that every syllable drifts across the room.
"God knows," the woman in the cardigan sighs. "Showed back up in town looking like that. Her mama says it was a car wreck, but I don't buy it for a second. Head wrapped in heavy gauze, and that left eye... just awful."
"Can't argue with her under the hood, though. Old Joe's beat-up BMW—nobody could get it running, and she sorted it out in three days flat."
"That's the truth. *Rustless Auto*, right? Better than any dealership mechanic."
"Makes you wonder what kind of life she had before this..."
The words trail off, dissolving into a low, collective whispering.
His burger arrives. The fries are thick-cut and fried to a deep gold; the burger itself is a classic diner staple, heavy, dripping with juices, and built to satisfy. Levi works his way through most of it, catching a refill on his tea along the way.
The ticket comes out to thirteen seventy-five.
The small-town intelligence gathered here is easily worth a generous tip. He leaves a twenty-dollar bill on the laminate.
"Keep the change."
The owner pokes her head out from behind the kitchen pass. "Thanks, hon! Have a good one!"
---
He heads north, cutting out of town for about three miles before hanging a turn onto a washboard gravel road. Fallow cornfields flank both sides, the bleached, brittle stalks standing like forgotten sentinels. Half a mile down, the road dead-ends at a sagging barbed-wire fence. A gap in the wire opens into the property, marked by a crooked wooden sign with *Johnson Farm* scrawled across it in fading paint. The house itself is a two-story white clapboard box, the barn casting a long shadow behind it. It looks like someone has kept up with basic upkeep—the structure holds straight, and the windows are still intact.
Levi maneuvers the RAM, backing the rig and the enclosed trailer flush against the front porch. He fishes a key from his pocket—one forwarded to his old address a month back—and slots it into the heavy padlock, throwing the bolt with a dull, metallic click.
He pushes the door open. The interior is cleaner than he has any right to expect. A uniform film of fine dust blankets the bare hardwood floors. A flight of stairs cuts up to the second floor; he takes them one by one to find three bedrooms, each stripped bare.
Heading back down, he cracks open the trailer's rear doors. Inside sits a scattering of utilitarian furniture, a handful of plastic storage totes, and a long, rectangular case draped in a heavy canvas tarp.
He carries the canvas folding cot into the master bedroom and snaps the frame into place, smoothing out the sheets and squaring away the blanket into a tight rectangle at the foot. Then, he slides the long, rectangular hard case deep beneath the cot. The rest of his belongings stay locked in the trailer.
With the bare essentials sorted, the sun is still holding its ground.
The truck is filthy!
He fires up the engine, pulling off the property. The local car wash sits at the south entrance of town—a weathered, four-stall coin-op bay. A lone teenager is working over a muddy SUV in one of the far stalls, his pressure wand kicking up a dense shroud of mist.
Levi steers the RAM into the adjacent bay, feeds the quarters into the coin box, and unhooks the foam gun. A thick layer of pale pink soap blankets the heavy contours of the truck, sliding down the panels in slow, heavy sheets. He gives it a soak before swapping to the high-pressure rinse, systematically chasing every seam, wheel well, and body line. The caked-on river mud shears off in chunks under the force of the water.
The entire ritual eats up nearly an hour. By the time he shuts down, the kid in the SUV is long gone. The RAM stands completely transformed, gleaming under the slanting afternoon light, down to the deep, wet-black gloss of the tire sidewalls.
---
The next stop is *Rustless Auto*. An old gas station has been repurposed into a garage—the former pump island is now a concrete pad for parking, while the side of the main building expands into a cavernous bay with its garage door rolled completely open.
The low sun strikes from the flank, painting one wall of the workshop in vivid shades of amber and rust while casting the opposite side into a deep indigo shadow. Weathered grease stains dissolving down the corners take on an antique texture in the slanting rays. The hand-painted wooden sign, *Rustless Auto*, gleams under the light.
Inside the bay, an old F-150 hovers on the hydraulic lift next to a Civic with its hood propped open, though Levi cannot entirely fathom why a rusted tractor occupies the remaining corner.
Just then, a RAV4 slowly backs out of the garage, coming to a halt in the center of the gravel lot. The driver's side door swings open, and a figure steps out.
Levi pulls over at the shoulder outside the yard.
He remains in the driver’s seat, watching through the glass.
First to emerge from the vehicle is a grease-stained cowboy boot, the hems of the denim rolled up to mid-calf. Then comes an upper torso clad in dark blue coveralls, zipped down to the sternum to expose a heather-gray undershirt soaked through with sweat.
Hange pulls off a pair of safety goggles, letting them dangle around her neck. Her brown hair is caught up in a loose, unruly bun, a few damp strands plastered against her sweat-slicked neck and temples. A streak of black grease cuts across her face, slicing from the right cheekbone down to the jawline.
She wipes her face with the back of her hand, which only succeeds in smearing the grime further across her skin. Turning toward the bay, she calls out into the dim interior.
A young guy in matching blue coveralls emerges from the shadows, a wrench balanced in his hand. Hange exchanges a few brief words with him, gesturing toward the back of the shop. The kid nods, peels off his work shirt, and gets ready to clock out for the night.
Only then does she turn her head, her gaze landing on the pickup idling by the curb.
Her eyes narrow slightly—the left one noticeably, tracing more lines at the corner of her lid—before a relaxed smile breaks across her features, and she starts walking toward the pickup.
Levi watches her approach. The dying sun flared behind her, catching the loose strands of her hair in gold. The deep navy of her coveralls takes on a violet sheen under the dusk, the damp shirt clinging flush to the contours of her frame.
For a split second, Levi simply stares, forgetting his next move. The twilight is too adept at staging illusions—turning the mundane into poetry. She is just an ordinary mechanic... yet the sight strikes him as almost painfully beautiful.
The person standing before him is mere feet away, yet feels entirely out of reach. And the look she gives him is completely pure, unburdened by any ghost of a shared past—just professional politeness. A quiet pang of disappointment hits him, yet he finds himself deeply drawn to the raw honesty of this total anonymity.
She stops just outside the driver's side door. Her face is close enough to the glass that he can see the fine specks of shop dust clinging to her eyelashes.
"Hey," she says, her voice carrying that same familiar cadence. "Can I help you, sir?"
Levi rolls down the window.
"Hope I'm not catching you too late," he says, keeping his tone even. "Just drove over a thousand miles to move in down the road. Hit a milestone on the odometer and figured it's time for a service."
Hange straightens up, glancing down at her wrist. "Got about ten minutes left on the clock, but—" She runs an appreciative eye over the rig. "Just washed? You did a hell of a job on it."
"The roads were bad. Had to clear the grime."
She laughs, a flash of warmth in her expression that goes beyond a standard work smile. "Pull her on into the lot. Let me take a look."
Levi steers the truck into the yard, bringing it to a stop right outside the bay. As he steps down from the cab, the young helper walks out of the building.
"Go ahead and take off," Hange tells the kid. "Be here early tomorrow to bolt the intake back onto that Civic."
"You got it, boss." The kid nods, slides his toolbox back onto the shelf, and gives Levi a brief, polite nod before hopping onto the bicycle propped against the wall and pedaling away.
That leaves just the two of them in the lot.
Hange grabs a flashlight and an OBD reader from the workbench and unlatches the RAM's heavy hood, propping it open.
"Oil hasn't been touched in about five thousand miles," Levi adds.
"Yeah, it's due," Hange agrees, pulling the dipstick out to inspect the fluid. "Brake pads are down to about half. Tread looks decent, but you'll want a tire rotation. We'll swap out the filters too."
She straightens up, dropping the hood shut with a heavy thud, and slaps the shop dust from her palms. "Can't knock it all out tonight. Earliest would be tomorrow morning." She pauses, looking him over. "Better off coming back in the morning, or you don’t have the wheels tonight."
Levi considers this for a second. "I'll just call a cab. I'm still unpacking tomorrow anyway, so I won't be needing the truck."
Hange chuckles at that. "There's no Uber out here," she says. "And a proper taxi is wishful thinking." She casts a glance toward the darkening sky, then back at him. "How about I give you a lift?"
"...?"
A bit overly familiar, isn't it? He wonders if this is just how small-town life works.
"I'm off the clock anyway. Might as well drop you off," she adds, filling the silence.
The sun has dipped completely behind the treeline, bleeding the orange horizon into a deep, heavy indigo. The yard's floodlights kick on automatically, stretching her shadow long across the gravel.
"If it's no trouble."
"None at all." She pulls a ring of keys, featuring a tiny silver wrench charm. "Just let me lock up the shop."
She heads back inside the bay, cutting the main lights until only a dim security bulb remains. Grabbing the handle of the massive roll-up door, she pulls it down with a heavy, metallic groan, stopping it about two feet off the ground. She slides under the gap with practiced ease, pulls the door flush, and snaps the padlock shut.
A minute later, she rolls out from the back lot in a Mazda Miata with pop-up headlights—a pristine, red two-seater convertible. The paint catches the last colors of the sky. It's meticulously maintained, fitted with aftermarket wheels and a subtle front lip, the canvas soft-top looking brand new.
She has shed her heavy work coveralls, wearing a plain short-sleeved tee and jeans now. The grease is scrubbed clean from her face. Her long hair has been reworked into a ponytail at the back of her head. But as she turns to look at him, Levi catches a glimpse of her left eye—there is a faint trace of scarring near the orbit, and the eyelid narrows more aggressively, as if fighting to focus. When she gestures for him to get in, her bare forearms reveal a crisscross of pale, thin marks. They look relatively recent, the faint pink edges not yet faded to a clean white, likely earned within the last year or two.
"Hop in," she says, leaving the top down.
Levi settles into the low passenger seat. "You've taken incredible care of this machine," he notes, his fingers lightly tracing the clean leather lining the inner door panel.
"Isn't she great?" Hange clicks the switch, and the pop-up headlights snap alive. Her tone is bright, full of genuine affection for the car. "A '98 classic. She even blinks. When I tracked her down, the engine block was completely hydrolocked. Took me three months to breathe life back into her."
"It's a rare privilege to ride in a proper stick-shift roadster these days."
"Well, thanks..." A faint flush colors Hange's cheeks, though it goes unseen under the deep dusk.
"Not many people know how to work a clutch properly anymore."
"Hey, I can pilot a tractor too. Machinery is machinery."
"I actually just finalized the deed on some land out here to plant corn. Don't suppose you know anyone looking to unload a used tractor?"
"You mean the acreage up north? Don't look so surprised—word travels fast in a town this small."
"That's the one."
"Let's get you home then." The exhaust note settles into a smooth, low hum as she slots the shifter into gear with practiced precision, guiding the Miata out of the lot.
As they hit the open blacktop, she hits the radio dial, letting the mellow notes of a saxophone drift into the night. With the top down, the air washes over them, carrying the raw scent of open fields. She doesn't push the speed, but every gear change is a flawless execution of rev-matching.
"The house treating you alright so far?" she asks, keeping her eyes pinned to the country road.
"Decent enough. A bit empty, but it holds a bed."
"Johnson’s place has been sitting empty for a while. A couple of winters back, the pipes burst from the hard freeze. Wasn't sure if anyone ever patched them up."
"The water's running."
"Good." She pauses, her fingers tapping a lazy rhythm against the steering wheel. "Ten acres is a lot of dirt for a single pair of hands. If you ever need an extra back, there are a few reliable farmhands in town I can point you toward."
"Thanks."
Silence settles between them again. It isn't stiff; it feels more like the natural quiet of sharing a moving pocket of space. Outside, the open fields dissolve into massive, dark inkblots under the night sky, broken only by the sporadic twinkle of a distant farmhouse light. The rushing wind brings the heavy musk of soil and corn, mingled with the faint, nostalgic scent of old leather and gasoline from the cabin.
Levi tracks the passing landscape, though his peripheral vision stays anchored to the figure in the driver's seat. Her posture is entirely fluid, left hand casually resting on the wheel, right hand draped over the gearshift. The night air sweeps through the open cabin, catching her brown hair; a few loose strands lift and fall in the breeze, tracing soft curves against her cheek. The jazz melody scatters into the wind, weaving into the steady thrum of the engine and the rhythmic slap of the tires against the asphalt.
There is a sudden, fleeting pocket of time—as the car cuts past a vast, uninhibited expanse of cornfields and the final, dying rays of western light paint the horizon in a thick, honeyed gold—where Levi thinks that this exact moment alone is worth it. This wind. This dying light. This quiet company. It makes the entire thousand-mile relocation feel justified.
"You usually close up around this time?"
"More or less. We stretch it out in the summer, shut down earlier when the winter dark sets in." She gives a small chuckle. "Small-town living. The clock moves slower here."
"You like it?"
Hange goes silent for a few beats, her eyes fixed on the pavement ahead. Scattered streetlights begin to puncture the darkness, spaced far apart; each one they pass briefly illuminates the small cabin before plunging it right back into shadow.
"I do," she says finally. "It's quiet. Simple."
The Miata turns onto the gravel driveway leading up to the farm. The headlights catch the brittle corn stalks lining the lane, casting long, erratic shadows that dance across the stones.
"Right up ahead is fine," Levi says.
Hange eases off the throttle, bringing the car to a soft halt by the gate.
"Pick your RAM up around two tomorrow afternoon?" she asks.
"Sounds good."
"Let me get your number for your pickup."
Levi rattles off the digits. Hange logs them into her phone and hits dial, causing the device in Levi's pocket to buzz in response.
"That's me," she says. "Haven't properly introduced myself yet. Hange Zoë. Born and raised here, and as you can see, I turn wrenches for a living."
"Levi Ackerman. Just moved up from Florida. Greenhorn farmer."
She grins, reaching over to pop the power locks. "See you tomorrow, Mr. Ackerman."
"Just Levi."
"Alright, Levi." She nods. "See you tomorrow."
He pushes the door open, the cool night air immediately hitting him with the crisp scent of earth and vegetation. He stands beside the idling convertible, looking down at her.
"Thanks for the ride."
"Don't mention it."
She lingers until he clears the main farm gate before throwing the car into reverse. The headlights cut a wide arc through the dark, briefly illuminating his silhouette inside the property before pointing back toward the main road as she drives away.
Levi remains behind the gate, tracking the twin red pinpricks of her taillights as they shrink along the dirt lane, finally vanishing around the bend.
---
The night sky is ink-black now, a scattering of cold stars pinned across the dark canopy. A few distant dog barks echo across the county before a heavy, absolute silence settles over the land.
Levi’s house is a pitch-black shell without power. He washes up quickly in the dark and goes straight to the second-floor bedroom. Guided only by the pale starlight filtering through the pane, he kneels beside the canvas cot and drags out the long, hard-shell case. He punches four digits into the combination lock—9050—and the heavy latches snap open.
The case is lined with custom-cut foam. Snug on the left sits a disassembled AR-15 rifle; on the right, a meticulous arrangement of cleaning rods, a few boxes of ammunition, and a suppressor.
He removes the components one by one, laying them out across the bare floor. The maintenance begins: he works a solvent-soaked patch over the bolt carrier group, meticulously scrubbing the locking lugs and the firing pin channel. A brass rod wrapped in flannel slides slowly through the bore. Every minute component—every spring, detent, and takedown pin—is wiped clean of invisible grit. Then comes the reassembly. The steel pieces lock back into place with crisp, definitive clicks in the dark. Once whole, he cycles the charging handle to test the recoil spring tension and dry-fires into the corner—the sharp click of the firing pin dropping rings short and clean through the house.
Finally, he snaps a fully loaded magazine into the magwell, rides the bolt forward to chamber a round, and flips the safety selector to on. He props the rifle within arm's reach of the cot, muzzle pointed safely toward the wall.
Only then does he shed his boots and lie back onto the cot, pulling the wool blanket up to his chest and lacing his fingers over his stomach.
In the dark, his pulse is a steady thud, carrying just a ghost of an elevated tempo—the lingering baseline alertness drilled into his nervous system over years of deployment. Outside, the dry rustle of the wind through the cornfields whispers against the glass, gradually softening as it dissolves into the deeper quiet.
But then, other noises begin to leak through.
It starts faint, like the rush of blood through his inner ear. Then it sharpens—not a physical sound, but an entire acoustic landscape reconstructed by memory inside his skull. The distant scream of tearing metal surges closer, followed by the dull, low-frequency rumble of a shockwave rattling the earth. His fingers curl into involuntary fists beneath the blanket.
Inhale. One. Two. Air forces through his nose, packing his lungs before slowly drawing out. Just as the VA taught him after discharge, his pulse gradually matches the rhythm of his breathing, the hardwired biofeedback taking control of his nervous system. It has been months since he needed a prescription to manage the spikes, but the symptoms still act like an old fracture—aching under mental exhaustion or the sudden gravity of a trigger.
He rolls onto his side, his back flush against the wall. The posture brings a modicum of security—solid drywall behind him, iron within reach. His knees tuck slightly toward his chest in an unthinking, defensive curl.
The wind keeps working the fields outside, the endless scraping of the corn stalks mimicking the sound of a distant, relentless tide.
He closes his eyes again.
This time, he intentionally summons a different set of projections: the amber twilight from earlier, the red Miata, the loose strands of hair caught in the draft, and the clean, effortless smile after the grease was scrubbed away. He forces these details into a slow-motion loop inside his head, using them to overlay the older, uglier static.
His breathing finally drops to a true, resonant crawl.
Sleep is a thin sheet of black ice, and he steps onto it carefully.
Get the power grid hooked up in the morning. Two o'clock... go see her...
The thought finally grounds itself into something solid and unremarkable. The finger resting over the rifle stock goes slack, and he finally allows himself to sink into the heavy, rural stillness of a Midwestern night.
---
Once clear of the farm lane, Hange drops her speed.
The night air rushes into the open cockpit, but instead of cooling her down, it sends a sudden prickle of static up the back of her neck. Swept by the high beams, the cornfields on either flank look like two endless, bottomless walls of black ink sliding backward into the dark. The arrow-straight asphalt cuts forward, a white blade slicing the void, yet the dark only seems to thicken just beyond the reach of the beams.
She has stared down this road a thousand times, but tonight hits differently.
A familiar, nauseating vertigo returns—a world folding where the world hitches out of alignment. The asphalt road stretching toward town begins to blur, overlapping with a completely different route. That other path was rougher, choked with heavy dust, flanked not by crops but by stunted, jagged scrub. She cannot tell if it is a hallucination; it feels like two distinct records are exposing onto her retina simultaneously. She can see both paths: one sharp and current, the other like an underexposed negative from an old film stock, yet both exert a physical pressure against her compromised optic nerve.
She has to white-knuckle the steering wheel just to ensure she stays on the correct, current line of asphalt.
It's back. Ever since she woke up in a hospital bed five years ago after the crash, this temporal dislocation has behaved like a dormant virus, flaring up without warning. Sometimes it's olfactory—the phantom reek of cordite or the blistering heat of a desert wind when there is nothing around but motor oil and coffee. Sometimes it's auditory—a sudden, low-frequency hum that fills her ears in the silence, like massive machinery operating somewhere over the horizon. But most of the time, like tonight, it is a folding of space.
It had happened before, while she was swapping out an exhaust pipe on a client's truck. She had slid under the chassis on her creeper, and the tight clearance immediately choked the breath right out of her. The steel underbelly hung inches from her nose, bolts and lines throwing jagged shadows under the work light. In an instant, the truck vanished. She found herself pinned inside a completely different enclosure—something forged of heavy plate armor, tighter, suffocating. The air was thick with diesel fuel, stale sweat, and the hot, metallic stink of overworked electronics. She could even feel that the surface beneath her back wasn't concrete, but a tread-plate iron floor vibrating with a faint, ceaseless tremor.
It was a suffocating sensation, like living out someone else's timeline. Like she'd woken up inside the wrong life, always hunting for a destination she couldn't name, the sheer weight of that hollow space in her chest was driving her half-mad with anxiety.
If she hadn't reached out blindly for a socket wrench and grazed her forearm against a scorching, uncooled exhaust pipe—
A sharp hiss of burning flesh and a blinding bolt of agony had jerked her back to reality, her shoulder nearly colliding with the floor jack.
The sudden violence of the pain tore through the illusion, exposing the real world again: the familiar garage, the truck chassis overhead, the smell of coolant and old rubber. A fresh, weeping burn blistered across her arm, white-hot and angry.
See? The burn is real. Pain is the only definitive border between reality and the phantom dark. It yanked her violently out of that overlapping, iron-plated ghost of a room and anchored her back to earth.
The injury itself is nothing, but the sheer clarity it provides has become Hange's addiction.
The burn eventually closed up, leaving a pale pink line to join the collection of similar marks scoring her forearms. She isn't cutting herself out of malice or self-loathing. She just... needs an anchor. When the world begins to warp and dissolve into an impossible double exposure, a sharp shock delivered straight to the nerve endings is the only evidence that proves that *here and now* actually exist. Her mother noticed the erratic behavior and dragged her to a string of specialists. After therapy, the episodes had mostly stayed dormant.
Yet tonight, the relapse hits with a terrifying, heavy momentum. And it all triggers the second she crosses paths with Levi Ackerman.
She doesn't operate like this. Usually, a customer drops off the vehicle, she diagnoses the trouble, talks numbers, schedules a pickup, and nods goodbye. Clear boundaries, zero friction. She never offers rides, let alone to a stranger who just rolled into county lines.
Yet the offer had slipped right past her teeth anyway. *"How about I give you a lift?"*
The way he looked at her was not normal. She is certain it wasn't curiosity, nor was the usual look men threw at women. His presence pressed against something sealed shut inside her head, like a stranger testing an old lock. And the worst part was how quickly it responded.
She can't keep driving. If she stays on the road any longer, she's terrified she won't be able to distinguish the turnoff for town from that phantom fork in the road leading out toward forgotten dunes.
She whips the steering wheel, throwing the Miata into a hard U-turn and tearing back toward *Rustless Auto*.
Killing the engine, she walks straight to the back workbench and clicks on a small desk lamp.
She needs to settle her head.
Needs to separate the tangled mass of projections clogging her brain, or at the very least, force them back under the surface.
Reaching into a component tray, she snatches a handful of loose, scattered screws. She squeezes her fist shut, letting the cold, jagged threads bite deep into her palm. The sharp bloom of pain radiating from her skin, puncturing the illusions trying to break through from the deep.
She regulates her breathing, tracking the ache as it systematically maps out the borders of her reality. The phantom roads dissolve, and the physical world snaps back into a single, unyielding focus. Slowly, the vertigo recedes.
Keeping the pressure clamped tight on her palm, she lifts her eyes toward Levi’s RAM parked in the bay.
The truck is immaculate, not a speck of grit caught in the seams of the custom wheels. What kind of farmer driving a thousand miles to plant corn treats a workhorse pickup like a showroom display? She has serviced countless farm rigs over the years; they are built for utility, beaten to hell, and completely unkept—she once pulled a nest of field mice out of a tailgate gap. This level of meticulous care is unnatural.
Did Levi's arrival break the seal on all of this? Is this man going to drag her fractured life down into a deeper, uglier mire, or... is he carrying an answer she hasn't even dared to hope for?
The dull throbbing in her palm persists, anchoring her firmly to the present—Springfield, her shop, her life. The questions surrounding the man, along with the lingering dizziness of those overlapping roads, are sealed away for now behind a levee constructed of pure ache.
He'll be back tomorrow.
And she’s going to look a whole lot closer into his eyes, figuring out exactly what kind of past follows the man who knocked her world off its axis.