Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

She kicked a fucking torn up root with her boot and wished she’d grabbed that novel on the dash. 

It might have read, In Cold Blood, or The Mockingbird Book, or some other caged bird crying. She had only opened it to the very first page, the chapter one to chapter two and three surely, just over the notes and letters and copyright nineteen-whenever-wherever. She’d usually read it all, it all, even the legal bits. Made her feel like she knew it better, up close and more personal than other readers, up its fingernails and scraping down at the dirt that dug under there from writing the thing. 

Well, she hadn’t read it, not yet, just the legal bits, and that “Chapter One” in regular little letters. She wasn’t much focused for it, not with the buzzing in her head, the sweaty cold of the cab and suspicious rattle of metal, the half breakfast sandwich from this morning making her feel sick, him. Now she’d never know it. It was pissing her off. 

Pissing her off more that she had one page of it torn out, from where it fluttered down onto the road so elegantly in the exhaust stench he left behind. 

One, one page. Just to tease her. 

She had seen it fly out in the fray as she’d been specifically not watching him go, turned in the other direction. It just made her angrier, stomping over there to snatch it off the ground, feeling foolish bending over for it, crumpling it as she shoved it into her purse. 

She had her purse, what of it that she hadn’t spilled about over the truck along the ride—a moment of silence for her crossword puzzle, please. What she had now wasn’t exactly helpful, but then again, she hadn’t thought she needed much helping or much of anything at all before this. 

She wasn’t sure quite what good her orange-red lipstick stick will do her right now. It was probably half-melted, too. Her handkerchief stuffed in there, a little stained from some spill when it was her ma’s, a tobacco-colored blot. A box of that stupid sugary cereal he insisted on lugging around, the one with the men on airplanes. A tin of breath mints with their initials punched in on the inside. The sewing needle that did it, and the rest of her little kit. Her ring of keys, entirely useless. His revolver; she tucked this into her skirts. Hm, a business card for a grocer in Topeka. Her comb and hairspray. A small box of tampons. Her toothbrush (thank god). The big wad of cash. 

A pen. 

Pennies. 

Gloves. 

Compact. 

Shit, not nearly anything. 

At least it was a big purse.

She shoved a handful of cereal into her mouth and glared up harshly at the bright yellow-blinding sun. He’d say she was doing it like she has something to prove. He’d be half-right there. Never nearly all the way. 

With a sigh, shifting on the patch of yellow grass she’s been thinking on, she gave her surroundings another once over with a hand shielding her eyes. She decided on leaning on the guardrail stretching on from where she was to where she would be, but besides that, she was at a loss. 

Heat rolled around her ankles. 

Flies had been following her around since forever and now come in close to her head. 

She flicked out her compact, nothing else to do, and took a good look, light flashing this way and that in the silver as she examined herself. The black eye didn’t look much better than the yesterday she saw it in and she prodded at it with a fingernail. Red starbursted around it in patches and flecks, unfortunately beautiful and pleasingly unsettling. She prodded it again. It hurt a little in that dull bruise way and she let it remind her of what she ought to be doing. There was a little country dust a lot over her, though really, that was nothing new. Her braid had taken a turn for the worst and she didn’t think it was too wise to have in now anyways. 

She tugged at the strands until they fell back around her shoulders. He called her on fire; on-fire, really, like a nickname. 

The sigh came out of her before she realized it was happening. She felt fit to go to a funeral right now, or church, or something equally dire. Something she could really sulk at. Maybe she’d run into one going wherever she was going.

She was pretty screwed if she couldn’t get her eyes on some sort of shelter before dark. 

There was a shit taste in her mouth from that sugary cereal. 

She really hated—she really hated—

She got back up. 

Something rustled loud out in the brush way behind her. 

She walked, and then, she ran. 

Her holy grail came in the form of a good old fashioned gas station. Miles and miles of road with her soles ground into them stretched behind her by the time she reached it. 

She took it in, lights out and weeds snaking high, white pavement cracked to hell. Zero cars in the parking lot. Beautiful, and just as the sun was starting to dip past her comfort level for being in the middle of nowhere all alone. 

She wondered if it was abandoned. 

The brick sailed through the window like a hand through water. 

More like, the fountain in the center of town that her ma would walk her and Pet by with pennies in their small palms, to go bargain for pop off the depot store as she bought groceries next door. They’d sit by the fountain with their drinks, or with nothing, until Petunia complained about the water splashing her and her dress. While her sister straightened her shoulders and stared-not-stared at boys walking by, she’d lean over the edge of the fountain to put her fingers through the sheet of curving water, easy as anything. 

The brick went like that, like the sound of the glass was an afterthought, not to be minded by the brick’s water-passing properties. It was entirely too satisfying. 

She swiped a boot over the sticking out shards at the bottom of the window frame and picked up her skirts to step over it. The hem was all dirty now, and so was she. Glass crunched under her shoes and shoved its way into their soles. 

The store was dark, like a dark store that was closed and not open. She hoped it would be that way when she woke up. She didn’t really want to steal anything, but thought that the gas station could manage a bag of Bugles and packet of Moon Pies less, not to mention the almonds she shoved in her purse. Coffee was easy to make, and she found some bottles of water to shove alongside her scavenged snacks. What she wouldn’t give for a damn veggie. 

The bathroom was small and too dirty but she washed her face and hair, trying not to grimace at how far she had metaphorically fallen. She didn’t really care about her looks, but it wasn’t about her looks, just that she was exhausted. There was an eyelash that had been in her eye all damn day, and she fished it out, careful not to skewer herself with a jagged, bitten nail. She took a sip of her coffee. It was a little chunky, and she wondered if trying not to grimace would become a regular thing in her life. She gave the stir-stick another spin. 

Now that she’d gotten her bearings, she could take a better look around, kill time until the coffee wound her down. It was always an either or for coffee, keeping her up or shutting her off. Something psychological, she figured. 

She paced slow through the aisles, ending up at the counter next to lotto tickets and an enticing cashbox. 

And, much better, entirely better, a stack of maps. 

Thank you, gas station. Thank you, Green River, Utah.

Christ. She thought it would be Colorado by now. 

So. It was back east home, a deceitful few inches of highway on the paper that her boots and already blistered feet weren’t cut out for. An entire state to cross, and then some. 

Home. To what? Stay in her sister’s spare room? It was doubtful that Petunia would even let her stay, or show her face around her, knowing someone would be watching. With her it was always appearance. Neighbors, Petunia’s weekly book club with all the other young wife-mothers she grew up with, more neighbors. Petunia always saw it as she and her, how people saw she and her, like a joint reputation. She imagined sitting around a dark table, eating wet coleslaw and ham, trying not to meet eyes with her sister, or her brother-in-law, the hypothetical baby, the pyrex locked up in a glass cabinet across from her. She imagined a fine layer of dust covering the whole scene, her, the baby. 

She doubted that her old friends remembered her. She didn’t remember them back, so no hard feelings. They probably went to her sister’s stupid book club. Squares. 

Her new friends were all his, and all shit, half air and half weed. In no world was she going back to their condo, crawling back after all this. She’d rather burn it to the ground. Actually, the idea wasn’t so bad at all. Maybe she would go back to the city. Settling down on the floor, she found the cold welcoming. Her arms crossed over her chest. 

Red. 

That was the other thing he called her. 

Hey Red. 

Hey, Red. 

She pictured flames dousing the cheap blue sidings of their place and her old life along with it as she closed her eyes, but fell asleep with his voice echoing in her head.

Chapter Text

There was an insect in her head. 

She woke with sore feet, legs that were sorer, and the knowledge that she had no idea where she was headed. 

Out seemed like a good idea.

Forwards.

Away.

One step ahead.

One foot in front of the other.

An easy concept to understand.

She took the money in the till with her, although she didn’t really need it. She’d got all the currency she could have between the gun and the fat roll of cash she already had on her person. On second thought, if she was cleaned up better, that would work in her favor too. A shame, probably. She did not care. How good it felt to not care. Jesus, if she didn’t have to spend another day caring and caring about all these things he liked, made her like, she’d take years of wandering on her own with a smile on her face.

She did wish she had a car. That was another currency she would’ve liked. 

Maybe the metaphor needed work. 

Maybe she didn’t care.

She left the gas station behind, a few pounds heavier on account of what she raided from it. She knew she should try and hitchhike, but out here wasn’t the same place where the people in Hollywood did it, even if she was armed. Another day of hiking without the hitching might convince her to try a little risk, though. Her feet really did hurt, even after she wrapped her blisters. 

It was hot again, but in a lower simmer, a tease and trickle of sweat down her back after a few hours of walking. 

She thought they ought to build more out here, the supposed final frontier. Besides the road, it had probably looked just like this a hundred years ago, two hundred. 

The quiet really touched her. There were no people, no artificial. The wind carved out the only sounds in the valley, that and her boots scraping along the road. It reminded her of home, the quiet moments where nothing really happened at all, just grass and the four walls of her room and her ceiling fan. Nothing was still in the city, of course. It was making her think different, being out here. 

She had no excuses to not listen to herself, to what she did. 

To every scrape-scrape on asphalt. Her fear. Her head. 

No one was taking up her time here. Someone was always blowing smoke in her face back just a week or two ago, the only variety coming in whether it was tobacco or weed. She lounged, there. She had let it grow on her, laying across a bed while Marty and Angela and everyone else would hum against the radiator or just rot in silence splayed out everywhere, as she began to wonder which drugs they were all really doing. 

She used to… wash dishes. Mow the lawn. Collect the neighbor’s eggs for them. Sew. It kept her time. Everything kept her time. As she took another scrape against the road, she wanted purpose. Real purpose, like—

She didn’t know, of course. She could say like destiny, but that concept was all too wrapped up in saintly-ness in her head to fit this need of hers. She knew what was before, all that was before, wasn’t it. They all seemed to involve being caught up in other people, though, so maybe this was a step in the right direction. 

Technically speaking, a step towards home, because that was the only plot point she could think of, or rather, the only realistic one. She was as good as homeless now, twice as much if she wasn’t meandering in the direction of those she knew and knew would take her in, however begrudgingly. 

It felt like a track; a circle. There, then, there and then, here, all underneath her feet in the rhythm she created against the empty landscape. She couldn’t see any progress without real landmarks around her, no proof that this was happening, that she was moving at all. 

Wildfire.

Sleep crusts her eyes and she’s lost in the black-red light behind her eyelids but she’s awake as soon as the word forms at its own will in her head.

He tugged on a curl in her hair, stared right into the shine of her eyes, mouth a tease and a smile. 

Wildfire.

She slaps herself before she knows what she’s doing. 

“Fuck!”

She was definitely awake now. Awake and in a mercifully soft motel bed. It took her a moment to recollect how she got here. 

The shade of a rare billboard—red with white peeling letters—and a Ford she watched rumbling down towards her from miles away. A hand around her gun and a wary smile. Some amount of hours looking out the window and thinking how much longer it’d all be if she was still walking. The sound of another person’s breathing had been all of a luxury and a sharp warning keeping her awake. The old guy didn’t talk too much at all, and his few words letting her into his car were more of a mumble than something with any real meaning. 

She sat up already reaching for the map. Wasting time wasn’t on her agenda even here, even ever. It looked like Old Guy took her off I-70, South. Unfortunate, but she wouldn’t know the damage until after she got out of here.

From what she could recollect from last night, her motel bed and motel were in a semi-populated area, with a few roads that had houses and house-shops and an autoshop growing from the wild grasses. That meant real food, real people, and real clothes that she hadn’t been wearing for days straight. Her head was clear and she had a plan. Her head was clear, and she had a plan. 

It wasn’t really a motel. More a combination motel-shop, with two other beds besides hers and burgers on the grill on the patio out back. She stared at her fried eggs, staring up at her from the cracked glass table at which she sat. A mosquito-eater twitched in a spiderweb on its underside. She ate her burger. Leaves shook yellow on the two trees guarding her from the empty field beyond not-motel. She had to look away after a few minutes. Grease bled through her napkin and she thanked the tired-eyed cook reading on the stoop before leaving.

She meandered with her bag over her shoulder, across the street to the town’s creaky floored tell-all shop, just as quiet as the rest of the place. It all made her feel wrong, trespasser or an unwanted living in a ghost town. She said nothing as she purchased bandages for her blisters and a newspaper. 

Her day ended slow, easy, long after she resolved to spend another night two hours South of the highway. The highway was nice, ‘cause it took her right back home all the way. She’d stick with it. She’d get back to it with a produce van going North that would drop her right on it the next day. The peace of just staying somewhere made her feel like there was something alive in her, something warm and small sun all alive just by itself. Thank fuck she’d gotten somewhere finally, somewhere that proved she really was moving. It was nice to be a foreigner, not dragged along by someone else to a new place but alone, observer. The wind stayed still here but she still blew in. Tomorrow morning she would spend picking green beans up the hills for the woman she met watering plants along the road, and she’d get a coat and a chance to look at a better pair of boots. Tonight she would sit out facing the empty land surrounding the town, feeling the life deep inside of her, feeling alive.