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Astarion makes it two hundred and forty-three miles away from Cazador before the car breaks.
He doesn't notice at first. He has no conscious thought. All he can do is count mile markers, white spikes like teeth where they protrude alongside the road. He hasn't slept. His hands are frozen around the wheel.
Now he's on the side of I-80 W, a road he only knows the name of because of the sign nearby. Hazards bleed scarlet over the asphalt, stark in the fading twilight.
He inhales once, twice. Tries to restart himself as easily as twisting a key in the ignition. Focuses.
Black smoke is creeping through the vents, spilling into the air he's supposed to breathe. It slows with the car stopped, twisting like cigarettes around the steering wheel, over the seat. He can taste it. Plastic, petroleum.
The dashboard is a rainbow of alerts and warnings, each flashing in their own hue, old-fashioned icons instead of a screen. But it's the same as however many were there when he first started. None added, none taken away. Only now there's smoke burning through the vents, and something is broken.
Astarion has made it two hundred and forty-three miles away.
He has to keep going.
So he leaves his hazards on and lurches the car out of park, brakes screeching as he pumps the gas. Astarion forces his head up, spine shaking with the effort, eyes peeled. Empty highway, farmland and forest on either side, but there should be a town before long.
It takes thirty minutes. He has to open the windows so the smoke can bleed out, but his lungs are used to the punishment. The billboard emerging through the gloam declares this place as Milesburg, apparently. A shitty little town in a shitty little corner of a shitty little map.
And right on the outskirts is a mechanic shop.
The sign is old and decrepit, grime-streaked. Milesburg Remedies. Under the text sits a pictograph of a car and wrench.
He limps into the corner lot as the sun raises her bleary head over the horizon, clipped off by distant trees and the hum of suburban life. Only two other cars, separated from customer parking by faded blue lines. The three bays of the shop are open to the air; one has a truck within, hoisted so its tires aren't on the ground. A mobile stand with some kind of power tools is underneath. Mechanics.
Astarion kicks over the lip of asphalt, the entire back half of the car shuddering as it crunches down. More smoke coughs out the vents as it grinds to a stop outside the first bay door, a mysterious part screaming in the process.
Someone comes out to investigate the racket. He's tall, coffee mug in hand, hair still damp from a shower. Shop opener, freshly risen. There's another pair of overalls crouched under the lifted truck, a rhythmic striking of metal on metal ringing out in the open air. No one around for miles. No one around to see.
Astarion jerks the handle into park, gears chewing on themselves as something shakes deep within. He unlocks the door, stumbles out. His slippers buckle against the gravel lot.
A nightshirt, lounge pants. Soft fabric meant for the inside of a manor with a locked door and barred gates. He sticks out like a thing dying.
The man whistles as he walks over, hand braced on his hip. "Now that's something else," he calls, the kind of chipper that comes from eight hours of sleep and satisfying breakfast. He sets his coffee mug on a side toolbox, half the drawers open. "What happened? How long has it been doing this?"
"Smoke," Astarion rasps. His voice is torn and ragged, not poised, not perfect. He hates it. "Less than an hour ago."
The man's eyebrows pinch. He scans the car, what last smoke wisps through its opened windows and the heat pulsing ruby-hot from its pipes. At the silver paint crusted over with grime and neglect, the empty glow of its headlights, the sag of its tires. Scans Astarion, his staggered posture, the wildness that must burn in his eyes.
"Right," he says, more uncertain now. "I can get under the hood and see what's causing it—what's the history? Had any problems like this before, anything else that's reared its head?"
Astarion stares at him. Holds his gaze because otherwise he will have to turn away, will have to dip his head and bare his throat. "I don't know."
The man waits for clarification. Astarion doesn't give it.
"Okay," he says, properly off-balance. "Right, well—haven't worked with one in a while, but I can try to stop the smoke, though you might have to take it to a proper Mercedes dealership if it's a bigger problem."
Astarion narrows in—tilts his head, neck cracking in the process. "Mercedes?" He repeats. The empty space behind his eyes fills with lean, jeweltone cars, purring down paved streets. He hadn't taken one of those. He knows they can be tracked, can be followed. He didn't mess this up.
"Well, yeah," the man says, a little bewildered. "Mercedes-Benz, I guess, if you want the full name. Specific dealerships always know how to work on their own cars."
Astarion lets his gaze drift to the side. The silver car doesn't react, cold in the gravel. Dust and rot smears over its frame, the dredge after an iron wash. "It's a Mercedes."
The man stares. "...yeah? It is?" When Astarion doesn't respond, the confusion deepens into something like concern. "An older model, I'm not sure what. The book'd know better."
"The book," Astarion repeats. His voice grinds against itself.
"It's, uh, the book that shows what parts are compatible," the man says, as though fumbling his words. "Has pictures and infographics on each car, if you– don't know what year it is. I know it's from before the 2000s, at least. By the shape."
Older. Maybe it doesn't have GPS. Maybe Cazador can't track it.
Astarion continues staring at the car. It doesn't look old. It looks like any other car that passes on the roads beyond locked windows and cold stone.
The man shakes his head in an odd, jerky rhythm. "Okay. I– me and Rechel will give it a look. Don't know how long it'll take until we know what we're looking at, but we'll– let you know. Is there anything else you want us to check for? Or do?"
Astarion snaps back to focus. Something inhuman in the motion.
"No," he says. "I just need it to drive. Ignore everything else."
Too strong. The man's eyes are wide, alarmed. Investigatory.
"I'll take it to a Mercedes dealership," Astarion says. The word comes thick and foul on his tongue. "Just make it able to drive. That's all."
There is a pause.
Then the man nods once, slow. "Our next scheduled appointment isn't until two," he says, cautious. "We can work on it until then. Should be enough to at least find the problem, even if we can't fix it. Give me your number and we'll give you a call when we've got it in working order."
Astarion's phone, which was never really his, is lying in pieces on his bedroom floor. He'd crushed it under the marble bust he'd been given for his thirtieth birthday, a philosopher he doesn't know and can't remember.
"I'm staying here until."
The man licks his lips. He's taller than Astarion by a head and still shifts weight between his feet. "Alright. Then the book is in there if you want to check," he says, gesturing to the storefront attached to the first bay with a neon open! in the dual window. "Feel– feel free to browse."
Astarion sets the key in the man's hand—just the key, no ring, taken from the cupholder, so confident the property was enough to scare off thieves, so confident that his gated fence and security console would make it so no one could get in, that no one could get out. It's old silver, tarnished from age instead of use. No fob. He has to manually unlock it.
The storefront jingles with a strand of bells when he pushes it open, no one manning the counter but a door that connects to the bays behind it. It's small, cramped, used as a pick-up shop for those traveling down the highway. The shelves are full of oil canisters, metal pieces, parts he doesn't know the name for. Two at the front have food, things for travel, chips and sodas. A rack of frisbees. Fishing poles.
In the far back, resting against a wall of long, thin boxes he thinks might be windshield wipers, there is a book. It is a wrinkled, yellow thing, pitiful in its neglect. Astarion traces the worn cover—Interchange Manual, ninth edition—and flips it open.
A table of contents, long enough it spills onto a handful of chapters. He flips through the brands, divided into categories and delineations he doesn't recognize. Mercedes-Benz is between the middle and end, an endless list of names. He flips to the title section and just looks through the pictures. He doesn't know anything else.
It's on a page not frequently opened, dust gathered in the crease, that he stops.
There it is. There's the car—his car, now.
Mercedes-Benz E230, long wheelbase sedan, 1995. The picture provided is gritty in quality, black instead of grey, but the four-eyed car peering morosely out at him is the same as the one in the lot.
Acronyms and numbers clutter up the real estate below the picture, things that drift through his mind and out again. He hasn't slept in what feels like eternity, all this tension making up his bones and filling in the gaps between teeth, but still his hand frames the name of the car, the make, the year.
1995. It's almost as old as he is. Cazador likely bought it new. And yet it sat in the furthest corner of the garage, a deep green body blanket wrapped around. If not for the many in-house servants, it would have drowned in dust. Astarion had never seen it move before.
And he had never seen Cazador use it, nor acknowledge it. The other cars, sleek and vibrant, all had their time under the sun; not this one. So that's where he went when he broke.
He'd tried to jumpstart it with an extension cord, because surely both were electricity. It had barked flames from the holes, so he'd switched to the closest car, less riddled with dust and with a proper screen on its dashboard. Ten minutes and it choked to life. He'd barely taken the time to undo the clamps and close the hood before he'd peeled out.
Less than twelve hours ago, he left Cazador.
Less than twelve hours ago, he made it out.
Astarion's hand slips off the page, the other grabbing the shelf to keep his legs from pitching forward. He's shaking, just a little. Adrenaline or fear or relief. Awe mingling with a heated, pulsating paranoia.
1995 doesn't feel like it'd have anything GPS or Bluetooth in it, nothing to track, but Cazador always found him before. Always smiled at him, waiting at the finish line.
Where's the finish line now? He doesn't have a license. He doesn't have a passport. He can't even remember whether he did before—whether they're locked up in some iron-plated safe or never existed in the first place.
No Canada. No Mexico. No flights. He'll just take this car and– go. As far away from New York as he possibly fucking can.
Astarion pushes away from the shelf, eyes wild. The storefront isn't large, is barely more than a memory of sales, but there must be–
There. Back corner. A food package repurposed into an open-top box with maps, outdated ones, yellowed with age and folded up like a brochure alongside half a dozen kindred. Astarion pulls them from where they've stuck together and shakes out the cleanest one, each crease like a crater spread over state lines. It's alien. He's never had to look at one with purpose before.
He finds the long, twisting line of I-80 W, a serpent cut through the soft stomach flesh of the nation. Narrows in and finds Milesburg.
It's—he's—in Pennsylvania. A state away from New York, at least. Two hundred and fifty-one miles apart.
He'll just– keep driving west.
Astarion folds the map and sticks in under his shirt, pinned by his waistband alongside a roll of cash, pulled out of Cazador's wallet. He'd left the credit cards scattered on the floor. Messy. Imperfect.
He stares at the wall, at the shelf, at the map. The world outside the manor comes with dust in the corners and dirt along the walls. His slippers have moisture wicking up the sides, the imprint of gravel from the lot. The air he breathes is muggy with summer heat. Nothing controlled.
Footsteps.
Astarion flinches hard enough he slams his head into the shelf. Three boxes clatter around his feet.
The man is behind him, frozen, one hand extended. His pale blue eyes are impossibly wide.
Astarion peels himself off the wall. More boxes tumble down in slow-motion. "What," he hisses.
"Sorry," the man says, a note of worry in his voice. More than a note. An entire symphony. "Just– wanted to say we've found the problem."
Astarion closes his eyes. Exhales. Reopens. "What is it?"
"Your electrical harness," he says. "There's a frayed wire under your windshield—all the excess heat can't ground in your chassis so it started melting wires when your engine got too hot. That's where the smoke is from," he says. "You caught it right in the nick of time. Any longer and it'd have burnt through the whole harness. As is, we'll only have to replace that one section."
None of it makes any sense. Just words. He focuses on the only part that matters. "How long will it take?"
The man is watching him too closely. Tracing the line of his jaw, the eyeliner still smeared over his lids from yesterday. Astarion's nightshirt has a high collar, the better to disappear in. He knows the bruises aren't visible. In the moment, it still feels like the mechanic can see them.
"Thirty minutes, about. We got lucky in how fast we found it." He hesitates. "It can be driven, but if you still want to go to a Mercedes dealership instead of fixing it here, I'll have to ask you to sign a liability of release waiver. That car is gutted."
"Gutted," Astarion repeats.
The man nods. "We only looked for the source of the smoke, but even a glance says you've got less than a half fill of oil, every fluid is empty, your battery is eroding in its case—hells, I'm surprised you made it here, to be honest. That car shouldn't be moving."
It did move. It brought him two hundred and fifty-one miles away from Cazador. That isn't enough.
"What does the form say?" Astarion rasps.
The man winces. "Standard release—says you're taking your car out of our shop despite our warnings, so even if it breaks down, we have proof we showed you those problems and you left anyway. Nothing more."
Just a form. Not a legal case, not something of his identity. He'll use a fake name. He'll use a fake number.
"Fix the wire," Astarion says. "I'll sign it."
The man sighs and slips back out of the shop.
Astarion leans against the shelf and keeps breathing.
Forty minutes later, Astarion has a tremble across his lungs like a cigarette filter laced with something, gripping the shelves for support, and the man walks back into the shop. There's grease around his wrists but not his hands. Gloves.
"The wire's all fixed," he says. Soot smears on the underside of his jaw, the base of his throat. "Take it a little cautious on acceleration to make sure there aren't any others that'll pop up with this one fixed, but it'll get you to the dealership. Are you going to the one in State College? It closes at five—I don't think you'll make it there today."
Astarion has no idea what or where that is. And if it's east, then he isn't going.
"How much?"
The man watches his face. Astarion doesn't falter.
"It's one seventy-five for the wire," he says. "One eighty-six with tax. Cash or card?"
"Cash." He pulls out the wad of cash from behind, where he can almost pretend it was taken from a pocket and not flush against sweaty skin. He peels through the tightly-bound layers, finding the hundreds tucked in the middle, shielded by ones on the outside.
Then, as he's walking to the counter, his eye catches something lower.
Underneath is a shelf of last-minute purchases, things to throw onto the receipt from impulse. Candy bars, magazines. One empty box that used to hold zippo lighters.
And a set of wrenches.
They're loose in a plastic bag and so neon in their rubber handles he knows they're poorly made, stacked haphazardly against each other. Seven sizes. The metal gleams dull in the fluorescent lighting. Forty dollars winks from the price tag.
Going to a mechanic means being seen, being remembered. Going to a mechanic means he is stationary instead of fleeing. Going to a mechanic means escape becomes conditional.
The same desperation that opened all the drawers in the garage, looking for a set of jumping cables he barely remembered from a past long ago, makes Astarion grab the pack in red and throw it on the counter.
The man pauses halfway through pulling out a piece of paper, flipping the bag over to scan the code on the back. "Two twenty-eight," he corrects. "And here's the form."
Astarion reads quickly. The one skill he still has. It's basic legalese, less than a page long—essentially he acknowledges this is against professional advice and he is waiving his right to sue should complications arise, with a fluffy, nonspecific close date that can summed up as 'roughly six months past departure'. That's fine. He isn't planning on sticking around.
There's three pens, all different brands, in a cup next to the register. He sets down two hundreds and one fifty and selects a pen—the signature box gets a jagged line without any recognizable letters, the printed name box gets the first classmate he can think of from law school, the address just his old classroom.
Mercedes-Benz for the maker, E230 for the model, 1995 for the year. He commits those to memory. Burns them into his mind.
He draws up short at the last question. License plate number.
The man glances over at the delay. "Yeah, everyone forgets that. One second–" he digs into his pocket and pulls out his phone, the corners scuffed and riddled with cracks. A few flicks and Astarion sees a flash of the camera app, stills of a grey car. "It's 55750E."
Astarion writes that down. Licks his lips. "You took pictures."
"Have to," the man says, and almost sounds apologetic. "For the waiver—we need documentation of what problems we noticed, otherwise people could try and sue by saying we missed something. We don't post them or anything. They'll just sit in a case file on our records."
Okay. It's attached to a fake name, a fake address. The car has been under a cover for thirty years. Maybe Cazador won't recognize it immediately.
He has to get out of here.
"Don't show anyone." Astarion picks his change off the counter, jamming it under his waistband. The wrenches get pinned beneath his armpit. He clutches the key between his knuckles like a knife. "If someone comes asking about this car, don't tell them. You didn't see me."
The man freezes.
"Wait, shit, that's–" he breaks off, quieter now. "Are you okay? Do you need help?"
Astarion steals a case of water bottles and three bags of jerky as he walks out.
The man doesn't stop him.
-
He's another forty miles down the highway, the car—Mercedes-Benz, sedan, long wheelbase, '95, his, his—guttering under throttle but still pushing forward when he finally pulls over to sleep. It's a pitstop for carpooling, tethered right on the corner of a turn-off. Half a dozen cars dot the parking spots. A lone light with a solar panel bolted to its back shines a weak beam over grey asphalt.
Astarion pulls in, the whole car rocking forward as he skates where the pavement dips. He eases it into a spot with no other cars surrounding, hands shaking around the wheel, breath heavy in his throat. A spot like this isn't on the map, but he knows he's moving west. Further away from Scarsdale, from New York. From Cazador.
The high is beginning to crash. It's mid-evening, sky a hazy pink-orange behind the clouds. The highway bustles with constant ambiance. Astarion locks his doors, cracks less than half an inch in the back windows for air. Drinks one of the bottles of water, swallowing down all the ash in his mouth.
The front seats hold all his worldly possessions, which are a paper map and set of wrenches he hasn't taken out of the wrapping. So Astarion crawls into the backseat, not trusting to go outside for even a moment, to show his face in the world where someone could see.
There's a central cup holder that can be raised flush with the seats. It creaks when he pushes it back. Then he curls onto his side, back pressed to the taupe leather, and tries to fall asleep.
He does so instantly.
-
Driving again, Astarion keeps his ears open. The dashboard is lit up in every colour and he tries to think about what the symbols could mean, so different from the Camry borrowed from his parents he did his driver's test in and never touched again—why would he have to? His attorney's office was a two minute walk from his apartment, and Cazador promised he could be chauffeured rather than needing public transportation. Then they moved to Scarsdale and the need for any form of travel became unnecessary.
Astarion accelerates more aggressively.
It whines when he does so, a thumping under his feet and center console. The dashboard rattles, teeth in a skeleton, even the steering wheel keening like a death knell. Every time he brakes, something screams. He can't smell smoke, but he can feel heat pouring from the vents, sweating through his nightclothes. There's a dial from hot to cold—he spins it and feels nothing change.
When he presses its gas, the car goes forward. When he brakes, it stops.
He keeps driving.
-
The edge of Pennsylvania leads him to a corner store, a lone bastion in an empty stretch of highway. There, Astarion buys a portable propane tank and the smallest fireset they have in stock, advertised for camping out in the Allegheny Mountains. The clerk stares unabashedly at the dirt crusted under his nails and tries not to touch him as she takes his money.
Cans are stacked in the trunk so they can't roll under the seats, anything he can rationalize the cost of. Beans, meats. No carbs. He still can't shake the revulsion that powers up his throat at the thought of overeating, even though he's very far from that concern. He holds a can opener for too long and buys a knife instead. More utility.
He paws through the clearance rack and ends up with a Hersheypark novelty shirt, two pairs of torn jeans, and a set of tennis shoes with the soles peeling off. They're horrendously coarse and tear at his skin, at his protruding ribs. He buys them anyway. Puts them on.
Cazador would call him hideous. Would call him a disgrace.
For the first time in years, Astarion almost wants to laugh.
-
He hits Ohio on the fifth day since leaving Cazador. The car screams now, every press of the pedals rocking it over the road and pummeling the gears under his feet. He can see other drivers turn their head when he staggers past, rubbernecking at the corpse they're driving alongside. Stopping for gas is a process he tries to do at night so less people remember the screech of his brakes.
But now he's two states away. Over half a week of distance. He can stop for a check-up. If he doesn't, he won't be moving at all.
The first two cities he drives through—Farrell and Youngstown—are too big, too full of houses, cameras, security. He stays on I-80 W as his car continues to bellow, thundering over asphalt strips.
Then comes Newton Falls. Barely a dot on his map, the sign announcing it old and faded. Astarion clicks the signal and gets off the highway. He crawls through a mess of checkerboard farmlands, golden wheat and corn, wooden fences broken and slumped alongside the side of the road. His car shudders under a historic bridge of some variety, the river snaking dark through the summer-green trees. Then he immediately takes a hard left away from the downtown—too many people. Too many eyes.
Mechanic shops are a repeatable kind of offense, more often tucked in the outskirts. He splutters around an ivy-covered library and sees his target: a concrete façade, slumped and indistinct but for the heavy red letters declaring Arlington Mechanic.
Astarion's car wails, but it gets into the parking lot, nosing up to one of the two bays. The parking lot has a row of seven cars but the lifts themselves are empty, a group of three employees already turned to watch him as he heaves himself over the finish line. One exhales a column of cinnamon smoke.
He puts it in park. Turns it off. Pulls the key out of the ignition. The car shudders like it's being stabbed.
Astarion clambers out, only a glance back to make sure his map is folded in the center console and everything else is hidden in the trunk. His shirt flaps in the wind, jeans shorn at the knees and tied with one of his shoelaces to keep from falling off his hips. He's gritty and filthy and in no state to see another person.
But he doesn't have a choice.
A woman—Arlington, maybe, except he thinks he saw a street with that name—walks up to him, teasing a toothpick between her teeth. She's got a hard set to her jaw and palms big enough to crush his skull between, wrinkled with sun exposure and grey threaded through her temples. She squints at him.
"With a car soundin' that bad, people oughta try to call in advance," she says with the voice of a heavy smoker. "Seems it got right fucked up. What happened?"
He coughs first, phlegm coating the back of his teeth. "I don't know. Can you fix it?"
"Depends how much fixin' you want," she says. "Or how much there is left to fix. That's a, what, Mercedes, E-series? How many miles are on it?"
Astarion has done nothing but read the dashboard for the past four hundred and thirty miles. The number still makes something burn deep in his gut. "Seven hundred."
Both her eyebrows shoot to the sky. "Seven hundred?"
He nods.
She whistles, pulling the toothpick out and flicking it somewhere behind her. "That's a show puppy," she says, a touch of begrudging interest. "What, been sitting in a garage for twenty years?"
"Thirty. It's a '95." He'd practiced that phrase until it sounded less cold on his tongue.
"And yet it sounds like shit," she finishes. "Lemme guess. Inherited it, decided to take it for a joyride, didn't do any maintenance, and now are surprised it's falling apart on you?" She huffs, scratching at her neck. "Thirty years'll eat a car alive, kid. Dunno how you even made it here."
"It had a frayed wire in the harness," Astarion says. "I got that spliced."
She pauses. Behind her, one of the other technicians raises his head.
"You already brought this to a shop," she says, waving a hand at his car, "and it still sounds like this?"
"They only fixed the wire."
She seems genuinely baffled. "They let you leave?"
Astarion sets his jaw. "I signed a release. I had somewhere to be."
That somewhere is away. Two states is not enough, but he can take a day to keep the car moving. If she doesn't want to help, he'll push it to whatever the closest town is that can still get him back onto I-80 W in less than an hour.
But she's just looking at him, sharper than before. Discerning. Her eyes are a deep, smooth brown, like ceramic glaze.
"What're you here for?" She says eventually, hand tapping her thigh. "If it's for one fix and then jet, it'll have to be a damn good reason for why I'm letting that death trap back on the road."
"I need it to drive," Astarion says. "I'll fix whatever it needs to keep going."
She drags her gaze over the car more slowly, rooting into the crevasses of the exterior. "Oil, brakes, rotors, engine, belts," she lists off, lips pursing. "Maybe rodent damage. Even in a garage, they're tricky shits. Did you jump it?" He nods. She continues frowning. "If the battery wasn't fried before, it is now. You might've fucked it up royally by pushing it, kid. Hope you had a good reason."
Astarion stays quiet.
She holds, as though waiting for a response—when he doesn't give one, she sighs. "Alright. I'll check it out, do what I can. You want me to just make a list while I'm searchin' and then have a chat, or fix 'em when I find 'em?"
When Astarion inhales, his ribs press against the wad of money in his waistband. Food and gas has eaten away at it, cutting through what had seemed like so much crouched in the darkness of the manor. Option one is safer. Option two is faster.
"Fix what you can," Astarion says. "Unless it's something expensive. Then we'll talk first."
She nods, a half-shrug kick of her shoulder. "Should be a few hours. There's a café 'round the corner if you want to wait."
Astarion doesn't move. "I'll stay."
Her head tilts, but that's fine. She can be suspicious. He isn't letting the car leave his sight.
"Fine," she says. "Go find a chair or something. This'll take a while."
-
It's more than he thought to fear.
She has to scrape out oil with a hook, sludging into the pan like tar. Two canisters of coolant disappear into the reservoir, so dry it bubbles out air from deep within. She pries out the battery with leather gloves thick enough she can barely bend her fingers, dropping it into a triple-reinforced barrel and slamming the lid shut. The car screeches when she lifts it on jacks, rubble waterfalling from its undercarriage. Astarion watches with dull eyes.
Hours later, she crashes into a swivel chair with an indecent groan, adjusting the cut of her pants and reaching back to pop the tab of a Modelo. It hisses in the air, a pocket of cold against the Ohio summer. She drains half of it before Astarion can drag his own chair over to her.
With a wipe of her lips, she clinks the can back onto the toolbox and holds his gaze. "You shouldn't have made it here," she says bluntly. "Should've stalled out in the driveway, let alone wherever the fuck that other shop was. It was holding itself together with grit and grime and a shitload of spite. Godsdamn miracle."
She sounds vaguely impressed.
"First off—wrong gas. You've been using regular but you need premium unleaded, at least octane 91 or higher, else it'll detonate your piston. If the shop doesn't have a certified sticker, don't go there, and definitely don't get discount gas. It'll fuck up your engine faster than you want, and it's already holding on for dear life after the shit you put it through."
Astarion grits his teeth. He'd just gone for what made sense—diesel for trucks, regular for everyone else—but of course a thirty year old car wouldn't use what's normal.
How much more per gallon is premium?
She continues, unaware of his inner plight. "Climate control's completely shot. Maybe just waitin' since it didn't have refrigerant, but more'n likely the wiring's crapped out and needs replacement. Could be the fan or compressor, but I won't know 'less I pop it open. Just for parts, maybe five hundred, bit more since I don't think this model was too common."
"Brakes—you're a lucky bastard that this was stored in a locked room because rust should've eaten those brake lines alive, but they're in alright shape. The brakepads are dried to a husk and gouged about five thousand miles' worth out of your rotors, but I can replace the pads for 'round four hundred. Calipers are fine so long as I do a brake flush and make sure to get the water out of the fluid."
"Struts, fine. Axles, fine. Everything undercarriage is a dinosaur but fine 'n functional. It's under the hood that your real problems start, because you're sitting at fourteen hundred rpm in idle. You'll burn through your engine like a candle if that keeps up. I popped your idle air control valves free and sealed some vacuum leaks, so that might fix it, but if it keeps meltin' asphalt you're gonna have bigger things to worry about."
She glances at him, taking another swig of Modelo. "You gettin' all this?"
Astarion nods. He isn't, but he nods.
"Right. Other issue is that your wiring's already actin' up—dunno if the last shop told you, but Mercedes tried a biodegradable wire coating from '92-'96 that had a prime time fucking up good harnesses. Run it too long and those wires'll disintegrate before you can catch 'em—probably what broke that one, not just fraying. Only a matter of time 'til it finishes the job." She snorts. "Trust me. You'll know when the harness goes. Either you're pressing the gas and it ain't moving, or you're making s'mores."
She says it easy, casual. Like each word isn't desolation.
Astarion closes his eyes. He presses a hand to the side of his ribs—not to the money, but to the coarse material of his novelty shirt, with a stupid Hershey's kiss over the front and faded red text. Five days ago, he wouldn't have had it. Five days ago, it would be soft cashmere no matter the heat, and the door would be locked when he wants to leave.
He opens his eyes. "Anything else?"
"Your hood strut's broken," she says with a shrug. "Optional, but easy to fix. Road rules means you need functional head 'n tail lights. And you should get a new drive belt and v-belt, but I don't stock 'em, and you could probably keep going for a month or two before they'll snap. Same for your hoses 'n pipes—they look fine on the outside, but sitting thirty years with fluid inside means they have to be paper-thin. It'd be hours to check 'em all, though." A pause, head tilted. "And new tires. Your rubber's dried dead, all these hairline cracks just waiting for you to brake too hard so they can blow out. 'sides, those're all seasons, and you need snow."
Whatever is on his face makes her snort, rocking back in her chair. "Just the way of naming, kid. All season tires are for mild shits south of Kentucky; we get real winters, and we need some real bitching thread to cut through it. Those tires'd be around two-fifty per, if we've got your size in stock. Or you could go pay triple at a Benz dealership to get their name on the rubber."
Four tires. A thousand dollars. The pile of cash tucked in his waistband is a thin and thinning stash.
Astarion swallows. "How long will mine last?"
She takes another drink instead of responding right away, watching him. "They'll be a tickin' time bomb," she says eventually, "but you could keep trucking on until winter, especially if I give 'em a pressure refill. You just gotta know that every brake, no matter how pussyfooted, could blow 'em up."
A thousand dollars. He'll learn how to brake softly. How to drive in the snow.
Or to avoid the snow. South of Kentucky—south of anywhere other than the mountains, really. South doesn't have snow, or ice. South means he can stay on all season tires. South means one thousand dollars saved.
So. South he'll go.
Astarion nods. "How much will this cost?"
"So far?" She leans back. "Oil, fluids, lights, battery—tack on the cleaning and prep work, and that'd call us square at seven hundred, 'less you want the others." She squints at him. "And just know if you don't get the brakepads, you'll wear through your rotors five times as fast. Or cut a notch in and break 'em anyway."
Seven hundred. Eleven hundred with brakepads.
The number is, in essence, meaningless. He hasn't counted how much he took from Cazador and won't now. He doesn't want a number he can rationalize, something he can chip away and feel how far it can stretch before it gives. All that matters is he is out of the manor, out of Scarsdale, and he isn't going back.
He touches the wad over his hip. Thinks of four hundred and thirty miles; thinks of going south.
"Give me brakepads," Astarion says. "Not the hood strut or climate control. Just brakes."
She nods.
-
Astarion stays for another two hours while she puts in the brakepads and cleans up a last few things around the air valves and v-belt, bitching all the way. She offers him a Modelo and laughs when he splutters on his first drink, too much after days of stolen water bottles. His second goes down softer, smooth. He basks in the enjoyment of a cold drink he hadn't known to appreciate until he'd lost it.
Not lost. Escaped.
She rocks back on her heels as the sun dips below the horizon, yawning behind a bear's paw. After a dance with the air compressor and general Spartan-style cleaning, the car actually gleams, looking more like something from a showbook than a cold, dark corner of a full garage.
He can kind of see the car as it was meant to be, in a way. It's a deeper silver than most others he sees on the road, storm-grey instead of polished. The four lights at the front look like eyes, almost curious, interested. The hood curves instead of running flat, mounding over the base of the headlights, smoothing up into the windshield. Its taupe leather warms the interior, the panel of faux wood bright against the grey.
Astarion runs a hand along its hood, following the curve. The heat from being sun-warmed all afternoon, held in even as the sky darkens. When he starts the ignition, it purrs instead of screams. Hums under his hands like something in waiting, longing for the road.
He pays her. She nods, shoves another Modelo in his hand, and sends him on his way.
-
Astarion gets onto I-80 W. The AC still doesn't work. For the first time, he lowers the windows not for something against heat, but for wanting to hear the world roar past as he drives.
-
There isn't a sky more blue than the midwest's.
The horizon can't block it, being nothing more than corn and crops, shafts of mottled green-yellow under the sunlight. It's the I-90 W now, the same open road with a different name. He cruises through Ohio, avoiding Cleveland, dipping into border towns and farming outposts that fill the highways with tractors twice the height of his car. Less people, less surveillance. Less eyes.
It's been years since he was still young and stupid enough to scream when Cazador hit him. Once he learned to hold his tongue, he tried to put foundation just a touch too thin over black eyes, to leave shadows of bruises across cheekbones, waiting for someone to notice. To see.
But they already had. They all knew. It wasn't a secret, but no one talked about it, and that was essentially the same thing.
Astarion keeps driving. He's going west, far from Scarsdale, from New York. He's going south to avoid snow. He's going so very far away from where he used to be.
Then the engine sputters. Through the vents, something gurgles.
His heart rate doubles—Astarion flicks on the hazards and pulls off to the shoulder, taking half a mile to decelerate so he isn't mashing the brakes too hard. A sedan sprints past with a brazen honk despite how he's doing everything right. The car locks fine, shuts off fine, yet when he gets out, it continues making that low, odd noise.
Astarion hesitates with his hands braced on the edge of the hood. He can hear something… sloshing inside, hissing and spitting with latent heat. A worrying hum that might be from the battery.
If he tries something and fails, the car breaks. The car could die right now, surrounded on all sides by rustling corn and a blue sky so high overhead. The car could die and he could be trapped until found.
He doesn't know what to do.
His mind follows the same path it always has before, down that worn road, a voice cold and familiar.
Foolish boy. Must you need me for everything?
"Fuck you," Astarion snarls, and pops the hood.
-
Milky yellow liquid pools over his undercarriage, dripping to the asphalt beneath. It's the fuel line, rusted away after marinating for thirty years since Cazador hadn't siphoned the gas out before leaving it to rot. She had said it would be a problem. He hadn't wanted to pay to check every hose. Astarion wraps the broken gash in the shitty thin nightclothes he used to wear and begins to crawl down the highway for the closest mechanic.
-
The man says he'll have to rip the whole thing out and replace it. Four hundred and fifty dollars. There is no choice other than yes.
Astarion stays in the shop the entire time. The man watches him, more disconcerted by company than the last, but Astarion knows how to write his own presence out of existence, and he sits still and he sits quiet and eventually the mechanic just goes to do the job. It's around four hours, including a break where the man waves over two apprentices from another bay to show them the car. Something about a model they aren't likely to encounter, since it had to be imported in from Germany and that kind of money wasn't common in the midwest back in the 90s. Mercedes are more common now since they've got a plant in… Alabama, he thinks, from what the last mechanic mentioned offhandedly.
But even ones this old are only a novelty, a curiosity. She had said it would sell now for under five thousand dollars. Not the car of the rich, the wealthy. Maybe that's why it sat under a cover for thirty years. Maybe that's why it had barely been used before being forsaken.
In the end, the engine purrs back to life. He has to pay another fifty dollars for a refill on gas, considering he spilled his all over the highway. Premium costs around a dollar and a half more. It's doable. It's fine. The mechanic tries to get him to buy a hood strut, a filter cleanse, a new set of brake lines—Astarion stares at him until he stops talking and then peels out.
Then, thirty miles down the road at another carpooling parking lot, Astarion eases it to a stop and snaps the package around his set of wrenches. Seven sizes, bright red handles. Even to his untrained arm, they seem uncomfortably light.
Four hundred and fifty dollars. Eleven hundred before that. Two-fifty before that. Astarion can keep buying cans of refried black beans and refill his collection of plastic water bottles at rest rooms, but his money will continue going down instead of up. He can't afford more breaks like this. He can't afford more breaks at all.
The wire had been frayed. The idle air control valves had been stuck. The fuel line had been rusted. If he had seen any of those in advance, if he had seen and if he had known how to repair them himself, he would have saved money.
So Astarion looks.
The hood goes up but doesn't stay up, lacking the strut that holds it in the air. Astarion scrounges around until he finds a stick nearby to wedge under the metal, creaking ominously as the hinges protest. Evening light catches the engine as it's exposed, trailing golden-yellow over metal that's lost its lustre.
He reaches under the hood and tries to trace the same things the woman had done—how the parts weave around each other, burrowing deeper within the body. How his hands carve lines through dirt, kicked up from the roads. All the highways he's been on are asphalt, paved, but the air is thick with dust and he hasn't done anything to clean it. The mechanic with her air compressor is past him now, and dirt gathers in the cracks around his engine block, around his intake valves. He can follow which parts are new, how the battery shines against the degradation of the casing holding it in place. The new fuel line gleams silver-white as it snakes around gaskets.
Astarion searches through his car for hours. He goes into the glove box and finds the original owner's manual, no sunlight to fade its text but a pale grey regardless, certain lines gone no matter how much he holds it to the dying light. It's incomprehensible. It's half in English and half in German, full of words he doesn't know, concepts he can't understand. But the manual says how to keep the car running.
So Astarion reads.
There he learns the names of parts, of pieces. How the engine fits into the frame and why it is where it is; what a driveshaft looks like and common problems it faces. What air pressure his tires should have, what viscosity of oil. He learns that his climate control likely isn't broken but the buttons are. He paws around the front until he can feel the difference between a nut, bolt, and screw without his eyes, what side they're sat on, how long they might be. He waves a hand through the empty pockets the manual warns are common places for rodents to get into. He wraps fingers around where the spliced wire sits back the engine block and follows the original as far back as he can.
When he crawls into the backseat for the night, Astarion hurts. His back aches, arms shaking, legs strained past anything before. His fingers bleed, droplets of red where they caught between bolts or sections of rust he needs to grind away. Small, but if he keeps this up, they're soon to scar.
He finds he is happier to bleed for this than what he has before.
-
Indiana is much the same as Ohio, flat and bright and beautiful. The minor issue is that there isn't a way to avoid Indianapolis unless he wants to go hours out of his way, and premium gas is not an expense that will allow that. So Astarion closes his windows, swelters, and drives through without stopping. He wraps his only other shirt around his face in case a camera is aimed at the road.
Then he's out, and he's free, and he's streaking over an empty highway with only a blue sky overhead.
There aren't as many carpool stops here, since most of the rural towns the highway passes near aren't those that have anywhere to commute. So Astarion waits until it gets dark and just pulls further off the shoulder than normal, carefully inching down until his bumper brushes a cornstalk and then parking.
He spreads out on the section flattened by his drive down, meadowgrass and thin, pale pink flowers that make his nose itch. He pulls out his propane tank, feeding the hose into the base of the fireset—black beans today. He's had pinto the past two nights.
Then, as Astarion pulls the can off the heat and closes the gas valve, he wonders where he's going.
It's a simple sort of question with a simple sort of answer—away. The destination doesn't matter so long as the distance is enough.
But enough what? Is he so naïve to think Cazador will search with the lethargic speed of search parties months after the victim is already dead, or that he will not wake up tomorrow with a tap on his window? At what point can he stop running? At what point can he park his car and let it stay parked?
Astarion pushes the propane tank to the side and leans back, resting his head against the trunk of his car. Far above, the sky is the kind of velvet-deep black cities can't have. He could trace the whorls of the Milky Way if he raised his hand. Below, fireflies hover over the cornfields in the thousands, little specks of warm gold.
He's never seen this before. He's never seen anything but New York.
Scarsdale didn't border the Atlantic Ocean, but did overlook it; if someone spent the money to make their manor tall enough, they could see the water of the bay. Maybe Cazador spends evenings on his balcony, watching those tossing waves.
Maybe he's there now.
Astarion nods at nothing in particular. He's going to the Pacific Coast.
-
At some point it switches back to I-80 W. The road still looks the same.
-
Astarion starts to push his car faster through Illinois, when none of the other hoses rupture and the brakes continue to hold strong. Still no AC, but he's reading through the owner's manual with feverish intention, and he might be getting close to understanding what the wires and electronics do behind the climate control panel. Not enough to fiddle with it yet, but soon.
He's crossing through the northernmost section of Illinois, adjusted to keep away from Chicago. Still too big, too populated; being four states away won't stop Cazador, not if a picture of his face or someone recognizing him sets up the flare.
So Astarion, splaying the paper map over his passenger seat and holding it in place with wrenches, takes the circuitous route. He traces highways with his finger and remembers names.
He used to have a phone. A proper one, smart, powerful, expensive as all hells—then Cazador had bought him a better one, and it had been wonderful, until features started disappearing. Until his searches turned up less results and names faded from his contacts. Until he could only look at his own social media, all the posts of himself, doll-eyed and smiling.
Now, Astarion has a single paper map printed fifteen years ago.
He still knows where to go.
-
Iowa has the Iowa 80, the largest truck stop in the world, which the map tells him in microscopic all caps. Astarion doesn't have a truck, but he can't help his curiosity, as well as the certainty that Cazador would never be caught dead at a truck stop.
It's– a lot. More like an amusement park than a parking lot, full of restaurants and even a museum. Astarion idles at the entrance, peering in as best he can manage, then makes a hard left and heads for the town it's attached to. Walcott has, generously, under two thousand people. Which is much more his speed.
And being adjacent to the Iowa 80 means that despite its size, Astarion only has to putter around the outskirts for fifteen minutes before he finds a mechanic shop.
This one's big, with a bay door that matches the two story building next to it. Three semis sit in the back lot, strangely naked without their trailer. There's a woman in the dock, leaned up against the back part of a semi—a fifth wheel, Astarion thinks. He can't remember where he learned that, but he knows he's right. She glances up as he purrs into the parking lot, clattering once over a stretch of loose stone. Her brows raise.
She pulls out earbuds as he parks and approaches, jamming them into her pocket and popping a bubble of gum through her teeth. Her tie-dye crop top rides high to expose the bottom of her ribs where she lounges against the fifth wheel. Calluses crawl up her palms, over her fingers. One bicep is enough to dwarf him. "What d'ya want?"
Astarion glances behind her—a full shop, decked out. "Tools."
She pops her gum again. "Tools? I'm a mechanic, not a cashier. We don't sell our own stuff."
"A list of tools," Astarion amends. "I want to know what my car needs, not just a basic kit. A practicing mechanic would know more than a parts shop."
She frowns at him. "I mean, yeah. But you came to Walcott for that? We do semis, not–" she waves a vague hand at his car "–prissy little sedans."
He came to Walcott because it's small enough no one would check here for him, not on their hunt for an escapee spouse that had lived in the lap of luxury. Little doubt Cazador first searched in Manhattan, Hartford, Long Island—anywhere that could maintain familiar comforts.
Maybe he's still searching there. Maybe he didn't think his pretty, perfect husband would rather live out of a car so long as he was free.
Astarion shrugs instead of saying anything. He only talks to mechanics these days, and it's starting to thicken his tongue. "It was you or Maysville," he says, the name of a truly miniscule town a few miles away. It had barely been a stray pen mark on his map. "At least you do mechanic work."
It's about then that she actually looks at him, both eyes focused instead of half her attention staying on the fifth wheel in front of her.
Astarion is used to being looked at. He's got all the relevant experience, poised for cameras or public or tailored suits and orchestral music. He knows what people think—pretty boy, fancy, soft, fragile. A thing instead of a person. Bruised skin in a dapple of fingerprints.
But he doesn't look like that anymore.
Travel has made him gaunt, greasy. He dumps water over his head in public restrooms, has only two outfits to switch between, hasn't had fluoride to brush his teeth in a week. His skin erupts without seven different lotions and the luminosity of his curls is a mottled, riddled grey. Hunger outlines his cheekbones and sharpens his smile, but not like before, where it was delicate; now he thinks he looks raw. He catches eyes with himself in the rearview mirror and can't look away.
The woman's face creases into something more considerate. "What kinda car, anyway? Not that I'm agreeing."
"'95 Mercedes-Benz," Astarion says, and the words no longer sound strange on his tongue. "E230."
Her gaze sharpens. "Shit, '95? How'd you get your hands on one of those?"
The excuse of someone else, Modelo tipped to her lips. "Inheritance. It'd been sitting in a garage for thirty years; still mint."
Mint. It means something different in his new vernacular; he likes the way it sounds. How it feels.
The woman's brows go up. "Thirty years? How many pieces did it fall into when you first started it up?"
"None. But it took some work to get here, and I need to keep it moving."
She clicks gum between her teeth, lips pursed. Her eyes flick behind him, to where the car is parked in the midday sun, highway dust staining its lower trim orange. Against the backdrop of a lonesome town, it gleams.
"This isn't rare, I want you to know," she says, deliberately gruff. "Like, don't think you're rocking up with a supercar and I'm dropping everything to check it out. It's uncommon at best, and I'm bored. This is a distraction."
Astarion's lips twitch.
She sets down her driver and follows him to his car, dragging a tattooed arm over her forehead. Even a few steps closer is enough to make her eyes brighten into something appreciative.
A glance back. "What's your set up? Got a workshop back home or doing all this out of a garage?"
Astarion keeps his eyes fixed on the car. "Whatever I can fit in the trunk."
There is a pause. She swallows her gum.
"Alright," she says. "Tell you what. Pay me for an hour's maintenance, and I'll piece together a list of everything you could fit in the trunk, and another list of what you can't but should keep an eye out for. That good?"
"More than good," Astarion says. "Thank you."
-
It costs him seventy-five and ends up flirting with two hours, but once she's gotten her hands all under his hood and made enough begrudgingly complimentary statements, she writes him up a list and sends him off with the stern warning that if she catches him trying to buy these parts at a mom-and-pop store that only carries Kobalt, she'll take the car from him herself. City instead of town.
She suggests Rock Island for its automotive history, but that's going east, so Astarion sticks the lists into his glove box and peels back onto I-80 W. Iowa City is around fifty miles out and he gets there before evening, slinking around until he finds an auto shop two stories tall.
He still doesn't count the money, but he pulls a handful of bills he's willing to spend. Not even a quarter of the list, but he picks up each tool with a sort of reverence he's never known—a box knife with a pack of additional blades, a three-piece set of screwdrivers, pliers, two c-clamps, a variety pack of screws and wire spools. Enough to do what he can. Enough to learn more.
If he'd kept his ring, he could've pawned it for more tools, maybe.
He can't make himself regret leaving it behind.
By the counter is a spinning rack of sunglasses and bandanas. A last ditch effort to squeeze more dollars out before getting to the cashier.
The sunglasses all look like they'd snap from a single breath of wind and the bandanas cascade off the side, a rainbow of colours. The cheapest option is a garish red, so thin he can see his fingers through the pattern. Despite the lack of quality, it's still a fiver. That could be a refill on propane or a four-stack of cans.
Maybe it's so shitty that while wearing it, sweat will bleed the colour out to stain his hair. Maybe he'll end up with a gory pink-red mess and matted curls and imperfection.
Astarion buys the bandana.
-
The knot goes at the nape of his neck and the band across his forehead. It pins his curls back and gathers beading sweat before it can sting his eyes—Astarion keeps it on even as he drives, leaning into the wind. He hangs it on the steering wheel each night, drying under moonlight. He thinks of red dripping down his face, staining him, marring him, ruining him.
I'm not yours, he whispers to a honey-gold sky, knuckles white around the cloth. I'm not yours anymore.
When he falls asleep, he dreams of nothing.
-
With the new kit of tools, Astarion spends two days driving only to swap car parks each night so no one notices how he sleeps there and dives into electronics with a fervour unmatched.
The climate control reconnects– not easily, but he bites his lips and squints at the infinitesimal wires and manages to splice new ones over the dead fuses where they're supposed to be. It clicks warningly when he starts it, so he shuts off the car and waits thirty minutes for the whole thing to calm down, then tries again.
Cool air brushes his fingers. Astarion laughs.
He keeps going, though, because the owner's manual had more hidden in the back pages—and on the second day, fingers burnt black from stray sparks and a faint ringing in his ears, he threads one last wire together and noise crackles through the speakers.
In this era, radio isn't what it was. Premium channels have a subscription, a payment to catch whatever is playing there—but back in '95, back for this car, all you had to pay was the installation fee and then the radio would be there. As it goes, it still is. There are still free channels out there for anyone to listen.
There's probably an app or a website for knowing what specific number they are, but Astarion doesn't have that, so he sits there and spins the knob until the static fades and something else plays through the gap.
He hasn't heard music since the parties. Since the gatherings. He doesn't recognize what's playing now as anything but tunes—harmonies, bridges, chords, choruses. Notes played from a microscopic source.
Astarion opens his door and swings his legs out. He leans back against the chair and stares up at the stars overhead, so distant, and listens to gentle melodies play through the night.
-
Nebraska has little to offer, and Astarion's okay with that. He drives longer over empty road, semis his only companion before they inevitably peel off for a city or similar. He continues on straight, windows hand, hair streaming.
At night, he sets up shop in whatever parking lot or stretch of flat land he can find, cooking enough to make his stomach quiet and then diving back to his car. The more he reads and understands the manual, the more he's starting to pick up—which is how today, he noticed the passenger window isn't closing at the speed of the driver's side.
It's the– window motor, he's pretty sure. Because the manual's saying that if it was the regulator, there's a decent chance he'd have gone to close his window only to watch it drop fully into the door, and instead he's just noticing it slow and stutter. Probably the motor.
And, as the manual says, it isn't the type of thing that was built to be repaired. Only replaced.
Astarion is sitting on a flat stretch of land in the Dissected Till Plains of Nebraska. He could turn like an owl and not see a single light of civilization.
More pressingly, the wad of cash he carries is growing thinner and thinner.
Yesterday, one of his clearance rack shirts ripped. Without anything to replace it, he'd instead used his box knife to cut off the other sleeve so it matches, which will in turn become rags for his mechanic work. Everything needs to be saved, kept.
Even if he's never had so much skin exposed, free to get stroked by wind and dappled by sunlight. There's nothing under the sleeves, ribs bare, only parallel scars and cigarette burns. Anyone could see. He's never had to think about that before, when his wardrobe was picked by someone else; even his nightclothes used to be full length. At least for when they stayed on.
He had known Cazador was bad for him, at some point. Before the doors were locked and the ways bared, he realized it was wrong and stayed anyway. Accepted the lie because he wanted it to be real.
Astarion lets the panel press back into the door. "I'm sorry," he says, quiet. In the windswept plains, his voice is barely audible. "I'll fix it eventually. Just not yet."
She doesn't respond.
-
It's about halfway through Colorado that his car starts to truly suffer. The roads aren't flat stretches through cornfields but now mountainous, clambering up and up with the horizon promising more. She makes it over each hill but whines throughout the process, a shuddering clunk somewhere deep in the engine bed. He fusses over her each night but can't find something he can fix, just another list of parts to replace he can't afford.
Colorado is different other than the mountains, at least. More police, as he moves through a countryside with enough population to be more than a wasteland. Astarion learns to lighten his foot and ride at the speed limit instead of above, just another car in a faceless crowd. Seven states away. He can afford to go slower.
Getting pulled over means getting asked for his license, for his identity. Getting pulled over means what Cazador said would happen gets the chance to come true.
Astarion is still starving. Astarion is still destitute. But it's because he doesn't have food or money, not because they are on the table yet being deprived. There is no hand to touch the soft flesh of his stomach and click a disproving tongue. To push him down when he's too weak to fight back.
He eases through the transition from I-76 W to I-70 W and keeps driving.
-
Astarion, leaning back against his car, stares at the aspens all around. Colorado is very pretty, particularly in fall; he's a little late for peak leaf season, but it's close enough to treasure. The east coast burns orange like a wildfire but here is pure gold, laurels and wreaths. He stops a little earlier each night to appreciate it.
He's sat atop a mountain in Colorado, so far away from New York, entirely separate from what should have been his husband, and there is no one around.
Well.
At this point, that isn't quite true.
Astarion flicks to the last page of the manual, past the instructions and onto acknowledgements of its writers. At the very top is the logo for the company, three spokes within a circle. He's picked up a bit of history through mechanic shops to know what the names mean. Mercedes—or Mercédès, apparently, its natural pronunciation taken away for a reason he can't fathom—comes from the daughter of one of the later founders, brought in after another's death. Benz comes from the first.
Faceless men, taking names from themselves or their children, flattened for a wider world and the meaning cut away. He runs a hand down the list of acknowledgements; stuck at the end of a manual, lost to the dust within a glove box for thirty years.
Should his car be named after those long dead? Should his car be named for the one who bought her, who left her abandoned in a garage and would never have taken her out except for upon her death?
Astarion leans his head against her door, cool metal and glossed paint. Thirty years dead, and now revived. She's only a few years younger than him, but Cazador had her for twice as long.
And now they're both free.
He took his first breath after too many years when he set wrinkled cash on a counter and picked up a set of beginner wrenches. When she stopped being a stolen car and started being his. When he decided he was going to be someone.
Milesburg Remedies.
Astarion closes the manual.
"I'm going to call you Remedy," he declares.
-
The next morning, when he flicks the ignition, her engine purrs.
-
I-70 W, through Utah, is nothing but mountain. Great grey-orange rocks stab from the earth like the hands of a giant, the ridges of a lizard, and Astarion marvels at the geography as he continues driving onward.
He checks the level of coolant as he stops for the night, as he always does. It's low, but not worryingly so; with autumn starting to wind over, even the slightest decrease in heat has helped stave off the worst of Remedy's more guzzling tendencies.
The wad of cash is now thin enough he hides it in his sock instead of his waistband. Gas is his greatest expense, and it doesn't seem to be trending down. The price of food stays roughly the same with the bottom shelf he buys, but gas fluctuates, rising the further he gets from civilization. Being only uninhabited mountain, southern Utah scrapes him deeper than others before.
But it's fine. Only two more states until the coast, the furthest point he can be from Cazador. Going and going and gone.
-
Las Vegas– looms.
His route on the I-15 W barely clips the bottom of Nevada, and all that's there is the city of sin, famed and regarded. In the center of a desert so barren a semi is a welcome sight, he sees the city, a gleaming bastion of steel in the dark.
It isn't New York. Isn't Scarsdale, mansions spread over checkerboard lawns and endless garages full of unused cars. But it's big and it's cold and it watches.
Astarion eases into twenty above the speed limit and peels around Las Vegas—heads out into the orange dust to carve his way over roads that haven't been used in decades, the city a spectre waiting on the horizon.
Nothing large. Nothing small. He'll keep going away from New York until he finds a medium city with a road and a spot to park his car, and then he'll figure out what comes next.
-
California hits him all of a sudden—still desert, still nothing, but a sign in green-blue welcomes him to the Golden State and then he realizes, nudging Remedy to eighty mph, that he is in the farthest state away from Cazador.
It's a sobering thought. He threads the thin line between Death Valley and the Mojave as it bounces through his mind.
Two weeks ago, he used a clothes hanger to hold open the door when Cazador left and stole a car. Two weeks ago, he was back in Scarsdale knowing there was another party the next day. Two weeks ago, he didn't know what it feels like to have an accelerator purring under his feet and an open road stretching before.
Now he's here.
Astarion clips the top of a particularly heighty hill and catches a glimpse of the water—a single line of unbroken blue, cut like a knife beneath the clouds. He's close. He's so close.
He's a couple of hours away from the coast when Remedy blows up.
-
The worst part is how slow it is. The worst part, Astarion thinks, is that he feels something change and his brain has enough time to say: oh, the manual mentioned this.
It starts with a crunch under his seat, like bone snapping. It starts when his foot noses into the gas pedal and nothing happens, hearing the whine of her pistons begin to falter as they lose the combustion necessary to fire. It starts with a lurch like he'd pressed the brake but he hasn't.
It starts with that.
It ends when something ruptures in her engine and oil explodes out the front.
Remedy tries. Gods, how she tries—the shriek of whirring pistons as she crests a final hill covered in ice-grass, black spewing through the gaps around her hood. Astarion clutches the steering wheel like a lover and tries to ease her to the side, leaning himself like that'll help, every movement through molasses.
Remedy groans, metal scrapping on metal, an electrical buzz like locusts in the air. The manual bellows through his mind—the hydraulic force is still there, the brakes still work, it just needs more pressure, you're fighting against metal—and Astarion slams both feet onto the pedal hard enough he hears something snap. She crunches back, his forehead pummeling itself into the wheel—her horn rings out once, mournful, as she skids to an unsteady halt just off the shoulder.
Then she stops moving.
And she doesn't move again.
-
Something hits the rumble strips like thunder. Astarion digs his head out from under the hood.
Two days since Remedy broke. Two days since he pulled seat belts through her windows and used that leverage to drag her further onto the shoulder, back wheels chewing on asphalt with every step. Two days since he pried open her hood and found only bubbling, rancid oil.
Two days since fresh water. Two days since new food. Two days since any fucking progress made.
And now, beside the whistling wind of those streaking over the I-15 W, a car has pulled up alongside him.
Not just a car. A tow truck.
Astarion balls up his fists.
He's in a shitty novelty undershirt that hangs cavernous over his sides, jeans hacked off at the knees, a splotched bandana dripping red sweat down his face. He's achingly dry in the throat and curled over a hollow in his stomach. He's standing over what might be Remedy's corpse and he does not have the wherewithal to deal with this.
"Fuck off," he says the instant the side door opens.
The woman stepping out blinks, brows up. She's taller than him by half, dark skinned, a pair of shades hanging off one ear and overalls more black than blue loose on her shoulders. "Right," she says, hopping down two steps to hit the ground. She flicks her sunglasses down against the blazing noon sun. "Hello to you too, mate. Looking for a lift?"
"Not in the slightest."
She hums.
Astarion takes a step back, fuel splashing over his shoes. There's a battlefield underneath Remedy; she lost the last of her oil when he'd dragged her out, spilling rainbow-slick over the surrounding asphalt. It pools in the grass now, too toxic to dissolve easily. Wounds, blood. It's black instead of red.
The woman doesn't come closer, leaning against the cabin of her truck. She crosses her arms. "Got a call 'bout you from one of our regulars," she says, like he should understand that. "She saw you stuck here yesterday morning then on her way back from work; thought it odd you hadn't gotten towed by now. So. Figured I'd stop by and make sure whoever you called actually came."
Astarion still doesn't have a phone to call anyone, actually. Too scared to risk it. His hands tighten around his wrench, fuel slicked up the handle. "Well, you've checked," he says, toothed. "And I'm fine. I don't need to be towed."
The woman frowns, adjusting one strap of her overalls. Underneath, her shirt is deep red with a design he can't make out. "Look," she says. "I'm private—work outta my own shop with my partner, not quota-paid or anything. I've got no reason to be here but wanting to help out."
He can't swallow his snort at that. "And I'm sure your fee is reasonable."
Instead of taking offense, her face clears. "Oh—don't charge anything, actually. Free towing, free transport; would write it on the side'a my truck if the city wouldn't beat down my ass about it." Her expression goes serious. "Because they will carjack you if you stay out here any longer, and those guys won't give her back. They're lazy fucks, but two days is risking it, mate."
Astarion licks his lips. He knows that. He just doesn't have a choice.
The woman nods to his car, eyes hidden behind her shades. "She's real nice," she offers. "The city'd waste her. So let me get you hooked up and then you'll be free to keep chipping away at repairs. I just want you off the highway. That square?"
He casts a glance behind her, at the road beyond. Remedy is perched atop one of California's rolling hills, a plummet on either side. He's been lucky that she hasn't rolled since her brakes are mechanism-only with the harness broken—he won't be lucky forever. And if she goes down either side of this road, he isn't getting her back as anything but a pile of scrap.
He looks back.
"No cost," she clarifies. "Nothing but getting your car outta here. That's it."
Bitten, bloody nails dig into his palms.
"She's got a fracture somewhere in the oil line," Astarion spits out eventually. "Hook her from the front, not the back. And don't you dare touch her tires."
The woman bobs her head, but a smile crosses her face.
She splashes into the puddle of oil, doing a quick circle around the shoulder to inspect all sides of Remedy. Crouches to get a look at the undercarriage, stretches a hand to make sure both axles are intact, nothing dragging or hanging low. Astarion flounders uselessly around the sides, hackles up and restraining the urge to shout whenever she gets too close. Of course she needs to get close. He just doesn't want her to.
Damningly, the woman works like a professional, moving like everything is as expected. A dip into her cabin and out she comes with a neon orange ratchet strap, fitting it through the wheel wells to keep her hood stuck down. Useful after a wreck to make sure it doesn't fly off if the hinges are damaged.
She didn't wreck, Astarion wants to challenge. She just–
He doesn't know what happened.
The woman kneels, unbothered by the oil, and slips the winch to hook around the crossbar. Ties it twice, tests the pull. Flashes him a thumbs-up that it's secure before he puts Remedy into neutral, driveshaft grinding without electricity to aid in shifting the gears.
Then the woman walks back to her truck and hits the button.
Remedy whines as she's lifted, axle grinding when it lifts off the gravel; but the hook is solid and she doesn't fall over, just wavering on the suspension. Her wheels lurch back, trying to dip onto stability and grinding against the suspension in the process—gods, what's causing that? Astarion doesn't have a jack, doesn't have anything to lift her up except going to a shop, which wasn't a possibility as his stolen cash dwindled lower and lower. What's broken under her carriage? What has he missed?
The woman tests the line with her thumb, plucking the length like a harpsichord. "Right," she declares, after checking the tension and getting nothing loose. "All locked up. You ready?"
He isn't. But he won't leave his car.
She clambers into her side then opens up the passenger door, kicking a bundle of papers off the seat. The dashboard is littered with little trinkets, white rubber dogs to resin figurines. Fuzzy dice hang from the rearview mirror. There's a sticker saying suns out, guns out on the steering wheel.
Astarion sits gingerly. The leather is warm and worn under his hands; broken in, used. The ignition rumbles to life and she cranks the windows down, squinting at the triple mirror to make sure the winch is keeping Remedy fully up. A sedan roars past and then she peels into the lane, engine thunderous and pistons purring low and smooth.
Seeing the world from this height is odd. The other cars are visible as their roofs instead of their windows, the reflection of afternoon sun off painted metal. The woman weaves through the lanes as a construction zone narrows the access, humming something under her breath, a tune he would probably know if he had ever had access to the wider world. But he doesn't. He managed to turn on his radio less than a week ago and using it took up gas he wasn't willing to spend.
Her truck purrs as she downshifts, extra power clawing her over the hill with ease. Exit 151 is where she turns, taking it wide and slow, easing onto the left shoulder to keep from cutting in too sharp. She's a good driver. Practiced.
The city she guides into is a multicolour lowrise, golden-brown landscape sweeping up to the higher mountains and studded with arid trees. Pockets of landscaped green around houses, a downtown short but sprawling. People mill around, families, couples. A white dog barks as it chases after a kid in a side yard.
"Where are we?" Astarion finally rasps.
Her brows go up. "Oh, not a local?" She doesn't wait for a response. "This is Tehachapi, 'bout thirty miles off Bakersfield. Home of the Tehachapi Loop if you're into trains; home of not much else if you aren't. Condors, I guess."
The name might be on his map. He can't picture it now; can't see anything but iridescent oil puddling out like blood. "How far from the coast?"
"Like, Pismo Beach? 'round three hours if you avoid traffic." She glances at him out of the corner of her eyes, a flash of dark brown. "Where're you coming from if you don't know that, mate?"
Astarion doesn't answer. Just stares at the winding road before.
Three hours. He made it three hours away. He crossed the entire country off his own back only to crash out with three hours left.
Something eight-bit chirps from the dash.
"Ah, shit–" the woman fumbles at the center drive, keeping her eyes stuck on the road. She unearths a phone, polaroids tucked under a yellow case and about eighteen oil splatters like constellations over top. The icon of whoever's calling is a blurry closeup.
She puts it to her ear but Astarion can hear a low baritone on the other side, the lilt of a question. "Hey-o," she says, operatic. "Yeah, got the Merc, bringing him in now. Can you open up the first bay? Something's up with the oil pan and I want to see what's underneath."
It's not the oil pan, Astarion wants to mutter but doesn't.
Whatever is said in reply makes her laugh, deep-chested and full. "Yeah, yeah. Fine. Tell Lae she gets one more night of storage and then I am sticking that bike out into the lot no matter whether it's raining or not. She won't come back from Sequoia otherwise. Actually, can you fib and say I caught her wheel rim with paint? Whatever colour'd scare her most."
Harmonized laughter. Her tongue peeks through her teeth when she smiles. "Great. Love ya."
She hangs up, letting the phone fall back into the cup holders full of gum wrappers and what looks like baking liners. "That's my partner," she says idly, shifting into the left lane. "He'll get the shop prepped—already wrapped up everything scheduled today, so it'll just be you. Should have her patched up in a jiffy."
Astarion's hands tangle in the frayed ends of his jeans, sunburned flesh underneath. Tucked against his ankle bone is enough cash to get him to the Pacific Ocean, to see the coastal blue, perhaps a meal from something other than his little propane fireset. That's it. He cannot afford a mechanic.
She makes another wide turn down a one-way lane, truck grumbling discontentment as she nips it in at the end to avoid the curb. A decrease down to twenty mph as she rounds one last turn and a mechanic shop comes into view.
Three bays, standard height, a smaller attached building that continues into a floor over the docks. The sign out front is handpainted and ribboned from rainfall, done up with a deep orange: Ravensgate Repairs. The calligraphy is organic, curving. Something practiced before being done on the final board.
She eases into the entry lot, skirting around a trio of SUVs and one pickup with a fender so rusted it'd serve better as a stop sign. Her truck rumbles approvingly as she curls into a seven-point turn in the cramped corners, never getting Remedy closer than five feet to another vehicle. She lines up with the first bay, its door closed in the growing evening.
"Welcome," she says cheerily, latching the emergency break before unlocking the doors. "Won't find a better shop this side of Pasadena, that's our guarantee. Helps that no one comes up from Pasadena to say otherwise. Wanna help me get your girl loose?"
Astarion slips from the truck numbly. Afternoon is gone and the air is mountain-cool, sunlight just a backsplash of orange over a darkening sky. It'd be about now that he'd start the search for a carpool lot, somewhere small and unbothered to park and cook. A little corner to rest in.
Instead, his life's possessions are hooked onto the winch of a stranger's car. Instead, Remedy is broken.
The woman thumbs at the button, head tilted; whatever noise it hisses seems to be satisfactory because she presses it fully, the winch twanging like some bewildered instrument as the coil snakes back into its maw.
Remedy, with a rumble of discontent, begins to lower. She settles on the ground with a groan as her axles rock back, wheels spinning. Another spray of oil pulses through her carriage, vomiting upon the ground. The woman winces. "Yeah, best get her in now. Hold on–"
She pads over to the bay, knocking twice on the corrugated metal. "Open up, mate!"
There's a moment's pause, then the door rattles. The woman steps back, giving it plenty of room to move. Astarion pads closer. He has a hand set on Remedy's hood like that would do anything if they decided to take her.
The door goes above eye level and reveals a man standing there, guiding the door up with what looks like a telescoped broom to make sure it doesn't fall back down. He's tall and broad, though not moreso than his partner, dreads pulled back and triple-secured so nothing falls in his face. His right arm is mottled—oil scars, Astarion realizes distantly. Like he'd stood near a vat of racing chemicals.
When he finishes with the door, he turns to them, smiling. He has a good smile, wide and warm. The scars continue up his jaw, right eye a strange, milky white.
"Welcome back," he says, even more baritone in person. "Who's this?"
The woman grins and marches up. "Wyll, this is–" then she pauses, glancing back. She scans his chest like a nametag is set against the ratty cloth. "...well, shit, I don't know who this is." A pause. "Fuck, did I tell you my name?"
Astarion raises a brow.
The man—Wyll, apparently—snorts, eyes crinkled. "This is why I said you shouldn't call him the Merc, Karlach. Your nicknames stick too easily."
"You think Aylin can say she spotted a long wheelbase '95 with original paint and that's not all I'm gonna think about?" Karlach says with a huff, tongue back between her teeth. "Thing's a fucking beaut, mate. Just wait 'til you get a look at her."
Something that could be pride unfolds in Astarion's chest. She is a beauty.
He keeps his hand on her hood.
"I'm Karlach," the woman says, tapping her chest. "And this's Wyll, both owners of this joint. What's your name?"
There's a moment where he goes to open his mouth, where instinct rises instead of rolling over. He's used every pseudonym under the sun when interacting with mechanics before—names common enough to slide under suspicion, similar enough to his own so he'll react. But here, with Remedy bleeding oil after two days of being able to do nothing, his brain can't make the jump it has before.
He keeps his lips pursed. Holds like a rabbit about to run.
Karlach and Wyll exchange a glance. Something passes through their eyes.
"Red," Karlach says like a declaration. When he blinks at her, she gestures to his head—to his bandana, dripping red-stained sweat over his brow. Constant use has made it fade but cheap dye isn't the kind that fades prettily; it's still garish and gaudy, a sharp bolt of colour against the grime of his other clothing. "We can call you Red, if that's cool?"
Red. Nothing more than a colour.
Astarion nods before he can think about anything else.
Karlach grins, sweeping her braid back over her shoulder. "Hell yeah. Let's get her into the shop, alright? Hoping that getting her up on lifts'll jostle a last bit of oil free so we can see where it's coming from."
They wait for confirmation and only then does Wyll latch the bay door with some mechanism by the base, moving to the back. Karlach crouches to unhook Remedy from the winch, nodding to Astarion so he moves to make sure she doesn't roll away once being released into neutral. She just whines. The parking lot's flat enough to keep her grounded.
Then Karlach comes around to the trunk and starts to push, her biceps genuinely as thick as his thighs. Astarion leans through the open window to yank her steering wheel as Wyll calls left or right whenever Remedy tries to veer into the wall, but between the three of them, she shudders as she rolls into the bay, a prismatic streak in her wake. Black blood.
Wyll sets a yellow chock behind her rear tires to keep from rolling away. When he turns to Astarion, it's with an easy smile, one used so frequently there are well-worn creases around his eyes. The milky one looks like a burn. It doesn't focus fully. "Do you want gloves?"
Astarion shakes his head. He prefers touch. Prefers little scars and blood welling on his fingertips.
Wyll nods, accepting without comment. There's a sagging toolbox likely weighing as much as a small planet that the man crosses to, pulling two drawers open and grabbing a set of thick leather gloves where they hang off the side, the joint worn white from loving use.
Karlach slips up the straps of her overalls, shucking her shirt so it doesn't get damaged—there's a brief glimpse of a gnarled, twisted scar off-center of her chest before the denim covers it—and ducks around the base of the lift, unfurling each of its four arms.
Astarion hovers nearby. He knows these machines in the abstract, can guess their purpose from what he's read in the manual, seen in the other shops. He has no idea how to use them. He can only watch.
Remedy grunts as Karlach gets each arm of the lift on her frame, adjusting to make sure they're stable on the right point. She double checks each, making sure the space is clear, then activates the hydraulics. The lifts rise without protest.
They stop about seven feet off the ground, only a few inches above Karlach's head. Remedy hangs there as though in the gallows, wheels arched to the wells and dust drifting like marine snow. A steady trickle of oil pools underneath. Her entire undercarriage is covered, sluicing through the bolt holes and vents. Black blood.
Two weeks to this. Two weeks of reading a manual by starlight and feeling through her engine bed by touch alone. Two weeks of trying and he still failed.
Astarion inhales so he doesn't cry. He hasn't cried since Cazador. He won't now.
Karlach whistles, low and steady. "Shit," she says, popping her tongue. "Yeah, that's not the oil pan. Spilled all five liters, if I had to guess; was it slow or all at once?"
That's a prompt to him. Astarion grits his teeth.
"All at once," he says. "I was driving when she lost more than half her tank in a second. She barely made it to the top of the hill before stalling out. Her harness is broken, too."
Wyll's eyebrows shoot up. "Her harness?"
But it's Karlach that grimaces, scratching at the side of her neck. "Shit, she's from the timeframe Mercedes was using the biodegradable wire coating, yeah? The one that'll chew your wires up for lunch?"
"Even with that, to break entirely isn't normal, though," Wyll points out, frowning. "A harness should go in sections unless something else prompted it."
Karlach hums. "Whatever popped the oil?"
"Maybe?"
"Let's find the oil first—though we can't drip-feed test without the harness," Karlach says, clicking her tongue. Turns to him. "Where you put more oil in then start the engine to see where it's leaking out; we'll have to do this by touch. That okay?"
Every word they say is incomprehensible in a way that curls his shoulders more than Cazador ever managed. Two weeks surviving, and he still knows nothing.
Astarion nods.
Karlach moves to the rear, running a hand along the rim of the tailpipe. Wyll, bulky gloves covering up to his elbows, steps to the center, tracing along her driveshaft. He pauses at the oil pan, feeling around the edges, peering at his gloves. "Nothing," he confirms. "The leak didn't start here, at least, though it looks worn."
"Oil goes all the way back here," Karlach says, shaking droplets off her hand where they'd been around the base of the exhaust. "Dark but not thick—changed recently. Don't think it's the problem."
Astarion bites down the urge to glower. He checks his oil every single time he stops, makes sure the mechanic from Ohio doesn't have her prediction come true. He does what he knows. He does what he can.
"But she lost it all in one go," Wyll muses, brows furrowed. "There'd have been a fire if the engine burst or it was an internal rupture, and there's too much oil in the undercarriage for it to have been just in the pistons."
Then something clears in his face. "Can I have a light?"
Karlach fetches him one he loops around his arm, aimed up. He braces it against his chest and starts to feel towards the back of the engine, where it connects to the transmission. He peers into the cavities between the driveshaft and oil pan, sticking his hand up.
A pause. Then he sighs.
"There it is," Wyll says, angling the beam so it better pierces through her undercarriage. When he pulls his glove back, oil drips from the fingers. "I won't know for certain unless we bring the transmission down, but it looks like the rear main seal broke."
Karlach sucks air over her teeth. "Full harness and rear main? She doesn't do things by half."
Astarion stares at where Wyll is gesturing, another section of her frame riddled with pipes like intestines and dripping oil. He knows the words. Knows what the diagrams look like in the manual, time-faded and finger-worn. Could maybe find these parts' vague location, pieced together from name and circular patterns.
He doesn't know what it means.
Karlach glances at him. Maybe sees something on his face. "The rear main seal is a– like a lid? It's what keeps all the oil in the engine from spilling into the car, mainly the transmission. Without it, there's nothing keeping your oil in." She sighs. "Honestly, I hate to say this, but it's almost better to get a full blow out than an advanced tear. Impossible to miss something like this, but if it'd just started to leak a bit then you might not've noticed and kept running your engine on half oil, which'll fuck it right up. Yours just– burst."
Astarion swallows. "What does that have to do with the harness?"
"Something something canary or the coal mine," Karlach says. "Dunno which one broke first and caused the other, but some sorta shock went through your harness and the extra heat just… melted all your wires, since the coating goes brittle super easy. And the harness is what runs all your electric, sensors, transmission. Without it, she won't move."
When her fuel line broke, he had wrapped it in his old nightclothes to try and trap gas in for long enough to limp to the closest mechanic.
Now they're saying she won't move at all.
Astarion digs bitten nails into the meat of his wrists.
Karlach hums, watching Wyll continue to poke around the rear engine. "Actually, the harness might not be that big of an issue with how mint she looks—if we send your VIN off to Mercedes, we could try the argument that they should replace it themselves from an old-as-fuck recall."
The vehicle identification number sits on the front end of the frame. The same one on the registration. The same one back on the books in Scarsdale, back under Cazador's thumb.
Astarion doesn't meet her eyes.
There's a low sigh, air pushed from her chest like a bellows. "...right. Well. The wire coating's a known problem; my guess is there's plenty of replacements out there, and I know how to replace harnesses. Won't be that bad."
"And I've done more than my fair share of rear main seals," Wyll says, coming out from under Remedy. He holds his arms away from his body so the oil drips down the leather fingers and splashes on the concrete. "The parts might take a while to come in, but she isn't dead. She can come back from this."
Well. There's confirmation. He'd guessed it without the specifics, but now he has those, too. A perfect bow to tie on top of what can't be called a gift.
"Thank you," Astarion says through teeth only partially gritted. He is thankful, just–
The ways he knows how to show thanks are not what he will ever do again.
"Thank you," he says again, "for getting me off the highway and helping with this. I appreciate it. Could you put her down?"
Wyll's brows furrow. "Pardon?"
"So I can leave," Astarion enunciates. "A thing that is difficult to do if you have my car lifted seven feet off the ground."
Karlach fidgets. "Red, you'll have to take out the whole engine to access the rear main," she says, "and installing a new harness means stripping her down to the frame and building her back up again. That's not the kinda thing you can do solo, even if you had an entire shop back home."
Maybe Cazador does. Maybe the parts of the manor Astarion wasn't allowed had an entire automotive hall, to explain those rows of solemn supercars like a progression of tombstones. But that's back in Scarsdale, and Astarion is not there.
Three fucking hours from the coast. He'll put Remedy in neutral and push her there if he has to.
"I can't afford it," Astarion says flatly. "Not the parts or the labour. This was a very expensive way to answer what I already guessed back on the road. So let her down, and I'll get her to the nearest free parking and come up with my next steps there. Again: thank you. Much appreciated. But I'd like to get moving before dark."
There's no point in mentioning insurance. If he had it, he would have said so by now, and all of them know it.
"We haven't looked up the prices," Karlach says, open and guileless. "She's an older car, but Mercedes runs a tight shop; could be a lot cheaper than you're thinking."
Unless he can get both for a tenner and fluttered eyelashes, he won't be getting them. Astarion shakes his head.
There's another glance exchanged between them, like folded paper airplanes tossed through air. A conversation held in the electric current between sockets.
"It's late," Wyll says instead. He pulls off his gloves, weaving a hand through his dreads. "We did an initial inspection, but I'd like to spend more time on her, if you're willing. There's a chance it could just be a few sections of wire or a break in the oil casket, rather than the whole system."
If they're trying to steal his car, they're doing a terrible job. Astarion frowns. "I could come back tomorrow," he says, because he's willing to cling to the fragile hope that maybe this is something he can fix. "But you still have to let her down."
"Why not stay with us for the night?" Karlach offers.
Then, before Astarion can ball up his fists and start snarling, Wyll steps in. "We have a break room," he says, gentle. "The couch isn't very comfortable, but it's better than a car seat, I'll wager."
Astarion meets his gaze with flinty eyes. Wyll doesn't flinch.
It likely isn't difficult to guess he's temporarily unhomed, as the more fantastical phrasings go. The bandana hides the worst of it but his scalp weeps with sweat and oil, matted, tangled. His skin went from seven separate lotions and exfoliators a day to less than nothing and it shows. His gums bleed when he talks too fast.
"A break room," he says flatly.
"A couch," Wyll agrees. "On the ground floor, right off the shop. We sleep upstairs, so there's no connection. It's just an extra room."
Astarion ignores everything about the offer to frown. "You live here?"
Karlach laughs a little, scratching the underside of her jaw. Black oil streaks like warpaint over her skin. "You think we're paying double property taxes in California? Nah, this building came with a second floor that's good enough for us. Had to pipe in some utilities, but we don't need much."
Wyll nods.
Karlach has wide, pleading eyes. "Just– stay the night. Tehachapi's not unsafe, but carjacks'll see you as a target in the free parking lots. At least here we've got solid walls and a cam system." She gestures to Remedy, mournful in her stillness. "Just for tonight. Then tomorrow we'll do a proper check and see about fixing her, yeah?"
She knows how to hit where he's weak. Astarion looks at Remedy—at his home for the past two weeks, his only companion beyond the fear that dogs at his heels and the hunger in his gut. At the steady drip of prismatic blood, pooling like a butcher's shop underneath. He has enough tools to line the bottom of a paper shopping bag and a manual that's half written in a language he can't read.
There's an entire building full of machines and equipment here. They spoke in words he can't understand but knows are important.
A Modelo pressed to sun-worn lips. A cool, casual mention he was using the wrong gas—and if he continued to, it'd blow a hole in her piston. That with his lack of experience, he was hurting her.
Karlach and Wyll know more than him.
Astarion nods.
They've got Remedy up on their lift. That's the only reason he's staying.
-
The break room is what it says on the tin; a storage room half-scraped for a couch and bookshelf, boxes of old supplies and oil canisters filling the opposite half. A maintenance sink has a secondary faucet for drinking sticking out the side, its socket one size too small.
Karlach unearths a box with folded blankets, each more colourful than the last, and Wyll hands him a lightning and usb-c charger—Astarion takes both just to avoid questions and selects the topmost blanket, one done up in pale blue and snowflakes. It's entirely still autumn. The leaves haven't even begun to fall.
Then they leave. Astarion waits, but they don't lock the door from the other side.
He descends on the sink and gulps down water until his teeth buzz with the cold, stomach swelling after two days deprived. He peels off his bandana and runs it under the stream, pink-white gushing through his fingers, salt crusted over his brow. He doesn't take off his clothes but does scrub himself down, sunburned skin finally peering through the grime. Thirty minutes and he almost starts feeling alive again, air through a water-softened throat and oil teased out from under bitten nails.
The couch is a squat, bullied thing, orange-white with a floral pattern that's likely older than his car. It creaks when he lays down, spreading the blanket first. The snowflakes are obscenely soft under his hands.
This is the first time he's fallen asleep anywhere but Remedy for two weeks. The first blanket he's had that didn't come bleached with Cazador's particular detergent of choice.
Astarion closes his eyes.
-
"This-a-way, Red!"
The staircase—to use a generous term—is a thin and spindly nightmare, built off a code that had likely been illegal twenty years ago. It's in the attached building which is mostly storage, a labyrinth of missteps and buckling shelf-racks to weave through before getting to the stairs, called only by Karlach's booming voice. Each step creaks when he takes it. Astarion clings to the handrail.
It opens into a landing room, roof shallow on the edges and only sloping high enough to stand in the center. There's a door in the back, cracked open enough he can see a bed piled high with fluffy blankets and a wall more picture than paint.
The room itself is a mishmash of everything. A kitchen along one side, every cabinet a different style, white-painted to oak-stained to a neon sort of blue, seemingly scavenged from every estate sale within a forty-mile range. The oven has its exhaust pipe punched into the floorboards to snake down. In the center is a table with three seats, circular; a TV some two feet across and balancing on a rickety table patterned with pastel frogs mirrors it on the opposite wall. A window behind him, streaming gold over the walls. Someone painted the ceiling blue with airbrushed clouds.
Karlach is sitting at the table, one leg hooked around the supports to keep her leaning back. Wyll bustles between it and the countertop, pulling over platters that are neither the same colour, shape, nor century. He's wearing an apron modeled to look like a Heinz ketchup bottle.
She glances up as he arrives, eyes crinkling. He's in the same clothes, hems damp where he'd tried fruitlessly to scrub some of the crusted oil out; she's in sweats and an athletic top that makes him think she could bench her own tow truck. She has a tablet braced on her thighs, screen throwing pale light up her top.
"Did some looking and it turns out the main seal's only forty bucks if you don't need Mercedes written on it," Karlach says, swiveling around her tablet to show him. He doesn't recognize the website, not that he was ever allowed access to many, but the part on the screen looks like a deceptively simple ring inlaid with notches. Maybe the width of his hand, by the scale figure.
"That's it?" Astarion can't help but say.
Wyll sits down, grabbing a piece of toast and spreading butter with fanatical devotion. "The seal itself isn't the problem," he explains, nudging out the third chair at the table. It's missing one of its legs and wobbles, but seems mostly structurally sound. Astarion sits. "It's cheap and installation is just taking out the old and putting in the new, maybe a bit of trouble in cleaning the housing. No, the problem is that to access it, you have to remove the entire engine block, while juggling how to disconnect the transmission." He sets the knife delicately back in the tray. "Which is difficult."
"That's why we bought the cherrypicker," Karlach chirps. "He'll lift that engine out like a bit of loose change so long as we hook it up right."
"And I think the E230 is able to leave the transmission in without the engine," Wyll adds. "Which should speed things up."
"It'll have to be a new seal, though; this isn't the kinda part you can skiv off with buying used." She reaches to the table without looking, grabbing a stalk of celery and crunching down like a particularly determined rodent. "Shouldn't be more than forty."
Wyll nods. "And the harness?"
"That one sucks," she admits. "Best I could find puts us around fifteen hundred, since this is one we'll want to get straight from Mercedes—ordering used or original means there'll be the same wire coating issue and we're right back at the beginning, but any they produce today should have the recipe changed. Lead time's crazy, though. E230s are old enough we'll have to get it straight from Germany, which is shipping combo'd with however long it'll take for me to convince them to send us one."
She swipes at her tablet again, switching tabs to a picture of a tangled mesh of wires, sockets and bulbs like dew on a spider's web. Astarion blinks.
He knows how to change oil, how to settle brakes, how to grind off rust on a panel until it stops spreading. He– doesn't know about any of this.
The back of his mouth is dry.
"At best guess, we can get the seal at any time, but the harness'll take two months if we're lucky, four if we're a little less." She notes something and sets the tablet to the side, reaching around to grab a third plate hidden behind the paper towels. "C'mon, Red, eat up. Wyll gets all sad if breakfast goes to waste."
Wyll coughs around a piece of toast and doesn't disagree.
All the numbers and words and concepts float through his head, but Astarion pulls his attention away to focus on the table, the feast spread overtop. He glances at Wyll, at Karlach, but both are eating themselves.
The plate set in front of him is pale green with a chip on the corner. Square.
If this is a mistake they're going to make, he's willing to take advantage. Astarion pulls the plate closer and loads up on the available spread—toast still hot from the press, little links of sausage with the Kirkland brand burned into the side, an entire bowl of scrambled eggs, cut vegetables.
Four ounces of steak and a day fasted to earn it.
Astarion eats until he can't. He eats until it hurts.
Wyll quietly gives him water, an ice cube shaped like a bear's head bobbing in the novelty mug. Astarion forces himself to slow then, washing it down, trying to breathe slow so he doesn't gasp. The water carries a twinge of iron down his throat. One of his gums is bleeding. He can't bring himself to care.
Karlach waits until he swallows then: "How much do you know about mechanic work, Red?"
He drinks again to give himself time to think—and gods, actual tap water is so much better than stuff filched from roadside rest stops—and elects for uncharacteristic honesty. "Only what can be done on the road. All my tools are in my trunk."
She nods like that's expected. "Tire swap, oil changes? What about brake lines?"
"Don't interrogate him," Wyll says, a touch wry. "What she means, Red, is whether you'd be willing to help us fix your car."
It's a good thing Astarion finished drinking, else he would've choked.
As it is, he still wheezes around half a breath, nails digging into his thighs. Wyll and Karlach meet him with twin looks of concern.
"She's mine," he says, reproachful and bemused in turn. "I'm going to be working on her no matter what."
Karlach snorts. Wyll grins. "My apologies," he says. "To rephrase: whether you'd be willing to let us help you fix your car."
It's said so open, so innocent. Like there isn't thousands of dollars waiting to rear their ugly head.
Astarion wraps his hands around the mug, a cold shock to his scraped palms. Doesn't look quite at them, just at the last traces of egg within the bright orange bowl. "Why?"
"Because I'd feel like shit watching that car go to rust," Karlach says bluntly. "Wasn't asskissing when I said she's a beaut—you've put your time into her, and it shows. Elbow grease'll take you a lot farther than phoning in with an automatic car wash once a season."
"And she's saveable," Wyll jumps in, nodding. "The rear seal is annoying, so is the harness—but annoying. Not impossible. Not even difficult, with three of us and an engine hoist."
Karlach grins. "Good chance to test my skills, too. Haven't had to change one'a these old harnesses since I was a wee tyke in the 90s—and that was because Colombia floods a shitload and the harnesses got water-fried, not degraded. This'll be a fun challenge."
Wyll's smile is so achingly fond Astarion has to look away again.
"So let us be selfish, mate. Kip it here for however long it takes to get the parts in, break up the silence, and don't make me send a queen like her to the junkyard, yeah?"
Sixteen hundred dollars in parts alone, to say nothing of labour or housing him and Remedy for two months. Astarion licks his lips.
"And if you want, you're welcome to explore the shop," Wyll adds, like a hand outstretched. "We've stocked up on every tool we could get our hands on, half of which aren't the kind you'll encounter in home workshops or for anything but specialty work. It can be fun to poke around, so you don't get bored with the wait."
"No need to answer right now if you want to think about it," Karlach starts, but Astarion shakes his head. He's terrified, not blind. This is more than he could have ever hoped for.
And a part of him wants walls. Wants a roof and running water and the feeling of sleeping without fearing police knocking on his windows in the middle of the night.
"I accept," he says, just a shade louder than a whisper. "You are– more than kind."
Karlach's grin shows every one of her molars. "Aces, Red. I'll get those ordered tonight."
Astarion takes another drink of water instead of having to respond to that.
The silence is beginning to stretch, waiting for a thanks or comment or question or something, when a shrill, strident buzz echoes around the room.
Both of them whip around, gazes arrowed onto the stove—where, perched on the back, a little tomato-shaped ball buzzes out the last notes of a song and falls still.
"Shit," Karlach says, jamming the tablet under her arm and hip-checking her chair under the table. "That's Gale—fucker added something to our pomodoro timer like six years back and refuses to tell us how he makes it ring when he shows up. If it's about his Sienna again I am going make him and Shads sit through an entire fucking presentation on how bribing me with booze won't save them from my wrath about forgeting oil changes for two years in a row–"
Her voice continues ringing as she clatters down the stairs like a bull.
Wyll, chuckling, sweeps all the plates up, though only holding one with the arm covered in the oil scars. "We have a few… regulars," he explains, stacking them neatly in the sink. "Gale and Shadowheart work in Tehachapi, so they come by frequently. I imagine you'll meet them soon, if you want."
He squeezes a bit of suds into the bowls, filling each with warm water to soak. "There's a shower downstairs," Wyll continues. "It's off the back of the shop; towels are in the cupboard to the left of the door. Feel free to explore when you're done—Gale enjoys a long conversation."
And then Wyll ducks under the doorframe and disappears below, leaving Astarion sat at an empty table.
All the gratitude and awe bleeds out for suspicion. For what has howled at him for two weeks as he kept going faster, faster, dragging a prismatic line over the dusty backroads of America with hell on his heels.
He stands, half unconscious, half tense. They lowered Remedy from the lift because the risk of falling during the night isn't worth the convenience of staying up; if they're truly distracted with this Gale, maybe he could sneak her out the bay. They mentioned cameras, a security system; it's likely there's already pictures of his face in their files. Already evidence of his existence. The longer he stays, the worse it gets.
Astarion, pushing off the table, happens to glance through the window.
Early morning casts a hazy glow with the upkicked dust, whorled by a battalion of windmills studding up the horizon. They aren't in the main downtown but other stores dot the surrounding street, flickering neon signs and morose café tables bolted down alongside parking lines. A faded poster advertises the TMRA Junior Rodeo dated to a week ago.
Why would Cazador look for him here?
Scarsdale was an affluent hellscape, no inconvenience allowed nor travesty suffered. White silk, dark suits. Parties made of ballrooms and central entertainment.
Tehachapi can't have more than– what, fifteen thousand people? Less? From Karlach's impromptu tour and this window view, Astarion mostly sees single or two story buildings, worn pavement, pockets of wild grass. A sprawling expanse of brush. Utilities wired through floorboards and magpie-scavenged kitchens.
If Cazador took a step in this city in his polished oxfords, he'd fall apart.
Astarion sits back in the chair.
-
He hides, at first. A cat kicked one too many times, no matter the new owners. Two weeks is not enough to undo previous expectations layered over the years. Without Remedy to shelter him from the world, he has to carry that protective shell with him.
The break room is slowly emptied, boxes of supplies hauled out until the bookshelf has a flat top to set his meager supplies on. Wyll agonizes for minutes before deciding on a bright red mug with a tropical leaf pattern, handing it over with mock solemnity and saying this is his downstairs mug. Karlach stops being subtle with offhand questions and just starts pushing recipe books into his arms. Whenever a client comes in, Astarion disappears to the room before he can be seen. He cracks the door to watch them work through the slit; tries to guess what they're doing.
When Karlach yawns, arms up and ubiquitous overalls riding low, a constellation of bullet scars punch through her upper shoulder. Wyll sits at the table each morning to meter acidic drops into his milky eye without a wince.
Astarion keeps hiding. Keeps tucking into the shadows with a tongue that's forgotten how to talk to people and hairs on the back of his neck that never go down.
Keeps watching them.
-
"Red, c'mere!"
Astarion lifts his head from where he'd been rereading his manual, tracing out all the incongruent lines of the wire harness. It overlaps some eighty million times, by his count. He can barely recognize what he's looking at.
Karlach, calling him. He's been here four days and this is the first time she's done so for something that isn't food.
Three meals a day. It leaves him more breathless than it ought to.
Astarion sets down the manual, saving its spot with the cut section of a used zip-tie, and pads into the shop proper. Wyll is out on a supply run since it's cheaper to have things sent to a stocking warehouse and then pick them up rather than pay the delivery fee, and Karlach is working on something. And calling him.
Her thick braid pops over the hood, a hand emerging alongside. "This way!"
Astarion goes.
"Li'l thing, if you're up for it," Karlach says. She's crouched beside a little four door something he can't recognize, storm-grey with mud kicked up like a rooster's tail behind each wheel well. "Ever done this before?"
Astarion frowns. He stays far enough away she couldn't grab him around the shoulders but crouches down alongside, looking where she's pointing.
It's the front right tire, and even from a glance, he can see something's wrong. It sags, not as circular as it should be; the rim has a lurch to it, like something had struck it hard enough to cause a dent. "It's flat?"
She bobs her head. "Puncture—look at the treads, see how deep they still are? This tire's pretty new, but if you feel here–" she reaches over the top, tapping a section of the center line. Then she pulls out and rocks back on her heels, scooting further away.
Astarion hesitates for a second, gauging the distance, but goes. The tire is covered in grit and dust, smearing on his forearm; and when he feels where she pointed out, there's a gash. Air whistles against his fingertips.
"That's a big enough wound we're better off just replacing than trying to patch it," Karlach explains. "Pretty simple process, especially on a solid car like a Sonata, but dead useful to know."
She spins a wrench around her finger, waving at the impact gun set on the cart she's pulled up alongside the wheel. "Wanna learn how?"
It's letting himself be exposed. It's being in the open instead of hidden away where he can't be seen. And yet.
The part of Astarion that had splayed a hand over Remedy's hood and popped it open, that had traced the new fuel line through her engine bed and wondered why it was the size it was, that had listened to her accelerator purr when he pushed a thousand rpms–
That part nods.
-
Astarion's a light sleeper. He has to be, when his door was locked by someone else's key and visitors were not those he invited. So his eyes open when he hears one of the bay doors move.
He lays there for a moment, fisting into the snowflakes, waiting. The corrugated metal clatters in its frame as it's drawn into the ceiling, the mechanism latching closed. Karlach's truck purrs, gravel spitting as its tires spin.
A low murmur comes from the shop; the buzz of fluorescent lighting, the clunk of a car with a broken driveshaft limping through the entry. Karlach's truck rumbles back into the parking lot, winch settling, then the door clangs open—Wyll's soothing baritone, the rasp of a client's voice. Picked up from somewhere. Maybe the highway.
The staircase creaks, the heavy plods he knows to recognize as Karlach and a softer set from whomever she's bringing with her. Within the shop, a cart is dragged to position, wheels squeaking on the floor.
Astarion stands. It's not cold, but he keeps the blanket wrapped around his arms, trailing at his ankles like a ghost's shroud. He pushes open the door and goes out.
The third bay is open, lights humming and shelves pulled into place. In its center is something that could have never gotten here by itself, not with the streak of black-yellow pooling under its tires. It's an old car, rust-eaten and dirt-streaked. The hood crumples in on a sharp point, half the bumper missing and the other half dragging over the concrete.
By its front, Wyll sits on a rolling stool, gloves sat in his lap. He angles a worklight on the nearby toolbox, beam crisp yellow in the gloom.
Astarion observes. Thinks.
"Do you do this frequently?"
To his credit, Wyll doesn't flinch at his presence, just glances over. "As much as we can," he offers, pulling open the toolbox. "Tehachapi isn't large, but I-15 W runs full. Anyone we can pick up is someone we can help."
The car in the bay is rusted through and weeping oil. It might be older than Remedy, and it didn't spend thirty of those years parked in a garage.
Astarion pulls his arms in tighter. "Why?"
"I needed help like this once," Wyll says mildly. Oil scars gleam over his jaw. "Now I try to offer it to others. So they can get out."
He opens the hood, using a two-by-four to keep it up since the strut is broken. Light spills over the innards, a tangle of cords and pipes that look as though they could be pulled from the seafloor. Wyll just pulls on his gloves and begins to inspect.
Astarion watches until his bare feet sting from the concrete. Then he goes back to the room and lays down.
-
The weather turns sour, seeping into the end of autumn. Tehachapi, apparently, is no stranger to snow despite being solidly in southern California—four thousand feet of elevation means winter will always find a way, even if they've still got a few months before it truly rears its ugly head.
But as the temperature skids on a freefall for an out-of-place week, Karlach doesn't rise with the roosters; just grits her teeth as she staggers into the kitchen, left arm locked up. Wyll is there instantly, easing her into a chair, moving it back so she can hunch over the table. He goes to the microwave, unearthing a well-worn brace and baking it for two minutes; in the meanwhile, Karlach peels off her top, left in only an undershirt so ratty it can hardly be called clothing.
More scars wind down her arm, the ovaloid punctures of bullets and one that looks like an axe wound. She exhales something ragged as Wyll wraps the brace around, hiding keloid lines. Under the shirt, her chest is uneven. One of her breasts gouged out.
"Hey, Red," she rasps, lifting her head. Astarion, who froze in the entrance and hasn't yet moved, starts. "Mind closing the bay doors? There's a storm coming."
-
Later that day, as Wyll reschedules appointments and cooks something warm, Astarion leans his head against the bubbled window pane, watching grey clouds roll in from the mountains.
-
Karlach laughs belly-deep, tongue between her teeth. She's got a compression shirt on, overalls unfolded so the straps bounce around her waist, but she's leaning over the hood like it doesn't bother her. "Red, wanna see this?"
Astarion pads over as offered. A new pair of shoes, close-toed and with soles attached by more than willpower, hold him stable as he peers into the engine block. "What–"
Then he draws short. Stares.
"What is that?"
"S'called a block tester," Karlach says, tugging it out from where it's stuck between the fuel line. "You hold it over the pressure cap, and if the blue turns green, you've got a blown head gasket. Damn useful. Guess this client's a bit more handy than they said, or their last mechanic is kicking rocks."
Astarion takes it when she holds it out, running his thumb over. It's an odd cylinder, an inch or two of pale blue liquid at the base, a nozzle-funnel underneath. "And they just left it in?"
"Sure did," Karlach chirps. "Lesson número uno, Red—you're going to drop tools under the hood. In fact, you're going to drop a ten millimeter socket, and you can pray to every god out there and still not get it out. White whales, I swear."
Astarion squints at the tester.
"There's a silver lining, though—because the amount of cars that roll in with gifts for us? It's a cycle. Tools out, tools in." She gestures at the far wall of the third bay, riddled with shelves and boxes in incomprehensible organization. "Think I've got an actual fucking drip pan from this lifted Canyon a few years back; it's a li'l trophy now. Never getting rid of that."
Astarion can name every single one of his tools, knows intimately where he sets each down, checks and cleans them whenever he wrapped up inspection for the night. He was working out of a grassy patch of shoulder alongside a highway under starlight and all of his tools stayed exactly where he wanted them to be.
"I'm never going to do that," he declares.
Karlach grins. "Maybe you'll be the best of us all."
-
Wyll has an offset gait, heavier on one leg than the other, and Astarion knows it's him when someone walks up behind. He turns, brow raised, and sees Wyll with a heavy box in his hands—flat, square. The man stops five feet away, lifting the box. "Want to practice?"
Astarion unfolds from where he'd been crouched before a Eclipse brought in yesterday, examining the exhaust pipe as though he can find the problem without going underneath. It's making a whistling sound, apparently, from what he'd overheard. "What are those?"
"A set of brake rotors," Wyll says casually, nodding to three other boxes stacked on the toolbox. "The mechanic shop on the other side of Tehachapi—Mano de Santo, our bitter rivals, good gods can Jaheira drink us under the table—found a set in their storage and offered it cheap. Have you ever installed them before?"
"No," Astarion says, but he's curious now. "Is that what's wrong with the Eclipse?"
Wyll blinks, then chuckles. "Oh, these are for you, actually."
Astarion stares at him.
"For your car," Wyll clarifies helpfully. "I saw your brakes—good job on replacing the pads, but rotors are quick to go brittle or warp after too long, and yours looked pretty… old. So. Figured I'd hunt down what aftermarket would fit on her." He lifts the box more, which is about the size of his torso. "Nothing crazy. We can write Mercedes on in sharpie, if you want."
Despite himself, Astarion snorts. "How much more would those cost?"
"Honestly? Not a crazy amount so long as you're going for daily driver rotors. Switch to their racing line, and you'll be blowing months of rent on something three circuit laps will burn through." Wyll hefts the box so it's caught on his hip, leaving his scarred arm hanging free. "Want to get a look at them? I think we'll have to wait for Karlach to get back since we'll have to push your car into the shop, but I can tell you about how installing them works."
Astarion leaves the Eclipse behind, heading over the main tool counter on the wall of the first bay. Three other boxes are there, one dented in the corner and a shipping tag taped to the front. By the thunk when Wyll sets his next to them, they're heavy as all hells.
"It won't be a drastic difference if yours were holding up, but you should still feel that she stops faster," Wyll says. "First thing old ventilated rotors tend to do is clog up, which isn't necessarily bad since those are supplemental, but it can make them feel sluggish compared to those that aren't clogged. Although you only have ventilation on the front tires—these two, should say which is which on the box—since that's where most cars use more brakes. Seventy-thirty split or similar."
Astarion hums, absorbing the knowledge as best he can. Every minute spent in Wyll or Karlach's presence is equivalent to a book cracked open so far its spine breaks, sentences pouring in and out and without prominence. It's all known to them. He's playing catch-up.
"At the very least, it'll make me feel better, knowing you have new ones," Wyll says. "Have you noticed any brake problems, though? Grinding sounds, pushback, the likes?"
"They haven't failed yet," Astarion says. "I was told I should replace them before winter at the latest, but I just– didn't have the money. And Remedy had other things I had to fix first, even if I did."
"Remedy?"
Ah.
Astarion winces. It's one thing to name your car—it's quite another to get so used to saying it that you forget other people can hear when you do. "Remedy," he repeats, a touch stilted. "My car. That's her name."
Wyll's eyes crinkle when he smiles. "Remedy," he says, as though trying it on for size. "I like it."
Astarion busies himself grabbing one of the boxes.
There's a box knife to the side and he slits the tape, keeping the cardboard intact—unfolds the top and takes in the gleaming silver underneath. Exactly like those he's seen Wyll and Karlach replace on other cars in the shop, shining under the light and behind new tires, but–
But this one is for him.
Remedy's brake rotors aren't rusted, but they're worn. The metal has no lustre, no shine. Dust wormed into the grooves and plugged up the ventilation, enough his brakepads leave streaks every time he has to stop. Another part that works, that gets her to where she needs to go, but not one she deserves. Not after thirty years.
Astarion doesn't touch it directly, hyper-aware of the chemicals and oils on his skin, but just– lingers. Holds his breath as though he could ruin it.
Beside him, he hears Wyll take a step closer.
"I think there are some other repairs we can do while waiting for the parts," Wyll offers quietly. "If you're amenable."
Astarion, actually, feels like he could cry.
-
"Wyll, picture!"
With a yelp, the man springs from the toolbox and lunges at the wall, skidding to a stop at its base—and not a second afterward, the entire fucking place begins to shake.
Astarion goes down. Crunches to his knees, something disconcerting popping in his lower spine, hands around the closest rolling cart—the ground pulses under his legs, not the shake of a drill but the ripple of struck glass, racing past, deep enough he can feel it in his teeth.
Then it's gone. Then he's just kneeling on stable concrete, panting, eyes wild.
Against the wall, Wyll pushes off with a wince, shaking out his right leg. He's holding a picture, having caught it a moment before everything started shaking, dreads frazzled out from behind his ears and one stuck to his lip. He flips it back.
Karlach pokes her head in from the third bay. "She good?"
Wyll hefts the picture.
"Aces," she says with a grin, then disappears back to her hoist.
Slowly, breathlessly, Astarion clambers back to his feet. He can feel his heart in his throat, heavy as a boulder. "What was that?"
Wyll turns to him—then panics, seeing how pale he must be. "Less than a four," he soothes, free hand extending. "I only reacted like that because this picture always falls and we can't replace it; everything else is secured down. All that will have happened is some spooked dust. The building is fine."
Astarion tries to piece together what he's hearing. "That was an earthquake?"
Wyll blinks.
"You really aren't from around here," he says, then shakes his head, as though he hadn't meant to say that out loud. "Tehachapi is around thirty miles from the San Andreas fault—we get, oh, a few hundred earthquakes a year you can feel? Only twenty to thirty that do anything, though. Karlach's got the senses of a cat to know when they're coming."
Wyll gently hangs the picture—a portrait of a Native American woman with thick black freckles dotted under her eyes and over her cheek—back on the wall, crooking it parallel. "She made us this frame herself," he says with a shake of the head. "We can't really fit a new latch on it, neither of us want to punch holes in for string hooks, and leaning it on a shelf doesn't help. So. We just catch it when we can and keep our rag stack underneath. I think we've broken the glass twice, but the frame's holding strong."
He says it all blasé, blithe. Like it's a perfectly normal thing to do.
"Right," Astarion breathes, patting himself down like the tectonic plates have rattled up his ribcage. "Right."
"Is this your first earthquake?" Wyll asks gently. "Feel free to sit down, I can get you a glass of water—it's an adrenaline shock you're feeling now, not any more quakes. It's over."
Astarion doesn't really have to say it's his first, because Wyll helps him to a swivel chair and presses his tropical-red-mug into his hands, ice cubes floating within.
"Are they normally that bad?" Astarion manages a few minutes later, sipping the water. It makes his gums itch. "You said– less than a four?"
"There was a six a year ago," Wyll offers. "That one made the whole shop move, lasted around a minute. But that was rare enough I remember it; most are just little shakes, seconds at most. You only get ones like this a few times a year—a quick shake, then done. Nothing more."
It's a little placating, a little patronizing, so Astarion drinks his water and grounds his feet firmly into the concrete. He holds the words and tries to understand them; to figure out what to do when next the world threatens to fall away.
His first earthquake. Carve another one off the bucket list.
Wyll hovers, brows knitted. It's pretty clear that Astarion isn't a native to Tehachapi, but now here's proof he isn't from the area at all. Astarion can see it in his eyes, concern and confusion fitted over each other: were you coming to California for a reason? Is there someone you were trying to reach?
Someone he was trying to get away from. Someone far, far away.
Three thousand miles west, Cazador's manor overlooks the Atlantic Ocean.
"Okay," Astarion says, and sets his mug down. "Okay. I guess I'll prepare for the next one."
-
He's been there for two weeks when he slips out at night, going for the pop-up shelter in the back they keep for long storage cars. Remedy is there, silver under the moonlight. New brake rotors. They gleam.
Astarion pulls out his propane tank, his fireset. These he sets in the far back of the lot, away from the wooden paneling but not close enough to the fence to be snatched by passersby. His supply of canned goods he leaves in the trunk, stacked out of sight. His meager tools are already in the shop and he doesn't put them back in.
In the glove box, alongside insurance expired thirty years prior, is a paper map from Milesburg Remedies, so long ago. It's even more weatherworn than when he got it, edges folded and creases spiderwebbing over its face. He's used it well.
Karlach has a pack of sharpies in her toolbox. Some part of Astarion wants to see the path he's traveled.
-
The map, with a wobbling red line cutting through the states and landing on Tehachapi, gets hung in the break room.
Astarion traces along its length and remembers those two weeks.
-
"What do you think?" Karlach asks, resting her elbows on the frame.
Astarion stares at the wreck for a second, then drags his gaze up. "What do I think? I think this is a nightmare!"
Her grin is sharp-toothed. "Damn fucking straight it is. This is what happens when you get frat bros who buy something with five hundred horsepower and drive it like a kiddie wagon—they've butchered her. You see that exhaust?"
"What exhaust? There's nothing left!"
She laughs like a symphony.
The car's a Ford Mustang Dark Horse, or what was one; it's at that entertaining little line between totalled and saveable, depending on how deep the pockets of the owner. It'd been hauled in by a separate tow trunk than Karlach—someone they do contract work with, partnered through insurance companies—and after an earsplitting phone call with the owner who seemed both near tears and near hysteria, Karlach's here to see how much the repair will cost. Or whether it should just be scrapped.
Astarion's leaning towards the latter.
Karlach treats it like an off day, calling him over and letting him take centerstage. No risk of her shirt getting damaged so she leaves it on under her overalls, yellow with a faded pictograph of a duck holding a set of maracas. Just lounges as though on a throne, grinning all the while.
"Game time," she says, waving a hand at the engine block. "Five points for everything you see that's wrong."
Astarion lifts a brow. "Wrong before or after the crash?"
"Before," she amends. "Double if you get something that broke because it was wrong."
Challenge accepted. The crash had been from driving into something, the fender pleated at the center and wrapped around what feels like a pole; Astarion avoids that section and instead goes to the engine block, lifting the hood with a screech of disproving metal.
There. Just as he'd suspected.
"That's an aftermarket turbocharger," Astarion says, pointing to the coiled tube, shoved in so awkwardly the coolant has to slither around. "I'd bet damn near anything it's incorrectly installed, or–"
He pauses. Draws short, leaning in, curls falling around his bandana to drift before his brow. "Is that– did they weld it to the transmission?"
Karlach clicks her tongue with a theatric sigh. "Unfortunately, that's the singular mistake this guy avoided. That's JB Weld. Two part epoxy-adhesive, mix a li'l of both tubes and slather it on whatever you're trying to fix. Useful in a pinch." She glares at the engine. "Not for attaching a turbo. But at least he didn't try to actively weld anything to the transmission."
Astarion runs a finger along the connection point; now that she's pointed it out, he can feel how much thicker it is, as well as lacking the typical ripple-beading effect. This looks like tarmac painted on.
"Ten points, since even though he didn't say anything, I've got a funny little feeling he was pumping it right before he slammed into that pole. He's lucky as shit all he has is a concussion." She sighs. "Too many people treat these things like station wagons, y'know? They're beasts. If you don't give them the respect they deserve, they'll buck you off, and they'll do it at two hundred mph."
Astarion nods. Remedy has a hundred-fifty horsepower, fast enough to keep pace with modern lines, but nothing up against supercars. Even hearing one of them rev when Karlach sets it on the lift stand makes the hair stand up on the back of his neck.
He gets a few more points in the engine block—overworn head gasket, empty fluid reservoirs, wrong viscosity oil for drag racing—and then shifts to the outside, walking around the frame. There's something odd in a few sections where the body hasn't been warped to hell and back; like a trim line, only not market. Too unsteady.
Astarion brushes his hand against the line; it's a bead of something, ribboned and warped. It clings to his fingers, but only in sections. He frowns. "Adhesive?"
"Spot on," Karlach says with a thumbs-up. "Double-sided tape, by my guess. I'd bet actual gold the guy had this thing chromed to the gills."
He blanches. "No."
"Yes," Karlach groans. "We're in fucking Tehachapi—sun's got her ass aimed directly at our skulls. A single plate of chrome is just begging to blind everyone driving around." She taps the line. "And, because he wasn't about to go through with getting actual chrome, he bought aftermarket linings and stuck them in place with double-sided tape. Which melts off. And ruins the paint."
She pats the car's crumpled hood. "At least he crashed it before he could add even more. Even the thought of chroming a Dark Horse makes me shudder."
"A chromed lowered Dark Horse," Astarion says, pointing to the side. He'd been wondering why the wheel well had been bothering him unconsciously, like an itch he can't scratch. There's his answer; it got lowered to the aesthetic height, then just– kept going. It's so low it's obscene.
Karlach nods. "Listen. Lowriders are– I respect them. It's a lifestyle. They're willing to stare death in the face and keep driving when a half-inch divot in the road will crater their undercarriage. Any hills—in California—essentially leaves them stranded. Brave souls."
"And they make you bank," Astarion chimes in.
Karlach grins. "And they make us bank. It's a mechanic's gold star to replace an oil pan some loose rock punched a two-inch hole into." She unfolds from her chair shaking out her shoulders. "That's about all I noticed. No wonder the guy wanted us to try and save it even though he should've called it totalled from the first minute—all these mods must cost a pretty penny."
"So this is a disaster," he concludes. "Not worth saving."
"Utterly and completely," Karlach says, chipper. "Absolute fucking nightmare mix of bad shop work and homegrown DIY bullshit. But I gotta show you the shit stuff so you know to recognize it when you become a master mechanic, yeah? So go grab the creeper—we're scrapping this so I won't bother doing a full lift, but I wanna show you one last thing. Ever seen what it looks like when someone removes the cat off a modern car?"
Astarion stares at her. The new book he'd read just last night flashes behind his eyes. "The cat," he repeats. "The catalytic converter. The thing that people try to protect because of how often thieves target it. The thing that makes cars able to meet emission standards. The thing full of heavy metals. That cat?"
"That's the one," she says, snorting. "But did you know that if you rip it out, you can make your exhaust just a wee bit louder?"
"I don't believe you," Astarion declares, and all but runs to grab the creeper.
-
Whenever the day is slow and pet projects are on the backburner as they wait for another part, Wyll frequents Facebook Marketplace. One day, he disappears with Karlach's monstrosity of a truck and comes back three hours later, grin wide enough to split his face.
With Karlach's help, they take the couch out of the break room and replace it with a bed. Just a standard twin to fit within the cramped space, but with a solid wood frame and duvet of bright red with a spray paint pattern. A dresser is slid next to the sink, its veneer peeling but drawers stable.
The couch is moved to the back of bay three, a little section cordoned off with mobile storage racks and an old tack box converted into a stand for the TV. Through much cursing and bitching, the shop vac and air compressor are crammed into the remaining space, tight enough they can't move but angled so their hoses reach outward. Workable.
That night, they all curl on the couch and watch a shitty sitcom. Karlach hoots at the screen when they kiss and Wyll laughs himself sick when the videographer uses four separate cuts to zoom onto the love interest's face.
Astarion rests his head on the couch armrest, can in hand. He takes a sip of room temperature beer and thinks he could be content with this.
-
"Easy, baby," Karlach murmurs, hand wrapped around the hitch. "You got this, c'mon, let go–"
With a deep, steady whine, Remedy allows the hoist to pull her engine out.
Karlach whoops, angling the cherrypicker back with both struts; the hydraulics hiss steam but with the chains around the back bolt hole and alternate bracket bolt, the engine barely shakes as Wyll and Karlach both guide it away from Remedy.
Astarion stares with only a little concern at the rolling wheels at the base of the cherrypicker. In his mind he knows they're reinforced, but they look eerily similar to the ones found on office swivel chairs. Which break when someone sneezes on them.
They set it in the next bay over, latching and chocking the wheels just for good measure. Astarion has watched them handle most of this, too hesitant in his knowledge to contribute as they separated the transmission line from the engine and then took said engine out, hanging in the air like a cat scruffed around the neck.
Karlach grabs the outer trim and rocks it back and forth, swinging in its chains. "That's in great shape," she says, an impressed note underneath. "Bit o' wear from sitting still for too long, looks like, but that's about as good as you could ask for. She'll hold for all the years you want her to, mate."
Astarion just nods, but something fragile exhales deep in his chest.
"Here's the flexplate," Wyll says, tapping at the bottom. "Six bolts, then the rear seal is underneath. Should be easy to work on."
Should be easy. Between the two of them, they likely have more years as a mechanic than he has alive. And still there's a stool by the engine with a wrench balanced on top, waiting for him.
Astarion sits, balancing the wrench on his thigh. Karlach helpfully drags up a side table with a tray and all the other necessary tools, resting against his side. As prepared as he could possibly be.
The wrench takes the flexplate off easily—a little too easily, actually, like the seal breaking had shredded their hold—and then he's looking at an opening into the engine.
Behind, Karlach whistles. Even Wyll snorts.
Astarion pinches the remains of the last seal and pulls off half a circle so thoroughly tattered it falls apart before he can manage to separate it from the frame.
"For the record," Wyll says, "normally they tend to leak. Very small cracks."
"Remedy's an overachiever," Karlach says brightly.
Astarion dumps it in the tray, sickly in the evening light. The opening into the engine waits for him, a maw painted in oil-black. What caused her to break, or broke because of the harness, or both happened at once—doesn't matter.
What matters is that this is what happened when she skidded to a stop on the highway, three hours from the coast.
He exhales for a moment. Holds, hand almost touching but not quite, thoughts running a hundred miles away.
"We're watching," Karlach offers. "You got this, Red."
"You already did the difficult part," Astarion grouses, and leans in.
He starts with the bristle brush, attacking the inner ring like it's personally offended him; flecks of calcified black dust around his feet, the last pieces of the seal fluttering alongside. Then the Brillo once he's gotten the worst patches off; glints of silver start to peer through the crusted oil and only get brighter once he gets in there with low-grit sandpaper. A bit of lubrication and the whole thing shines.
It's easy, almost insultingly so, to set the new seal in place and fasten the flexplate back over. Six bolts, torqued to specifications.
Then Astarion rocks back in the seat, heart pounding like a thunderstorm, and stares at Remedy's engine.
Fixed.
Karlach whoops, clapping Wyll on the back as a stand-in for him. Astarion stands up, shaky in a way that has nothing to do with the ten minutes of work. His hands are clammy. He's smiling, and his cheeks hurt.
Wyll opens the oil cap on the top of the engine and pours in half a liter, grabbing the tray of detritus and setting it under the new seal. "If anything is still leaking, we'll see it in the morning," he promises. "Then we'll assess and move from there."
Astarion nods. His hand is still curled around the wrench.
"You did it, Red," Karlach enthuses, grinning so wide it shows every tooth. "Fucking nailed it! We'll check tomorrow, do all the proper shit, but for tonight—movies. Beer. Couch. Now."
Wyll laughs—and for some reason, Astarion does too.
-
The low buzz of the shitty TV hums in the corner, throwing white-blue light over Karlach's face. She's sprawled, legs kicked up onto Wyll's lap, arm thrown wide over the back. Leftover grease leaves a port wine stain on her face. She doesn't seem to mind.
Cans of 805 line the base of the couch, Wyll stacking the empties neatly alongside. It's near impossible to get plastered on less than five percent, but you can't beat cheap beer that's this side of palatable. Light, hoppy. It matches the approaching autumn air like interlocked fingers.
When their chosen movie—Death Becomes Her, an old classic that has Karlach shrieking how the two women should kiss even as they try to kill each other—finishes, no one is ready to turn in yet, still giggly drunk and lazy-loose over the couch. So Wyll wrangles the remote and starts to flick through their pirated list.
"Miyazaki films are for being high," Karlach protests. "C'mon, sometimes the science channel reruns old river monster episodes—I wanna watch something get torn to shreds by piranhas."
Wyll huffs laughter, so achingly fond it makes Astarion's teeth buzz, and obligingly switches to the channels that came free with one esoteric purchase or another. It takes the screen a moment to catch up with each click of the remote, static bleeding from the corners.
Then Karlach's can tips over. Cheap beer puddles on the concrete. "Shit," she croaks, Wyll already pulling out of his seat to help her. "No– look–"
Astarion follows her stabbed finger to the TV. To the image displayed over its warped screen, words bright and bold along the bottom.
Missing person.
Oh.
It's an older picture, back when his collar was starched and his eyebrows plucked, when to have a curl out of place was to spit in the face of the one at his side. A… party, of some variety. In the background mills an affluent crowd, suits and dresses and more gold than a mine. It's just a still, no sound, but he can hear their laughs even now. Vulture-high and twittering.
He—because it is him—is smiling at the camera, positioned just high enough his irises don't touch the bottom of his eyes. A white buttondown, embroidery around the hems. Waist up only, but he knows he's in either grey slacks or that one pair of deep blue Cazador always preferred to couple-match with. There is an arm around his waist, a ring on his finger. The diamond gleams.
This version of him looks– polished. His skin is smooth and full, peeled back for his cheekbones to shine and jaw to cut, each tooth an artificial white. Thin lines of black frame his eyes, weigh down his lashes. The peach tint to his lips isn't natural but is close enough to seem so. A blush high on cheeks that has nothing to do with the flute of champagne.
Astarion lifts the 805 to his lips. A six-pack for a tenner, if you scrounge the shelves at a bargain store just right. That one glass of champagne is likely fifty dollars.
Then the shot switches to Cazador.
He's in a suit. Standing before his manor, the wisteria already beginning to die back with the coming winter, the picture of melancholy composure—his lips begin to form a word, a too-familiar phone number scrolling across the bottom alongside if you know any information about Astarion Szarr–
The screen goes black. Wyll lets the remote drop.
Astarion takes a long, deep breath. His hand is shaking.
So he's still looking, then. It isn't much of a surprise, though he'd hoped for the alternative.
Karlach rights her can, a puddle of beer sloping down towards the drain in the center of the shop. In absence of the TV, her breathing is loud; so is Wyll's. It's just him that goes mute, quiet as a stranger living in a manor that was supposed to be shared.
Astarion takes another drink, lets it marinate in his mouth.
Before him, the screen is black. There is no one visible but his own reflection.
"He takes shit care of his cars," Astarion says eventually, little more than a murmur. "Remedy had been in a garage for thirty years when I got her out, less than five hundred miles. It's a miracle she was able to start at all."
Karlach watches him. "Okay," she says, like that's all she needs to hear. "Do you have a preference on name?"
Astarion thunks his head against the back of the couch. The 805 is nearly empty and he drinks regardless, catching his tongue on aluminium just for the sting.
"Red for now, I think," he decides. "Maybe Astarion one day. And it's Ancunín, not Szarr."
Karlach nods.
-
Three days later, when he can look in a mirror without seeing that starved, empty smile looking back, Astarion asks very quietly how he would go about getting a new license and social security card.
It's the first time he lets them hug him.
-
The woman has a Honda Civic LX in platinum white pearl, though it's hard to see past the orange road dust. A bit of a dent in the front fender, rust eating away at the visible brake calipers. She rolls into the lot a little past eleven, to-go coffee in hand.
Karlach and Wyll are off in bay two, balancing the Silverado that came in with a V8 engine transforming its crankshaft into a pile of scrap metal. Word on the wind is that a recall is coming soon since too many issues are presenting, but in the meantime, it falls to mechanic shops to get them up and running. Fixes like this can take hours, if not days.
But the Honda just needs an oil change and tire rotation.
Astarion smooths down his work shirt, ragged around the hem and splattered with grease up to his neck. Makes sure his bandana is fully holding his curls back.
Then he grabs the jack and begins to lift the Honda into the air.
-
It goes well. He overtorques one of the lugnuts and has to hammer at it with the impact gun to get off, but he's done before the woman comes back and she drives out without issue. Wyll breaks from the Silverado to complete the purchase considering he's the actual certified mechanic, but she doesn't seem to notice anything wrong.
Astarion touches the spot of oil over his forearm. The tears in his shirt, the crusted rag hanging out of his pocket. Wyll's cooking means he's putting on weight, ribs no longer countable, jawline softening to fill out his face. His hair grows and grows, because he doesn't bother to cut it with his bandana keeping out of his eyes. The skin of his palms could be used as sandpaper. The rasp from smoking cigarettes to suppress his appetite is fading. He wears a galaxy's amount of little scars and lingering wounds.
He is no longer perfect.
He is human, instead.
-
"Absolutely not, Wyll Ravengard, you haven't totaled a car in your life."
The man sighs with the long-suffering attitude of a war never won. "That Tahoe–"
"You've told me this story, mate—your rear axle kicked out and you started to skid, but because you're a badass, you righted it and just kissed the embankment wall. Less than five hundred in body work! That isn't totalling!"
Wyll raises his hand in surrender. Karlach matches his laugh and turns to Astarion, brows up. "See what I mean?"
"I said I agreed with you," he reports, wiggling his can in her direction. "I just wanted to know if he'd ever done anything wrong to a car, not necessarily totalling it. Whether he truly is the standard I should hold myself to."
"I'm really not," Wyll says, grinning. "I faked my first certificate, you know. Mocked it up at a free library computer after a picture I'd taken in a shop near my hometown. If my original boss had looked at it for even a second, she'd have noticed the seal was printed on."
"But you went and got it properly done the moment you had enough cash," Karlach points out. "That's, what, two months when you were uncertified? And I'd bet actual gold every car came out better than it came in, certificate or not."
Astarion is– a little curious about the legalities of what he's doing, to be honest. So he lifts a brow. "Did she ever find out? Your boss, I mean."
Wyll flushes crimson, right over his ears. He coughs. "She did, actually."
"Now that sounds like a story I ought to hear."
"I was in a rough spot," Wyll says, sighing, but his lips quirk around the red. "I was– twenty-four, around, and had only just gotten to California a week before applying to her shop. I think my certificate passed muster for a few days, but she caught me staying after hours to read manuals and learn about the tools, and– she didn't say anything, but we both knew." His eyes soften. "She didn't kick me out. Just helped patch up my missing knowledge and got me into an actual program. Saved my life, I think."
Karlach reaches across the table, worming her fingers into his. "I still oughta send her a fruit basket," she says, smiling. "One of those li'l ones with all the frozen strawberries. Unless I should just skip that and do the biggest bottle of Casamigos I can find?"
"She'd prefer the second," Wyll says dryly, and they both laugh.
Astarion laughs too. It feels right.
-
They find this in Mano de Santo's storerooms, which are apparently the envy of the county and can whip up parts for cars that sold less than fifty models in North America. Jaheira's a collector, Wyll calls her, with a wry sort of twist to his lips that means something else. He only speaks fondly of her.
Karlach complains about how it's rude to have someone twice your age double-match you for shots.
A part of Astarion is interested to meet her.
But for today, he sits in the back lot of Ravensgate. This repair is small enough it isn't worth pulling Remedy into a bay, and some part of him wants to do this alone—to pretend he's still out on the highway, following a paper map and the sun's path to know he was traveling west instead of east. Away instead of towards.
And yet the tools he's using are refined, well-loved; Wyll has inlaid this half-sized crowbar with his and Karlach's initials. She's nubbed the claws of this wrench so it doesn't hurt plastic when it works underneath.
It's the same and it isn't. It's the same and it's better.
"Sorry it took me so long," Astarion murmurs, and uses the needlenose pliers to wrap the last wire around the gasket. He checks over the system three times, running a hand along the electrical trail.
Still no wire harness. Even if he tried to activate it, the window would stay up, unmoving.
But it's right. He knows it is.
Astarion stands, packing the tools back into the canvas bag he'd used to transport them. The side panel of her door closes easily once he pulls the crowbar out, bolting back in place with screws so small he nearly loses one in the grass when it rolls off his palm.
Remedy sits there, silver in the moonlight. Her headlights are still off; her engine is still cold. But not forever.
"We're almost there," Astarion whispers. "Just a little bit longer."
-
When the box arrives two days later, Astarion runs a hand over the logo on its top.
Then he clambers onto the roof, stepping gingerly on the shingles, and sits on the highest point. He watches the distant wind turbines spin like a field of impossible flowers.
-
The wire harness looks exactly as it did in the website's picture—which is to say, incomprehensible.
Astarion stares blankly as Karlach just continues pulling more out of the box, grinning like a loon as the logo—three spokes in a circle—keeps flashing her on the underside of the electronics. Wyll stands on the other side, grabbing the ends like a sheet to be spread out, nudging the stepladder and welding stand away to clear more room.
All spread out, it's a California king mattress and tangled enough to be used as a fishing net. Or noose. Or friendship bracelets.
"How did we ever invent cars?" Astarion wonders eventually. "At what point did we look at a plate of spaghetti and decide this is what we'll trust with the control of four thousand pound siege weapons?"
"Some caveman made a wheel and whooped so much ass everyone copied him," Karlach says, half distracted. She paws through the box for the manual. "Right, from Mercedes—all corporate thanks for ordering. Damn. Was hoping they'd express just a bit of interest in a mint '95."
"I don't know if it can be called mint when they are actively sending us repairs."
"Sure it can! It's their manufacturing that made the wires break. That's about as mint as you can get."
Wyll tips his head in agreement, scrutinizing the harness. "We should start at the front," he says. "We're more likely to mess up there, and I think we'd all prefer having to do as little backtracking as possible."
Karlach nods, setting the box aside. She looks at him. "Red, you ready?"
He's been ready since she crunched into the shoulder of the highway with the Pacific Ocean less than three hours away. He's been ready since he looked up at the sky in a field filled with fireflies and wondered where he was going. He's been ready since crouching in the garage with clamps wrapped around the nearest car and watching her dusty engine roar to life for the first time in decades.
Astarion nods.
The work is endless. It takes all day. Every single strand they find leads to another, until Astarion is elbow-deep under her quarter panel and nearly sobbing as yet another tangle of wires meets his grasping hand. To make matters worse, rarely are they complete—the coating issue means that some sections are melted strands of plastic, others just the sockets with the centers missing. Like trying to complete a puzzle with every piece fire-blackened and warped out of shape.
But Mercedes sent a manual alongside and Astarion has done nothing but pour over Karlach's tablet until the witching hours for this. He closes his eyes and sees the original shop drawings, the ghost-lines and x-rayed pictures of where the harness attaches to, and his hands follow.
When they sit back, a charred mess behind, the harness is in. Not done, not quite. But in.
She survived thirty frozen years but Astarion plays it safe now, squirting prep oil into each cylinder and greasing the edge of the belt. Every fluid is refilled, every gauge checked, everything perfect. Her frame gleams in the evening light. He even tops up her gas where it was a fraction of an inch below full.
Then he climbs into the driver's seat.
Three months since he's sat here last. Three months since she carried him thousands of miles away from both of their prisons; since she took him where he couldn't take himself. Three months since she broke. Three months since she went cold.
He puts her key in, newly polished. Before them, the bay door is open, the sky breaking into golden afternoon overhead. A highway of orange dust and forever.
Astarion twists the key.
There's a croak, a spluttering of oil kicked into her four cylinder engine, and then the pistons whirr; her entire frame trembles as she settles right into a tiger's stance, horsepower gnawing at the brakes keeping her caged. Leather hums beneath him, air cascading through the vents.
Under his hands, Remedy purrs to life.
Astarion releases a breath that sounds like a sob. He clutches her wheel until his arms shake.
She's back. She's alive. She's here.
"We've almost made it," he says, soft, settling into his seat. "Three more hours. Then we'll have gone all the way."
Remedy rumbles, engine heating back up after her long rest. He can feel each pulse of her pistons, fluid waking back up and testing its limits. The clock on her dashboard is so hilariously off that he wants to leave it.
When he presses the button, both windows roll down, new motor whirring to match its brethren. They go at the same speed.
Karlach laughs, eyes so bright they're headlights of their own. Wyll has a sheen over his eyes. They wait at the side—wait for him. For what they've all been working towards.
Astarion exhales. He can't remove his hands from the wheel; glued there, or fused. Something forever tied.
"Pismo Beach," he says. "We have to make it to the coast. But I'll come back. I promise."
Karlach smiles, the one with her tongue between her teeth. "It's your room now," she says. "And maybe we sign you up to get that certificate, yeah?"
The mechanic's certificate. The proof he's good enough—the proof they've already given, time and time again.
Thank you, he wants to say, and he will—because he'll come back, and he'll curl up on the couch with them, and he'll hold the worklight when they need it, and offer his hands for repairs, and go in the dead of night to pick up crashed strangers on the highway, and find Wyll new recipes, and paint new designs on the walls with Karlach, and help Wyll with his physical therapy, and microwave Karlach's brace when she needs it, and wake up each morning under the same roof and know he's here–
But for today, he's gone three thousand miles from one coast to the other. He and Remedy got out of that manor where they'd been put to rot. They escaped.
There's just a little bit left to go.
Astarion releases the brakes, and Remedy roars—a press of the gas and they blur as one for the distant coast.