Chapter Text
By the time they made it to the garage, the rain had already soaked through every layer of Jude’s clothes. Her hands rubbed against each other, trying to create some semblance of warmth. The grey-blue October morning air was frigid enough that her breath escaped her in plumes of filmy smoke. Jude clenched her teeth to keep them from chattering.
A new kid took Pat’s place today. He hadn’t seen them yet; sniffled, blurry eyed, as if he’d just been shaken awake a few minutes ago. Abby walked--stomped, really, and Jude wondered if she knew how to be quiet--right up and said, “hey, David. Just my usual,” jerking him out of his sleep-addled state. She took up the entire counter, both hands splayed wide across it.
The kid--David, apparently, sleepy eyes brightened and wide--leaned back, and nodded quickly. "Hey Abby. Sure thing." He made to scramble off when Abby added, blatant hesitation on her face, “and the same for her.” Her , complete with a thumb jutted in Jude’s direction.
It chafed, like sandpaper on skin.
The kid behind the counter nodded again, and shuffled off to collect their guns.
A few seconds passed, and Abby sighed, as if she’d expected the minor delay. Rocked back and forth on her heels. Curled her wide-palmed hand into a fist once, then relaxed it, repeat. Suddenly she turned about face, and Jude met the cut of her eyes with a loose glower. Leaning her hips on the edge of the counter, Abby crossed her arms and arched a single brow, as if daring Jude to say something, anything.
Abby watched, and Jude felt it, her gaze. Felt the way it slowly traced the dips and curves and details of her, her brows furrowing at the way Jude’s palm hovered against the weavy sheath of her knife. Her eyes flickered up, like nails tracing along the spine, and Jude straightened beneath the scrutiny.
Jude chewed the inside of her cheek till the soft skin there tasted like iron. She rolled her tongue over the minor wound and didn’t blink, barely breathed.
Finally Abby glanced away, staring at some spot on a nearby wall. “I’m driving.” She said, stiff and distant.
In any other situation, that would’ve been just fine. Suited her, really. Oh, she could fix cars. She could take an oversized metal death trap and put it back in dancing condition for some other driver, but she’d nearly crashed last time she’d tried to make a car dance. Her hands always shook with the nerves of a self-taught brand new driver, never quite getting used to the curve of the wheel in her grip. She sure as shit didn’t want to drive in the rain toward her fast approaching death.
But it was about the principle of it all. It was about the hard line of Abby’s mouth and the way her tone didn’t give an inch, brokered no room for argument, and the way Jude hated that.
“Why?” Jude asked, shifting from one foot to another as her soles numbed. Her fingers bit into the damp, scratchy fabric of her jacket, stinging the skin below it. “Thought I was supposed to be your guide?” She spat out the last word like a bad taste, her face pinching up.
“You know how to get there from here?” The question was more like a statement, and Jude scowled. Abby probably knew damn well she had no fucking clue just how to get to sector twelve from the stadium. Maybe it was in a file somewhere, if they kept that sort of thing (the WLF are nothing if not organized), smacked right under raging bitch and just before smartmouth . She had a general idea of the landscape of Seattle, sure, just like anyone else. But she’d watched it all from the back of trucks, driven by wolves who knew where they were going, and always away , never towards sector twelve. The way she preferred it.
Jude’s shoulders bunched up near her ears, and she tried not to drop her eyes to the floor.
Abby’s gaze snapped back, her fingers working over her biceps, so tightly the blood leached from her hand, leaving behind only sickly yellow bruises around her first three knuckles.
Jude relented, glaring at the ground. “...Not exactly.” Her inner cheek split completely under her worrying teeth.
“Right.” Abby said, turning back around, “I’m driving.” As if striking the final note in their conversation. Jude sucked in a sharp breath, bit off a scathing response, and focused on the way the blood tasted in her mouth and the way that she wasn’t fucking incompetent, she wasn’t, and fuck Abby for acting like it.
The kid clambered back to the window with their guns in hand. His thin shoulders sagged under the weight of the two rifles. “Here you go, Abby.” He said, beaming up at her, a dim flush to his cheeks. Jude rolled her eyes hard enough to ache. Abby, on the other hand, shot him a little smile as she hitched her rifle on her shoulder and holstered her pistol in quick, efficient movements.
Abby didn’t hand Jude her own guns. Held Jude’s pistol in one hand and the strap of Jude’s rifle gripped in the other.
Her jaw burned from how tightly she clenched it.
“Thanks, David.” Abby said. It was genuine enough, her voice taking on a softer, more polite quality. David pushed his greasy brown hair back and smoothed down his wrinkled shirt. If Abby noticed the attention, she paid it no mind, giving him a shallow nod of gratitude.
“Of course. You need anything else?” He said, a little too eager, and his hair flopped back over his pimply forehead.
This time, Jude actually snorted. Get a life, kid, she thought, and Abby asked, “yeah, you know what trucks are in right now?”
Before David could get a word in edgewise, Jude snapped, “you want R37.” It was in. She knew it was. Worked on it two days ago and hadn’t given the all-clear for it to go out in the field yet, mostly out of a selfish desire to not see all her hard work go to shit just yet. A truck with sun-faded white paint and a rusty grill on the front she’d spent two days scrubbing dried blood out of, with a decent enough engine and fewer problems than most of their trucks. It plied under her hands easy enough that Jude was relatively confident she could fix it if anything happened while they were gone. And something would, undoubtedly, happen.
Abby craned her head sideways to look at her, one brow arched in question, and Jude shrugged as if to say, what?
Abby shook her head, then gestured to David’s clipboard with her free hand. The other still held her gun. Jude’s eyes twitched.
“Is R37 still in?” She asked, still polite enough, still genuine, and her expression wasn't its severe scowl, as far as Jude could tell from this angle. David shifted uncomfortably, gaze flickering between his clipboard and Abby and Jude--Jude, who he squinted at, just a little, like she was interrupting something.
She rolled her eyes again.
“Uh, yeah… but it’s not ready to go yet--”
“It’s ready.” Jude snapped, stepping right up to the counter. She didn’t necessarily shove anyone, but to accommodate the space, Abby was forced to step to the side, and she felt a petty sort of victory at that. “Let me see that.” Jude gestured for the clipboard with a short, sharp hand motion. She didn’t look up to see Abby’s face, but she could feel the probing gaze settling like hot coals on her cheek, her neck. David hesitated, his hand still tight around the clipboard, like it actually meant something. “Any day now, kid.” Jude glared, and he slowly passed it to her.
Jude skimmed the lines of trucks, some checked off, others not, until she found the one she was looking for. R37. Not cleared. Mechanic: Judith Copeland. She grabbed the pen hanging by a string from the board, and quickly checked it off, signing her name over a thin black line. “Good to go,” she said, handing it back to him.
While David made a show of pretending to have some authority, squinting at her scrawled signature, Jude took the chance with her hands free to reach for her gun, still pressed firmly under Abby’s hand. “You mind?” Jude said, craning her neck to look Abby in the eye. She nearly stepped back when she realized their proximity.
God, she was close, much closer than before. Close enough that Jude felt the soft heat of her breath on her face as she exhaled.
Jude flinched back, just a little.
“Where’d you learn to use this thing?” Abby asked, keeping her hand firm over the pistol, pushing her back straight like she was hot shit. Jude ignored how it brought them an inch closer, then seethed at how Abby’s blue eyes--the stormy morning light brought the grey out in them, and it would almost be pretty if she wasn’t insufferable--didn’t waver, not even once.
Who the hell does she think she is? “I seriously doubt I’d be here if I didn’t know how to use a fucking pistol--”
In front of them, David cleared his throat, and both of them barked, “ what? ” at the exact same time.
Abby looked at her.
Jude refused to look back.
“You, uhh, want your keys?” He asked, dangling a set of keys in his left hand while his right rubbed at the back of his neck.
“Yeah,” Abby said, knocking her hip into Jude’s waist as she reached for them.
The place where her solid hips met Jude’s softer waist burned, and so did her cheeks, a fuming heat under the skin of her cheeks. Her mouth had always worked faster than her head, so when Jude sneered, “anyone ever tell you you’re kind of an asshole?” she didn’t give herself any time to reconsider, let alone regret it.
Abby stilled. Then she turned around, pocketed the keys, and her mouth tilted into a sardonic, jagged curve of a sneer. “Once or twice.” She said, shoving herself away from the window. Her voice cut low, with a kind of carelessness Jude didn’t quite know what to do with.
She offered Jude the handle of the gun. Hesitated when Jude reached for it. Then relented, though her brow never relaxed from its stiff, hard frown.
Their fingers brushed as Jude took it, slowly and carefully. She checked the safety, then tucked it into the waistband of her jeans.
“Now let’s get a move on.” And then she stomped off, puddles of rain splashing against her boots.
A building guilt pressed its edge into Jude’s gut, ugly and rotten. She pushed it down, her mouth still tasting of her own blood, and followed Abby’s soldier march all the way to the car.
Abby settled into the driver’s seat with ease, her steady-wristed hands confident and sure of themselves as she rolled them out of the stadium, out of the surrounding area, out onto the bumpy main highway patrolled by wolves. The highway would take them far enough, probably, but Jude remembered those maps in Isaac’s… office. His crossed out areas and his red-inked circles, and she remembered hushed news about how they’d been forced to cede territory, the Scars pushing them out inch by inch, one skirmish at a time. It was easier to simply give non-priority locations. Get out their own people, live to fight another day, hunker down, take their licks and swear they were gonna get back those fucking Scars soon enough.
There would always be more chances to drive out Scars. Always more fights to win. But she wondered if the highways were as long as they’d been a year ago. She wondered how quickly they’d lose the watchful eyes of the WLF patrols, how quickly their well-protected territory would give into no man’s land. Were they driving through it now?
Jude risked a real glance at Abby for the first time since they’d clambered into the truck. Abby watched the road, a wrinkle of concentration on her brow, left hand on the wheel and right arm propped up on the armrest. She’d shucked the jacket when they’d gotten in the car, tossing it into the back.
For a moment, Jude just watched. Watched the way the black cloth of her t-shirt worked against her skin, and the way it pressed taut when she breathed. Watched the fine lines of tendon and muscle go rigid when she turned the wheel, or made a fist on the console. Thin scratches and bruises and minor scars crisscrossed the freckled expanse of her sturdy forearms, the same kind of wear and tear they all had, but on Abby it was different. Sharper.
“What?” Abby said suddenly, and Jude stiffened in her seat. She looked up to find Abby’s flickering gaze, switching back and forth from the road to her, eyes never quite leaving the road.
Jude swallowed hard, then frowned. “What?” She parroted, leaning back and pressing herself to the unforgiving curve of the door, watching Abby watch the road, watch her.
“You’re staring.” She stated, a thin note of wryness dragging through her vowels.
Jude expected their silence to settle back into its uncomfortable place, but Abby continued. “I’m not stopping the car, if that’s what you want. Better if we stay on the move.”
“Why? There Scars in the area?”
“Yeah,” Abby replied, her hand clenching and unclenching around the steering wheel. She shifted slightly, the cracked leather of the seat creaking beneath her. “Patrol spotted some a couple of weeks ago. Said they took care of most of them, but…” her voice trailed off, working her jaw. “I’m not gonna risk it.”
She didn’t try to carry the conversation any further than that, the weight of her words sitting heavy in the air.
A beat of silence passed between them, like pressing down on a bruise. Jude adjusted in her seat once, twice. She turned to watch the rain outside the car window, knees curled up to her chest. Empty shells that used to be buildings moved behind thick streaks of distorting rainwater. Abby deftly dodged old cars, cracks in the road, the truck groaning under them each time she took a curve a little too fast. After a few moments, she murmured, “you got any idea how bad it’ll be where we’re going?”
Abby exhaled a rough, exasperated sigh. “Pretty fucking bad?” She almost snapped, like it was a dumb question. And it was. It was. But Jude wanted it confirmed anyway; wanted her nightmares to be real, so at least she could prepare for them.
She turned just her head, watching the other woman. Abby opened her mouth, then closed it, as if she’d thought better of whatever she wanted to say. “We’ve… lost a lot of units. And they never got very far in the first place. Isaac thinks we’re missing something. So…” one of her eyebrows arched up, up, up, and her lips tightened. She looked away from the road long enough to catch Jude’s gaze, and Jude held her breath. “Recon. That’s my job. Just need you to not get us lost.”
Abby looked away, and scoffed a little, shaking her head. “Or killed.”
Jude’s teeth grinded together, hard enough she felt the ache spread down her jaw. “I’ll do my best.” She sneered, digging herself further into her chair.
“Good.”