Chapter Text
“Good luck.” Boone was smiling as he said it, but Javi could see right through him. They’d both need a hell of a lot more than luck to get out of this.
“Yeah, you too.” he mimicked the stressed out smile that Boone was wearing, neither of them reassuring the other even slightly. Then he took a deep breath, steeling himself for what he was about to go through, opened the passenger side door and got out. The weather outside the car felt just as shitty as it had looked through the windshield, and his instincts screamed at him to get back inside. But he didn’t. He turned and looked at Boone, still buckled in in the driver’s seat, one hand on the wheel like he was about to drive off, and tried to tell himself he’d see him again.
Having nothing else to say, and nothing else to do, Javi shut the door behind himself, barely hearing it slam over a massive rumble of thunder which reminded him how close the storm was. And then he let the fear take over and just started sprinting away from the car down the road.
It felt wrong leaving Boone behind with the car, the same kind of wrong it’d felt watching his friends drive away to ‘tame a tornado’ several years ago. Although at the time he’d thought for sure it was just the hangover. And it could have had been. It could also be that the extremely dangerous and terrifying situation he was in right now was making him see links that weren’t there. But a not insignificantly sized part of him wanted to turn around and run back to get Boone.
Maybe he needed help fixing the car. Or maybe he was still sulking about Tyler and Kate and maybe Javi shouldn’t have yelled at him for making the dumb, spur of the moment decision to pull off the main road. It wasn’t like he knew the car was going to breakdown. Plus, Javi had done plenty of stupid things because of love. Hell, he was here because of love. He was literally here because he’d tried to rekindle something that he’d never had with Kate in the wake of a stupid breakup. Honestly that decision had mostly improved his life, but then again he was also currently running for his life away from what had looked like one of the biggest tornadoes he’d ever seen. In the dark no less. Javi decided that he wouldn’t turn around. Either Boone would fix the car, and pick him up, or Tyler would pick them both up. They had enough time. Probably. Unless they didn't.
Alone out there, with no clue where the tornado was, running for his life because of some fucked up guy's fucked up car, Javi couldn’t help but see a lot of similarities between his situation and Kate’s. Not that Jeb was a fucked up guy, or that his car had been fucked up before they'd crashed it. Obviously Kate and he had gone through the same grief, the same guilt, the same loss, but now he could also sympathise pretty damn directly with the trauma of that day. And shit, it was terrifying. He could fully understand why a person might never want to see a tornado again after almost getting swallowed by one. Hell, maybe he’d move to New York if he ever made it off this road.
Despite the sun having gone down fairly recently, it was pitch dark now, mostly due to the thick, low storm clouds. Javi felt like he was holding back from running as fast as he could due to the fear of running straight into something, or something running into him. He’d been staring at the tablet most of the way up the road so he had no idea what he was headed back down towards. The occasional flashes of lightning were the only way he could tell where he was going, and he tried to scan the landscape in those split seconds for any obstacles in the road, or other vortexes that might be forming. He hadn’t chased that much at night before but he’d heard stories from other chasers, including Tyler, about how nocturnal tornadoes seemingly formed out of nowhere and were incredibly hard to monitor, making them much more dangerous.
***
Javi stumbled on uneven ground, and raised his arms blindly to stop himself from falling. He stopped running momentarily, waiting for another flash of lightning to show him where the road was. Trying to catch his breath in the brief pause that had presented itself, he bent double, letting his hands rest on his hips… and felt a familiar shape in his pocket.
“SHIT!” he yelled in disbelief, the curse lost to the noise of the storm. Gratitude flooded through him as he pulled his phone out of his pocket. How the ever-loving fuck had he forgotten that he had that? It was like his basic caveman survival instincts had kicked in the moment he was in danger and he’d overlooked the fact that he was literally carrying a light source. He turned the phone torch on, and pointed it at the road ahead of him before taking off running again.
***
Carrying the phone, which was quickly becoming slippery from the rain, was cumbersome, but at least he could run full speed without feeling like he was going to smack into something. The wind was his main other obstacle, whipping around him violently, chilling him to the bone despite the otherwise warm weather; and slicing across his face viciously, making his eyes water. As if there wasn’t enough water on his face already from the rain. Javi mentally praised himself for keeping his hair shorter than he’d used to as he was sure if it was its old length it would be obstructing his vision or trying to strangle him or something. Although back when his hair was longer, he would never have put himself in this situation in the first place, so it didn’t really matter.
Images flashed through his head as he ran; Kate climbing into Jeb’s car in the rain; Kate disappearing into the tornado in El Reno.
The Tornado Tamers posing for a picture in front of a circling updraft, Addy laughing at something Kate had said, making her face a blur in the final photo; Dorothy’s map of the tornado that killed them, played and replayed over and over until it was seared into his mind.
Scott’s suave smile when they’d first met; and his disgusted scowl moments before the argument that had broken them up.
Boone grinning at him when he’d first joined the Wranglers; and the barely hidden anxiety in his eyes as Javi had slammed the door of the car.
Kate sitting next to him in their first class at OU; Kate sitting on a hospital bed getting stitches in her leg; Kate staring out his car window on the drive from the airport; Kate crawling out of the upside down window of Tyler’s truck, covered in blood; Kate smiling at him; Kate screaming at him; Kate walking away from him. Kate.
Everything in his life seemed to come back to her. He just wished that he could. Wished he could see her one more time, even if she was angry, even if she was upset with him, even if she was looking over his shoulder at Tyler the whole time.
Javi squinted into the darkness ahead of him. Was his phone torch reflecting off something or were those lights? He lowered the phone experimentally, slowing his pace. The lights stayed.
Holy shit, he was going to fucking make it.