As he drove down the highway toward the Grey Gull, Nathan gripped the steering wheel, praying he would arrive in time to save his friends. Beneath him, the blue Bronco let out its gutteral roar, the old salt-crusted frame letting the vibration from the engine seep right into the seats and floor so that Nathan's feet tingled, though his affliction prevented him from truly feeling it. He looked at the seat beside him, the empty expanse of cracked and sun-bleached leather leaving a hollow space in his heart, and so to fill it he turned on the radio. Nothing but static returned to him, so he immediately shut it off again and instead rolled down the window to let the ocean air blow in around him.
The dashboard was a mess of flaking leather and the usual debris common in an old truck - toothpicks that had probably been his dad's and Duke's gum wrappers along with a few discarded bobby pins tangled with blond hairs - and memories drifted back to him unbidden. Ice skating in the park at age eleven, the Chief looking on from the side of the pond with worry in his gray eyes; He and Duke "borrowing" a six-pack of beers and the truck, driving up to Ferry Point to drink them in secret, never realizing that the loud exhaust had given them away before they'd even turned the corner; his first meeting with Audrey Parker, when her car had careened off the road and would have tipped over the edge of a cliff with her still inside it if he hadn't shown up and helped her escape.
The Bronco had been there all along, far from quiet and unassuming and yet no less comforting. It had taken him to good places and bad, had been used and filled with so many memories they seemed etched into every surface inside and out. He'd taken his first girl out in it, had his first kiss in the back seat. He'd used it for his driver's test - and passed with flying colors thanks to his dad's forced practice sessions - and had gone to his mother's funeral in it. Even then, on what seemed his darkest day, the Bronco seemed to wrap closer around him as if it were indeed trying to comfort him, and he remembered resting his head on the windowsill, breathing in the mixture of old leather and his dad's cigarette smoke and wishing he was old enough to drive so he could jump into the driver's seat and go far away.
But whether it was fate or his love for his dad, he had stayed in Haven, and eventually the truck became his own. It burned oil and smelled like it would catch fire any moment, but he loved it anyway. It wasn't just a truck to him. It was family. It had a soul. It had treated him with care all those years, and he felt he owed it the same.
Right now, though, he needed its help again. Looking through the windshield, he could see the lighthouse just past where the Gull would be, its square shape jutting up from the rocky outcropping.
"Come on, baby," Nathan purred to the Bronco as he pressed on the gas pedal. "Go faster."
Almost immediately, the truck poured on a burst of speed, and Nathan nodded encouragingly.
Thanks to the Bronco, he just might make it in time.
AN: I know this isn't a person's character, but after watching reruns and the new season of Haven (as well as listening to my hubby lament the loss of his favorite truck last year) I realized that a man's vehicle - and especially a truck - can be a very sacred thing to him. It's why they name them; it makes them a part of the family, almost alive in the human sense. I always wonder if Nathan named his truck, and if so what that name would be.