The night air was hot and thick with humidity, so much so that Heero's burns throbbed under his clothing and hampered his movements. He had to walk carefully here; the parking lot was thick black asphalt, pitted and scarred with time and weather, the painted lines so faded that they were nearly invisible in the dark.

He couldn't afford another injury; he'd never get out of this hellhole if he took a bad step and twisted his ankle or broke a bone.

Del was watching him, saying nothing, her face too backlit from the streetlight behind her to be readable, but Heero gathered from her relaxed posture and the slight tilt of her head that she was probably more curious than afraid.

He stumbled over a badly patched pothole in the dark and swore. This was what he got for letting a woman distract him.

"You alright there?" she asked. Smoke from her cigarette wreathed her face and softly dissipated as she spoke. The effect was disorienting. "Had a few too many, huh?"

"I didn't have any," he replied, stopping a safe distance from her, just in case. She didn't move, except to take another drag off her cigarette. "But if we're being judgmental, that's probably a lot worse for you than a couple of drinks."

She laughed.

"It's water vapor, sugar," she said, waving the cigarette at him. "This thing's electronic. No nicotine, no tar, none of that other shit. Just a little bit of steam. When Tillie puts me in a mood, sometimes it helps to pretend I might actually breathe fire if I wanted to."

Heero snorted, amused, and came over to lean on her truck with her. He made it a point to stay out of arm's reach, but she didn't seem like the grabby type. Not like that waitress. Tillie.

"Name's Delphina Declair," she said, switching her cigarette off and tucking it into her pocket. "Most people call me Del, and most of the time I let 'em get away with it."

"What about the rest of the time?" Heero asked, using banter to draw attention away from himself. He wasn't quite sure he wanted to tell this woman anything yet, not even his name, but he didn't want to leave until he figured out what it was about her that seemed so—familiar.

"Well, then it better be ma'am, and it better not be sarcastic," she quipped. She grinned as she said it, but her tone was serious enough that Heero didn't doubt that she meant every word. "I don't take crap from people. Specially people who oughta be smart enough to know better."

"Like Tillie?" Heero asked. Del rolled her eyes.

"That girl's as dumb as a sack of doorknobs and not half as useful; I don't expect her to know anything," she said. "No, honey, I was talking 'bout strange men who don't have the good sense to introduce themselves when they walk up to a woman outside a bar. Good lord, boy, did you forget your manners when you left the house this morning, or were you just born in a barn?"

Heero couldn't tell if she was serious or if she was hitting on him, but he got the impression that it was time to stop fooling around. He needed help if he was going to make his way back to Preventer—even if it was only so he could knock a few scientists' heads together—and if he played his cards just right, he thought he might be able to convince Del to take him to the Houston office. He could get back easily from there.

"My name is Heero Yuy," he said, extending his hand. "It's a pleasure."

Del wondered for a second if the new fellow was pulling her leg when he told her his name, but decided to shrug it off. She'd heard people name their kids stranger things, after all.

"That's better," she said, bracing herself and accepting his offered handshake.

Del didn't normally care to touch people anymore than she had to; skin-on-skin contact usually gave her a deeper glimpse of a person's timeline than she needed to see. Average people never learned to shield their minds—they didn't really need to, after all—so she was accustomed to getting a lot of unnecessary information when she came into close contact with someone.

She'd take it if it meant she could help Heero, though. He looked like he needed it, and she had promised Jack she'd try looking after him. But when her palm met his all she got was the sensation of incredible, searing pain. A quick glance showed her the source of the pain, and his hiss when she pushed his sleeve back confirmed that it was a recent injury and not just a lingering fragment of the past.

The burns were bad, almost all the way down to the bone. Heero tried to pull away and Del tightened her grip on his hand, not caring if she gave too much of herself away. If he brought it up later, she'd claim it was adrenaline.

"What happened?" she demanded.

"That's none of your business," he replied, still trying to tug himself free. It was a wonder he was moving at all, as badly as he was hurt, but Del didn't think he had a whole lot of juice left. It seemed Heero really was running on adrenaline.

"Like hell it isn't," Del muttered. She half-dragged him around her truck bed, unlatched the tailgate, and forced him to sit. "Stay."

There was a first-aid kit in her toolbox, and a jar of homemade salve in the kit. Del retrieved the salve and some clean bandages and, just in case, the pearl-handled pistol that she kept in her truck for emergencies. She jammed Pearl into her waistband and marched back around the truck to where, miracle of miracles, her stray had stayed put.

"You weren't cooking drugs, were you?" she asked as she unscrewed the lid from the jar. The salve smelled terrible, and Del tried not to breathe it in as she coated a bandage in the stuff, but it worked better than anything you could buy in the store.

"No," he said flatly. "I told you, it's none of your business."

"Right," she muttered, not sure if she believed him. He was awfully defensive. He didn't smell like drugs, though, and his eyes were clear enough that Del didn't think he was a user. She decided not to worry about it for the moment. If it seemed important later, well, Del had ways of getting information out of people. "This'll go a lot easier if you just hold still."

But telling a man to hold still was a lot like telling a cat to go for a swim. It was far easier to just grab hold of his arm and work around his struggling. He was too weak from the infection in those burns to put up much of a fight anyway. And the salve didn't take long to work its magic.

"What is that?" he asked, no longer resisting as Del wrapped a clean bandage around his right arm to keep him from smearing the sticky ointment all over her truck.

"Something my granny cooked up. Aloe vera, spearmint, a little bit of dragon's blood," Del said, shrugging. "Maybe a couple other things. Works pretty good, don't it?"

"Hn."

It was noncommittal and vague, hardly more than a grunt, but Del decided to take it as agreement and get back to what she was doing. She finished binding his left arm and wiped her greasy fingers off on her jeans. She had a feeling he'd burned more than just his arms, but she figured he could handle himself from here.

She turned her back on him and stretched lazily, giving him a moment to collect himself, waiting to see if he was going to try and escape while she had her eye off him. When she turned back around, he was watching her with a thoughtful look on his face. Del raised an eyebrow.

"Cat got your tongue?"

He grunted again and looked away. "You remind me of someone I know," he said softly. "That's all."

Del didn't want to pry anymore than she already had; she gestured for him to hop down and forced her expression still when his jaw clenched as his feet hit the asphalt. He was still hurting somewhere, but much more assistance on her part would probably lead to resentment.

Even strays had their pride, after all.

"Here." She handed the jar of salve and the rest of the bandages to him and made sure the tailgate was secure again. It didn't always latch right, and she didn't want to lose any of the supplies she had under the tarp in her truck bed. "You probably need that more than I do. Specially with that hurricane that's supposed to come through tomorrow night."

"Hurricane?" Now he sounded worried. But who wouldn't be, in his shoes? Underneath her ointment, he smelled like pine tar, dry earth, and sweat; Del didn't think he was crashing in somebody's shed. More likely he'd found a clearing somewhere and was roughing it. He looked dehydrated, too, but Del couldn't be sure that wasn't just the bad lighting. Her night vision, while better than the average person's, still wasn't perfect.

"Yup." Del ran a hand over her hair and glanced sidelong at him. "Category four, they're saying, but it'll probably go down a notch by the time it makes landfall. It'll be hard rain and wind, maybe a few tornadoes. Power'll go out for a week, maybe longer. We'll most likely see a few flash floods in low-lying areas, and parts of the woods are dried out enough that they might catch fire if a power line goes down in the wrong place. Trees are definitely going to come down. It's a strong storm for this time of year; we usually don't get the big ones until August or so. If we get any at all."

She let that sink in a minute before adding, "I'm surprised you're still out here. Most of the other campers had the sense to clear out yesterday."

She decided to go on the supposition that he was a camper, as opposed to a runaway or a vagrant, in the hope that he'd be more comfortable if he thought she assumed he had a good reason to be in the area. Maybe he'd be a little more forthcoming with information then, and Del could convince him to go home sooner rather than later.

"I was waiting for some friends who were supposed to meet me," he said. "I guess now I know why they never made it."

Del considered that a moment and wondered why his friends hadn't bothered to call him, or try and contact him some other way. It was a lie, she decided, but a good one. Either that or he needed to make some better friends.

"They'll probably be waiting in Houston now," he said thoughtfully. Del could almost see the hook he was dangling, but she wasn't going to bite.

"Sweetpea, if you're fishing for a ride down to Houston, you're just shit outta luck," she said. "The roadways are all jam packed with evacuees now, and they won't be letting just anybody in until after the storm blows over. It's gonna be at least a week, maybe two, before you can get down there. And that's if you're lucky. They're gonna get hit harder than we are; there won't be any power, or gasoline, there may not be running water, and you're gonna have a heck of a time finding a hot meal. Then of course, there's the problems they'll have with gangs and looters hitting places up while the power's out and nobody's phones work. It isn't gonna be fun, that's for damn sure."

"I can take care of myself," he argued.

Sure you can, Del thought sarcastically. Like a one-legged man at a butt-kicking contest. If you're so good at taking care of yourself, how'd you manage to set your stupid ass on fire, huh?

"I'm sure you can," she said calmly, keeping her thoughts to herself. "There's a big storm shelter up in Huntsville that's taking people in. A lot of churches and schools are opening their doors, too. There are plenty of options to choose from, and I'm sure you'll find something, dear."

And that was that. Del dug in her pocket for her keys and hoped he'd take the bait. She couldn't force him to go with her, wouldn't even try, but given a choice between a single kind stranger and a whole crowd of them crammed into a close space, a lot of strays would take the stranger.

It was probably why so many runaways turned up dead every year. Poor kids trusted the wrong people sometimes. Del didn't like thinking about it; the idea of harming someone so fragile just turned her stomach.

"What are you going to do?"

It was all Del could do to stop herself from cheering. He hadn't agreed to anything yet, after all.

"Go home, have dinner," she said, deliberately giving him the wrong answer. "Unload all this crap out of my truck and hit the hay. I still have to board up all my windows tomorrow. It's gonna be a long day."

"For the storm," he clarified, scowling at her. His eyes were piercing, clear, and dark as the sky at sundown; they definitely weren't the eyes of a user, Del decided. And, although he was clearly lacking in common sense, he probably wasn't stupid, either.

Del shrugged. "Wait it out at home, clean up what needs cleaning up afterward, then pack up my chainsaw and head over to my granny's place. She's gonna need help getting things straight again."

Del didn't mention that her granny would have all the help she needed between Del and her cousins. She was trying to offer this fellow a place to stay, not scare him off, and Raff and Zeke could be plenty scary when they put their minds to it.

"Come to think of it, we might could use an extra pair of hands," she continued thoughtfully. "That old chainsaw gives me a heck of a time by myself, and I'd rather my granny didn't throw her back out trying to get downed tree limbs off her lawn."

Heero didn't say anything, but Del could see he was thinking about it. His face hardened—he seemed to be having some kind of internal debate—and Del decided to just take matters into her own hands, instead of trying to maneuver him into offering to go with her. He was a tough one; chances were equally good that he'd decide to go back to the woods instead of with her and she'd feel responsible if he turned up dead after the storm.

"You aren't afraid to get your hands dirty, are you?" Del asked. "It'll be more work than staying at a shelter, but I can promise you better food and a ride to Houston once it's safe. What do you say?"

He was quiet, still thinking, and Del was just about tired of waiting. She retrieved a permanent marker from her purse and pulled the cap off, preparing to scribble her number down for him in case he changed his mind, when he nodded.

"All right," he agreed. "I'll help you if you'll take me to Houston as soon as it's clear."

"We have a deal, then," Del said, putting out her hand so they could shake on it.

This time the contact was empty—no pain, no emotions, no nothing. Del had no explanation for the anomaly but, worrisome as it was, she wouldn't go back on her word. Heero was coming with her, and that was all there was to it.

Notes: Thanks so much to everyone who's reviewed or added this to alerts, faves, etc! I hope you're still enjoying this. The story isn't moving as quickly as I'd like, unfortunately, but after debating it for a while I finally decided that this really was a good stopping point for this chapter. Anyway. Let me know what you think!