"You promised," she says, pounding tiny fists against his shoulders. "You promised!"
Then Mercy sees me. Her fists stop mid-air. "Savannah?"
The silence shifts. Every pair of eyes turns to me—really looks at me. At my dead eyes. At Legion's clothes hanging off my frame. At my bare feet on the cracked blacktop.
Little stones dig into my soles. The collective gaze of a biker gang weighs on my skin, heavier than any camera my mother ever pointed at me.
"I've got no shoes," I say, because it's all I can think to say.
Something in the air changes. The edges of everything go soft. The silver-haired woman's face shifts from suspicion to something else.
"Mercy, go on up to bed," she says, her voice surprisingly gentle.
"But—"
"Now, honey. Go on."
She does. She leaves. But something else remains.
I can't really put my finger on it, it's more of… an aesthetic. Something gloomy and gray. Something… woeful remains behind.
I've complicated things.
I've ruined Legion's homecoming.
Now they all just look sad, these dangerous men with their tattooed knuckles and knife scars.
Legion bends suddenly, scoops me into his arms like I weigh nothing. My head rests against his chest, right over the infected brand that marks him as theirs.
He kisses my cheek, smiles at me with a gentleness that doesn't reach his eyes. "You're OK," he tells me, though we both know that's a lie. "I've got you now."
Then he carries me inside, past the ring of watchful outlaws, into the dark heart of the Badlands where a neon skull sign flickers blue-white-blue against the far wall.
Legion's arms are steady beneath me, but my thoughts scatter like prairie birds. Tryin’ to see everything at once. This room isn't just a bar, though it has one—long and gleaming with bottles that catch the neon's pulse. It's something more.
Couches line the walls, worn leather cracked in places that tell stories of men too drunk to stand.
A pool table dominates the center. Video games—the old kind with joysticks and pixelated screens—stand sentinel in the corner like artifacts from another time.
Every surface tells a story I wasn't meant to hear.
Everyone follows us in, silent as church. Their boots make less noise than they should on these old boards. One steps forward from the pack. Older, with eyes like winter and a beard that's seen more summers than I have birthdays.
Legion says, “Brick.” Like that’s enough. Like evoking his name is an explanation all its own. The name fits—he's built like something that could crush you without trying.
Brick doesn't look at me. He points to something across the room—a door, maybe, or another hallway—but his eyes stay locked on Legion.
"Now," he says. Just that. One word that hangs in the air like smoke.
Legion nods, understanding something I don't. He moves to a couch with faded paisley upholstery and sets me down gently, like I might break.
I might, actually. I’m not sure yet.
He crouches in front of me, his eyes finding mine. There's a softness there that doesn't match the rest of this place, or these people.
"I'll be right back," he says, voice low enough that only I can hear. "You stay right here—no one will fuck with you. All right?"
I realize I'm still clutching his motorcycle helmet against my chest like it's the only thing keeping me together. Maybe it is. My knuckles have gone white around the edges.
