PROTECTORS ↠ SETH CLEARWATER [R.U]

1| EVOLVE

"I know. But everything is fine," she repeated, looking him dead in the eyes. "I'm fine, Harley."

He was silent for a moment, scanning her face for any sign of hesitation or feeling of unsureness. "Okay..." Harley spoke slowly, and in a low voice, as he nodded his head once. "Do you need me to drive you back home?"

Sullivan shook her head. "Thanks for the offer, but I think I'm going to walk it."

The look on Harley's face proved that he wasn't happy with her answer, but he had learned to not argue with her. She was strong-willed and very independent, especially with being an only child, and dare he even say it, hot-headed a lot of the time. With a soft kiss pressed to her forehead, and a tender-hearted hug, Harley let Sullivan walk out of the storage room. He followed behind her and flicked the light switch off, closing the door once he stepped out, turning around to lock it with the keys that hung from a chain on a belt loop of his dark blue jeans. Sullivan grabbed her coat from the wooden coat hanger hook from behind the counter and pulled it on, leaving the front open. As she began to walk to the front door with the small 'welcome, we're open' sign facing towards her, Harley's heavy, black Timberland boots echoed dully in the main area of the tackle shop.

"I will see you tomorrow, Harley," Sullivan spoke up as she bid him farewell.

"Aren't you going to be cold?" He asked with his eyebrows furrowed. "You know, I think you're getting sick, maybe you should zip it up, just to be safe."

"I'm fine, Harley," she told him as she turned around, walking backwards slowly. "I will see you tomorrow."

"Get home safely, Sully," he reminded her, pointing his inked-up fingers at her.

"Will do." She saluted, placing her hand on the door handle. "I always am," she finished in a playful tone, stepping outside, and closing the door before he could say anything back to her.

The trick with the door was that you had to use your entire upper body strength to close it fully. Sullivan reminded Harley to get it fixed every single time she entered the shack, but he never seemed to listen to her. From the other side of the door, Sullivan could hear Harley's deep, barrelling laugh as he walked over to lock the door, finding the knitted eyebrows on Sullivan's face to be rather amusing, that, and when she clenched her jaw angrily, glaring at the door as she slammed into it. With the roll of her eyes, she waved goodbye to him, just before she pointed to the lock and then back to him. Sullivan smiled to herself at his gleeful expression and turned away before she began walking around the side of the shack and into the forest. On her way, she walked over to the generator and scanned over it to make sure everything was okay, or if she had to alert Harley about it to make sure the storm didn't fry it and cause a fire. But everything seemed to be fine... from what she could make out at least. Sullivan lightly kicked the wired fence around it, pulling her hood up before she stuck her hands into her pockets.

As she turned away, a crack of lightning piqued her interest. Sure, it was raining, but it wasn't raining too heavily for the storm to have lightning or thunder for that matter, but, even so, Sullivan never really questioned Mother Nature. With her eyes cast down on the forest floor, she jumped over a few roots, missing the crunching sound that the dead leaves would make when they were dried up because the rain caused the leaves to turn to mush, preventing her from hearing it. She even picked up a large stick to swing around like a lightsaber, making noises that didn't quite match that of a lightsaber, but anyone familiar with the franchise would have picked up what she was trying to achieve, just before she quickly grew bored and threw it behind herself, back down to the ground. Half expecting to hear a thud, or at least a small squelching or splashing sound from the small collections of puddles surrounding her, she stopped short in her tracks when she didn't, and an unusual and uncomfortable feeling of heat and pain washed over her. She brought her hands out of her pockets, balled them into fists and turned around with them raised, breathing heavily when she saw nothing there, but the stick was propped up against the tree trunk.