( minor TW: depictions of a panic attack )

She scoured through the aisle of chips and candies thoroughly, checking the expiration dates and brands to make sure she would pick something correct. She had her headphones over her ears that were attached to the Walkman she had been given when she was six (and hadn't bothered to get rid of) and was listening to a custom mixtape that she had made on her own in the early 2000s.

The song that blared in her headphones was The Cure's In Between Days and the lyrics helped her focus on her task as well as calm her down from the brief encounter she'd had with Javi just five minutes ago.

Goddamn him, she thought bitterly with a shake of her head. Who was he to accuse her of leaving him when he was the one that ditched her first? She wouldn't forget having to wake up in the cramped apartment that they had once shared together and discovered that he was gone. Not a single trace of a note or phone call. She had been forced to call her mother, to which she had been told that Javi had taken off to register for the military, leaving her alone to deal with the sobering process.

Yeah, goddamn him. She didn't need him. She was healed now.

Mostly.

Maria came back to reality and grabbed a bag of sour cream and onion chips and then a bottle of coke before heading up to the register to check out. She tapped her foot patiently while the male cashier rang her items up, a little surprised that it was only a few bucks. Then again, she was in the middle of nowhere in Oklahoma, so it made sense for things to be cheaper at this gas station.

"Will that be all for you, ma'am?" the cashier asked.

"Can you add a pack of Marlboros with that?" she replied with a light smile. "Any kind is fine."

The cashier nodded and grabbed a regular pack of cigarettes to ring up. Afterwards, Maria threw a ten dollar bill on the red surface and thanked him, stuffing the cigarette box into her pocket and grabbing the leftover change before leaving the building. Once she was outside, she climbed onto the bed of Tyler's truck and withdrew a single cigarette from the box, igniting it with her spare blue lighter and inhaling a deep lungful of smoke.

Her fingers slowly began to ease their trembling as she blew out the puff of smoke, creating a transparent gray cloud in the air for a moment before it vanished. She pushed all the stress to the back of her mind as she continued draining the cigarette of its tobacco, finishing it within less than two minutes before putting it out on the sole of her shoe and tossing it to the ground.

She then hopped down from the bed of the truck, removed her headphones, paused the mixtape, and walked over to Lily and Dani, who had a small table of t-shirts lined up for the crowd to take. Her fingers lightly brushed against the table and it was then that she realized she needed to repaint her nails, the black polish on them already beginning to chip and peel.

"You need any help here, guys?" she asked quietly as she saw a few people buying two or three shirts at a time.

"Actually, that would be great, Mia," Lily replied with a smile. "Dani and I are gonna go in and get some snacks of our own. Would you mind taking over for a few?"

"Sure, no problem," Maria mumbled with a nod, smiling back at her friend.

"Thanks, I owe you one!"

"Yeah, don't mention it." She then turned to a few people that were gathering in front of her and smiled shakily. "Alright," she added in a quivering voice to a younger man that was in front of her. "How many t-shirts for you?"

"Just two," he answered. "One for me and another for my dad."

Upon closer inspection, Maria instantly understood that last part. The boy couldn't have been any older than sixteen. "You got it," she said kindly and picked out the necessary sizes for the shirts. "So, are you a proud Tornado Wrangler?"

"Yeah, have been for a few months now," the boy answered as he took the shirts and gave Maria the necessary amount of cash needed to pay for them. "I watch y'all's videos all the time whenever I'm feeling down."

Maria's heart ached for the kid, since she knew damn well what he meant by 'feeling down.' "That's great," she said, her voice a little gentler and more maternal now. "Listen, kid, I'll give you some free advice. Whatever's going on in your life... don't let it tear you down. It may not be easy to fight back but, if there's any negative thoughts going on in your head... I don't care what it takes. You squash 'em like it's nothin'. A kid your age doesn't need that negativity in their life."

The young boy nodded and Maria could see his eyes shift into an expression of subtle courage. "You got it," he mumbled and was about to turn to leave. But he stopped and looked back at her. "You're my favorite of the crew, by the way. You're an inspiration, Maria!" What followed were a few whoops and hollers of agreement as some of the other crowd members looked in her direction.

Maria felt a tinge of embarrassment crawl through her and she shook her head immediately with a sheepish laugh. "Far from it, kid, but thanks!" she called back before seeing him disappear into the large group of fans.

"You don't gotta be so humble about it," came a voice from right next to her, making Maria flinch.

It was Tyler, who had removed his sunglasses not too long ago and was looking down at her with a grin. Knowing it was him made her instantly relax before glaring at him scoldingly.

"Jesus, Tyler, don't do that to me," she hissed at him before turning to face the crowd.

"I'm just sayin'," Tyler replied, his grin turning into a smirk. "Maybe try being a little more confident with yourself when you do this. You seem like a natural with this part, too."

Maria gently scoffed and glanced at him briefly. "As if you'd know what being a natural is like," she said with a fake little smile.

Tyler raised an eyebrow and held his hands up defensively. "Hey, hey, I'm just tryin' to make polite conversation with a friend," he mumbled. "And it was a compliment. I'd say you're just as good at this as with helpin' us track the storms, Sphinx."

Despite the smallest hint of a blush creeping up to her cheeks, Maria just rolled her eyes and shook her head. Luckily, that was just as Lily and Dani were returning to the table, so she took that as her cue to walk back to the truck.

"A simple 'thanks' would have sufficed!" Tyler called after her, but she chose to not respond on purpose to annoy him. And she knew she succeeded when she heard him mumble under his breath, "And she's gone."

Maria went to the side of the red Ram and leaned against it, opening up her notebook again and taking her pencil out. She flipped to a new page and scanned her surroundings to see if there was anything interesting she could sketch for the time being. She gazed over to her left and saw a thundercloud slowly forming in the sky, and then to her right to see an even bigger storm cell.

Her eyes then landed on Kate, who had distanced herself from the StormPAR group for a moment, which Maria could guess was to figure out what storm to chase. Despite her differences with the opposite storm chasing crew, she silently hoped that her old friend would pick the right one. And it seemed like a good choice was being made when she saw the blonde pluck a dandelion from the grass below, crushing up the ligules and letting them flutter away from her palm.

Maria instinctively stepped closer and put pen to paper, knowing that the sight was even canvas-worthy. She drew an outline of Kate's clothes, the stem of the dandelion, and the ligules before moving on to shade in the grass and her hair. And that was when she saw, out of the corner of her eye, Tyler approaching Kate with a friendly smile.

"You know, I used to do that, too," she heard him say, and she could have sworn she saw Kate give him an annoyed look before turning back towards the sky she was looking at. "Compare the wind direction to cloud movement. Get you a feel for the shear. Yep. Sometimes, the old ways are better than the new.... So, where you comin' in from?"

Kate cleared her throat awkwardly, wanting no business with what seemed to be an arrogant stranger. "New York," was all she answered with, making Tyler smirk over at her in surprise.

"Well, you're a long way from home, city girl," he remarked casually. "So, you like working for StormPAR?"

A few moments later, Maria spotted Ben jogging over to the two of them, slightly out of breath. She took that as her excuse to also walk up to Tyler and Kate with a newfound curiosity in her brown eyes.

"Tyler," Ben spoke up, "do we know which storm we're going after yet?"

Tyler briefly glanced at him and then behind them to see Maria approaching before facing Kate again. "Well, why don't we ask..." he mumbled, still having not known her name.

"Kate," she forced out just as Maria reached them.

"Hi, Kate," he said, extending his hand for her to shake in a polite gesture. "I'm Tyler."

"And I'm Ben," Ben mumbled, also shaking her hand. "I'm a reporter doing a piece on American storm chasing. Tyler's letting me ride along."

"That explains it," Maria gently deadpanned with a smile, earning a light laugh from all three of them. "Someone didn't care to inform me."

Tyler rolled his eyes and smiled back at her before gesturing to Ben. "Yeah, Ben just had to promise to write nothin' but good stuff about me," he muttered with a chuckle.

"Good luck with that," Kate mumbled sarcastically before turning to walk away, clutching a tablet under her right arm.

"Hang on," Tyler spoke up, making the blonde halt in her movement as the three of them faced her. "You didn't say which way we were goin' yet."

Maria noticed the calculating look in Kate's eyes and slightly nodded towards her, encouraging her to answer. Just like the good old days. Come on, Kate, you got this, she thought to herself before Tyler continued.

"Now, from what I gather, west... we double our chances. East... well, it's high risk, high reward."

"Well, go for the reward," Kate replied, deciding to take Maria's silent advice to heart... in her own complicated way, of course. "You don't want Ben to think you're boring."

Maria laughed silently to herself, shutting her notebook and tucking her pencil in her hair behind her right ear as Tyler retorted with, "No, boring is not usually a problem for me, Kate."

Kate curtly nodded before pointing to her left. "The two cells to the west are fighting over the same inflow," she said levelly. "They'll choke each other out. This one to the east has the sky all to herself. Moisture, wind shear, instability. All the things you need to give Ben a good show." And she then turned and began walking away.

Okay, that is in no way what I fucking meant, Kate, Maria thought with a sigh, knowing instantly that Tyler had been lied to. Kate's fidgety hands and the slight tremble in her voice had been dead giveaways. She had never been the best liar.

"City girl knows her stuff, guys," Tyler mumbled just loud enough for Kate to hear but the blonde just kept walking in the opposite direction. He wasn't going to have a repeat of Maria from earlier. "I said, 'city girl knows her stuff, guys!'"

Kate turned on her feet and smiled dramatically at Tyler, outspreading her left arm. "Thanks!" she said mock cheerfully. "Maybe if I work real hard, I could be a Tornado Wrangler, too!" And she then finished her journey back to the StormPAR vans.

Maria then burst into soft laughter and looked at Tyler with disapproval in her eyes. "You're more of a dumbass than I thought, Owens," she mumbled, shaking her head.

Tyler cocked an eyebrow at her. "What, you know city girl or somethin'?" he muttered.

"Let's just say I've known her since she was four," Maria replied smoothly with an innocent little smile on her face. "She's lyin' to you." She pointed towards the west. "West is the better option by a landslide. East is lookin' more like a 'pulse' with the singular updraft and downdraft. Looks more like a regular thunderstorm to me. Sheets of rain, maybe, but nothin' more severe than that. West, though.... Take a closer look at those cell clouds. You've got greener clouds than the shade of the grass we're standin' on. Radiating green frequencies from the sunlight. Looks like a funnel cloud's gonna form, too."

Tyler's confused expression grew into an all-out grin of satisfaction as his blue eyes brightened. "I'm impressed, Rivera," he said, his tone sounding genuinely surprised. "Where'd you learn that from?"

Maria beamed at Tyler slyly, crossing her arms over her chest and holding the notebook tightly. "It's called growin' up long enough to have your baby brother pressure you into liking meteorology," she answered and shrugged before pointing straight at Javi, who was conversing with Kate.

Tyler could only nod his head while Ben just stood there, completely flabbergasted. "Now I know why you're a part of this group," the latter said in an amazed tone.

"Yeah," said Tyler, tipping his hat to Maria out of pure respect. "She's not just a pretty face, Ben."

Maria just averted her gaze and opened her notebook back up, not even able to fight back the blush at the compliment this time. But, instead of actually looking through her previous drawings, she only pretended to and secretly listened in on Kate's conversation with Javi. And it was confirmed that Kate had, indeed, lied right to Tyler's face when she heard her say, "We want the cells to the west... ...conditions don't feel right. Cap's too strong. It'll never break."

She smirked with victory and gently shut her notebook, turning to face Tyler with a hand on her hip as the StormPAR vans began taking off down the road... towards the west cells.

"I thought she told us east," Ben muttered in complete puzzlement as he watched the vans get further and further away. "She going the wrong way?"

Tyler smiled in acknowledgement and slipped his sunglasses back on. "Nope," he said smugly before looking at Maria. "Thanks, Rivera, I owe you one."

Maria's smile was more genuine as she adjusted her glasses and took off towards the RV. "Don't mention it!" she shouted back to him, grabbing the snacks and soda she'd bought and beginning to climb into said caravan.

"Wait, Mia, you're not gonna go with Tyler?" Dani asked her with a raised eyebrow.

"Uh, no, I'm gonna hang back with you guys on this one, if that's okay," she replied, her eyes filled with slight anxiety but it was enough for Dexter to notice.

"Hop in, kid," he said, opening the door further so she could get into one of the backseats and she thanked him profusely.

_____

Maria twisted the lid off of the soda bottle and took a sip from it as the caravan sped down the dirt roads but, luckily, it wasn't enough to throttle her around like a ragdoll. Dani had pulled apart the small curtain that separated the front of the vehicle from the back so she could see out the windshield. At first, all she could really see were the clouds in the near distance growing a bit greener than she had described earlier.

She leaned forward so she could see better, watching with envy as the white vans in front of them got closer and closer to where a funnel cloud would undoubtedly form.

"What does it seem like we're gonna get, Mia?" Dani asked her, looking back in her direction with an expression of interest in her eyes.

Maria's heartbeat began to pick up speed as she was asked the question but she ignored that and peered at the wall cloud forming more closely. She pushed her glasses further up the bridge of her nose and hummed. "The thundercloud doesn't seem to be getting any bigger," she mumbled before reaching into her purse and grabbing a few sheets of papers she had printed out the night before. She shuffled through them and found something. "And, from what I'm reading and seeing out the window, the winds don't look too intense... maybe eighty-five miles an hour. I think we're looking at an EF1, guys."

Dexter nodded, immediately believing Maria as he grabbed the nearby walkie-talkie he kept on his dashboard. "Alright, Tyler, Boone," he spoke up after depressing the button. "Maria says we're looking at a possible EF1 funnel cloud today. Possible wind speeds of eighty-five to one hundred and ten miles an hour."

"Gotcha there, Dexter," Tyler's voice spoke through the speaker, sounding slightly muffled. "Possible EF1 comin' our way. Thanks, Maria!"

Maria then burst into laughter when she saw Tyler's crimson Ram truck barreling onto the dirt road, cutting off the van that Javi was no doubt driving. She then got concerned when it seemed like the van had lost control in the nearby field, but everything turned out fine in the end and she sighed with relief. She then heard Tyler speaking up once again and rolled her eyes, especially when Boone's whooping and laughter joined in.

Same old shit, she thought.

"All right, what's up, chat?!" Tyler shouted cheerfully and Maria could quite literally hear the grin in his voice. "Welcome back. Thank you for joinin' us. It is a perfect weather day! We just had a tornado genesis, I'm lookin' at a tall rope due north of us, and she is pretty! Joinin' us today, per usual, got my chief storm hound, Boone."

"Boonie, baby!" Boone cheered.

"We got Maria, Dexter, and Dani in the caravan behind us," Tyler continued, and the three of them in question smiled up at the camera built into the corner of the front of the RV as if on cue. "And Lily with her drone ready."

"What's good?!" Maria heard Lily greet their YouTube audience through the speakers, making her chuckle. "What's poppin'? What's good?"

"And our special guest today," Tyler went on, "we got Ben in the back seat. Ben, you just came in from, uh, London yesterday, right?"

"Uh... Uh, yes," Ben answered enthusiastically, but Maria could swear she heard a shake in his voice. Probably had something to do with the tornado just ahead of them. "South London. J... Uh, just between Streatham Hill and West Norwood."

There was a long moment of silence besides the blaring music coming from the radio in the caravan. And it was then that Maria spotted the funnel twist further west of where they were driving as Tyler replied to Ben over the speaker with a simple, "Okay."

Maria immediately tapped Dani on the shoulder and silently pointed to the rope-like tornado twisting in the opposite direction. Dani nodded and grabbed the walkie-talkie, depressing the button tightly. "Tyler, tornado's on the move," she informed him.

But Maria wasn't even paying attention to the sight in front of them anymore, not even when Tyler's pickup truck sped into the nearby field to chase the tornado down desperately. Instead, her eyes were locked onto the wind turbine near where the truck was headed and she gripped her seat in worry as she watched it shake and rattle from the strengthening winds.

"Wuh-Winds seem to be about a hundred miles an hour now, guys," she mumbled to Dexter and Dani, doing her best to hide the tremble in her voice. "Stay alert."

Dexter nodded along with Maria's instructions, also eyeing the quaking turbine warily as he continued down the dirt road. He could sense how tense the younger woman was being and he wanted more than anything to comfort her, since he would always be the one that consoled her in times of stress. But he was unable to at the moment thanks to the task at hand. "You're doing alright back there, kid," he assured her while Dani put a hand on Maria's arm and did her best to bring solace. "We'll be far enough away, we won't get too close."

The wind turbine not too far from them proved their safety to be completely in vain since, when they were about a mile away from where the tornado was, the metal whined and groaned with the effort to stay upright. However, it was useless against the strong winds and it toppled over, landing directly in the middle of the road and one of the blades impaling the ground.

A scream erupted from the bottom of Maria's soul as Dexter frantically swerved out of the way with a curse. She gripped her hair almost inhumanly tightly and squeezed her eyes shut, her mouth frozen open in a horrified cry. She prepared herself for the brutal impact of the caravan against the fallen turbine... but it never came.

Instead, all she heard were loud sobs in her subconscious, howling winds, and finally... dead silence as she glimpsed memories that were flashing in her eyes.

I promised her... I would be there for her birthday... her fifteenth birthday.... I can't feel you.

A hand gently grasped her shoulder and a shriek left her lips as her eyes snapped open, and she suddenly remembered where she was.

"Are you okay, Mia?!" Dani shouted, having hopped out of the passenger seat and opened the side door to where she was, gingerly holding her by the arms.

Maria was panting heavily and she could hear her thundering heartbeat in her eardrums, which nearly muffled Dani's entirely. "I'm... I-I'm okay..." she mumbled with a frantic nod despite her terrible shaking and every inch of her skin tingling with numbness.

Dani noticed and shook her head, unbuckling Maria's seatbelt for her and carefully guiding her out of the RV. "You're not okay, Mia, I know that now," she murmured, sitting her down on the muddy ground. "Breathe, breathe... Okay? Breathe, Maria."

"Really, Dani, I-I'm alright," Maria replied but her breathing grew more frenetic as her shaking hands went to claw at her chest, as if trying to tear her heart out. Her blood was rushing through her ears like ocean waves, nearly deafening her, and her vision was becoming blurry even with her glasses on.

Dani's response was to grab Maria's hands to keep her from accidentally harming herself. "I know a panic attack when I see one, man," she said, refusing to let go of her hands. "Just focus on your breathing. In and out... In and out..."

Maria chose to listen to Dani just as her heartbeat was getting faster with utter fright and she inhaled deeply through her nose before letting out a shaky sigh. She repeated the action a few more times, taking stabler breaths with each runthrough.

"You're doing great, kiddo," Dexter then said as he approached them, obviously a bit shaken up himself as he knelt down to Maria's level. "You're doing great. Just keep breathing and focus on our voices."

"Yeah..." she sighed haggardly, breathing as normally as she could muster again. Then again, she hadn't been able to breathe properly in twenty-four years... as if she were restraining herself. "Jesus Christ... good swerve, Dex..."

Dexter and Dani laughed with her as they saw the sanity come back to her eyes, but Maria didn't say much after that, utterly sucked away into her own world. She went to sit in one of the folding chairs not too far away but kept her distance from the arriving fans, lighting up a cigarette and greedily dragging the smoke into her lungs as her teeth clamped down on the stubbed end too tightly for comfort.

She kept replaying the moment in her mind repeatedly in slow motion, the cheers for Tyler's successful experiment of shooting fireworks up a tornado completely faded from her attention. While she stared at the ground, all she saw was the turbine collapsing to the ground directly in front of her eyes, the blade having been mere feet from the vehicle when it struck the dirt. She vividly recalled how she had been shaken beneath her feet... just like twenty-four years ago.

Maria blinked and the sound was back to normal; it turned out that she had been so zoned out that nearly fifteen straight minutes had passed. The tornado was now long gone, having finished its terrorizing journey across the land. She sighed shakily and threw the burnt out cigarette stub to the ground, removing her glasses and wiping at her eyes. "Fuck..." she hissed at herself.

"Heard you had an anxiety fit over here while I was gone, Sphinx," came Tyler's voice from in front of her and she flinched before quickly putting her glasses back on.

"Yeah, so what's it to you?" Maria snapped at him, the amusement entirely vanquished now as she stared at him.

Tyler sighed and pulled up a nearby chair so he could sit next to her, and it was only then that Maria noticed that he wasn't wearing his stupid hat. "Was comin' over here to see how you were holdin' up," was all he said, looking over at her.

Surprisingly, Maria managed the tiniest smile and shrugged her shoulders, taking another deep breath. "I'm fine now, Ty..." she replied in a gentler tone, leaning back against the chair and fiddling with the pockets of her overalls. "If by 'fine,' you mean I'm not dead, then yeah."

A light chuckle left Tyler as he rolled his eyes; even when she was stressed, Maria Rivera always found a way to make light of any situation. "I'm talkin' that and right now," he clarified, his expression a little more serious now, which took Maria off guard completely. Tyler Owens was never serious with her, it was never supposed to be that way, not in the three years they'd known each other. It was impossible.

Pushing the subtle fluttery sensation in her stomach away. "It's somethin' I'd rather not talk about..." she whispered, looking back down at her lap and shaking her head. "I'm just tired, alright?"

Tyler one hundred percent knew it was something more than that, but he wasn't the kind of person that pried on another's secrets. So he just nodded his head. "That's fine," he assured her, his tone more soothing than usual. "You want me to drive you to the hotel?"

Maria smiled a little more and sat up a little, stuffing the pack of cigarettes into her pocket before getting to her feet. "That'd be nice," she muttered.

Tyler stood with her and gently took her hand into his with that dumbass smirk on his face. Of course, Maria would never admit to that smile making her go weak in the knees. "Lead the way, ma'am," he said.

A/N: i hate this chapter and for what lol...

did you guys like this chapter as opposed to me?

do you like how intelligent maria is in this book despite it being hinted at that she never wanted to be a meteorologist in the first place?

what about the subtle flirting she had with tyler? do you already like their chemistry?

yes, the scary moment towards the end was an homage to the original twister film.

did i handle the panic attack scene well?

be looking forward to the next chapter!

-denbroughswife