Chapter Text
There was no time wasted in diving right into the swells of wanderers crowding the tables of wares. Each War Boy had memorized the content of their pockets so as not to showcase all of their tradeables. When they found something too shine to pass up, they’d pull forth what they thought was fair until the trade was struck or backed down from the price.
Malik handed over four strips of clean, dyed cloth to a woman with a mane of sun bleached hair in exchange for a shard of glass outlined in plastic. He held it by the handle to inspect his reflection and smiled. There was one crack, stretched like a crooked grin and it was small enough to fit on his bike’s handlebar, a good trade. The woman seemed to agree as she began to tie her hair in large poofs, jagged teeth peeking from behind her curled lips.
Matches followed Trix and Sam around as they gave him his first tour of the infamous Bartertown and found that they were the center of attention. Runs to Gastown and the Bullet Farm were quick and there were other War Boys to meet and talk to, catch up with, but here, they were like ghosts of the dead, all of the vagabonds parting the streets to let them through. There was a wary eye set on them as the War Boys wandered, their white warrior paint and axel grease making people stare. It didn’t help that the whispers of Joe’s Warriors and their penance for collective chaos preceded them.
“Pretty trinkets for a pretty lady!” A man with a fingerless hand waved at Trix, his skin so tanned that it folded like leather when he moved. “Very good deal, swears it.”
But Trix walked by without a word, eyes caught instead on the glinting steel of a cross bow two vendors over.
“Look at this glorious thing.” Matches breathed, hands on his knees as he hunched to get a closer inspection. The weapon looked like something an Imperator would have, reflecting his face in the polished metal as he grinned. Trix shrugged noncommittedly, not letting her interest show on her face, and instead set her eyes on a cluster of serrated arrows.
“Likes what you sees, Miss?” The voice comes like a distorted vibration from a metal contraption the woman holds to her throat when she opens her lips. She’s tall, thickly built in a way that Trix wishes her muscles would fill out, and she’s missing only one of her breasts. That fact lifts Trix’s eyebrows in surprise and the woman stares her down, silently questioning her in return.
“How much for the bow?” Trix finally asks before any other conversation can start and looks down at the weapon instead of at the woman.
Sam straightens his shoulders when the woman eyes Trix, lingering on her bald head, twin scars on her flat chest, and then turns those cool eyes to him.
“For a fellow Amazonian, I give discount. You tell me your greatest story of war and you can have it. A worthy weapon for a worthy woman.”
There was a stillness then that surrounded the wood table but Trix licked her scarred lips and began her story, one that Sam had never heard Trix tell in those calm nights at the Citadel when pairs confessed things in order to strengthen their bonds, or the yelling, chest puffing way War Boys would gloat over dinner, remembering their great deeds done in the name of V8 as they try and outdo each other, Witnessing again.
“It was supposed to be a routine run but the Motor Rats had moved their territory lines and we were trapped. My lancer Chev told me to leave it but I wanted…” Her voice went hard, like how a beetle collects itself beneath its shell when touched, and caught the woman’s eye as she told the rest.
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Ace had tried to keep a look out for which ways all the Boys went but they had scattered like wolves on the hunt. They knew to be back to the Rig by the time the sun was straight up in the sky and nobody had been lost on a run yet.
He wove between the booths and eyed the wares from behind his goggles, knowing the power he exuded with his height and stern features. Children who were running underfoot balked openly at his lumps and pointed as they whispered to each other, mothers grabbing the hands of their offspring, leading them away from his path. Ace frowned deeper at that because, back at the Citadel, the Pups all ran to him, tugging on his arms and jabbering away about what they’d done and wanted to do, what their bigger brothers had shown them, and little stories they’d make up as they went. Their little fingers would try and flatten the wrinkles of his face and squeeze at the sore lumps of his neck as they questioned why he looked so old. To some War Boys, to have lived so long meant he had failed V8 and, in turn, Valhalla was closed to him. To the Pups he was as immortal as they came. But here, to the diseased and starving wretched who wandered here, his half-life status made him a pariah.
“Morsov!” He scolded when he turned and caught sight of the boy holding a live lizard above the wee child’s head, the baby pawing up at the wiggling thing. They were surrounded by Wasteland women, some old and haggard in their rags, others clean and unscathed, bearing the marks of freed slaves, their brands newly shaved off, but all were reaching for the child, cooing and eyeing her in a way that Ace found almost predatory. The women scattered away as he jogged over to Morsov, the lines of his ire lost in the blackened grease.
“Was just playin’ with her.” He sulked as Ace snatched the lizard from him and then began to unwind the knot of his sling. “Wait, no, I can do it.”
“Give her to me.” It wasn’t in Morsov’s nature to disobey a tone that stiff so he bowed his head and drew the fabric over, handing the child to Ace’s sure hands. She didn’t fuss, too caught up with grabbing for the bands of Ace’s goggles, and Morsov helped fasten her in, loosening the strap to fit Ace’s bulk.
Morsov snatched the lizard back and let it scurry across his hand before tightening his fingers around its smooth body and dropping it head first in his mouth. Ace scowled at the deplorable table manners when Morsov slurped the tail between his lips and swallowed.
“You don’t show her off, you hear me? Bound to be stolen away if you keep that up. Besides, she’s much too small to be eating like that. Got a couple hundred days before her puppy teeth come in.” He fit her head into his palm and swiped at her hair with his callused thumb, soothing her.
“What are we gonna call her?”
Ace paused, knowing his answer would make this decision definitive. Names were communal, something you were given by the others or earned after battle. Some boys started off with soft names and received newer ones later on. Some grew into their names, and some never lived long enough for the name to matter. Giving something as important as a moniker to this little girl meant keeping her, meant he was going against Imperator orders.
“Off with you.” Ace said instead, waving Morsov toward the mob of vendors behind him. “Go be trouble somewhere else.”
Morsov made a face, his jaw stiff as he grits his teeth, but didn’t say anything else in departure. There was an odd, unbalanced weight now, without the baby pulling him forward, and every so often he caught his hand reaching up to cradle her, only finding empty air.
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The cross bow is almost weightless in Trix’s hand, fitting easily against the calluses of her palm, and she too feels light. Telling the story was like aqua-cola, once the gate had been opened, the words rushed forward to quench a thirst in her she had forgotten until the first sip. The Amazonian must have been parched too, because she drank each word, her expression softening under the silver scars of her tanned face.
Beside Trix, Matches and Sam were unusually quiet, the youngest one too caught up in the glitter of junk at a vendor’s table, while Trix’s Lancer kept sliding his eyes over to her, pensive and worried. She could read the weakness on him, almost smell it for how strong it was, and it stirred something hot and angry in her. Loosing Chev had been the first personal blow she’d experienced but that was something she’d carry alone.
“Stop staring,” Trix growled, and when Sam turned to her, trying to act surprised, she popped him in the chin. “I’m serious, quit it!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” He countered weakly, hands drawn up against another attack, “I just never heard the story till now. Never heard you witness him before.”
“Cause there was nothin’ shine about the way he went.” Her fists are clenched, white knuckled, and a wire in her hoped Sam would say another stupid thing and trip it, setting her off. But Sam sensed the boundary and stepped back, giving her space. He knows she’s not above beating him senseless here in the middle of a crowd, no matter what Furiosa had said about behaving.
There’s a din of haggling and arguing around them, making the air hotter, and yet Trix is finding herself wishing that Sam would press the issue, would ask tempting questions so she could filter these emotions out, release the rest of their poison.
“’M sorry,” Sam says after they’ve made the circuit around the town, coming back to where the Rig is parked, flanked by the pursuit cars. “Sorry about how it happened and for not being like him.”
Trix suddenly can’t gather the words she wants to spit, mostly because she hadn’t expected him to say that. Instead, she shrugs, scratches at the chapped, stapled skin of her missing breasts, and ducks into the cool shade of her vehicle. “Get bent.”
Matches, who had been following at their heels, uneasy to say anything that might slice the tension, took the command and peeled out, heading back toward the last seller who had satchels and leathered wear hanging from a line. Sam stayed, even though it felt wrong to stand over her, disobeying. He watches as she tries to look busy, her hand nervously picking at her staples, eyes searing a hole in her steering wheel.
The click of steel toed boots catches his attention, makes him turn, and he sees Ace approaching, chest covered in the sling, the baby asleep.
“I’d say you got bout an hour before noon,” Ace says as he shields his eyes and looks skyward, judging the time. Sam knows when he’s being told to leave and takes the subtle hint, turning on his heel and walks away, eyes on the ground, counting his steps.
They’re alone then and something in the way he shifts his weight, no doubt because of the babe, makes Trix feel like she’s in trouble.
“You know, he’s trying.” Ace raises his chin as Trix slides over to the passenger seat so he can settle behind the wheel. He sighs then, a hand cradling the tiny pup’s head, and Trix finds she can’t stop staring.
Something in her clenches and the fact that she can’t place the feeling and why it makes bile sting the back of her throat upsets her more than anything. Ace must sense it in her though, that’s why they call him the Ace, and he grabs her hand, guides her to the dark tufts of hair poking out of the sling. It’s impossibly soft, so much so that she keeps swirling her fingers through the strands, mesmerized. The thing in her that’s distraught seems to quell as the baby coos in its sleep, and her stomach coils tighter. It makes her angry, that something this small and helpless lives while hardened warriors die out on the roads all the time.
“Furiosa said we can’t keep it,” Trix acidly bites, snatching her hand back as she curled her legs to her chest and leaned against the door.
Ace doesn’t say anything, but she catches him give her a lopsided frown, its meaning not lost in her peripheral. It was the kind of look that he gave other Imperators when they tried to give him orders, or when War Boys challenged Furiosa in the Pits. It meant that there were two options: what you wanted and what was going to happen. Usually Ace knew the second wasn’t going to coincide with the first.