Chapter Text
"I remember you."
Max turns and plants his foot behind him, both free of the Citadel's shadow. A hooded man is leaning against the curve of the wall, the roars of the crowd and the water behind them. There's a long cloak obscuring his features.
"Maybe it was not you, exactly, maybe it was just a story. I keep stories you see." The hood is lifted, the hands that did so are covered in swirling lines.
Words, Max realizes.
Names. Tattoo'd in grey too faded to be soul-marks. He must be one of the many-souled. A Storykeeper.
"I don't proper have a name for you, really, except 'Road Warrior', One Who Leaves." The old man holds up a hand and on the parchment of his skin, so it was written. "None of the refugees— them groups we get sometimes? None of them say you leave your name with them," he chuckles, "Well, maybe it's someone else then."
He tears his eyes from the word 'Nux' on the man's cheekbone and scans the horizon. The sun is moving, and he should too.
"But there's not many out there who help, and even less who leave afterward." The man gaze probes Max's form, "Do you perhaps drive an Interceptor?"
Max takes a step back, heart pounding.
The man nods, and claps his hands, "Well, you'll be needing this then." He starts patting at the rock beside him.
Not rock, Max realizes.
The vague shape of a motorcycle forms as dirt cascades off a dirty tarp. Max steps up and helps him tug the sheet off. He hums consideringly, it wasn't the best, but the parts that needs to work does, and the important parts are rust-free. He remembers the other man and looks up.
The wide smile he gets is a shock. It's one that's wide and easy and Max doesn't remember the last time he's seen one so deeply engraved on a face as to leave lines behind it.
"Well, go on then." The Storyteller looks at him intently, "I'm sure you're leaving for a reason."
Max slides his gaze to the side. Doesn't meet the man's eyes as he climbs on the bike. It starts with little coaxing and Max lets the murmur of it fill in his words for him.
He lifts the kickstand and pauses.
Grunts over his shoulder, "Your name?"
"Rumpus," the many-souled says easily, like a man used to living protected and whole.
Max nods a thanks.
He rides away towards the teeth of the hills, ignoring the itch beneath his brace.
—
Rumpus hums as he watches the motorcycle go.
The name the First History Man had inscribed onto the back of his hand doesn't seem like enough to describe the story he'd just Witnessed. Then again, the one who stands Witness is never encouraged to keep the story to themselves. To Witness fully means leaving the memory to a History.
But this memory isn't complete.
The old man stares up thoughtfully at the rising lift. He'll have to speak with one of the remaining Herstorians. They might be able to get the rest of the telling from one of the Widows. Too bad Miss Giddy had been taken with the war party to keep record.
Rumpus smiles hopefully into the sky for Miss Giddy, "May your name return to us and your stories reach our ears."
Perhaps she is still somewhere over the hills.
—
There were always stories, speculation, and guesses about the half-souled, and what they'd meant. The names of halves would appear on perhaps 8% of the population, growing less, and only 5% of that fraction ever find each other. But of those who did, there were tales of faster healing, better stamina, slower aging, and greater reflexes the longer the pair were in physical contact.
There were never any research into soulmates.
(Nobody really wondered why. It is what it is.)
—
"What the 'ell is that?" his new partner had asked by their lockers.
Max looked at the guy, steadily, until he started to squirm.
"I mean I know it's yer soulmark but what kind of name's that? Never hear of anyone with that sort of thing, what kinda mother'll do that to her girl?"
"Figure it just means anger," Max muttered, looking down then to at the hollowed spaces around the room. All over the world civil society was collapsing as the shortage of resources increased the number of those left wanting. Looting and stealing, then more murdering as people started to fight back. Attempts to keep peace became increasingly futile as more and more people got desperate. They've lost touch with their state headquarters months ago, and attempts at recruiting more help just left them with betrayal; the recent influx of new blood was only because they've managed to find a couple holdouts in a station two towns over. "Not like we don't have reason."
"Eh, you just be sharing yer lady love with us all then?" he'd laughed.
Max frowned at him.
"Oh shaddup, y'brought it up." The man huffed and checked his cartridges. "Look, 's good that you found yer other half, even if'n' be a feeling insteada body ta fuck. Roll with it."
"I try not to," Max said under his breath. The rage festers in him sometimes and threatens to eat up his worth. He's a cop, not one of the desperate, one of the mindless, clawing at others. He reminded himself of Jessie and Sprog, to keep it all leashed.
"Nah, go with it. Gives us an edge. Just point it at others, eh, and not at my back."
Max shrugged.
He never bothered remembering the guy's name. It was probably for the best as he didn't last a week.
At least there was always Goose to count on. If Max ever goes down, he can always trust the man to look after his family.
—
Governments have always known that the half-souled, even without meeting their soulmate, would always be sturdier on average than their situation would allow.
For thousands of years there had been systemic recruitment of half-souled into military and secret personal forces. Any private research into the nature of the soul-mark had been ruthlessly suppressed, as well as any attempts to make databases of names for the half-souled to find each other. There were speculation that the half-souled were stronger and longer-lived to give them a better chance to find their other selves but it was a difficult thing to test for certain. Most research was heavily monitored because one more test subject means one less person on the field. (The half-souled were always mentally brittle when it came to certain pressures. A soldier can't fight if they're catatonic.)
What is known for sure that when soulmates meet, the both of them became stronger and more difficult to control. The solution was simple, those men in power thought, thread through the populace a distaste for others, encourage isolation and pride and a love of things, not people. It shouldn't be a hard truth for people to realize, was the thought, because the only real truth in the world is that people are things.
(When the rate of people being born with soulmarks declined, from 80% to ever less and less, they only tried to spread their message more, and faster. They needed all the resources they could get. It's the only way to survive, they told themselves.)
When the world broke, these same powerful men blamed the world for being so feral.
—
'One Who Leaves,' the hallucination smiles. 'Road Warrior who leaves death behind him.'
The words on the many-souled skin grow red, become bleeding, become names that blame him, become pleas for Max's help. He is never there in time.
Angharad walks through the blood, tearing it apart. She glows. She burns.
'Why didn't you go back?' She asks.
She reaches out for him and Max flinches—
Is thrown from the bike.
Sand scrapes along his face. There's a weight on him. He's being choked. Max explodes— grabbing the wrists of the hands around his neck and yanking down, planting his feet and shoving upwards. The person above him unbalances to the right and Max follows, surging up and rolling them over until the man (it's a man by the smell) is pinned to the ground belly down, arms hauled up and twisted behind his back.
Oh. Not a man.
A War Boy, an old one by the looks of the wrinkles on the head and the size of those tumors.
"That bike's not yours," the War Boy spits, struggling. "If you've harmed theHistory, all War will bay for your head! We'll kill you! Kill you! We'll tear you apart!"
The painted body heaves upward, raging, while Max just holds firm, anchoring himself center on the spine. He feels perplexed however, and hums his confusion.
"Y'mean Rumpus?"
The Boy stops. Pants a little into the sand and tilts his head to one side. "You know his name?"
Max shrugs and lets the motion telegraph into the grip he has around the guy's wrists.
"Told it to me. Lent his bike." It's not like Max is planning on keeping the thing, he needs to find his car. Belatedly he realizes that he probably should have told the old man that. Getting a move on seemed more important at the time.
"Lies," the crooked white mouth opens and spits. "The bike is for his use only, we gave it to him. I would know it anywhere."
"Eh?" Max asks, blinking.
"The History needs a way to run."
To keep safe, Max hears.
The War Boy croaks out, viciously, "He keeps the Witnessing. Even if you kill me, there's not one War Boy in leagues you'd be safe from. You'll be hunted day and night and we'll tear your skin off for parchment." The painted man starts thrashing again.
Max hums, thinking, leans his weight on both wings of shoulder-blades, kneecaps crunching against muscles and tumors, and levers the arms up higher to keep the Boy still.
Asks, "What does he call you?"
"What does it matter, feral—?!"
The fighting increases. Max jams his foot into a painted thigh and it spasms back under his control.
"He calls me 'Road Warrior'."
Immediate stillness.
"I'm looking for my Interceptor."
The War Boy cranes his head backwards in shock.
They stare at each other.
Max, nods, continues, "Joe is dead."
Shhhh murmurs the winds and sand. He thinks the eyes must be wide beneath the goggles, the forehead's wrinkled.
"...Furiosa?" Her name isn't spat out. It's a whisper. There's maybe fear there, and no small amount of respect.
So Max replies, "Citadel."
The greased head drops down. There's a huff.
He tch's, "Of all the Imperators... 'course it's her." There's a bit of a crooked smile on that crooked mouth, a rueful laugh.
Max measures him, and then gets up. He untwists the War Boy's arm and uses it to leverage him standing. He's given a slow blink as Max pats him awkwardly on the shoulder. Seems a bit thin, Max muses, and banged up. But nothing was actively bleeding, plugged up by white chalk was it were, not even the large face wound or the bullet holes. And the Boy could stand without assistance.
"Think she needs more hands?" The goggled eyes measures him in return, dusting sand off his chest.
Max is already moving towards the bike. "Can't hurt," Max replies. He lifts the motorcycle from the dirt and looks it over, checking for debris and damage. Seems okay.
"Well give me a ride to the Citadel then," the War Boy protests, trotting up as he swings onto the bike. Max scoots forward and looks at the seat behind him significantly.
The Boy clambers on. Nodding, "Name's Ace."
Max grunts and swings them back onto the road.
"Hey! Citadel's that way!"
"Hmgg, doing you one better." Max says. Trusts.
"Huh?"
"Y'can drive?"
As the disbelieving hoot rings out across the sand, Max thinks that there's probably scavengers swarming the wrecks already. If this Ace lasts, if the guns Max will give him is never pointed back at him, Max will measure the War Boy again.
Maybe there's more than one Nux underneath the death-painted skin.
And if there's one underneath this Boy, he'll send him back to her with a war machine. Seems like something she could put to use.
Yup.
(the thought is a soothing one and he doesn't much examine why)
There's golden laughter in the distance, but it's easy to ignore when Max's got a War Boy yammering about salvage in his ear.