Chapter Text
Max thinks it's appropriate that his soulmark is a feeling rather than a name (is insanity instead of a person).
His life has become a series of impressions, senses sharpened, self muted, until all he is has become brutality and rage. He’s tried to craft the anger he's soulbound to into usefulness, to patrol and to protect, but he fails. And his failures lay their corpses next to him at night, drape their gore across him in the morning, and covers his face with their decay in his odd waking moments. Often he doesn't know if he's mad because he's Marked with madness or if the rage is drawn to him like a corpse draws flies.
Max only knows his own name because his madness (his lover) croons it at him like a sharp knife twisting. He runs not because he prefers it but because the death he trails demands it of him like starving children. He thinks they eat him sane. He maybe almost loves them for it (hates them for it). They are his truth in this crazy world.
His soulmark’s on his leg; the bullet hit it almost squarely. The word has become distorted with the scarring. (Like the world, he thinks. Like the world.)
Max makes himself a metal brace, so that he can continue running; but when the sun heats the steel he thinks he can feel the name it covers burn.
(I burn with fury too, he thinks at it.)
—
She can't see her soulmate's name, but neither can anyone else. The only one who had was her mother who tells her, "Hide it, Capable, they'll only use it to ruin you."
Her hair grows in quickly, a tangle of weeds wild and thick like it'd been listening, like blood, like roses, like thorns, and her mother tells her the dusted story of a prized girl in a high tower who leads her love to her by her hair. What a luxury, Capable thinks, to choose to let down her hair. Capable should know luxury, because after her settlement was raided, all she was surrounded by was the sweetness of it thrust upon her, a shell of decaying meat.
She prefers to face Joe always, but especially when he takes her, so there's no chance some unwary part in her hair reveals the name written on her head. The name is hers, like so very little actually is, even if she never knows it or claims its promise because its also her right to choose not to. (It feels like a hollow choice. Angharad tells them that their choices are still strong, but sometimes it doesn't feel enough. She wants to choose something honestly sweet, she wants something gentle; she wants to choose to be gentle, instead of having to be hard.)
The rest of her skin is clear, like her sister-wives, and Immortan Joe revels in the ability to mark them as his.
It is as much for this reason that they all worship Angharad for her courage in marking her own.
—
She has no name, at least none of someone destined to her. She knows this because when she was born, Joe himself came and inspected her thoroughly.
Miss Giddy named her Most Beloved, and so she was by all who looked at her and all who tried to shield her. Her nursemaids requested music for her and it was given; and good books, and food, and every story that they could remember among themselves, and every story that even a scrap of the Wretched could remember. As a little girl she shied from them when she saw the Wretched in passing, but Miss Giddy whispered to her their stories. She wonders what would have happened if she herself was born with poor lungs, a wine-marked face, a soulmarked skin. She wonders this, twelve and with Joe lumbering between her legs, as she mentally traced the image of his skull on his ceiling.
Because it was his ceiling. It was his rooms, his piano, his books. She wants to hurt him but she’s not sure how, he's in everything she sees. (Even her.) There is something wrong with the world; the stories she reads tell her there is a different way, but she doesn't know how to articulate it.
She’s washing her arms in a bowl after he is done with her one day, her hand catching against the meat of her forearms as she rubs it again (again). Her nails almost catches, and she thinks, that was close, I almost scratched his property.
Angharad blinks. Straightens, staring blindly at a wall. His property?
The memory of a line in a book taunts her. ('Careful, he says, you almost scratched yourself.’)
She looks down and scores her nail down her arm. Repeats it until her skin grows red, and bursts apart under the force, bleeding, bright. Angharad feels like she's shocked into her body and she gasps like she'd just awoken.
She thinks, I am not —
"SPLENDID," Immortan Joe roars, tearing into the room, his sons at his wings, "what have you done."
She looks down at her arm, like a triumphant red flag a design of her own making. Her mouth tears her face open in a smile.
"I'm marking your name, Immortan Joe," she replies sweetly, looking up, chin strong, proudly showing him her arm, "Your War Boys mark the skin for you. Wouldn't you like me to show my regard?" She makes her face look especially dumb and vapid.
Joe's sons look at the incomprehensible scratches, then look at each other.
They turn to Joe.
“A—Alright." Joe says, slowly. The sound pulled long, syllables loaded with his own words trapped against him. "Alright then."
Angharad's smile sweetens.
—
Joe tells himself that his soulmark is somewhere in the sores that breaks open his skin, but there's little he can do about this wasteland that tears each of them all open. The world is insane, he knows— and dangerous. He tries so hard to be good to his people, giving them a purpose, feeding and clothing them; it's really tough sometimes, it really is, to be responsible for so many.
He feels proud when he looks at his family, at the strong women he calls his. He makes sure they are happy and gives them everything, everything he does is for them, to keep them safe from the dangerous and the dirty that would hurt them. He chases everyone with dark foul'd skin away from his lands but it's not as if he's blind to the charm of those races, he’s not terrible; he even rescued their daughter from them and made her his wife.
It's no wonder his War Boys worship him.
His new one is a bit shy but he knows how to bring her out of her shell. He'll tell Cheedo how beautiful she is, he'll tell her over and over again and she'll eventually believe him because he is right. His opinion is the most important, why wouldn't she believe him? He spends the entirely of one afternoon following her around telling her how much he’d like to take her until she curled up in his arms and screamed. She'll get it eventually, Joe thinks.
But until then there's always his Angharad, always his favorite. His gorgeous, confident Splendid Angharad. He loves strong women, don't you know? (He loves it most when they're mostly naked and squealing like they hurt.)
It's terrible that he doesn't have a soulmark; but then none of his wives now do. (He’s learned better.) He collected them in from the wilderness and he'll make a safe place for them all. He'll do all the awful things he must for their sake, and for his boys; he has no problems getting his hands dirty.
(He carefully forgets he never had the name of a soul even when his skin was clear. It doesn't really matter that he enjoys getting his hands dirty; everyone has a use. Even him.
Especially him.)
—
They get their names after their first raid, and while he likes his, he wonders where his counterpart could be. Nuts and bolts, they hold a car together, so who is his bolt?
Slit smacks him upside the head and hisses, "Stop thinking about it and drive us home!" Spittle and blood vents from the cuts on his cheeks; the Organic Mechanic will take a look at it back at the Citadel but they both know that Slit was inches from being historic, and they both mourn a little at how close it was. To be chrome on your first raid!
Nux shuts his mouth on a sigh and nods, levering himself behind the wheel. The Mechanic will be busy tonight, to get all their bodies ticking right, especially after everyone's done keying themselves up. Nux knows he'll key onto himself the holy V8 engine block; it's a popular design, drawing the insides on your outsides. Some War Boys prefer to mark themselves more directly of Immortan Joe, his face or his sigil or sometimes his entire body keyed onto their chests or arms or backs.
It's popular especially to key up birthmarks because your first raid is like being born anew; it’s incomprehensible that the random blotches or scribbles of someone else's name might matter in Vahalla. Especially since none of them could read.
Nux secretly likes his soulmark however; its loops and curves reminds him of cylinders and crankcase and the hum of a warm engine (the vaguely remembered hum of somewhere warm and soft and held). The poetry of the lines recalls a blueprint, and he draws the tangle of intake valves into the name’s arms, and when he rubs away the leaks to look at his reflection he thinks, it's so shiny.
Slit, holding up the steel plate they were using as mirror, barks laughter and gives a thumbs up.
The Mechanic will fix his leaks, and then he'll get another paint job, and soon it'll just be another raid until he'll be Witnessed.
Nux can't wait.
—
She holds him down with stub and shotgun, he's pinned and sliding his eyes towards her marked half-arm and he looks stunned and winded and she tries to shoot but the gun's faulty. She hauls the weapon up to clock him instead but the feral finds energy from somewhere and surges forward and from there there's almost no time to do anything but react until she's face down, breathing sand, gun at her skull.
But he doesn't shoot.
And if she's alive Furiosa knows she has a chance.
She catches up with the War Rig and stares him down. He agrees to bring her along easily enough, glancing at her, twitching, barely verbal; couldn’t even meet her eyes after she gets her arm on, while he steadily refuses the others a ride. But there is a look to the guy's gaze like something familiar and she knows how to break him. Furiosa has seen in the mirror and known what it's like to want to breathe but for the self-created steel-muscle and belts and ties suffocateing all the air from your lungs. You can’t scream with something like that on, and sometimes you need to.
“Do you want that thing off your face?”
It's easy in the end to fall into battle rhythm with him, as if he were the phantom limb she would have had had if Joe not ripped off her arm in rage, post-third-miscarriage. The name of her other soul ripped with it, barely legible now except for the first three letters; Immortan Joe swore off any woman with a mark as he nearly beat her to death with the limb. He tossed both it and her away. (He hates strong women who defy him the most, best loves those who kneel.)
Surviving the wound was a blur, clawing her way to their medic and insisting to him she could still fight and drive.
"Ain't nothin to me,” he'd muttered and seared the stump closed.
Her arm is a bit of a vicious thing, cut short, so Furiosa doesn’t even blink when she catches the man glancing at it and clutching his leg right above his brace. He flinches whenever he does so, like he’s waking from a nightmare or sinking into a nightmare awake. (He looks at her like he can read all of hers and wants to hand her a gun in response.)
“But what if you don’t come back?” she asks, as he trudges towards the Bullet Farmer. (They need help on this journey, and he is reliable, he is more than reliable, he—)
“You keep moving,” he replies. She stops, and understands. If she had been alone out here, she would have had to say that to one of the wives. (But she’s not alone, and he does this for her; then came back to help when he could have left with the Farmer’s guns and supplies and guzzoline. He could have ran away so many times but didn’t.)
She thinks, on the edge of the salt flats, that he deserves help and thanks, at least a full-loaded bike (deserves the option to turn away, and the request that he doesn't). It's excessively loaded with supplies they could’ve used to last them longer than 160 days but Furiosa knew they wouldn’t have come this far without him. He should have a share and a space in their convoy, if he chooses to.
He chose instead to let them go.
Furiosa accepts this with more regret than she was prepared to admit to. But she also accepts that this world is made up of regrets and there’s many more that haunt her daily and deeper. This was nothing in comparison. It shouldn’t feel so large. There were girls and women counting on her leadership.
.
.
.
And then that crazy feral decided to catch up to them again.
"We go back?” They would be outnumbered, outgunned, outflanked. It’s a completely insane idea and her stump itches with it. But then everyone starts speaking with hope and the hope is not breaking them. She knows they won’t move without her approval and Furiosa feels the sandstorm of everyone’s determination at her back.
He offers her his hand forward and she takes it as if it’s a magnetic pull, key into the ignition, humming.
Furiosa couldn’t at any point thereafter regret that decision, even when half the Vuvalini have fallen and Toast was captured and she was stabbed and he was hanging by her slowly unravelling arm and all was looking more and more lost. She remembers that flare of hope in the middle of the salt and it was the brightest thing she'd felt for years, a dozen people around her planning for better things. It’s why she finds in herself a deeper well of strength, of rage, to protect this hope and let it carry her through to meet Immortan Joe face to face.
Where she proves to them both that he could die.
It's enough for her. She’ll make it enough; they are easing their way towards the Citadel and the women will be safe even if she’s suffocating in her own death. Her hand is warm. (He holds it.) He looks so worried but he doesn’t need to be, they can keep going, and Furiosa wants to tell him this but she can’t get enough air.
“Her lung’s collapsed."
There’s a flurry of movement she could barely track, and then he lets her breathe even though it hurts him. She thinks gratefully, he is reliable.
“Take them home."
She falls unconscious.
.
.
.
"Why did he walk away?" Cheedo asks, peering over their shoulders as they rose higher and higher towards the Citadel dock. "Why are you letting him walk away?"
"He needs to," Capable replies. "We all need to sometimes."
"But, but his name..."
"Even then.” Capable’s jaw is hard. “Sometimes things don’t work out like you think they should."
“But she doesn’t know, how could she, she was— Furiosa, his name is Max," Cheedo pleaded, "It's Max. And—" and we've seen your arm, she doesn't need to say.
His name is Max. Furiosa breathes in, world fading out a little, arm tingling, the name on her arm tingling. She never expected to find her other soul out here in this wasteland. (She never expected it to matter. Never expected there to be anything left of her soul to match to. Never even crossed her mind.) She wants him to not exist. (She wants him to exist forever.)
He knew, she realizes, he’d known all this time. Every time that he flinched when one of the others called her. Every odd look at her, at her stump (at his name, she knows now); and with the way he clutched his leg, she wonders if she would find her name there. She wonders if he'd wanted to run as much as she does now, from the knowledge and towards the knowledge; she wants to know this truth both sooner and never.
Would it have made a difference, she asks herself. And she knew that he knew that there was no time and no space for them. Not then. And not yet. A great surge of both fondness and grief rises in her as she understands completely; he would not, could not, have afforded to place her any differently. Still couldn't.
She knows him like she knows her own arm. They've work to do.
She breathes out and stares at where he disappeared.
“Furiosa—"
She holds her hand up, "He's looking for something."
"Said it himself, everything's right here,” Dag mutters with a crow-tilted head.
"Not yet, it doesn't," she nods at the pillars of the Citadel, “Let's get this sorted first, get you a chance to plant Keepers's seeds."
"But what if he doesn't return?” Toast asks pragmatically.
Their platform shudders as it hits the dock. It covers her small stumble.
“ 'He said it himself',” she parrots over her shoulder. Then faces the observation room, chin down, shoulders back, "We keep moving."
She spares a glance at the distant fumes of Gastown, at the far off flares of the Bullet Farm. Furiosa knows he has a map and her name, his car is out there and three half-shredded armies are about twelve days out if they go around the mountain. He told her that hope will make her insane if she doesn't fix the broken but there's nothing here for him to fix. Out there though…
She'll trust in him and thinks he’ll return.
And if that makes her a little crazy, well, maybe that just makes them a matched set.