Chapter Text
Splendid had expected that the day they finally escaped from their husband would be more dramatic. She had expected one of either two things: fear, or jubilation. Fear as they slipped out in the middle of the night ready to walk as far as their legs would take them, clutching as many supplies as they could carry; or jubilation as they walked freely away from a dead man who's ghost could do nothing more than haunt their dreams. Instead, she felt nothing but a grim determination. It was amazing what three and a half tonnes of truck could do to alleviate fear.
It went without saying that she had been planning this escape for months, but it was only recently that she had been offered a chance of escape that had any hope of success. She was still reeling from the revelation. She was escaping. They were all escaping. It was actually happening. She glanced over at Furiosa, their saviour, who drove the truck with a steely expression and a watchful eye on the speedometer. It would not do to get pulled over by the cops at this point. Splendid almost couldn't believe all this was real.
In the back seat of the truck sat her fellow “wives”. Capable sat nearest the window, her nervous fingers plaiting and unplaiting her red hair into more and more intricate styles. Beside her The Dag chewed at her fingernails contemplatively, staring past Capable and out at the bare unchanging landscape. Toast came next, the pistol handed to her by Furiosa clasped so tightly in her hands that her dark knuckles turned white. Finally came Cheedo, the youngest of all of them. She sat hunched in on herself and gazed unblinkingly out the other window. Her cheek was still dark with the bruises that had finally made them desperate enough to flee.
Cheedo had been brought to them a year ago at the fragile age of fourteen with tears staining her cheeks and a shake to her hands that never quite left. She told them about a car crash and her mother dying, and hands that pulled her from the burning wreckage only to shove her into another car, and a hot, torturous drive that lasted for days while a piece of metal embedded in her leg bled sluggishly. Then white, bright lights and water and new clothes. A voice telling her she was to be the new wife of a man named Joe, and the sensation of the hole in her leg being drawn closed by coarse threads, the pain so great she passed out. And then she woke up here.
The Dag had turned very pale when they found out her age. “Fourteen.” She'd whispered, “She's fucking fourteen.”
Capable had jumped into action, approaching the girl with caution and wiping away her tears before pulling her into a tight hug.
“We won't let him have you.” Toast had growled, turning towards Splendid, who's brain was already ticking over with a plan to protect this girl. She would voice it to the others in secret later, while Cheedo was asleep, but for now what she said was:
“We have to get out of here.”
For a few months it had worked, their plan to protect the child in their midst. When their husband had entered the room, looking for sex, they would exchange wordless glances, and one of them would offer themselves up to him before he had the chance to choose his latest conquest. It made the rape marginally more bearable, knowing that they were doing this to protect a child, yet each time, Splendid felt her anger grow. How dare this man place them in this situation. How dare he force her to choose between this and the rape of a child. She could see the anger rising in the others as well, most notably in Toast, who would spit and punch her pillow as she returned, breaking whatever breakable thing she could find before retreating to the shower.
And then Splendid got pregnant. And as soon as the bump began to show, Joe wouldn't touch her. She had tried her hardest to keep him focused on her, to keep him from looking to where Capable, The Dag, and Toast were inching slowly in front of Cheedo, but Joe had caught on. In a fury he had pushed past the three girls, grabbing a struggling Cheedo by her wrist and dragging her away. They had tried to stop him, The Dag snatching at his hair, and Toast throwing a punch, while Capable held on to Cheedo, but he was too fast and too strong, and before they knew it, the door was slamming behind him with a click.
Still, they had persisted in protecting Cheedo from the worst of Joe's rage, and in the following months he only stole her from them twice again. But it was this third time that was the worst. She had returned to them with tears in her eyes and her face a mess of bruises. Apparently the novelty of his new wife had worn off. Surprisingly, it was Capable who was angriest this time. She had lived up to her name and tended to Cheedo's wounds with a mother's care, but awoke early the next morning, stalking the house that was their prison until she reached the garage. There, her careful eyes watched the comings and goings of business associates, household staff, and the young men who seemed to hold undying loyalty to her husband for reasons unknown to her.
Finally, her eyes honed in on the woman who would become their saviour. The others wouldn't have thought it to look at her. Furiosa's outward appearance screamed tough. From her hair shaved down to the scalp, to the axle grease on her face, to the grubby tank top that revealed a metal prosthetic limb, nothing about her gave any hint that she would be sympathetic towards the wives plight. Yet this had always been Capable's strongest asset, recognising the good in people before even they themselves knew it. Sure enough, Furiosa agreed to help them escape.
It helped that Furiosa herself had been planning her own escape from her place in Joe's “business”. She had managed to make contact with her family for the first time in years- her great aunt, who had assured her in her letter that her house was as good as hers if she could manage the journey from Florida to Washington. Furiosa was determined to get there if it killed her. Factoring the additional women into this plan was not difficult. With the plan already formed, it took only three days to set it into motion. The girls were left relatively unguarded during the day. Joe trusted the undying loyalty of his men and knew that his wives had no way of breaking through the locks on the mansion doors or the bulletproof glass in the windows- and upon their escape, where would they go? He knew they were miles away from anyone who might help them. Furiosa had smirked as she had broken through the locks on the door and smuggled the girls into the back of her truck. He'd been too cocky.
It was almost suspicious how smoothly it went from there. They'd been on the road for hours without any sign of trouble or pursuit. It was possible that Joe didn't even realise they were gone yet, despite the aggressive messages they had sprayed across his rooms with a can of silver paint Furiosa had wordlessly handed to them. It was too easy.
It took Furiosa suddenly slowing the truck to a standstill to change the stifling atmosphere in the van. She took out some sheets of metal from under the dashboard and handed them to Splendid, followed by a toolbox.
“C'mon.” She said, stepping out of the cab. “We'll want to change the number plates. The last thing we want is the Immortan filing a stolen vehicle report.” The girls followed her out and blinked in the bright, Floridian sunlight. Furiosa offered up a spanner and Toast took it without hesitation, setting about unscrewing the old number plates. The Dag took the second one and got to work on the rear plates, while Splendid stood by with the replacements.
As they settled back into the cabin of the truck, they felt a great weight lift from their shoulders. They were escaping. Furiosa was taking them to the greener state of Washington, where they would have a house to live in that they could leave whenever they wanted to, and the freedom to live their lives how they wanted and when they wanted was at last within their grasp. It finally felt real, and as they settled into a far more cheerful mood of conversation and song, their escape began to feel a lot less like a desperate attempt at freedom, and more like a road trip.