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The world came back to him first in feeling, and then in sound. The dull ache of the sun beating down on his face didn’t wake him up much. He was too deep into the dark place to be pulled out. Nux couldn’t feel his legs, and the numbness was spreading up along his spine, trickling into his blood and turning him cold. He couldn’t imagine opening his eyes, standing up or really moving at all.
He wasn’t completely sure if he was alive until he heard the crackling of flames, angry flames feeding on guzzoline, and the unmistakable clatter of a fender breaking off a vehicle.
He felt sleepy, but there was a sinister edge to his drowsiness. Somewhere between conscious thought and animal instinct Nux realized that if drifted off into sleep, he would fall into the long sleep that he would never awaken from. The idea was tempting though.
Nothing hurt in his sleep. No hunger, no thirst, nothing.
Nux had earned his rest. He wasn’t sure if Valhalla would welcome him, or if it was there at all. Those illusions died with the Immortan. But Nux had earned his death.
Yet he couldn’t slip into the darkness. Not quite yet.
What bothered Nux is that he couldn’t quite place why he had restlessness.
He had driven the war rig. He had died heroic on the Fury Road. Nux had seen enough adventure, guzzoline and death to last him a lifetime, but here he was: halfway between the long sleep, the peaceful sleep, and the unforgiving irradiated desert.
Why was he wavering?
He saw a flash of red, his own blood, but all he could think about was how perfectly the shade of his life-blood matched Capable’s hair. He blinked sand out of his eyes and tried to move his fingers.
Searing heat coursed through his veins and burned hotter than any engine he’d ever laid hands on. He would have grimaced if he could relearn how to move his face, and moan if his vocal cords hadn’t dried to leather in the scorching sun.
He twitched his fingers once more, and the pain was more manageable the second time around. Nux shifted and everything went white with pain. When his vision returned, he become acutely aware of how much everything hurt. Now that he was moving, now that he was choosing to live, the pain was everywhere.
Nux heard a broken sound, a whimper from somewhere in the wreckage and he raised himself up on his elbows to get a clear view. He felt blood trickle into his eyes and he blinked it away.
There was nothing around him except the remains of the great war rig, fire and Rictus’ arm. Nux wasn’t sure where the rest of Rictus was, but it was probably dead. Rictus was almost a perfect heir, but his lungs were shrivelled. Without the oxygen canisters he would suffocate.
Nux surveyed the Pass once more. He had rolled the rig fantastically. It blocked off the narrow pass without a single gap.
Nux leaned on his right arm and that mewling came again.
It took him a long moment to realize that the broken noise had come from him. His arm lay at his side, useless and hanging at an angle it should not be hanging at. Nux squinted through the sand and blood in his eyes to look out onto the desert.
Lucky was an understatement.
He was alive. That in itself was beyond lucky.
Manifest Destiny, maybe.
And the fact he had been thrown clear of the wreckage, thrown across the pass and back into Immortan Joe’s territory, was nothing short of a miracle. It was probably Furiosa’s territory now, Nux reasoned, with the half of the Immortan’s face decorating the underside of that buggy. The dead had no place claiming the land of the living.
The Masters of the Pass were probably quite displeased with the carnage, but after all the chaos they wouldn’t dare trespass on Furiosa’s land. Not after she had the guts to ride headfirst into the Immortan’s army and then drive out again carrying the warlord’s corpse as her trophy.
Nux struggled to his feet and blanched when a wave of nausea overtook him. He fell back to his knees and retched. His vomit was more blood than anything and he didn’t know much about taking care of his body, but he knew that when your blood was on the outside instead of the inside, you were in trouble.
Nux got back on his feet and realized that if he wanted to, he could lay down again and the long sleep would take him still.
He shook his head and saw splotches and stars in his vision.
No way.
He wanted to see the Green Place first, and hoped that there he would find a bit of auburn hair there. The desert stretched on beyond what his swollen eyes could see, but Nux had the sun still. The white clay coat he wore warded off the deadly sunburns, and now the sun offered Nux a faint idea of where he stood in the wasteland.
He survived Immortan Joe. He would survive this too.
While driving, the desert always passed by in one continuous blur of brown. The dunes rolled past him like waves and no distance was too far. Now on foot, Nux had such appreciation for the power the wheel gave him.
He spent so long staggering through that desert that he could name and get to know every single sand dune personally. When the great hulk of the Citadel rose before him, Nux couldn’t help a large smile that started on his face. He felt his lip bust open. The dryness of the sun and his own dehydration made his skin crack.
The warpups let him up the lift with no trouble. The Immortan’s broken son, the little one who’s legs were too short and didn’t work sent him a filthy glare but let him up without question.
Furiosa stood in the doorframe, staring at the frail warboy. He must have looked like a ghost with his bloody clay and sunken eyes bruised black from when his face slammed into the wheel. She gestured him over and her mechanical arm whirred and clucked before it settled into smoother motion.
Nux stumbled over and came to a halt when she raised her hand.
“How?”
Nux licked his lips and tasted blood. “I don’t know. I think Valhalla didn’t want me.”
Furiosa looked him over and a smile ghosted her lips. “Valhalla would be foolish to close its doors to you. Maybe today was just not your day.”
Nux ducked his head. “Thank you, Imperator.”
“I’m sure you want to see the others? The wives?”
Nux raised his head and smiled toothily. His teeth were red with blood. “I do. But I also think I’m going to die?”
Furiosa chuckled and called out to a passing warpup. “Boy, the Organic Mech. Here now.” Furiosa turned back to Nux. “They’re not here yet.”
“Where are they?”
“Out. Looking for you. Well, not Max. Max is gone.”
“They went back?” Nux noticed the Imperator’s lip harden.
“Of course. We couldn’t just leave you.”
“It’s a waste of guzzoline.” Nux muttered and kicked at the ground. The toe of his boot was starting to come off and it got caught every time he took a step.
“We all thought it was worth the gas.” Furiosa ran her organic hand through her hair and let out a long sigh. She softened. “None of us counted on you dragging your own corpse home on your own. What’s broken?”
Nux paused and took stock of his injuries. “Everything, I think.”
Nux wasn’t sure where to go from here. Everything he had known was gone. Dead and crashed just inside that narrow pass where it was burning up into nothing.
Capable burst through the doors. Tears streaming down her face and threw herself into him. Nux couldn’t remember what happened next because the pain made him black out, but when he surfaced back to consciousness Capable was kissing his cheeks and crushing him in her arms.
“N-nux,” She managed between sobs. “I thought you were leaving, warboy?”
“I never got to see the Green Place. I wanted to stay a bit more for that. And I didn’t have any chrome on my teeth. Didn’t feel right leaving for Valhalla without my chrome.”
She laughed and stuck her face into Nux’s shoulder and stayed there for a long while until her shuddering breaths calmed and Nux couldn’t feel her tears dripping onto his chest. Nux wrapped one arm around her wordlessly, like all the times he would in the back of Furiosa’s war rig, and like all those times before Capable settled into his embrace. She didn’t doze off to sleep this time around though. She stayed awake and clutched at Nux’s good arm while the Organic Mechanic worked on the shattered one.
When the silence was too heavy, Capable would talk in soft, lilting tones about the wreckage of the pass. How they had gotten there and found Rictus, all tangled up under the war rig, and then blood. Nothing of him, nothing of Nux except blood and Capable whispered, in a voice so soft that Nux could only hear it because her mouth was next to his ear, that she thought that the Masters of the Pass had taken him away and eaten him.
Nux normally would have laughed at that. Who would eat a scrawny warboy with irradiated blood and company like Larry and Barry? He didn’t laugh. Instead he let her curl up in his lap and told her about the walk back, and his favourite sand dunes.
Through the wide doorway he saw the other women peer in before vanishing out of sight. They would send him his welcomes later.
Nux had his head resting on Capable’s head and was content to stay there and just look at her hair. He’d never had any. No matter how far back he remembered, it was shorn off his head. Just within the last few years it stopped growing back at all, courtesy of Larry and Barry. That didn’t bother him much. Capable had enough hair for the both of them.
Capable was colour through and through. Her hair, red as blood, kept catching his eye. She wore deep greens and bright golds that made Nux question his love of chrome. Chrome was silver and cold, but Capable was vibrant and alive.
Nux found his hands rubbing against the white clay of his skin and for the first time in his life didn’t want to wear clay as white as bleached bone.
Black and red wasn’t oil and blood anymore. Now it was soil and life.