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He left her alive and standing, with a good portion of his blood coursing through her body, on her way to the high gardens of the Citadel. He is confident that she will heal on her own now, trading an eye for an eye, saving her life just like she had saved his life moments before. His instinctual set of qualification, which were once a variety of charm, machiavellic talents and bodily prowess, back then when his world was still complete, are not needed from here on. He will be of no use in finding the strategies they need. Be it strategies to strengthen the bond between the new mistresses of the Citadel and their own people or strengthen the bonds between neighboring cities, discouraging anyone from attacking this frail phoenix of a city, which had been born out of a half-dead place. Bonding is not his thing, and never was, since he became ‘just Max, another mad man wandering the wastelands’. He is best in staying on the run. His qualities are killing, and getting people killed, staying alone and staying alive. He surrendered into this life not comfortably and not contend, but found himself being neither comfortable and contend, each time he tried to adapt to something new.
He left her staring after him, giving her a last glance at his face, while he nervously pushed the greasy dirt on his forehead from one side to the other. After that, his matted mob of hair is only seconds visible from behind while he dodges the Wretched on his way to the motorbike that was given to him. It survived the brutal ride to the citadel and he takes inventory, aware of his luck. It was fully loade, but the essentials were not lost. This way, getting out of the Citadel is so much easier than the last time, he notes, as he revved the motor of the Many Mother’s bike and cuts deep lines through the sand on his way to the horizon. Not looking back he imagines the Citadel growing smaller and smaller, while the orange horizon grows larger and larger, until he wouldn’t be able to see it anymore. His head is not calm, the usual voices making him twitch and swerve on his way, but he remains in control. He knows the only thread is in his head now, so all is good.
She should have looked up, looked to the future, concentrating of what’s ahead of her and all the possibilities this victory brings with it. Not back down, watching Max leave the city he just helped liberating from a fat tyrant. The weight of the gaze is not lost on her as she felt some of this big, ginormous feeling in her leave her, as he chose not to claim his rightful part in this victory. She doesn’t know yet what that feeling is, but she hopes the future lies within. The noise of the Wretched is almost unbearable in hear ears. The women hold her now, as her knees sagged yet another time, supporting her body just as she is failing to support her own weight. They have her in a warm bubble of their bodies, shielding her from the grateful but prying hands of the Wretched, who jumped with them on the lowered carrier. She straightens her body though, consciously keeps herself from sagging into her, as pain radiates from her gutted ribs. Deep into her, she didn’t think the women would be able to manage her weight, manage the weight of building this city up into something tangible without her being the one radiating strength and leadership. Joe must have left his tracks deep in her, narcissism and everything else. She survived worse wounds, she thinks. This does not qualify as a situation where curling up into a ball of self-protection is the right reaction, she thinks.
“Where did Max go?” Toast is the first one to voice the question they all have thought by now, as the carriage reaches its destination with an ungentle jerk. They get swept away with the Wretched. “The Wasteland.” Furiosa breathes, exhaustion numbing her lips. Toast looks dissatisfied. “Forget the man, child,” one of the surviving Many-Mothers says gruffly, holding her once bleeding arm, already tightly wrapped, against her body. Toast pushes out her lower lip, and Furiosa can see that she is thinking about talking back, pointing the importance of the lone Fool out to the older woman. “He obviously is still fighting a fight with his own demons, you cannot ask for someone with a burden like that to join us. Caging a wild animal will do you no good. Kill it or leave it in peace.” The older woman adds exasperated, and averts her eyes, letting the young woman deal with any lingering dissatisfaction of those words on her own, until she learns.
They linger as the crowd dissolved and they see a woman of the Wretched holding a white child in her arms, sobbing heartbreakingly happy. Many others greet the half-lives, as if the death of the Immortan Joe has temporarily brought them closer together. Everyone has had family at the foot of the Citadel, family tangible now.
“She’s ashen, we should find her a bed.” The Dag finally injects, breaking the tension. At some point she must have had her head too close to the floor of the cab, strands of her shining hair matted in the same color as Capable’s, just unnaturally with Furiosas lost blood. “We should really find her a bed.” Cheedo approves, tiring under the weight of the former Imperator. They start walking, and Furiosa steers them towards her quarter. It’s trashed, but she expected nothing else. She’s sure Joe had it searched once he realized what was going on, but she feels no regrets as she sees her broken things on the ground. They had never hold any value in her heart. Cardinal, the Many-Mother with the wounded arm and Toast rush forward to pick up the two thin matrasses thrown through the room. They lie them back on the cot at the end of the room. Furiosa is glad to see, that they left the tension behind them, she can’t really use that now. As she sits on the bed, she looks in the hopeful and wary eyes of her friends. Her hand comes to lie protectively on the holes in her torso. “We have to close ranks, with everyone. The killing of Joe and loss of most of the War Boys have left us vulnerable to outsiders.” She breathes and then hurts some more. Talking never has been this hard before, a silent kind of fear bristles at the back of her neck. Everyone looks less hopeful and more wary, but she hopes they understand what is to do. Slowly, one after one, she hoists her legs on the cot and finally lowers her torso on her bed with a little, pained huff. She lets herself be covered by her familiar blanket and closes her eyes.
They leave her room after that, neither uttering a word. Cheedo and the Dag hold hands, while Toast and Capable trail loosely behind them. The Many-Mother, who was swept with them silently closed the door.“It could be worse, but it is not good.” She finally says. Nobody knows if she means the state Furiosa is in, or the state they’re all in. They trail to the room Joe had used for his official business. They find the last two surviving of the Many-Mothers, avidly talking to one another. The two woman, halting their discussion, greet them with the same tired smile all their faces show. “I see you left our Furiosa to heal on her own?” Diane said, stroking a strand of her – literally – sandy, blonde hair behind her ears. Cardinal nods. “Getting gutted like that will not easily heal. She would have died if it wasn’t for that man.” The third Many-Mother said and held a canteen of water with into the group. She glisters, where she used the water to cool her face, still visible in tiny droplets. Cardinal takes the canteen from her hands, but doesn’t drink it. “Thanks Till.” She says and turns to Toast. “Why don’t you tell the others what Furiosas orders were?” Then she takes a swig.
After Toast explained, the group didn’t waste any time. A few of the servant War Boys bring them food they previously prepared for Immortan Joe’s return. It doesn’t get wasted, as the 7 women each eat more than their normal portion. Their near future gets decided in those evening ours. Internal changes have to be done. Growing the Keeper’s seeds, multiplying the crops and starting to feed themselves and if possible the Wretched. Increasing the efficiency of the water pipes. Getting the sourness out of the damn sand below. Utilize everybody. Get rid of everything old. Curious War Pups sneak during the course of the discussion into the room, resting themselves alongside of the inner walls. Just a few brave of them creep further, transfixed by the new dynamic in the air. External changes seem more difficult to manage, nobody of them is a great war general or politician. Anticipating Bullet Town’s next moves is not easy, the Damocles sword hangs above all of their heads.
The one who initiates the end of the first Council of Citadel is Capable. The Dag at her hand yawns widely, as she declares that everyone should get some sleep. They would start the reformation first thing in the morning, everyone fulfilling their agreed task. Toast and Cheedo follow her then, off to their old sleeping hall. No one questions that this is the right place for them to stay, when they see Angharad’s words on the wall. There is no doubt that those words will never be washed from these walls. Cheedo bites her lips as she crawls into her usual sleeping spot, Toast close at her heel. All of them have always slept huddled together, so they would notice if one of them got dragged to Joe’s quarter in the middle of the night. This way, they could anticipate to soothe the touched sister’s pain. This night, they have to huddle closer, to fill the void between all of them Angharad had left. Toast is the first one to sob quietly.
-
The sun sets as he slowed the bike for the first time. Under his weight, the still standing wheels of his vehicle dig deep into the sand, and he looks in the setting darkness of the land ahead of him. He remembers his drive, from the Citadel until this place deep into nowhere. Not even Buzzards or Raiders were once on his tail in the hours he had spend on his bike. He remembers her eyes. Angry and wide, as his faulty gun refuses to blow his head off. Watery and full of dread as she drives the Rig to their destination despite the war around them, as she stares at him realizing, she will not make it alive out of the cab. Tired and something darker in her gaze, as she watches him watch her, on the ground below. He just can’t shake her eyes, just like he can’t shake the charging eyes of the people he lost. They flash into his mind glaring and loud like a lightning on the horizon, but seeing her eyes doesn’t shake him as much, they transfix him, confuse him make him feel like he is missing a puzzle piece, not understanding why the tiredness in eyes bother him the most of all at this moment.
He curses, not able to shake the puzzlement he feels. He curses even louder as he revives the machine under him and turns it around, torn between returning to the Citadel to soothe his feeling or to turn around yet again, and continue his journey to the far far away. He looks at what was behind him and really can’t see the bulges of the Citadel at the horizon anymore. He tries to remember why he wanted it gone so badly, when he prepared his departure as the Women were carried away from him. That thought seems so far gone like the mountains themselves and he doesn’t even think and presses the gas.
He follows his tracks back.
For half of the night he rides and he is lucky again, he notices. The sand shows him its silent side. No Buzzards, no Raiders, not a single soul out here at night, up to no good. The Raiders normally are reliable like that, it’s unsettling when they aren’t. The way back is shorter. He must have chased, he thinks, after the dim lights of the Citadel finally arise from the horizon. The wind carries happy festive noises to his ear and he dreads the crowds as he drives towards the carrier. A pack of War Pups eyes him curiously, as he swings his leg over the saddle of the bike. The bravest of the pack pushes his shoulders down and straightens his back, but doesn’t reach higher than Max’ navel. Together they creep closer, as he nibbles on his finger, not minding them and plotting his way up. “Why aren’t you with the Imperator?” The bravest asked him, the white chalk is partially rubbed away from his skin, displaying light pink flesh to the moonlight above. If he hadn’t known better, Max heard an accusing tone in the child’s voice. He doesn’t want to think about what the child and his peers must have concluded when he displayed the murdered Joe to the crowd, pressing their battered Imperator to his side. Choosing his battles, he steps on the carrier and nods up “ I, uh,” he clears his throat, trying to get rid of the nervous constrictions of his airways. “need to go up.” It would have been a long shot, if he had talked to someone grown. They get wary of strangers almost instantly, the pups are more naïve. The brave one just nods, accept their Imperator’s crutch’s will and starts calling together his little pack. It takes a while until they get the carrier working. He gets more fidgety with every minute.
Upstairs he is so at lost, it must have shown on his face. Or it was the Pup’s plan all along, as they start to lead him in the direction of, what he thinks is, Furiosa’s chamber. Either way, they lead him through tunnels, deeper into the rocks. He casually tries to remember the way. Fast looks from right to left, imprinting the different types of wall ornaments in his brain. It is always handy to know your way out of a place. At some point the War Pups stop and point to a door. “Don’t get lost again.” The child warns him with a serious face. He has got warm brown eyes, and they don’t help him to bring the seriousness across. Max just nods and watches him leave with his pack.
When he carefully swings the door open to her room, he feels like he should just have waited a moment longer to think about it. Maybe he should have first tried knocking to get her attention, before letting himself uninvited into her room. He takes the trashed room in, the broken wooden chair and turned table at the wall. At the other side of the room is an opened chest and clothed are strewn around it like it exploded. He’s glad to notice that at least her bed is made.
Like the sleeping sphinx she rests in her bed, but he nearly doesn’t recognize the body in front of him. She looks sunken in, and takes automatic, shallow breaths, filling the room with her sounds. What isn’t covered of her still displays the dirt of their war to his eyes, as if her first and only priority was to just lay down again. He can empathize, and listens to his tired bones for the first time since he got abducted to the Citadel. He’s sure that she would have woken up if she wasn’t so fucking weak right now. He bets he could throw her over his shoulder and she would be the last of Citadel to notice her being gone. So he just stands here, treading awkwardly from one leg to another, unsure why he is here now and what to do from now on. The creeping feeling he felt in the sand is not gone, what he feels now is just a shadow of it. It seems like a theme to him, the general unsureness, since he got captured by Joe’s henchmen. He got ripped out of his soleness and yearns for it back; it was easier then. Back then he knew what he could expect. Her breathing pauses for a moment, and he is listening up. It resumes and the tension he felt for a short moment leaves his body. He feels so on edge when he thinks about her waking up. Any reaction, he feels, be it happiness or anger at seeing him would stop his mind. So he is content that she sleeps, so he can just watch her. He feels calmer that way. He creeps nearer and nearer to the bed, until he can’t anymore and his shins press lightly against the cot. She is really out cold, he muses, or else he would have had a knife at his throat by now. He shrugs out of his jacket, letting it fall on the stone floor beneath him with a muffled, leathery sound. With a pained groan he forces his body down, his joints making noises and cracks and signs of weakness he is not comfortable letting anyone else hear. Finally, he rests his back on the edge of the cot, and looks through the darkness of the room towards the door he left slightly ajar. He fishes for her hand behind him then, frees it of the blanket above her and lays it on his shoulder. She is colder than expected, but he welcomes the weight of her hand nevertheless.
He sits like this for a while and then some longer. He wonders what the hell he is doing here, as the muffled voices keep calling him.
Screaming.
Terrified eyes charging him angrily.
Her hand jerks for a moment and he sees the silent room in front of him again. He turns around to see if she’s awake now, dreading that his moment of tortured silences is over, that he has to face her questions now. Her eyes are still closed though, as she lies still in her bed. Somehow he’s confused by her calmness, and something urges him to pat her cheek. When he doesn’t get a reaction, het gets on his knees and pats her cheek again. “Furiosa?- Uh.” The hairs on his neck raises and holds his fingers under her nose. He downright feels his body being pumped full of adrenaline with every millisecond he waits for warm air to tickle his finger. With a strangled howl he rips the blanket from her unmoving chest and presses a checking hand down on the sides of her soft neck. Without resistance it’s almost squishy and he hates the feeling of it. “What the-“ he curses, and doesn’t understand. He would have been lost again, if he hadn’t been such an instinctual bastard as he moves the hand from her throat to the back of her neck, raising it and letting her head fall back. With three dirty fingers he pries into her mouth, opening her up. If she doesn’t want to fill her own lungs with air anymore, he will do that for her. Once, twice, thrice, more or less what’s needed. When he thinks back of this situation he will not be able to remember the details. He just feels frantic and honestly at loss. She was fine when he left her? She was standing on the carrier looking down at him with darkened eyes. She was fine, as fine as she could be after this war. He hits her chest then, anxious not to put too much pressure on the two stab wounds.
Finally, just as he puts his mouth around her lips yet another time, she jerks alive, greedily sucking in the air he was sharing and then some more. She looks confused, eyes blown black, one hand clawing at his shirt, while her stump tries to find halt on the mattress below her or the stony wall at her side. It was as if her body forgot in that primal, surviving moment the loss of her hand, twitching like a headless chicken. She breathes hard, trying to make up for the time her body stopped doing that itself. He does the same, his body demanding the air back he shared with her. He feels the pressure build at the place where her clawed hands dig into his flesh. “Wha?” With furrowed brows she exhales the broken question. His right hand still lays on the part of her body, where the sternum gives way to the neck. He feels her pulse beating fast under his fingertips. His body prickles with relief and he doesn’t let her go, his left on her upper back, stabilizing her. “You stopped-n” he halts, coarsely, suppressing the urge to tell her so much more. That he didn’t like what just happened, for starters.
She looks at him as if she questions his sanity and normally this look would be rightful, but not after this ordeal. She lets go of him, succumbing to the stabbing in her side. With a moan that has him on edge again, she lies back on the cot, nearly trapping his arm behind her. He then is fast to react though, helps her slowly glide back the last few centimeters to the mattress. He feels himself get fussy with her, touching her neck and face, trying to measure her comfort as if that would be an indicator for another episode. He doesn’t care a single bit how that would seem to her or a third pair of eyes. It is then, he realized, in what position he’s gotten himself. He is bend above her, straddling her hips. He must have jumped on the cot to get more momentum, when he pressed her chest. She isn’t objecting to his weight pressing her hips into her mattresses, but she also doesn’t object, when he awkwardly gets off of her. She hadn’t asked him what he is doing here, he noticed. The dreaded unanswerable question dodged, so far. It could be, he then thinks, that the only uttered word was that question. What he is doing in Citadel to shortly after his wordless departure.
She doesn’t look at him, just stares in the darkness ahead of her, processing what had just happened to her. He sees her mouth grimace slightly, noticing the foul taste in her mouth. “Sorry.” He shrugs, absently wiping his fingers on his shirt. It has three new holes where she gripped him. “No.” She breathes, a slight wheeze accompanying it. She must have started bleeding into her lung again. “Thank you.” There is nothing he can do against her wounds right now, he will have to think of something, if the wheezing gets harder again. He shrugs again, unable to deal with the outspoken thanks, and lowers himself on the spot on the ground where he had left his jacket. He shrugs again and shakes his head. She shouldn’t say thank you for that, and those eyes shouldn’t charge him in a moment like that. He turns around to her and searches for her eyes. Their looks find each other easily, calmness slowly returning to both of them. He fishes for her hand, which is still a loose fist at her side. She lets him curl out her fingers and lets him put the hand back on the skin above his trapezius, the warm weight a welcome anchor. “You should sleep now.” He whispers then and is glad he only gets a little sigh in return.