Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A gnarly man sat writing in the dark. He scratched carefully with a fine bone pen, not human, by the garish light of an old world bulb. The sound of clouds rumbling, burying the stars, reached him through the thick topped cave roof, close above. He huffed and sighed and stretched one scarred limb after another, wrestling himself into a hunched shadow around the papers.

Thoughts became pauses, then markings or nothings. His crew of seven ran out of water on the return after ten days on the Edge of the Wasteland. He’d sent the bikes to gun for home when they hit safe territory and pushed the rig so close to overheating it would need weeks to re-inspect. He wrote some of this.

When the sun rose dead ahead, and he gave his last ration of water to the boy on watch, he let his mind wander from the mundane horror of the Waste. He imagined a slight someone climbing from below the front engine, giving a thumbs-up. They could keep pushing another day. He’d slung his arm around the back of the empty seat and tried to catch her in the rearview.

The air was heavy in that last stretch, adding a persistent damp to the dirt and sweat, and the pressure was disturbing, aching the craters down his worse side. That was why he couldn’t keep his thoughts on track. It would rain soon, before morning now, and the racket would push him to the edge more likely than not.

The pen would go dry if he didn’t start making sense. He brushed away his thoughts like the dust on his inkwell, wasting time, and tried a fresh page. Good mapping and a good haul were the job, not his sorrows. He’d fill in charts for their big find instead of sleeping, the find History-man was waiting for. Down the crags and up the Waste Edge, past rocky stash points and a finger of the Salt Flats, he’d scratch it out of his brain until he dropped. His mind could do what it wanted, then, when he wouldn’t remember except in a bruised sort of way upon waking. He wrote on.

The Edge of the Wasteland was unsteady ground and only a few clicks wide, the last possible stop for the dunes to have dumped him. It was fair enough to live by if you didn’t mind the view, the abundance on one side calling without slack. The place he was supposed to go to with her, did it look worth dying for? None of it was any good. Somewhere on the coast was nuked, spreading rads, worse than half-life. You couldn’t drink the clear water or eat the falling, ripe berries as sweet as a mirage.

He wasn’t so scared of it as others, though. That’s why the people here had him wrangling their half-life kids. They needed someone to keep a cool head but not give in. They were looking for things, valuable stuff they needed which were worth risks, and he didn’t lie about the danger with all their unknowing trust. There was no Valhalla this way. He knew what the last run would look like for a half-life, when they had to go home, and got them results to rest easy for.

Besides, for all their grumbling when put to use, the crew got used to him and didn’t question his downturned moods. He was free to follow the Milky Way road in the sky as it turned the night, talking to ghosts and wondering if any of the stars were the signposts on that map of secrets. It was the closest he could get to peace, thinking of her waiting up there. Any two pins of light might be the wide eyes he always felt on the back of his neck. He used to swear he could hear her looking. That she had to be sly instead of just saying anything, he would hide his smile to avoid her glaring the Immortan’s brand right off as she followed him around for spite. She was a determined force of nature, his Fury.

Jack took a shaky breath and put down the pen. Some sleep may be in order, but he knew what would come. The crew shouldn’t be bothered by him thrashing about after the last run. He pictured a heavy, chrome box like old Joe’s vault door. Rubbing sore fingers, he knew it wasn’t right. There was a box woven like a bird’s nest on the shelf above his parent’s bed. He imagined opening it and putting in the things he didn’t want to see.

A lock of hair went into the box and the desperate grasp of her hand. He could fit the nudge of her boot and her low, rumbling laugh. Jack tried to let go of all the times the sight of her had him in thrall, a clenched fistful. When she wouldn’t go and came back to save him, that unnamed feeling had to be put away. There had been no chance to tell her off or thank her before he woke up in this meager place.

Thunder rolled closer, ready to torment, but Furiosa would’ve run out to listen. The delight would finally crack her like the little eggs of the cliffside birds to run through his fingers. A ruined Jack turned the latch in his mind and gave himself an empty moment to shudder.

History-man would be awake by now. He barely slept and didn’t share his reasons either. Jack groaned, lifted his head from the table, and unfolded stiff arms from around his chest. Picking his way over the pile of pups in his care, he swallowed a bitterness at their smooth-dreaming faces in the halfway dawn. 

The door hanging, a mat of scraps, was tied back to let the churning air whoosh through the halls and up narrow shafts that usually brought light into the bunk room. A handful of little bells that they begged him to keep were already strung from a hook in the rock. They gave off tin whispers that made Jack’s head jerk in alarm as he was bagging his report and getting his boots on.

This was the start of the worst season, in his limited experience. They all probably thought him a smeg. When he was too obvious, he blamed it on his scars and got them talking on which cache had what depth of water. It was the polite and limitless topic of conversation here. The weather did have pain pushing at him all day, to be sure, but his resentment was the real junk weighing on him.

When he was first well enough to drag himself out under the sky and be rained on, it was almost worth it. Never before was he surrounded by water like that, and it whipped about in chaos. It was a big dump of Aqua Cola, but without the hand of any god as solid and shiny as the Immortan. If there was a god of rain, they never heard of Jack either. Jack could cry out and beg to be sent away to where he belonged in the dust, but it wouldn’t matter. He knew that then, but he tried to pray V8 style in his delirium as he didn’t know another way. Any hint or reason would’ve been something to steer for, but there was just him sopping wet for the first time in his life. That was two years ago now.

This wasn’t the place for a sun cracked wastelander like him. He bumped about the twisting halls, leaning into the breeze when he caught it. Some of these turns would take him to secret grottos where families lived. A few were marked with warnings of the deep dark. They couldn’t use all of them. He would start charting them soon with extra lights salvaged that wouldn’t make it to History-man’s stores. Jack needed a place to stock up. 

First, weapons and bullets skimmed slowly from the stash, to go without notice. These people didn’t shoot as often. Then, fuel and repair stuff. Organic fuel would go last and likely all at once. He still had time to sharpen up, to think through the plan, for all that it helped. Because Jack didn’t even know where he was going, just that he had to go. One day, he’d toss the last crew off his rig and drive on the hunt for another elsewhere or for his grave.

There were no richly green places on History-man’s maps, but many marked, seasonal settlements, fortified towns, and even a city. All information was out of date, but Furiosa had been right to try and escape the Wasteland. Jack knew she came from some uncovered hiding hole taken by raiders. That was how anyone ended up at the Citadel. It was only when she showed him the big seed that he finally knew for certain that it was another real place, with farm soil and water. She was right to have secrets, as that was one he regret knowing. Born in a tent by the mud of Joe’s not yet fixed water pump, Jack was taught there was nowhere else. He would do hideous monstrosities to get at the place she implied.

And he had done them, more force to the wrenching on his heart. It was his fault for making himself a thing of hers, that she wasn’t here to enjoy the rain like all the little people of this other place. Jack was so twisted that he wouldn’t even die now. He wanted more, to see more places with gentle folk or a second chance at finding Furiosa’s home with a neglected fruit tree beside it that had learned to carry on without her. He needed to know more to decide if there was a chance of touching her bones again, to bring her all the way. He would set them both out under the shade.

People greeted him quietly among the rustling of those up for storm work. They didn’t complain at his rough voice or silent nods. Someone passed him a little food when he crossed the communal kitchen and its soot-black roof. The shutters were open to the clean light of their hidden courtyard.

“Sit while you eat,” they said, “before you’re on that leg all day.”

So he did, wedging his bag between himself and the wall by the stove. A ceramic mug full to the lip and some kind of millet cake were a generous portion. It didn’t taste like curdled mother’s milk, and his fingers didn’t taste like engine grease. They had no idea what Jack’s people would do to them for need or for sport. The longer he stuck around, the more he considered going straight back, instead, to destroy what he could. That would be a valiant cause, the blaze of glory. None of them should escape, from Immortan to the last man-eating hound. They weren’t worth saving.

Jack left cover and gulped the thick, cool air around their garden plots. There were even flowers on the edge of things, just for looking. The clean sweetness of it choked him.

Great wooden doors were open wide, the most grand of History-man’s chambers. The man himself was enjoying a cross breeze at one of the deep cut seats of his northside windows. He might’ve been a statue in the early, gray light, like the gargoyles and vaulting beams carved high in the room. But it was just a soft-fleshed old man, lucky to have his silver hair. He wasn’t particularly young even when the world died.

Most others called the History-man Grandfather. What the other old ones called Grandfather, Jack didn’t know. They just talked around or at him, and you always knew when they were talking about him. Jack called him History-man because that’s what he was. Sure as shit wasn’t his grandpa.

“Ah, you’re back. You could’ve taken your rest,” History-man said, rising from his cushions with courtesy. Jack sighed and looked around behind himself before stepping inside.

“Couldn’t sleep with the storm, anyway." he answered, “The crew might miss it. Long ride, this one.”

“But fruitful, I hope?” History-man asked. They hadn’t seen edible fruit in a month or two.

“We found it alright, boss,” Jack answered, opening his bundle on the biggest table, the History-man’s worktop. The old man started flipping through it.

“It's a six day round trip along the Edge, but not far in,” Jack continued, “Scouted out a good base camp. Could do an extended trip, ferry what you want every three or four days. We’ll need some full-lives to man the camp and load the rig. Frees up the boys to go into the rad zone.”

History-man tutted about like the papers fluttering in the storm breeze. They covered all the varied surfaces of the room and were held back by curious bits. He stopped at the map wall and started pinning up Jack’s new chart.

“The unafflicted among us aren’t ‘full-life’ any more than every young person with tumorous growths is a ‘half-life’,” History-man said. It was a common complaint, but Jack didn’t see how it was any bad to have a word for the difference. The people here didn’t have one exactly, but they only sent half-lives past the Edge.

“And I gather you went in with them anyway, which I have advised you not to do,” History-man continued.

“As I said, it isn’t far in,” he answered, “that rad counter you gave us still has juice. It didn’t pick up anything big.”

“It’s bad for your health, son. These exposures could be the death of you, turn you into a half-life,” History-man said. Jack didn’t like when the old man acted like he was more ignorant than he was. That wasn’t how it worked. He sighed again, too tired not to show it.

“Full-life can get himself killed, sure. I followed all the decon rules, me and the pups. Figure we’ll bunk down until the rains are done,” he said.

“Yes, yes. That will be the time to go. We’ll have time to plan, you and I…If you went in, we may as well discuss it. We’ll get you off your feet, if that’s all you’ll accept today,” History-man said, “You might not believe me, but you’re easier to talk to than the younger ones.”

The old man settled back into the cushions by the window and gestured for him to take a seat, which he did with forced reluctance. Jack knew this was part of the job, and it would help him ease up with this weather. History-man offered water from a shine pitcher of hammered copper, which he may as well have, then got to his work picking over everything Jack saw. Sitting beside the drizzle of the season’s first storm, Jack let him.

History-man was impressed before by what Jack knew, or so it seemed, but it was simple math. He was old enough to have parents to tell him old world stuff. Jack even let loose that he attended school for a bit. He only said it because it was so long ago it had gone fuzzy. The kids didn’t understand the whole of it, what a real school was, this big old world site found for History-man, and it meant incomparable scavenging.

They began with building names and which were most intact. There weren't any signs of previous occupation or looting. He asked about specific salvage materials, road integrity, and wildlife disturbance. Some of it was in the report. History-man would ask about other stuff too: what the overgrown gardens smelled like or if Jack was learning to tell bird calls apart. 

Jack tried to picture the moments in time again and go back. He let the old man's descriptions of things Jack had never seen flow through, and he talked more than he did anywhere else. What did the innards of a computer look like? They sipped their water and matched up their minds. Even though he couldn’t touch it again, he could see, smell, and hear a green piece of earth. When History-man picked him over, it felt like throwing his feet back on the ground after fighting on top of the war rig. He was steady with nothing fanciful, a rest from real remembering.

“You didn’t hear many birds before, did you?” History-man asked softly. The rain had started to fall steady and sprayed them a bit, but neither man moved away.

“Flesh eaters floating high, maybe some budgies or whatever. You eat ‘em before you think to study ‘em,” Jack said, without thinking. Bastard got him with that brain tuning.

History-man held up his hands as if to calm some wild man, and Jack bristled anyway. He was wedged against the stone wall and grate of the window, cornered by the old man’s care these last years. While never full of mirth, History-man wasn’t unkind. A little detached, but genuinely curious. And Jack was in bad shape when whoever hauled him here traded supplies for the half-corpse of a wastelander to the only man who bet on people looking like they held information.

But Jack didn’t want to satisfy curiosity. He used to be afraid History-man would find the power of the Wasteland enticing. That was the gnarled waste part of him that made no sense. Now, he could see his fear clearer. Maybe part of that was because of their talking back and forth, the practiced introspection.

Jack remembered himself answering to Joe when he was knee-high for all his possible sins and the praise for betraying anyone to give Immortan the truth. It felt like solid ground then, too, to have his brain picked over. Joe feigned a twisted kindness to his hand-raised assets from the early days. They were his children, and he was giving them the best of all that was left in the world. It made them feel they made a real difference, that they were protecting each other even as they were ordered to stab a brother in the back. The ease of words for History-man meant Jack would never fully believe he was up to all good. The best he could do was not let the cruelty of the Citadel spread past him, just in case.

“I used to be respected for playing things straight,” Jack said, “I’ll go back the way I came one day, and I'll thank you for it by doing what I can so you see no one that way again.”

History-man curled a wrinkly hand around the bars of the window lattice. He looked at Jack the way he knew the old man was seeing the scars of his scraped left side, thinking on the old slice that curved from his mouth. His hard look was balancing how far he could push Jack to talk. It wouldn’t be far. There wasn’t a whiff of torture in this whole place.

“This metal is salvaged from a ship, back when I thought to escape,” History-man said, patting the grate.

“People used to go up off the world into the vacuum beyond. Did they tell you about that?” he continued, “That’s what I wanted to do when I was the age of your pups. And I almost made it.”

The rain was dripping from History-man’s fingers, like the rain god was shaking his hand.

“I was qualified,” the old world man said quietly under the storm, “but we didn’t make it there in time.”

Jack looked him over in turn. He had the soft face of a man raised with plenty and to be the most clever. He was strong enough to go on a rocket and live a hundred years or whatever without complaint. He was like Joe, the last hope left behind by a dying world, and each great man could use the dredges to the limit of his imagination, good or ill. No wonder they were all fucked.

History-man was offering an exchange of pasts, trying to worm his way in. That wasn’t going to work, for their own good.

“There’s life here, son, and it has to be enough,” History-man said, leaning closer, “we can stop the fire burning the world. You have to stop feeding it.”

Jack tried to imagine a Wasteland basin filled with water and couldn’t, even with the rain in his eyes. He turned his face more into it and let the water drip down his neck while the History-man offered him a place among these people for life. Jack only heard the shifting dunes and the sand grit as he was hauled in circles. He felt heat burning his face as he strained to see one last look of her. She should give up on him and get out. Just get out of the chains, somehow, and don’t watch what they did to him. Was she still there?

He couldn’t stay here. Jack would go on the long haul. When he ran out the tank, he’d bike, then he’d run until he found whatever sandy pit his bones were supposed to be in. And he’d dig and dig until he found her wrinkly seed. He’d plant it by good water if he had to kill every man in the Waste. Then he could die.

It would be a living tree with flowers like the roses in Joe’s biodome and fruit that tastes like icy water. Jack had never seen a damned fruit tree in his entire, wretched life, but this one would feed a boy who finds it grown huge, who never saw a trace of Jack’s cohort because they’d be long dust. He’d have dreams like the one History-man was offering and get told not to turn into Jack in some bedtime story.

“I was a Praetorian,” he choked on the words. He was a fine-ground fool.

“A Praetor, ancient Rome? I see,” History-man said, “I’m sorry, Jack. I’ll stop.”

The rain was really going now, splattering on them so that History-man told him to move away. He offered even more water to drink and a clean cloth for his face. Jack hadn’t smashed his hope, but today’s try was done.

“I’m sorry too, for your loss. Your ship,” Jack remembered to say, as though his mother was there telling him to be civilized.

History-man waved him off without any more soft words and went to his papers. The storm went on. Jack was welcome to the cushions, so he spread out on the cool, stone floor to ache and rest but not sleep, distracting himself with the old man’s muttering. It was gibberish to him half the time: satellites and seed banks and soil remediation…

He woke to a sharp knocking on the open door. Had he twisted and cried out, said anything he was hiding? History-man paid him no mind. Looking upside-down, Jack saw one of the full-life scouts who ranged the foothills for strangers standing at the threshold.

“Grandfather,” the young man said, dipping with some deference. No other talk was needed, or they’d done so while Jack was asleep. History-man made some affirmative grunt, so the scout shuffled aside and brought two people forward. New people, but not nobodies. Jack could tell by one look at them.

It was a man and a girl. The man was tall and wiry, dark-skinned with quick eyes. The child, maybe ten years, had carved beads twisted into her hair, and she curled into the protection of his shoulder. Not just healthy, but cared for. Same eyes as her Pa and full of fear. The kid was too soft to be from the desert.

“Ah, new friends. I’m told you came with peaceful intention,” History-man said, “and there isn’t a scratch on either of you, to be sure. I hope you had a comfortable rest.”

“You’re in charge here?” the man asked. Jack wondered how long he'd been waiting, all through the day?

“I am. The folks here call me their Grandfather, though none are my actual children. I founded this sanctuary many years ago, and I can speak for all here," History-man said.

“I didn’t know of this place. We followed the clouds as they grew,” the man said carefully, “You have only a few guns posted, and none stopped us. I hope this hasn’t caused offense.”

“This place isn’t a secret, not exactly, though we don’t mind having few visitors. You’ve come a long way, perhaps? Lost almost everything, it seems?” History-man asked.

The new man was thinking, and he found himself with as much time as he liked, for History-man was a patient fellow. Jack got up to pour a half cup of water from the old man’s pitcher and put it on the big table of notes between them. He tried to mask his stiff leg, but he could tell the quick eyes caught it.

“Your girl?” Jack asked, gesturing with a nod. He knew what he looked like now, even freshly clean. If he didn’t, the ever-widening fear of the little one would’ve told him.

“Yeah,” the man said after another hesitation. He encouraged the child to drink. She made a strange gesture with her finger, like stirring the water, before taking the cup and drinking in small sips. Her eyes darted about the cluttered papers, looking like she wanted to reach out for their weights, the baubles and colored stones.

“Our bike ran out of gas a few clicks back. It’s nothing worth going back for, unless you don’t want a trace. We only have what you see,” the man said, arms wide for the searching.

They both wore good cloth, though travel worn. Their wrapped layers and tunics were dyed in shades of blue except their sandy cloaks, good for hiding in the dunes. The girl wore a woven belt wrapped double and still hanging to her knees. Were they a larger party of adults, now reduced? Jack spotted the many hiding spots among the richness and the man’s scrappy boots, probably wrenched off a dead man. He wondered what History-man saw.

“We’re looking for a place to rest, to stay maybe. Or information on this part of the world,” the man added.

“I see,” History-man said, “This is the leader of our survey team, Jack.”

Jack reached out his still-decent right arm, palm quarter turned up, open to whatever greeting the man’s people had hand-to-hand. Maybe not any, as the puzzle of it rolled across the stranger’s face. He grabbed Jack around the wrist and squeezed.

“I’m Cirrus,” he said, “and my daughter, Andromeda.”

The girl looked up from the angle she was using to sneak glances at the room and each man in a little circle, glancing over Jack the quickest.

“What lovely names,” History-man hummed, “Do you know the star grouping of Andromeda?”

Cirrus did, by the words he looked like he was swallowing. The old man had found himself another tight-lipped one.

“Yes, well, let’s discuss your stay,” History-man said. He waved for Jack to help him with the cushions and some stools near the lowering light and drizzle.

“We don’t go out the way you came in very much, if you have a tale or two,” he continued, “The children are having a holiday in this weather. Perhaps Andromeda would like to go play?”

The man named Cirrus was thinking again, weighing the threat of separation versus the indication of innocent ease. Jack would make ready to go check on his crew. Except, Cirrus was looking Jack in the eye this time, not History-man. He was sizing him up and flexed his hand by habit. The scouts must’ve taken whatever weapon he usually had there, behind the hip—maybe a gun across the back.

Jack tried not to look like a monster. The girl wouldn’t come to any harm when he was the gnarliest mug in the place, not that Cirrus knew that. He pulled his shoulders up and leaned back in relaxed readiness like he was squaring up a disrespecting warboy, faking an emptiness of mind that let men back down.

“Are there many children here?” Cirrus asked.

“Not more than we can feed,” Jack said for History-man, “not few enough that we take them for hard work at her age.”

There was a quiet desperation about the man, barely patched with severe dignity. For all his vagueness, Jack could see a man used to a strong way of things, recently cast out. He had a first taste of the Waste and wasn’t far enough from the worst day of his life to think what was next. Jack could follow his clear calculations about what could deform a man with the frustration of only guessing, and smart enough to know that. If he stayed, Jack would tell him before leaving for good. It might save the child some trouble.

Jack let up on what wasn’t working and helped History-man to his stool and his old stick to lean on. As he turned back, he plucked a smaller bundle from his bag on the worktop.

“How about you take these?” he offered. He set it next to the girl, not direct, so she could pick it up without answering him. They were glass marbles from the salvage, swirled with bright color. Jack meant to trade them to the welder’s brood for some gear work they liked anyway. He’d manage.

“Gotta bring something to the table when you can,” Jack said. The girl might be too meek to join in easily. Hopefully, they wouldn’t just take them off her, if she told them they were from Jack.

Her Pa decided something, watching her experiment rolling a marble along the table edge and diving to rescue it when it plunked to the floor. Jack caught her smile.

“Alright,” Cirrus said. He pushed his girl to thank them and didn’t change his mind when Jack was sent to holler down to the little ones.

When Jack returned, he barely caught the end of Cirrus bent to his daughter’s level, foreheads bumped together, as she listened with her eyes closed to something he was finishing under his breath. Hiding from History-man like his own secret was being given away, Jack shuffled about the door, acting natural, to keep the gaggle of kids at bay. The sweet girl mirrored her Pa with a hand wrapped round the back of his neck. Jack knew what that felt like.

He forgot to give a damn whether his crew had gotten up to eat or if they’d mess with the haul that he still needed to steal from. And History-man didn’t stop him when he took his place up at the window again, above the spot left for Cirrus. He was probably using the effect of Jack on strangers, but what did it matter? Jack looked them over anew, took in every scrap of the girl as she was led away.

They were like his Fury, and they weren’t. She was squeezed to the rind when Jack met her, and she never said useless things like whether her mother braided bits in her hair. Being mysterious and clever didn’t make you one people, but the look of them leaning together was something Jack knew in his bones. Furiosa had put it there.

If she had a people, it was something Jack never considered. There wasn’t anywhere outside the Wasteland, no place green enough to grow trees, and there couldn’t be one big enough for a whole folk of growers. There might be family of hers, old ones, a whole community to ask him to bring Furiosa home, and she never spoke a word of it. Some providence of mercy was finally showing him the way. Jack knew where he would go next when he had the stash.

While Jack pondered, Cirrus took all of History-man’s questions with firm resignation, slipping around giving good information like he had better reasons than Jack. At the end of it, what he did say amounted to a stay among them, to Jack’s relief. He was a sharp sniper, quiet and quick. History-man could make him a scout, seeing as how he walked right by them all. He asked the same for his daughter, and argued about girls her age not doing work like that as he wanted her trained. Jack didn’t offer to help, agreeing with History-man that she was a slip of a thing. It would have to come another day.

All settled, Cirrus bowed in thanks.

“For my daughter, I will grow you a fig tree,” he said with pride.

He showed them a preserved fruit from a bag on his belt, the wrinkly thing resting in his palm. Jack could picture the tough bite of it in his mouth and tasted sand again. Quick eyes bored into his skull, saw the deep scars.

Maybe Cirrus was old enough to have met her. He looked of that age. Jack saw their time stretching out as he put off his departure an extra hundred days. He would try to get answers to his questions about Furiosa and agonize in the night about when the time was right to tell all, anything for the possibility of another piece of her left to know. If this man was as strong as her, it might be a hundred days more again and again. Maybe they learned to grow trees together. Maybe when Jack was told the way, he could go and learn what Furiosa’s standard would be of making things right.

Chapter Text

Five years later, Jack drove the survey rig away from Sanctuary with a trailer full of goods and an empty gas tanker hitched to the rear. The heat dried the day out to cracking, and he could smell the life lifting off everything to rise away. Their course took them across some doldrums, sun bleached and empty aside from the shimmering air and its tricks of light. They were headed to Waystation by the safest road, the closest thing to a bartering place before one’s choices were to turn back or embrace the heart of the Wasteland.

It was Cirrus’ idea to put the two of them in charge of fetching the guzzolene, once they knew where it came from. The scared people that were sent out before welcomed their reprieve, now long-used to the idea that Jack was the town hauler and never lost his way. That was a thousand days back, when Jack gave away the last bits of his past that had any use to History-man. The small glory of gathering resources for the old man’s big work, the little gears that kept his own job moving, like listening to children and their strange cares, these things tied him down in the breeze. It was the wind he made at speed in the rig. Jack’s dreams of the dust circle and biting dogs quieted, and his ghosts stood by and waited to see the next move of fate instead of running toward it. He still knew it would come, but one day he woke with only the tasks of the day on his mind, and realized he felt like himself again rather than one of the many wretched things he remembered.

Cirrus was hanging out the window, taking a break from their companionable silence, and Jack thought idly of some question to entertain them. The other man had business in town but wouldn’t say, and Jack could watch them pretend otherwise, make fun of a man who was sneaky but bad at lying outright. Cirrus had more of Jack’s life in the open, just about everything he could spare, from the time he tried to top Cirrus up with stories to spill the secrets he wanted. That mostly didn’t work, but they grew close that way. Each took a habit of pushing the other to understand the sideways examples of their deeper grief. They got on together most days, maybe not partners in war, but something easier to keep hold and build on.

The kid was here too, riding rearguard. Jack looked into the bright light that bounced from the rear mirror set to the view of the flat rig top. She wasn’t at her post. He checked the side mirror past Cirrus’ shoulder and shook his head with a small laugh to spot her slacking off. Andromeda crouched by the lower bar of the catwalk that ran the side length of the survey rig. One leg dangled in the spare shade of the cargo hold, and she witnessed the smooth nothing roll by.

Andy didn’t run from Jack’s scarred face or hide from bullies with his survey pups, not anymore, but she wasn’t a fighter, no matter how many times Jack taught her to break a hold or got her to kick him. She was something better, if you asked him. Without any experience letting an ordinary child grow, Jack didn’t know what it was. She was misplaced in the Wastes, and it was a puzzle that had him ask History-man about the colors of the ocean, what it looked like glittering. There was no end to the shine of an innocent child. It ate his living guts looking at Andromeda, thinking of all the little ones he’d seen, even himself or a young Furiosa. How early must they have taken her, when a girl grown in safety could be so mild? The strange thing was that when she was happy, Jack could forget all that and smile too.

Cirrus gentled Jack in the raising of her, with the routine they fell into as the years passed by. If Jack lost his edge, it wasn’t a good thing. He’d have to think on that, see if it was time to get a move on and head out, but he kept on driving peaceably instead, every haul. Cirrus followed his gaze as he checked Andy was secure and shook his head at her idleness.

“Road is smooth,” Jack said when Cirrus ducked back in with a sigh. She wouldn’t fall.

“She’s too distracted, and she isn’t talking to me today,” Cirrus said with a frown. It was like that with Andy, lately, though they were all quiet this morning. There was less chattering than usual for a trip to Waystation, but on a day of steering straight for blue sky past the shimmer of mirage, Jack knew not to mind the heady air behind his skull.

“She seemed fine when we set off,” Jack said.

“Only you accept that monosyllabic cheek."

“Hm,” he answered, “so what’s the problem?”

Cirrus let the road glide under them without a reminder that if he didn’t like something, Jack would try to keep his daughter to his rules. He ruminated over something he didn’t think Jack would get, that was clear. The man thought fast, but he made decisions slower than the desert grew, so Jack returned to his mirrors and looked out. His whole crew wasn’t in the mood to do their job, apparently.

“Andromeda is a woman, now,” Cirrus said at last, “She isn’t taking it well.”

Jack considered the weighty news in sympathy, felt it pull him back to his seat and think in the now. If he ran back the last hundred days, Andy was different, and no wonder except that she hadn’t said anything all the while. She even asked for target practice, and he barely saw her unease. When Jack killed his first man, he was younger, and didn’t feel as grown as people said, but that wasn’t anything to his inability to think of how Andy would get used to the idea. Cirrus should’ve come to him sooner, but Jack’s views on Andy having a tranquil amity about her, one not leant well to violence, vexed her father.

“I told her to talk to the women at Sanctuary,” Cirrus continued, “but I don’t think they do things the way we do. They still treat us as something strange, sometimes. It isn’t right, but it means I’m on my own to help her make sense of the changes. She won’t talk to me, though. I think she’s embarrassed. I knew it would be a hard thing, but…” Cirrus trailed off with a shake of his head.

“Ah,” Jack said, switching tracks too late by Cirrus’ count. He fidgeted with the rifle between his knees, confused by Jack’s confusion. They were talking about bleeding—women’s stuff, “Well, uh, that’s good. It means she’s eating enough. She’ll come around.”

Cirrus dropped his head into a hand, “I forgot that you barely know what I’m talking about, either.”

Jack knew Furiosa would slip away marginally more than usual and give a look of gratitude for an unearned break. She was paranoid that the Immortan would be reminded somehow and look too closely if she were more obvious, would reconsider. The general ignorance that surrounded her, himself included, was a benefit, so Cirrus did pick the wrong man to know more. Jack knew well enough that you didn’t have to be a woman for this sort of thing, and he didn’t like the thought of Andy grown enough for the vault. It made him want to crawl out of his skin right there, to be reminded that Joe was likely still out there, a few girls her age trapped with fear and not sitting moody, but free, on the side of Jack’s rig.

“I’ll admit you lost me there for a minute,” Jack swallowed it down, away from his words, “but you were never concerned about her growing in the practical sense, so I had a mind on the next big thing. I thought something happened on watch. That’s what made you grown, when I was doing it.”

Sometimes, Jack wondered if all of Furiosa’s people had clever eyes, or if he just happened to find the strange ones. When he glanced at Cirrus, the other man caught him by the squeeze of the wheel or too much sweat on his brow, and Jack knew his pain was obvious. He really was losing his edge. A few years back, Cirrus would’ve joked about his not knowing women at all.

“We kill to preserve life. It’s nothing to be admired like the gift of bringing life back. Growing should be a joyous thing for her, not the guilt of surviving over the next person.”

“Right, just never heard it put like that, is all. I understand where people come from, Cirrus,” Jack gave him a pointed look, “It’s just not something I was always glad to know about, as it happens.”

“You’re kind to the children, but you don’t like speaking with their mothers,” Cirrus pressed, “Why?”

“I don’t know if that conversation will go where you like. I told you women weren’t common where I’m from, and I think you got the point of what I said.”

“You don’t know how I know anything about raising one,” Cirrus said. That sounded familiar, from their early days.

“Certainly not,” Jack said and peeked that Andy wasn’t about to sneak up on them, “which is why you don’t need my advice, but also this isn’t about me. It’s about Andy, so I’m not going to recount what happened out there, the things you don’t want to know about.”

“I told you because I want to know how you’ll treat her. I don’t want you putting your strange views on the mothers into her head,” Cirrus said.

“I would never—”

“I should’ve said,” Cirrus interrupted, “that if it’s just the two of us that care, I wanted to know more of what bothers you, because she might talk to you when she pulls away from me.”

“It’s a difficult thing, like I’ve lost sight of her,” Cirrus added with a shuffle of his boots.

Jack wanted to argue that Cirrus made an existential nonsense out of nothing, to make this go away, but he kept his mouth shut. Andy was just a kid, but if she was, then so were all the warboys that used to beg him for a post on the rig, fresh out of their litter. She would grow into some place under their watch. It was easier to think of her in training forever when he couldn’t remember some names of the girls he grew up with, ones that Joe took. They never agreed outright that Jack had a lot of wrong in him to hold back, but Cirrus couldn’t plan around the vague wreck of it.

“I’ll treat her the same as always, that’s what we should do. Let her be, so she knows she’s in charge,” he said. That made sense to him. She would find her own way. Jack had some idea of their people’s reverence of things female, but if it was such a secret that Furiosa never complained, then the women may as well keep it to themselves.

“But what about you? One day she’ll see what I do, and I don’t like it,” Cirrus said.

“She’ll be grown by then. We all see things we don’t like,” Jack let Cirrus hear they were near a point he didn’t want to cross, “Do you want to hear you’re doing a good job, is that it? You know I don’t know. Maybe I won’t be around, and you can explain it how you like.”

Jack always figured he’d hit the road again before Andromeda was old enough to see him for what he was, if he could get Cirrus to point him to his people. But the assumption was too old, and now his gut didn’t like the idea. It would be a fine thing, to see her settled and safe, worth the trouble for him of losing the two of them, to know they were allowed to stay good people up through such a day.

“You’re my friend. I would prefer you do it yourself,” Cirrus answered.

It would be a shame to part ways, that’s what Cirrus said between his words, and Jack kept the rig steady to think. The easy ride required almost no thought, a switch of gear for a patch of sand, nothing more. He didn’t have friends at the Citadel, only people he was tied to in life with its suffering. Furiosa became more than a friend in his heart, but they never said aloud what it was. Jack didn’t know what to make of the mundane realization of how often he sat alongside Cirrus these days, just for the company with no deal to compel them. It wasn’t the scorch of high noon without water or a looming threat hidden in the dunes that would finally make the moment right to say what he wanted. Jack was on a boring supply run when he discovered he had a friend, and that meant he was allowed to be understood.

“I knew a woman once,” Jack started, “She tried to steal my rig, and they let me keep her for my crew. Only one I can tell you about, the rest are far away, as far as my memory goes.”

Cirrus straightened up, looked off in the distance, and let him talk.

He continued, “It was a terrible day, best of my life. We had each other for a while, and it didn’t matter that she was a woman. It was probably part of what got us close to getting out, if it had anything to do with her being especially attached to living the way most weren’t.”

Jack let himself remember the quiet intensity of her after a fight on the road, the way she peeled the air into her lungs like it was a drink to savor, and the soft grip of her eyes all over him to be sure he was whole. She was never ashamed to win, whatever Cirrus thought about a survivor’s guilt. It was like that every day, actually, in her glorious hold. Some trick of the fates let him stand next to the most alive person in the Wasteland each day until the one where he was supposed to die. They made something together, scraped and clawed at life to keep each other in it. If that wasn’t weighed at all in the scales of atrocity against womanhood, Jack was doomed to a lack of respect from his friend without a bother for the rest of the long tale.

He looked at the other man, then back at the road. Jack didn’t think he said all that aloud, but Cirrus showed nothing less than shock. He drove on and half wished some asshole would show up and shoot him.

“I’ve been meaning to tell you about her, but it’s a hard thing,” Jack managed.

“I see that.” The way Cirrus tapped his fingers against the gun, turned his mind. Jack was sure his friend guessed something about his secret and wondered what was the surprise.

“Your fighting woman, what was her name?” Cirrus asked.

Jack couldn’t do that. Last haul, he realized they were in a year when he was at Sanctuary longer than Furiosa spent in his passenger seat. The entire time, he hadn’t spoken her name, for more space than he knew her. He shook his head, cleared it.

Locking the gas pedal, he leaned over Cirrus and out the window, and smacked the cab side.

“Forward,” he yelled, gesturing up. Andy saw him but took her time.

“You got me where it hurts today. Well done,” he said when he was back in his seat. Cirrus mumbled an apology as they agreed to act natural, but as soon as Andromeda was in the window, she read them like a book and cast her eyes down and away, face as hard as she had in her.

“You told him!” she cried at her father’s betrayal. She lowered until she was only a dark, shiny forehead and the lip of her headscarf, blue patchwork.

“This sun cooked my brain hours ago,” Jack started, cleared his throat, “don’t overestimate the conversation of a couple old fellows.”

“Jack struggles to move even from grunting to the moronic,” Cirrus added.

“But you were talking about me,” she said.

“About you giving cheek to your Pa, or you’re impersonating me—brace hands,” Jack said. They bumped into a potholed plain. Not chart worthy, but he kept an eye on Andy’s grip in the rearview as he steered them through. Almost as long as Furiosa, he knew the kid’s stance on his rig and he hadn’t pressed her to learn better.

Jack continued, “Well, we didn’t get around to me telling him that you’re a good kid, and I think he should let you be. A woman will be one without anyone to tell her, I think.”

“It’s not so bad, Andy,” Jack said, but changed his mind with a peak at her withering glare. Maybe it was, fair enough. He reached under his seat for the bag with their spyglass, compass, and such and offered her a distraction. It was the actual reason he called her up.

“Chin up, then. Tell me if I’m still on course,” he said and held the bag up for her to take.

“And you can ignore your Pa all you want,” Jack added, holding the bag in place when she pulled, “but if you’re on my rig, you’re my crew. That doesn’t change.”

“Fine,” she said, climbing atop the hold. He slowed down to see her form steadier.

“I hope that was civilized enough to hop the bar,” Jack said.

He should order Cirrus up too for a proper lookout, and to give himself time to think. Andy would be fine, whatever they said, but it was about time for the two of them to have it out.

“I was never going to forbid you to speak to her, just wanted some help,” Cirrus said, making ready to go after her, “ask me again when you tell me the rest, whatever it is.”

Waystation 34 was an old military outpost along a ruined railway, the number being somewhat irrelevant these days. It was the sprawl around a rocky outcrop that lay in the floodplain of decent water, low at this time of year. Walls of heaped scrap and earthen embankments created a defendable position that was picked too long ago to bother moving and let the market town rest peacefully as the second to last stop on this branch of humanity.

Jack took his ease after docking and let Cirrus have the space to get his daughter’s good graces. They unloaded the rig while Jack stretched and dealt with the storehouse registry. The greater portion of everything was for sale, but there were also pre-arranged deals to honor and Jack’s compensation skimmed off. He had a crate for the dock boys, so they would watch the rig and run up to their main buyers and the gas depot.

Independent settlements had different deals on the guzzolene, but History-man was part of a coalition that ran down the rails and to the sea. Jack would receive a full tanker in the morning to take back until next season, no questions asked. It was an unimaginable network that he just got his head around, like the Triumvirate if it kept going on and on. They were stronger together, trading one thing for another, but Sanctuary wasn’t a place that produced much to send back in way of market goods. It was the gear at the bottom of the rig, packed with padding and books of vellum, that made them worth the gas.

He figured if Furiosa’s place of green trees and blue fabric was on this route, he would’ve heard about it by now. A place like that would be safer trading their fruit, and their philosophizing would’ve made its way to History-man’s city at the other end of things. Jack made dozens of planned trips into the desert over the years, tracing what he knew of Cirrus’ story or his own. Not in the rig, not to go on the death run, just to survey and run the numbers in case Cirrus ever said he was finally going back. Even at top speed, Jack wasn’t carried far when he was left at Sanctuary, not in his condition, and Cirrus was from a similar direction. Somewhere between here and the Citadel, in the empty part of Jack’s map, was the place Furiosa was trying to take them.

A supremely unfortunate level of luck was what it looked like for her people. There might be only a week or two’s worth of slow driving between here and the Citadel. Not only was Furiosa lost in the worse direction, but Cirrus’ group had met misfortune in a matter of days. It was the part of the tale Jack knew best, from his friend’s mouth rather than implication. The keening anger Cirrus had when Jack named himself a road warrior was only surpassed by the horror that they were surrounded by cruelty that made his tale commonplace. Cirrus never asked Jack to take them back, no matter what skills Jack conveyed. He was at his last hope of seeing the spot Furiosa yearned for, more likely to find the spot where she died. That was another reason, come to think on this again, that he should tell Cirrus the truth and see where it led.

“Make your mark,” said the woman who ran the storage ledger. She batted the air with a fan of woven reeds and didn’t acknowledge that they’d spoken dozens of times before, so they never got to names. Jack pulled out the Sanctuary stamp.

“Any more bullets come up?” he asked. They were scarce last year, and his stores were back to a baseline where Andy couldn’t practice much. The woman gestured for him to look through the ledger and hummed this and that as he traced the arrivals with a finger.

“Too many raiders have come down into the Basin, that’s what I heard,” she said, “so bullets are selling well there, and no one cares whether we have any here, or what we’ll do if they start moving up the rail and scare off trade.”

Andy set aside her dolly of crates and crept up beside him at the counter, reading the declarations of caravan groups that came and went. She didn’t remark which interested her, still in a mood, then.

“There’s a deal at the gas depot,” added the store woman, “the gas runners want men of experience to keep the route clear.”

“You wouldn’t really go, Jack?” Andy asked.

“History-man says there are farm allotments, or you can buy a place in the city working like that,” he said. He saw Cirrus’ brow furrow as he listened from his place supervising the dock boys.

“If you can make it all the way down there,” said the store woman, and Jack agreed. It was a long way. They all went to their work again, no speculation on what this far-away place of coins was like because even rumor had trouble traveling so far.

“I’m too worn out for all that,” he said and nudged Andy’s shoulder. He smiled, because she was too worried to tease her for long. It seemed she was serious enough to mind. 

“Does that mean you still want to be crew? I need a partner to haul through the market, unless you’re ready to put your Pa out of his misery.”

Cirrus let Andy insist that she wanted to go with Jack for the afternoon. Her father would have some peace and time for his secret business is what Jack thought won her case. She brought out all her promises to be good and bartered chores left undone for the treat of his company, a torrent of words she didn’t know cheered them. Her enjoyment was inexplicable to Jack, as he didn’t let her wander off and felt the two of them stuck out too much in the crowd to be completely at ease, but sometimes she took to wandering in mind, and he knew the kindness of being left to a thought with no questions.

He led them to the usual spots of business, for gear, guns, and long-lasting food. The permanent structures of Waystation’s market were of clay and stone with shaded gardens. They made a lazy arc around the hill and shared a guarded well pump on one side that sloped up to a town hall. That was the only place to see bits of the old world left, old military stuff. Andy sat with him there each time they hauled after he told her about his parents, in silence to consider them better. There were more than a few like him in Waystation, the offspring of the last offshoot of the old-world forces. They had a kind of belief in a broader order that Jack recognized, a civic faith he and others left behind took as bricks from an abandoned building to reuse. 

It was a comfortable stroll down the lanes packed by feet and years, and more festive than usual. There was ample space set between houses or in camp clearings within the town walls, for traveler tents and stalls which now filled the place to the brim. Andy talked off and on all the things she hadn’t said in the weeks she was stuck in her own head, and Jack followed wherever she wanted and tried to buy her something to celebrate, as it seemed the thing to do for surviving the tumult she defined. Jack called for a break in the shade outside the boom smith's shop, where the awning kept their eyes clear of the sun as it cast lower. The rest was for him, to think about why he didn’t often recall being her age and laugh to himself about it probably being as awful, just not worth remembering.

“I know the day of mine by the old calendar, my birthday,” Jack said because the Boomsmith had thought of that when she refused the knife Jack wanted to get her, “but I lost track of what day we’re on, so it’s all the same. My mother used to get me a good piece of real food.”

“A knife isn’t a good present,” Andy said, and Jack disagreed. When she picked at her pack, resting it on her lap, he studied the little flowers she’d stitched along the seams, ones Jack didn’t know. There were things CIrrus and her did that he didn’t get to know. This was one of those things.

“You can get what you want. Doesn’t have to be from Boomsmith, but get something for all the missed birthdays. I’m sure you’re owed a gift for something or another, anyway. It’ll please your Pa, and you’ll have something to talk about.”

Whatever she chose, Jack decided to go back for a knife. She should be familiar with one, at her age, something she could keep on all the time. Just in case. If Cirrus wanted a different, proper way of things for her being a young woman, he would have to say what that was. Jack saw the looks she got more now, when they brought her along and she wandered in front of him. He would talk to Cirrus about that, now that they had an understanding of her growing up. Jack didn’t ever envy telling her something cruel.

“My mother is the one who gets a present, on my birthday,” she said.

“Yeah?” he asked.

“I’m not supposed to talk abou–” she started, but Jack cut her off.

“Yeah,” he said, “your Pa won’t let you say one thing about what the rest of us are doing wrong. I got it a while back.” He tried to hide it as more teasing, a short laugh.

He shouldn’t say it like that when it might encourage any young person to think of being contrary, but he was tired sometimes of the kid feeling guilty whenever she managed to start a real conversation. It was little wonder she was lonely and often away from the others at Sanctuary. Jack didn’t tell his stories either, but he was old enough to not mind being set apart.

“She bore me near the summer solstice, when the stars of Andromeda were running away in the sky,” she said, reciting part of a tale he didn’t know.

“I think I don’t remember her face anymore, sometimes,” she added.

“Yeah, that happens,” he sighed, looking about to the next shop across the way, then the empty sky, but Andy’s sad face begged for some mothering, and he’d been the one to keep on about the past today. Jack didn’t try to picture his mother anymore, because that realization was long past, and it hurt.

“Is that why you don’t want to say much these days? The whole thing has you thinking about her too much?” he asked. He was right because Andromeda tried to answer, to make something up, but she couldn’t.

Jack talked instead, “I had my father still when I was a man, got to ask the important questions. He was wrong about a lot of things, though you only figure that out later. Must be worse for you.”

His father was a good man, maybe better than Jack, but that was why he didn’t survive. It was enough for Jack to understand that there were other ways to think in your head than what Immortan said made a man. If only Jack’s parents had acted earlier, though, before power at the Citadel was consolidated, they wouldn’t all be complicit in so much suffering. None of that would be helpful to Andy. Truth was, Cirrus held women in a deep respect that Jack barely understood, to a point of odd deference. He didn’t know what would help, but it was apparent she needed more useful advice than either of them had.

“Everyone is making things up. If you have to sit and think up something for yourself, do that and forget about your Pa. You’ll have something of your mother in you, if you want to keep it,” he said.

“I want to think she’d still like me,” Andy said with a tiny voice that would break his heart.

“I don’t think that’s how it works with mothers—or fathers,” he said, not to leave room for doubt and throw Cirrus under the rig, “I’ve never seen a mother give up on her child.”

“The mothers watch over us,” Andy agreed.

Jack moved through the rest of their business as quickly as he could, to have time for a way to cheer her up. The tip he needed came from the apothecary woman when he picked up something she made for his scars. She said it might help soften the skin along with his stretching. Jack wasn’t a vain man, but he would take any help as he tried to strengthen his worse side, especially his leg. She also said the raiders had caravans spooked, so they wouldn’t cross the Basin and piled up here. Some were charting a longer route around the mess, but those with precious things wouldn’t risk it. They had things Andy would like, curious and pretty.

The girl had a good head for imagining. Jack used to have her hold the light while he worked on the rig, when she came out from a spell of hiding. If she didn’t mind him cursing to interrupt her now and again, she could talk for an hour or more on what fixation ran circles in her mind. He didn’t have to listen to all of it, that wasn’t the point, so it was good for the background of work. Because she wasn’t allowed to tell her people’s secrets, she made up stories or places and described them in detail. The pictures she made were something to treasure, so he made a game of it whenever she was in the mood to play.

“What do you think?” he asked, as he moved through a bit of beadwork hanging at the tent entrance. This was sure to delight her away from sorrow. The place was full of fine fabric and trimmings, pallets raised to hold bins of glitter and shine. Loose-woven bolts of dyed fabric were hung carefully to sway in the breeze. Andy felt them like she needed to touch a color to see it. Jack decided to chat up the proprietor, a wrinkly old one whose family bustled in the next room of the tent in preparation for the end of the day. He would wait for her to settle in and pick something.

“Jack!” He smiled to hear it and went to see what she found. She held a few pieces of glass from a tray filled with more. They were bright blue and cut like crystals. It looked like new world work, an impressive implication of luxury.

“It reminds me of ice,” she said, pouring them into his palm to see.

“You’ve seen ice?”

“No, but Grandfather told me he saw a mountain of it once, at the tip of the world. He said rivers run through them that are more blue than the sky,” she said.

“Then it’s probably true. I guess ice could look like that, maybe a lot of it changes the color, like water. The only ice I’ve seen was clear, as any water is up close,” he said.

“When did you see ice?” she wondered, started guessing for him, deep underground or far off, wherever he was from.

“I’ve never seen it in the wild, but we found an old-world machine that could make it in pieces, like this. You wouldn’t like it. Hunk of metal, not fanciful at all, and then it broke and that was it. They were clear though, or white.”

Jack had ice when someone found enough of a refrigerator for Joe to waste gas running it. One of his first wives—her name was Verity, asked to give them each a few cubes, and Jack held them in his mouth past the pain until he stopped feeling his tongue. It was the best water he ever had, and the last time he saw Verity because he was getting too old to be allowed in the vault. He told Andromeda she was better off not having any because he still thought of ice when the road was too hot.

“Go on then, where would I find blue ice and History-man’s river of sky?”

“I’m not a little kid anymore,” she said. That was a first, and Jack couldn’t help voicing his disappointment.

“I liked everything you came up with,” he said, but Andy would have it that he only let her talk to keep her out of trouble. A man could have more than one reason, though. It meant the idea was an even better one.

“At least tell me what History-man said, as you have an interest in it. You’re a smart one. I know you remember everything he says.”

So she did, telling him of glaciers and birds that could swim. Jack only liked History-man’s facts up to a point, as it was hard on the heart to think of real things that he’d never see, or which ones his parents or grandparents saw for the last time, what disappeared. Andy was different, and he could tell a part of her believed without examination that a desert of snow was still out there. He should be happy for her, but it didn’t evoke the wonder that little Andy’s rainbow cave of ice would.

“Never seen colors like that put to cloth before. Must’ve come a long way,” he pointed out a run of fabric bolts that caught his eye, dyed to a solid sharpness. They were somewhere between red and yellow, brighter than the browns of the desert. Maybe he’d seen them on the end of a brand, cooling.

“Did you ever have an orange?” Andy asked. His confusion made her laugh, but then she thought better of it. Another thing she wasn’t supposed to say, but decided to, this time. Jack was going to get shit from Cirrus when he ratted out the girl for going weak on her vow of silence.

“The color. They’re orange, like the fruit,” she explained.

“Alright, tell me about that, a whole color,” Jack said, and she did in a low voice away from the tent seller, though it kept coming back to food. She reminded him that carrots were orange, no matter that he insisted the ones he had were different, and named a dozen things he hadn’t heard of as she wandered in words. Jack wanted to ask what they tasted like but didn’t want to remind her that she shouldn’t be sharing the memory of such abundance. He couldn’t help himself, eventually.

“What about a peach?” He named a fruit he only knew from a whisper, the last night he had with Furiosa. Andy’s face lit up, and she looked around until she pointed him to a pink fabric, one that he now saw had orange in it.

“What are they like?”

Andy scrunched her face to remember and opened her hand like she would pick one again.

“They’re sweet, so sweet that an overripe one could make you sick, and juicy. They’re full of water and have soft skins like people.”

She confirmed they had big, wrinkly seeds.

It shouldn’t mean anything, but Jack could now imagine Furiosa climbing a great big tree with hungry greed, eating with more relish than any meager delight he was able to find to give her at the Citadel. He would save it as a balm for his bad nights, that she must’ve had the memory to hold all that time of a nice thing in life.

Andromeda regretted being carried away, but he told her he wouldn’t tell anyone, that he knew someone who had food like that and was always curious, that she did him a kindness. She would tell her Pa, which was right, so that decided a way to explain the rest of things to Cirrus. He supposed all his secrets were going to fall away, today.

“Here, I’ll tell you something from where I’m from instead,” he said. Jack pointed out another fabric he had admired, hanging in prominence above the seller. This one was finely woven with dyed threads of many colors. The last sunlight shining through from an opening in the tent roof turned it into a floating rainbow.

“Back where I’m from, there were floating gardens sprayed with water. It was pumped from pipes into a mist. When they all went up at once, it looked like that.”

“You can see big ones after a storm, over Sanctuary,” Andy said. Jack had seen those. He thought the warboys would’ve liked them, a better road to Valhalla.

“It’s not so bad there, once and a while. I’m sorry I got you talking, kid. Don’t mind me. Be as quiet as you like, from now on,” Jack said.

“It’s alright. I don’t remember much from before, anyway, and we can’t go back."

She forgave him too easily because she was sweet, and Jack had to tell her his own stories. He did it out of guilt, and to keep her from falling back into sadness. He felt sorry for the fruit growing people, for the loss of their girl.

Andromeda listened to every bit of pretty thing he could think of about the Citadel, which wasn’t much. The wide open sky blazing sunset was one thing, the rage giving way to a glittering firmament. Another was the hidden room of painted pictures, wordless stories of old ghosts in the dark. Jack liked to watch them dance in a flickering fire and thought of dying for something older than old. He couldn’t tell someone like Andromeda about his awe in witnessing the beyond in the faces of the Awaited, but he could remember the purple under their tired eyes and red flush of laughing with the crew that raised him, back when Barry the Bard was still alive and sang plays about carousing and seafaring, lady loves, and anything else the rest of them didn’t know one speck about. They acted their hearts out, though.

“It sounds nice,” Andy said. They had wandered to a spot in the grass near the end of the market, over the river and its sliver of water in the dusk. Their packs were full, and Jack got most of what they needed. Cirrus would be finished securing the big sales from the rig by now and be over by the gas depot.

“It wasn’t,” Jack said, “but I’ve been thinking of remembering the things that weren’t bad. Maybe it’s like that with your people.”

Andy’s knees were drawn up to hold herself together.

“You’re a good thing, kid. That’s what I think. People don’t imagine things where I’m from, so it’s true. When I see a good thing for once, that’s my mother talking. That’s how you remember them,” he said.

The light of the day was nearly gone, banked down for tomorrow’s scorch under a dusting of the first stars. It was about the time for Cirrus to do the thing he planned and wouldn’t say, and Jack checked one last time with Andy on safety before leaving her at camp, so he could follow. He estimated his steps versus Cirrus’ longer ones around the back of the gas depot and hurried for an early spot to hide among the dwindled market bustle. Tonight’s deal would be a big one. He could tell.

Cirrus did this to Jack as well, he was fairly certain. Jack wasn’t much for stealth, there being nowhere to hide in road war, but life at the Citadel taught him to watch his back. There were more than Fury’s eyes keeping him warm from time to time at the market. It was an odd habit of theirs. After all, they had more than a few frank conversations back at Sanctuary, and Cirrus saw nothing more secret than Jack turning down the apothecary woman when she went soft on him, but Cirrus had a long scheme he worked on as soon as they started market runs. It was something deep as the cave wells, so they couldn’t have it out about creeping after one another.

Sure enough, Jack spied his friend at the foot of the rocky hill that rose from the market center. Cirrus read something on a scrap of paper pulled from his shirt pocket and glanced uphill, turned away from Jack to catch the final light on his page. Jack used the moment to crouch behind an empty stall and hide just as Cirrus’ eyes turned and studied something in the deepening twilight. There was a beckoning look to his bright eyes, and Jack almost thought he was spotted, but a breeze finally picked up the threads of heat from the ground to carry away, and Cirrus closed his eyes in relief.

The man moved like a shadow of the tent poles against the hillside, quiet and quick. In his wake, Jack always felt clumsy. He managed by staying far back and counted on the limited options of Waystation to keep Cirrus from disappearing, giving him a long lead to twist their way up the narrowing lanes and clinging brush. Just under the big house at the top, a few lonely shacks leaned shy of a drop to the riverbed. Cirrus met a man they’d seen before, on another run.

He was a traveler of vague intention, a nondescript fellow ready to do any job while he seemed capable of more that he never said. The little things he had to barter were from far off, maybe past the Basin, but if he had city knowledge that Wasteland clingers didn’t, it only showed with the odd twinkle in his eye. Jack never liked that about him, but Cirrus met him a few times. They ducked into one of the shacks together, and Jack waited and lost time as he eased his eyes to the growing darkness and his way to a window.

Cirrus bent over a bed, a real one raised off the floor, where some poor bastard labored to speak in his ear. They had no light, so Jack listened more than he watched, the three men folded up in the gloom like a dream. Faint metallic clicks sounded like a gun passed around, overcome by a wrenched sob when Cirrus bowed low to touch foreheads. Something clattered loud in the wind over the men’s whispers, and Jack looked up to see a hanging of scavenged wood knocking about.

“Take it, please,” Jack heard the healthy man who wasn’t Cirrus say. They were already outside again. He pressed himself against the tin sheet wall.

“You have our thanks, friend,” Cirrus said as he shoved something into his pack, “for everything.”

“Go in peace—stars over you,” the man said farewell, and went back inside. Jack didn’t move until Cirrus was well down the hill and away. No need to trail close, as he wanted a respectable excuse’s worth of time. Before he left, he peaked a last time into the shack, now with a little candle lit. A sick man, not old but older than Jack with shaggy, graying hair, reached for his attendant’s hand, who took it with care and a kiss. Little bells in his hair clicked as he rolled with fever.

Cirrus said once that he’d be happy to see his people again, like he wasn’t really lost. Jack knew there was more and what it likely was, but it didn’t bode well for the secret place—the mirage. This wasn’t the epic meeting Jack hoped to see at the end of Cirrus’s scheme. The man he didn’t like much was upright with a noble look to him in his tenderness, and the older man was large and strong, a long survivor. A people like this, with the historic written on them, shouldn’t be scattered like embers in the ashes, but there it was as Jack read them. He waited another moment in witness to the feeling he saw, then turned away.

Cirrus caught him at the rig, because of course Jack checked the rig every night before sleep. He sat on the footboard under the passenger door, leaned against the step to the catwalk.

“Three years of sneaking, and you still can’t get close to anything useful,” he said.

“Well, if I did it right, you wouldn’t have the fun of being smug,” Jack said.

“Took you a while to come back down,” he made room for Jack to sit and throw their packs together, “I thought maybe you went to whatever watering hole the gas boys are recruiting at tonight. Or hoped your grief had you over at the apothecary.”

“You still overestimate my knowing women, unfortunately for me,” Jack kicked him as he settled in, “No, like I told Andy, I’m too worn out for gas runs. I had to come back here to report the mess of everything she said to me today, bossman.”

Jack let Cirrus have time to be sure of what he waited here to say. Relaying how Andromeda was this afternoon gave them time. She wasn’t too quiet, but sad, not mad at her Pa just missing a mother, and Jack was sure nothing the three of them had would be quite enough to settle her. No one could call Jack a coward. He laid out that he got the kid talking about her people, the peaches.

“You know I’d never want to trick her, but I’m weak for scraps like that. Seemed a small thing, as long as I told you about it. No harm done,” Jack said.

“No, I suppose we’re past that point, since I trust you to cart my own child all over the place,” Cirrus said with a huff, “though, she knows better than to speak of such things.”

“I was going on about myself too much. Should’ve just asked you, after this morning,” Jack said.

“My thoughts precisely.” Cirrus gave him a hard look. He’d made up his mind.

“What you saw up there,” Cirrus started, then switched back with a wave of his hand, “Andromeda has been anxious about these plans of mine, but I couldn’t go to her now until I talked to you. She’ll ask what will happen to you, and I won't lie to her…We’re leaving. I have a route now, as soon as the rain is done again. We want you to come with us.”

Jack couldn’t help himself from standing up to pace. He expected to get information, finally put things in the open and make his own plans known. Five years was plenty of time, now at the end of it, but he was shocked Cirrus was that decided.

“Because we’re friends, that’s it?” Jack asked.

Cirrus hesitated, held his hand stiff in the air with agitation, “Was this not your plan, all the time? I thought it was, but you were good to us. I don’t ask lightly. I’m sure we’re friends.”

It was manipulation, what he wanted at the beginning, and Jack wouldn’t be punished for it. He targeted them in his grief and wormed his way into their lives for a purpose, and he didn’t forget that just because he made the girl smile. Cirrus got up and knocked him in the shoulder, got him to stop walking circles in the rig lot.

“I see you search for the good things in you to show. When I told you what happened to Andromeda’s mother,” Cirrus swallowed and thumped Jack’s shoulder again, “you got me moving, so I could raise her. Don’t start on about your twisted scrap or whatever, again. You’re our friend. Why is that difficult for you?”

“It’s not your home, at the end of the route,” Jack said, his long unasked question no longer needed after all.

“It’s gone,” Cirrus shook his head. Jack brought the peach tree to mind, the one he imagined Furiosa longing for, that she must have climbed as a child to laugh with the birds. He let it wither and die, closer to the truth. One day, he would try to be glad she never knew.

“The woman I told you about. I meant to ask for a while—She had a peach seed hidden in her hair. I wanted to see it, the tree with peaches. Had some plans there.”

“I’ve been worried about something like that, for you, but we can’t go back, Jack. Come, I’ll tell you what I found. Say you’ll come.”

They shouldered their packs and walked around the rig, away toward the edge of town under the rising moon, the bright bulb of it lighting their way in silver without need for a lamp. A good harvest moon, Cirrus told him, if the season wasn’t so bare. He spoke the name of the fevered man, Royce, who knew him as a child and found the way they would go. A great movement would occur in the shadows this year, a gathering of the remains of his people, those who Royce found. They were scattered, their home dying for years. The Vuvalini, from the Green Place, an oasis in the Wasteland.

“I guessed you knew one of us, the way you looked over our things like you were matching something up,” Cirrus said, leading the way.

“I don’t know that I did. She didn’t have anything but that seed and a word now and again that didn’t make sense. I haven’t been matching up anything,” Jack said.

Cirrus looked back, puzzled, “You don’t know of the Vuvalini?”

“I once scared her in a fight, when I took a hit to the head and woke up days later to her crying for a mother’s mercy. Bits like that are all I’m going on. You have a strange fixation with mothers, from where I stand. She was a tough one, and I made a promise not to ask for her secrets, and I kept it back then.”

“She was stronger than Andromeda, then, in silence?” he asked. That made Jack laugh in spite of remembering the pain of her glare.

They arrived at their camp, an old firepit and flattened sleeping place in the curve of an embankment, and Andy rose with haste from her bedroll by the little fire she made.

“Did he say he’d come?” she asked.

“I told him. Let him think, child,” Cirrus said. Jack looked her over anew, the Vuvalini girl, with her trusting face. She was a good one, took her father’s pack and got them food.

“She’s not so bad at keeping secrets,” Jack said because there was no question of his saying no to her face, “Maybe she let the things about fruit go, but I didn’t suspect you were leaving Sanctuary.”

She asked again if he would drive them where they were going.

“Did your father tell you, he thinks I knew one of your people?” he asked. She nodded, so there was hope for the kid, if she knew all the while Jack was allowed a peek at the truth.

“Did she see the things you told me about—the mist garden?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said “but I don’t think she saw them the way I did. She knew greater abundance and didn’t like that I saw it in her eye. You should’ve met her. I meant to bring her home—”

There it was, but Andy was too young to judge that it was his fault or understand how painful it was to say any of that. She wanted to know more and asked her questions because Jack never stopped her before now. He should tell her that Fury would’ve liked her, but he didn’t know. Andy was a sheltered child who needed protection and couldn’t hurt a mouse that wanted to nibble through her only spare shirt. He helped squeeze the softness out of Furiosa, so she didn’t have a gentle touch, then took anything left for himself. There was nothing in his mind when he tried to remember a tenderness that wasn’t for a new gun.

“What was her name?” Cirrus asked, and Jack shook his head. Andy furrowed her brow.

“My heart's name was Astraea, dusk-watcher,” Cirrus said, after a while picking at their food. Andromeda leaned forward to drink in his words, “She knew the proper name of every living thing in the Green Place, the connections between them, and she fought hard to keep it going as it faded, to the last hope. Sanctuary would be an Eden if she had a hand in it.”

Cirrus left the end of his thought unsaid, but Jack knew the warble in his voice from the first time he told his tale of woe. Astraea was the one who should’ve lived, to find the place to fit her daughter in the world, or make the right one if it wasn’t there. They could never say that, but Jack understood, because they were friends.

“The mothers say life is a fruit. You grow strong and full, sweet, or healing. And life is plucked to feed life. You must grasp it in hand and never flinch. We feed each other and make the world anew,” Cirrus said.

Jack looked up from the orange campfire as Cirrus reached toward it, grasping, and spoke his wife’s name. Andromeda copied him, grasping the name from the night breeze into her chest. Jack found he was crying, which he was always a little in danger of since he found his stowaway, so many years ago, but never let out without warning to hide. What Cirrus said reminded him of her, the way she clutched and savored life, whatever the taste.

He wiped his eyes, “Ah, it just sounds like her, somehow. Not the sweet fruit, but she was resplendent in life, my F—”

“What was her name?” Andromeda asked, “We’ll speak of her together. She’ll be with the many mothers in your heart.”

Jack would say it, if that’s what she would want, but it felt like letting her go. Would it send her ghost to the one she slipped up and mentioned on a stormy night? Perhaps he felt her stare in the night because she needed to be free, and his heart alone was a cage, and she was pissed off at him. Cirrus nodded, words unsaid.

“Furiosa, that was her name.”

He tried to make the gesture, but didn’t want to force her back in. Jack opened his hand and let her rise to the stars. Cirrus looked at him strangely, and he waited for a reproach for his doing it wrong.

“Our people were not so many that I forgot Furiosa, from Swaddle Dog” Cirrus said.

“You knew her?” Jack could barely ask, to know for certain that she was one of these people.

Cirrus put his food down to gather his daughter in the safe crook of his arm, “We lost others in the days of fading, but she was one of the first and longest looked-for. Her mother was a Venerated Protector. I didn’t know her when we were young, and she was taken, but everyone knew of her. The girls weren’t allowed that far out again without guns.”

He rubbed his head thinking, “Royce will live the night. We can’t go back through the market now. It’s too obvious, but you must come up with me in the morning. He knows of everyone. There’s nothing you could tell him of her that wouldn’t cheer him. Stars above, he’s watched for her for…twenty years, more? It would be a mercy.”

Jack was overwhelmed to shock by his earnest voice and the implication that everything to know would be open to him. Cirrus beckoned with a hand and knocked their foreheads together, more like a headbutt, and the absurdity of reality against whoever he guessed Jack had known made him laugh.

“Furiosa, I can’t believe it! That her life somehow twisted back around to the Vuvalini, after all. It’s a great work of the mothers. One day, you’ll see it.”

Andy, who was thoughtful all the while and wide-eyed at Jack’s tears, moved to get her own tap of his brow.

“Say you’re one of us. You can’t leave us behind, then,” she said, and he never said no to that girl, so he did.

Chapter Text

Jack still had a mind bent toward mercy when the three of them marched together past the market pump and uphill the next morning. Rested air whipped around his feet and those of everyone else glad to be up before the heat of the day, and the crack of it past tent walls and growing bustle topped off his full heart. Life had something left for him beyond his need to carry Furiosa. He wasn’t too late to share her in the way of her secret people, the lighter load for them all.

Tin shacks caught the rising sun against the hilltop and gleamed to a solid mirror, and Jack looked into the brightness while it lasted, whenever their switchback path caught it in view as they climbed. The sick man Royce was under one of those with a long-held care for Furiosa. Among the kindness they let out to breathe in the night, he figured out just how close a connection, and now the point called to him without slack. 

Cirrus remembered music when he opened up deep into his own past to help Jack, until they were half asleep. Royce used to belt a song for the children as he crossed the river fork from a stint on watch to see them safe. While not known to each other, Furiosa shared the joy of it as a little one a few years shorter than Cirrus and more often favored by Royce from Swaddle Dog with a treat from some stray bush or tree in fruit by the border. A warrior of respect impressed them with their own worth. Whether Furiosa remembered it when she tallied fresh crew to replace used up warboys, Jack couldn’t say, but he cared that Royce was owed the same account.

As they walked flat past the last scruff between them and the sheds, Cirrus stopped them. He reminded his daughter that Royce spent precious time for her sake. She was the better thing wanted where the Vuvalini gathered, so she should say what was right. Jack raised his brow to get orders of his own.

“He’ll want a story for his clan, and only you can finish it,” Cirrus said.

“Whatever he needs is what I came up for."

Jack shared a look with Andy that made her smile when Cirrus turned around, and he savored it when she followed. She'd learn a few more hard things today with no reprieve from him as he'd be the cause, but leaving Sanctuary was likely to lead to many more.

They weren’t greeted at first when Cirrus tapped at the door, though it opened. The other man, Royce’s fellow, startled out of worry when he recognized Cirrus returned with company and cut through their light air with a sharp whisper.

“Come in, then. Quickly.”

The man pulled the door behind and crowded all four of them in silence to witness the shadow of a longer night than theirs. An organic kit from the road lay strewn over the floor from packs that piled one corner with a crumpled bedroll shoved away to make room. The candle had melted away in its holder on a chair, the only other furniture besides the bed where Royce labored to rest. The man moved through them as Jack studied whether Royce looked any better than before. To wake a dying man was far from the worst thing he ever did, but he'd be grateful to not do it again.

“He’s been sleeping a while, I think. What’s happened? I thought the plan was set.”

“He’ll want to speak with Jack,” Cirrus said.

“Our driver, yes,” the man shook Jack’s hand in a rush of forced politeness, though it gave Jack enough time to shoot Cirrus a sidelong look—already the driver, “We haven’t met properly. I’m Harrow, but we’d be just as well met in good time on the road.”

“Badly met, then. I came to talk to your man while he’s here,” Jack said.

Harrow didn’t argue the way some men would. Instead, all the sorrow of his fight bore out with nothing hidden, so that Jack had to look away and reproach himself to do better.

“If he’ll make it to the road, I don’t want to disturb his peace. I have some things to say that might be a long time coming. Maybe you’re the judge of what he wants to hear,” he added.

Harrow looked to Royce with concern before they remembered Andy. She hesitated against the shut door with her manners unused. The sound of Royce below their talking was stark unpleasantness, though Jack told himself he saw worse survive. Royce looked to be a hearty full-life before whatever got him. He said as much to Andy as Harrow introduced himself again, something of an apology.

“He’ll be so happy to see you. He spoke of nothing else after your father left. You’re our last Vuvalini girl to bring around.” Harrow spun some cheer at the end of his rope, and Cirrus approved to see Andy move in as Harrow took a careful seat at the foot of the bed.

“We brought Jack to speak of Furiosa. She was from Swaddle Dog,” Andy said low.

“He'll have a place by Royce’s say,” Cirrus added.

The window where Jack spied now made a bright square that framed a tired face and sandy curls fluffed to a mess as Harrow looked past Jack and far off to play out some inner argument. Not as young as Jack thought with such earnest eyes, the light caught strands of silver in Harrow’s hair that would stay hidden unless he survived to see it all change over. With a blink or two, Harrow’s eyes shifted to resignation, and he rubbed clear a conflict there before looking at them with the unsettling glimmer he’d seen before.

“I’ve heard of her, as it happens, and you’re right,” Harrow gestured toward Cirrus, “but if possible, I’d ask you to be brief.”

Harrow wasted no more time. He gave Jack the chair by Royce’s head and plied the older man to wake at once. Andy stood at Jack’s shoulder with a poke to his jacket while her Pa crouched to rest on the floor, and they waited as Harrow spoke softly with a gentle touch, like they weren’t there.

Royce groaned his awareness and looked at them all in pained confusion, “She’s here already…It hasn’t been so long...”

“No,” Harrow dampened a folded cloth, “It’s only the morning. Cirrus found out his friend’s connection to the Vuvalini after all and brought him up for you to judge.”

Royce’s good nature was to smile and push Harrow’s hand away to take the cloth for himself. Still too tired to finish a greeting he started, he waved off Cirrus’ apology before a fit of coughing and saved his energy to hum over Andromeda’s pretty words, and her being lovely as her mother. Cirrus was still too young for a grown daughter. They caught Jack between them all as an outsider kindly left ignored.

That was expected. It left Jack able to watch for the other side of Royce, who asked about Andy’s aim before her interest in what music was left among his things. The warrior would get up for the pride to speak properly and had strong arms that barely hesitated to lean on Jack when offered. The bells in his hair scraped the tin wall as he settled back, exhausted, but in a position to breathe easier and wipe his face and beard. A presence of sturdy muscle even seated ill, Jack wondered what his weapon of choice was.

But Jack didn’t press for attention, because he’d rather watch Royce’s eyes dark and warm for another look at Harrow and slow to leave. Jack waited for him to have his fill, to not push in before a sure piece of mercy was done, but Harrow brought the conversation back around to Jack with a repeated reminder for rest. There was a purpose to Jack in the only chair for Royce to see him better, something more formal than Cirrus told him.

“Jack named the Vuvalini Furiosa,” Cirrus said. Royce’s smile faded, and he shut his eyes against illness, for memory, and in pain.

“But you said you found another man with lost love,” Royce said, and Cirrus hummed an acknowledgement. When Royce opened his eyes, they shone with pity Jack didn’t want.

“Forgive me, but by the look of you, Jack? This won’t be a tale to ease my heart, except to leave the burden of unknown grief,” Royce said.

He finished after another breath, “Don’t let me stop you. It’s been my dark dream for many years, that life wasn’t wronged by the early loss of our Furiosa. I deserve to face the reality of that.”

“Don’t say that,” Harrow said, but now Royce only had eyes to look into Jack for answers. He didn’t know if Royce was at any fault for what happened, but he understood the implication of dread for a lonely life set apart from her people.

As he considered a way to refute it, Royce continued, “It’s custom for you to go first. Was Furiosa your wife?”

“No,” Jack said with force, then let out a sigh for whatever Cirrus didn’t tell him about this meeting despite good intentions, “What’s the custom we’re doing, then?”

He didn’t turn to see the effect of Royce’s reproach for Cirrus’ trick, or the short phrase that followed in a language he didn’t know. This conversation had more use if Jack were prepared, but Cirrus had the excuse of short notice. They would drive back to Sanctuary this afternoon and not see each other for weeks. Once satisfied in respect, Royce explained.

“If she was close enough to a wife, next time you should say that she was. The Vuvalini don’t hold to those ways, but everyone else does, and in our scattering it’s taken on a significance,” Royce looked to Harrow at last with a tired nod to the gear in the corner, then back to Jack, “My word is held as truth. At the end of our route is a place for you among my people—mine exactly, now that you name Furiosa. In her place, I can stand for you.”

Too many words left Royce breathless, and Harrow rummaged quickly through a pack for a metal box that rattled with paper as he let it drop to worry.

“I’ll write something after we settle her story, so if it comes to that…” Royce trailed off with an indication for Jack to start again.

He couldn’t reject such open courtesy, though he’d rather speak of lighter things to do with her. There still wasn’t a name for what they were. Love was too free in his mind for the whole of it, and the Citadel left no space between deprivation and the grab for survival. They welded themselves together in some way. Furiosa might’ve stayed awake to choose words that would fit him into her home, after they revised his plan for her escape to make one together. He imagined her straining to remember what was right to say, and it wouldn’t let him refuse Royce her story in whatever order.

“It isn’t cheerful,” he said.

“It will lift hearts, maybe a song. You’ll see. I’ll be glad of it, for my little Fury,” Royce said between crackling breaths. The sweat of returned fever clung to him, but he still wiped it himself.

Jack started again, “Furiosa was my partner in war. We had a deal that I would train her to my war rig, so she could get home. Nearly six years I had her, but it wasn’t enough.”

He continued to an explanation for her absence, and Royce shared his shame when Jack stopped, a few words around the fallout of their failure. He was mangled alive, and Furiosa was left in slow hands of certain death. Royce looked over his shoulder to where Andy shifted from one foot to another and asked for more, the real flesh of the fruit or however they talked of such things. Jack already decided to give that today, but he hesitated.

“Should the girl leave?” Royce asked.

Cirrus argued she was old enough to stay, evidence of his belief that Jack didn’t do anything beyond terrible, though Jack still hadn’t told Cirrus the whole truth. Royce suspected worse, and Harrow was inclined to agree. Andy said nothing, so Jack turned around to see her scared. How she could see his scars and take weapons to train and not think of war would stump Jack except that it was his fault for going soft. Cirrus’ too, to speak well of him.

“Your Pa’s right, and you’ll be on the road soon, but you don’t have to stay. I can tell you another time.”

She picked at a seam on his jacket, so there was probably something to fix there, “You could at least say that you loved her.”

“Well, we didn’t say it like that back there,” he said.

She moved to sit with Cirrus on the floor, at Jack’s knee, and leaned into the back of her Pa’s shoulder, “Then how did you say it?”

“We didn’t.”

With his relationship to Furiosa left fittingly unsettled, Jack explained their hauls defending trade from starved wastelanders on behalf of a warlord, in part to test how far Cirrus related Jack’s stories of the road. What Royce didn’t know already, he wasn’t surprised to learn, which told Jack enough. Custom required something more, so Jack went on.

He added the three times they took the real warpath with morale machines blasting, playing noise. They got Furiosa bad on the first, and he let her drive revved out of reason until she earned the scrap of respect that tamped down on knives at her in the dark, so Jack could unstick her from his side where she was bolted for safety. They went downhill from there, the fight always ready in her, and she made war with dreadful grace that might please her people, if only for appreciation of honed skill, but it was a cruel story.

Royce still estimated by a span of hands the size of her when she was born, and Jack chose to remove the context of the Immortan’s particular depravity, a mercy for himself as much as anything. Royce only looked haunted when he softened the blow. When Jack could manage, Furiosa only did what she wanted to do. They had each other’s back, and she knew that.

“What was your side of the deal?” Royce asked.

“No use for a wife and not allowed one where I’m from, if that’s what you’re asking,” Jack said.

Royce shook his head, “Did she offer to take you to the Vuvalini?”

Jack chose his words carefully, “We never spoke of it, but I knew she let an idea grow, until she thought I might come along. I don’t know what counts for your people. I meant to let her go but she was—”

She was so happy when she thought they were free.

Jack swallowed what he never bore well to remember, “You shouldn’t hold it against her, after everything. Cirrus can tell you. I didn’t know where we were going.”

“Our Furiosa,” Royce’s damp hand grasped for her in relief before gripping Jack in sympathy, “Lost with our secrets, and she did so well.”

He didn’t push Royce’s hand off, though his face burned like the sick man. Furiosa did everything well, and Royce shed kind tears for it that Jack felt as his own. They were all kind to want him to see the love beneath, but Jack’s own people didn’t reward relief with wasted water before the day was full.

With a mind to move on, Royce cleared his chest as best he could to give his half of the story in their unfinished custom. They had her longer than Jack, but the telling was short. Furiosa was a fearless Vuvalini girl raised as a wellspring in a crack of the Wasteland, an untamed treasure. She argued with Royce before she could speak and never wandered because she had too much a mind on her target for such a word. One fine day, she grew too clever or the Watch too wide, and a biker gang took her out in front of another girl hiding. All he had left was the whistle from her initiate day, ten years of joy dented in the dirt.

“Nothing was ever right after we lost her. The fight was in that one to lead, and I’ve always wondered if we didn’t lose a future that day, our dowsing rods in the desert. She was the fist of her mother,” Royce let silence surround a question that wasn’t for Jack, “What of her mother?”

They defined a gap that Royce didn’t expect him to fill, but she was someone Jack saw without knowing—Mary Jobassa as Cirrus named her, though no one else said a word. 

Harrow patted Royce’s leg, and he stirred, “Mary went after her to kill them all, anyone who saw the Green Place. That was our way, so no one would—” Royce coughed and gasped, “When she didn’t return, I waited for trouble. When no one returned, I already knew the end of her story.”

Royce loved Jobassa as forged kin, the brightest warrior ever pulled from the sands and with a child already inside, the peak of a mountain that saw far. Jack stood her up in his mind before a rusted door in the highest tower that opened on a sheer drop to the stars, a Fury altered by what little he knew of her anguish pinned to the Southern Cross. 

In the still dark, on the rare chance they slept alone by the rig on a run, or at Bullet Farm overnight where rank earned them privacy, Furiosa spoke a word or two of deepest pain and looked to him for comfort but never to make sense of it. He knew which games of Dementus she went stiff as death to recall, a spirit that watched her with stern fastness, and a person in pieces. It was her mother all that time. The twist of his gut and the grief on Royce dragged her out into the daylight.

“Furiosa had someone awaiting her in death. Someone who died early enough to be part of her secrets. She saw the worst of it, something grim but certain.”

“Mary had her victory. She protected the Green Place,” Royce said.

“It gave Furiosa a thirst for revenge as much as to leave it behind. That’s all I know for sure,” Jack said. While quick to tell, the account didn’t ease Royce.

Royce shook his head again, and the bells in his hair rolled, “It was an end of love and worthy of respect. This is something Furiosa would understand to accept. If she said nothing, that was the honor of it. We’ll remember her mother whole and beautiful.”

In the face of exhausted fervor, Jack didn’t press his conviction that Furiosa would tear herself from the bone before she accepted what happened to her ghost, her mother. A dry panic heaved through her whenever she needed him close to the truth inside with enough violence to keep him in his place, in fear for her. She only calmed to know he wouldn’t stop her leaving. Not that day, he would say, but always in sight soon.

The truth to learn from Royce was the power of a secret among their people. Jack saw now how it bound her all that long while by Jobassa’s example. At least he knew now that she struggled for the sake of something sacred to her, not for doubt in him. When he had time to sift his memories through it, there would be one where she first loved him enough to want him to stay beside her, even if she didn't say it then. To look for hidden tenderness was all he had left.

“Furiosa held close the hope of home for them both above all else. She was strong in that to the end,” Jack said.

As sure as Royce chose a portion of honor for Mary, Jack did the same. Furiosa didn’t always put the Vuvalini first. If she held tight to that kind of sacrifice, she wouldn’t have pushed so hard to bring him along when he could’ve stood beside her mother. Jack’s presence proved conflict in her promises, but sometimes the living needed a lie.

They agreed that each gave enough ground, and Royce offered honor for Jack as well, a place among the Vuvalini. With what remained of Swaddle Dog at the end of their route, a home waited for him, if he would swear to protect them life for life.

“I didn’t come here to convince you to keep me,” Jack put them off, even Andy’s protests, “You have a right to her story, and I wanted it to do you good. Came here for that, and I’ll still drive you all.”

Royce frowned, “The Green Place is nowhere, now. It exists in our people. You must keep the same silence around them as Furiosa, if you would come with us. That is our way.”

They described a familiar exchange, for Jack to vow before the older man and receive purpose. The small ceremony of it wasn’t too different from that of a shot of milk the Immortan might offer, a gratitude for the mothers and their hard-earned safety. This was something Jack knew he did well, but the request was heavy as ever. It was a thing he buried deep these years in respite, the labyrinth locked in his mind, and the door would swing open. Jack tried to shut it without thinking as he used to, but the words didn’t come.

The place he swore his first oath was the same one where his father died, and Jack knew who molded the first brands of the Citadel because the same man flew from his hands one day to the ground, and that was all funny somehow when he was young in the same way it was to catch Immortan Joe in a lie. It didn’t do you any good.

“It’s what Furiosa would want,” Royce said, and Jack had enough sense left to agree if not to speak.

But Furiosa planned for this at the end of the ride where she smiled to have both him and her people. She couldn’t have either or her mother, but Jack could give her this. He had a debt to pay. He wasn’t weak. He would do it once he wound himself up. Jack looked away to the little bells, the large hands that fit Furiosa between once. When he looked back to Royce, the other man leaned in to touch foreheads instead and grab his neck, their eyes disturbingly close.

“Just say it, and they’ll keep you whatever happens to me,” Royce said.

The hand squeezed Jack’s neck right over his brand. Eyes bored through him into it, and Royce pulled back to see.

“A more harsh mark,” Royce said in thought.

“It’s the mark of the—” Jack stopped himself, “the man who owned me for war. Furiosa had one too.”

Jack measured he gave them enough of what he meant to give, and they were past any relief to share. Royce didn’t stop him when he got up to leave with words of hope for good health. They would meet in better shape on the road, and Jack only promised to think and have those words in hand.

It was Harrow who walked after Jack and sat with him on a bench in the shade of Waystation’s big house, the town hall. On this side of the hill, he could look down on old concrete and twisted rust before the slice of riverbed, sprawled out with nothing to guess at. After the approach, Harrow placed a pretense of two jugs and a bucket at their feet. Not following Jack, just going to get water.

“I’m not Vuvalini either. Royce will want time for whatever they say between themselves."

“I’m fine. Old grief has a well-worn handle.” Jack really was fine, after a few minutes to recollect himself. He just needed some air without the smell of stagnated sickness. Everyone knew he had a steady head in worse spots, or they did back home.

“I see.”

The decision to take on the Vuvalini words was made already, by Furiosa. Once he had time to think, he’d find his way to accept it. Jack wasn’t a witless waster that cried for his first piece of honor, and Furiosa didn’t make him discover the means of dignity. He earned plenty in the past in different forms and understood what it meant to pick a new one. She was the last. Jack would shake off what oaths tore loose and pick up one more.

Harrow scooped a rock up from the gravel at their feet and drew back to aim, “Did Cirrus know about that mark? You don’t see as many people owned, this way. Royce won’t like that we didn’t know.”

The rock sailed through the sky in a great arc and didn’t hit anything, but Harrow made a noise of appreciation. The long glide of it was what he wanted.

“He’s seen it, but I never said it that way. I don’t mean to bring up what offends them,” Jack said.

Harrow dropped the next stone and looked at him like he was ridiculous.

With an impulse for explanation, Jack added, “You don’t often say what’s a fact of life. We didn’t call it anything, back where I came. I don’t want pity for what I did because of it. No one owns a man past death, and living was a choice.”

Harrow’s eyes still being two chips of glass, Jack could see the other man didn’t come from as cruel a place, not beyond the banal precedent all life faced. As Harrow turned over what he said, he wondered how a man of their age still held himself like an open book.

“You’ll stick up more for yourself next time, or I'll do it,” Harrow pointed at the ground, “Royce won’t make a bound man swear for anything, whatever his people’s ways.”

That was how Jack spent the time toward midday, in conversation with a stranger who jumped into his corner without knowing the cause. He wanted to learn more about that to a point of relaxed absurdity and smiled somewhere along Harrow’s wandering way. A brand could staunch bleeding, and they discussed coolant leaks, then steam engines. The Vuvalini all knew good food, but Harrow had roach gruel as a kid. They threw rocks at what came to mind as though they were two boys from different litters stuck in the back of a scouting crew convoy to compare notes on the lead.

Harrow was strange, even a cracked wastelander could mark that, but he had a clean air. Jack stopped his description of a book he traded to the Vuvalini to insist they shared the ability to read and write, well enough anyway.

Harrow apologized, “That’s unusual I think, as far out as Cirrus said you’re from.”

“Both my parents could read, and where I was kids were still taught, back then. I should’ve been more suspicious of Furiosa, but a fair number of the mechanics could read to teach each other.”

“I spent a year carting around the heaviest books you’ve ever seen to still be legible,” Harrow said as he reached for another rock to throw, “Royce knew I would read anything out here, but I didn’t realize it until he had me sewing people up in the back seat. What do they call it in the Far Wastes? An Organic Mechanic? I’m not complaining, but the way he pulled me into everything was a marvelous trick.”

Jack got an honest earful of Royce and Harrow’s meeting in the Wasteland, but it was a balm of a story. One man hunted for the right people to save, the other looked for a way to set people right. They spent years crossing paths of purpose, until they realized each planned around the other for another day to rest. In the end, they simply decided not to part ways and smooth themselves into one travel. It sounded like a gentle choice.

“He sounds easy enough to please. It’s no wonder to me that you got him talking,” Jack said.

Harrow laughed, “It wasn’t difficult, but a long way to wear him down. Otherwise, I rather think he caught me. Well, in the literal sense a few times when I stepped on a secret meeting or two. I told him to say what he wanted or stop me next time. Vuvalini dignity can’t take the embarrassment if you know they won’t shoot you.”

“Just like that, then?” Jack asked, “That wouldn’t have worked with Fury, though we front-loaded the standoff.”

Harrow hummed his sympathy, “There was more to it than that for vows, but less between men with no home around. No doubt she had the mothers in mind, and you were in a tighter spot.”

Harrow continued with a more serious tone, and no more thrown rocks, “For her sake, Royce will let you walk away from any oath you take, as long as it’s up to him. That sort of thing hasn’t come back to haunt us yet.”

The heat of the day reached them as the shade turned slim, and they moved to lean against the town hall instead of heading back. Harrow wiped his brow and told Jack how far he drove to meet this life of his. There was a place near the city down the rail line where people dug underground before the big booms. It wasn’t so green, but it knew exactly what it was, and some there figured they beat the end of the world. Harrow didn’t care about secrets because his didn’t matter. None of them could get back inside.

“My teacher was taught by a real engineer, from Before, but I didn’t want to be a redundancy kept in store for a spot of need to open up,” Harrow said.

There were no windows, but he looked straight up one day and made the mistake of wishing to see more, and want turned to need past the balance of his own, unnamed people. They were kind enough to let him leave and bother the rest of the world to find a place he could spread decency, in the light with his remnant of existence.

“I’m sure you think I’m an idiot, the way things are outside, but once the road was under my wheels there was no way back, so I lived with the choice.”

Jack couldn’t help himself. He laughed harder than he had in a year, and Harrow laughed with him. What an odd fellow to meet on the road, but nothing was ever beyond the road. To choose Wasteland chaos over security without a hint whether any of them were worth the trouble was inbred madness. The same people who made Furiosa snatched up the last unspoiled man in the world. They were all greedy beyond belief, and it cheered him.

“A do-gooder,” Jack said as they caught their breath, “You must be a smart one to live this long on that foolish hope.”

“Do they really have none of that, where you’re from?” Harrow asked with the shine back in his eye, now clear to Jack as his earnest wish, still full of hope. He was a lucky one, far beyond Jack.

“Jack?”

Jack left his smile where he stared down into the dry dirt under his feet with folded arms, thinking. You could drive in circles full of hope. Where you went only mattered at the start, then the way of it was the going. He had to start again, and again, and again…it was a virtuous difference to get up to do good.

“I’m not as smart, or a real fool,” he said.

Harrow frowned, but Jack waved it away, “Thanks for the tale. I bet it’s the best most people have heard. I see why you tell it.”

“And I’m sorry that you didn’t get to see your Furiosa with her people. I’ve found peace is a rare thing out here, by the fault of no one in particular and worse the pain,” Harrow said.

They went to fetch water and see if the others finished. Jack complimented Harrow’s care for Royce as they climbed back up. The Vuvalini, both men could agree, seemed an unstoppable force that should transcend the Wasteland’s pull toward nothing. If Royce had half the will of Fury, he meant to keep Harrow as long as luck held.

Harrow set his jugs at Jack’s feet by the door with a sad smile and insisted both he and Royce would be there when Jack returned to Waystation to pick them up.

“We don’t give up on them, either. I’m going to make him live.”

Jack finished his last survey report and didn’t lie awake to waste light and glare at his maps that pointed back to the Citadel. He didn’t reconsider the scale of it until his eyes ached to wonder whether this point or that was the last place he saw Furiosa. That was the path not taken now, his decision made to go another way. The anticipation was over, his new end began, and he let Furiosa come to him as she always did after a run. Jack held his mind on the tired promise that he’d do right by her somehow, but for now he settled in to sleep with Furiosa a touch clearer to see.

She was a messy heap in the bed he bargained to borrow from an old Imperator he knew well. The room was secure to leave her for two runs on the road without the worry of a knife as she slept alone to fight through a sickness. Their second year lay behind them, but it was the first time he was sure that she trusted him, not their deal but the man Jack, because she forgot to hide her star chart and pushed herself up and into his arms in relief. As she did then, she gave up why Rictus stalked her through the caves and her panic that Joe already knew what she wanted Jack to help her hide. This time, she told him what Dementus meant to her in full, but it was still too late for Jack to do anything about it and no way to change how he’d let her fall away from him to rest.

In his dream, Furiosa was also a blue bundle slung across a junky bike as it scratched her way from home toward the worst day of her life. The grooves of the peach seed in her tangled hair scratched his fingers when he held her, then it pressed between hands too small and none were his. The shadow of Furiosa’s sweat against his blanket that he left in the little room was the blood of a figure that watched him over her shoulder. He relived the moment Furiosa made herself real in his heart with a claw of belief that he wanted to help her, now crowded by a person who was never there. Jack finally understood her desperation to retrace the arc of flight across a page of Wasteland sky. He knew the place behind her vacant stare before they parted.

Furiosa wasn’t just another woman pleading for help he barely had. She was his partner on the road and vowed to die there rather than in a cage, and she knew both to make the decision. It was a profundity to him on that day, an answer to a question he didn’t get to ask any of the wives before. He held her life in his hands up until then but decided the greater glory would be to watch her go because she was going somewhere real, if Jack managed to play things right. Furiosa had a story, and she wasn’t chasing a mirage in fever. When he opened his mouth to say so, time dissipated.

When he woke, Jack climbed natural stairs from the bunkroom down to the ground, then way up and outside to sit on a rock above the garage of Sanctuary. He sat in the mist as it rolled in and turned white with the broken morning light to listen for the echo of her. The rest of today he planned to scrounge, cut, and weld, and the complaints of his old BlackThumb would soon run through him in consideration for his shoddy work. He reserved the start of the day for her, his desperate Fury with a mother to put to rest, a people and a hundred secrets of theirs to keep that she passed to him.

The mist thickened and would turn to rain again soon. The rise of it off hot earth after water was the last breath of Furiosa on his neck before they took her away. There she was.

As small to feel as what he called hope back at the beginning, when he shared for the curiosity that she always wanted more. On that day in his dream, he went straight from his report with the Immortan to Furiosa with her clutched to his shirt, and Jack believed in something completely new. She became his proof of elsewhere out of control, where the ashes of the Immortan’s world didn’t fall. Old Joe was tricked to let Jack keep this one thing he held in his arms. Furiosa would go free, and he swore to himself it would settle him for the rest of his life.

When they clung to each other at the end and grasped every second without a care for the empty last, it was her strength that carried him away alive. Dementus came back to finish the job, but she stared through them all because she was going somewhere. Ghosts went slow and vengeful. Jack didn’t give up easily in the circle because he thought to become one, because she believed all that time and wouldn’t leave him behind. In that bed in the little sickroom it was decided, and Jack among the Awaited.

What he put together at Waystation didn’t change the core of them. It just gave him what he needed to snap his wheel to the steering shaft. The thought of it should calm him as it used to, but he let himself weep at last while he still had time today, alone in the mist where it didn't matter. The road had a bitter turn and no clear end because a return to home was Furiosa’s revenge, now rolling sands, and her lost seed a mother’s love surrendered. Jack would carry their hope all the way around at whatever cost until he found vindication for both. What he took must be enough to make due, though so much time passed. He'd bear what fate his heart made anew on the road.

Only one person could sanction help from Sanctuary as he shifted gears to business of the long road, and Jack found him where he often did these days. Oldest History-man napped on his cot in a back room of his stores or watched the jagged circle of light from his window as it moved across his door and the far wall. Either way, he lay many hours there to preserve his strength. One of the survey crew built the metal risers that brought his bed to the right height for him to get himself in and out, most of the time.

History-man didn’t stop Jack, though, when he offered an arm or to fetch his robe and cane. He didn’t know why he started doing that. Sometimes he’d think of Joe and his wide-eyed alter boys and picture what the Immortan looked like now and how long before Jack could be sure he was wasted away. His skin burned under History-man’s dry, paper hands, but he kept on helping. At least there was no fanfare to it.

“I waited for you to come by. I didn’t want to fall asleep and let you get away,” History-man said. He groaned in Jack’s ear as he unbent to stand.

“Got that report ready in the big room,” Jack said.

“Yes, the last one?” History-man asked. Jack stiffened in surprise.

“Last of the season,” History-man patted Jack’s arm as he shuffled to the doorway, “The rain came in before you were back. I hoped you weren’t too stuck in the mud.”

Not toward the big room, the old man turned to lead them down a storm-dimmed hallway, and Jack followed at his slow pace past cascading troughs of trickling rainwater and rumbling thunder.

“I was joking with you, Jack. One of your boys came to tell me you let them all go. He must’ve scurried up here as soon as you were back.”

After they got the rig through a mire of mud, the crew lined up from their play in the rain. A good crew, for their part in the job. Four boys left now and too old to whine, but they did when Jack broke the news of their last run with him. As Jack was told at that age, there was no crying on the rig, but he left aside his usual strategy of discipline to play games and tell stories of pissboys the rest of the way back. They earned a break.

He figured they would spread the news for him, but he bet on them at least running home to slack off first and kiss their mothers.

"It’s not a secret that I’m free to leave. They’re good boys, offered to work the garage while the weather holds,” Jack said.

History-man didn’t care overly much about the education of his survey pups, and Jack always took a turn to remind him. The half-lives of the people here were short, worse than the typical Citadel Wretched, but even the worst war pup was never left out of use. If they wanted to learn about rig tuning in the time they had, Jack did what he could.

“I’m sure you need the help for what you’ll drive off on. Fix up what’s left, if you’re feeling generous enough to not leave us stranded.”

He followed History-man to a stuffy room with still air and no windows, past stacks of books and towering shelves to the back of his library. Dark for a chat, but as nice and dry as Sanctuary had for both men’s aching bones. They settled into salvaged armchairs after Jack wheeled aside the reading table and an adjustable tree for old-world bulbs, but he left the door open for a faint, cleaner light.

“I wasn’t going to steal the survey rig,” Jack said. History-man gave a closed smile.

Even though Jack scratched the current rig together himself over the years, his plans included a fair replacement. History-man in a mood to joke was a rare thing. The old man knew the exact limit of Jack’s honesty and would guess he came by early today to discuss what Sanctuary owed him for service.

Jack leaned back for the next jab and pondered the stars carved in the library ceiling, fancy with metal fixings. There was nothing to read on History-man’s face, nothing on Jack’s either after years of coordinated discussions. He never told Jack who made all these decorations and how long ago. The beauty of Sanctuary stopped somewhere on the other side of the courtyard past the kitchen gardens.

“You may as well take it, if you can put something together for market drives,” History-man said at last, “I’m not planning another survey after you leave.”

They did meet eyes for that, Jack with raised brows, before he went back to the ceiling with an unasked question. History-man never put a number to his age, though he was older than the Immortan by a league. Speculation on how only interested Jack because of how wrecked he could imagine Joe to meet him. Jack should ask Harrow if it was in one of those books. The fact was that he didn’t have to ask anything to understand History-man was at the limit.

“You’re sure? I figure they’ve been saying you’re going to kick it for as long as I’ve been here,” Jack said.

“As long as you’ve been alive, probably.” History-man gave a short laugh.

He continued, “No, I’m sure. I know what it looks like. Perhaps you’ve never seen it. I don’t know why, but I never thought of that.”

Jack watched plenty of people prepare for the end. They just weren’t usually old. History-man knew a lot, so he probably guessed it without even thinking. His gut knew not to waste what time he had left to ask Jack, so they skipped ahead.

“Did you ever have a real grandfather?” History-man asked. Jack shook his head, but they were long past any sharpness to personal questions.

“My mother’s father was never known to be dead after all that,” Jack didn’t remember how she’d put it, the way people talked across distance, “after the satellites or whatever fell off. Something had to get him out there, but people like her acted like not knowing made him still alive.”

“If a tree falls in a forest, and no one is around to hear it,” History-man recited thoughtfully, “does it make a sound?”

“See, it’s stuff like that,” Jack pointed without looking, for emphasis of something the old man never got, “That’s what they’re like out there, the History-men. I call you that because it’s what you are, not because I care for a lost grandfather.”

History-man shrugged his bony shoulders, “I would’ve liked to know what they kept close on skin, and what was important enough for more permanent accoutrement.”

Jack huffed half a laugh, “I’d bet this whole room there’s at least one History-man’s skin hanging in prominent permanence. Some piece of Wasteland has someone who thinks that’s a well-done investment.”

As he said it, he wondered why the Immortan never did that, though it was a long time before any History-man arrived at the Citadel. Maybe he thought of it by now, someone with the V8 tenets etched all over, or that Organic Mechanic’s notes on anatomy to cover a bloodbag, killed carefully for a tortured education of the wives.

“Probably can’t read it either,” History-man joked again. Jack sighed out the bad luck of guessing what he didn’t need to worry about either way.

Instead, he pondered the conversation they fell into. The old man wasn’t trying to trick Jack, which was strange enough. They should be tugging Jack’s mother between them, as he hadn’t mentioned her in a year or two. History-man used to want more of her work. He should bring up his stash for the road and settle that while the giving was good.

“You’re an intelligent man by my book, Jack,” History-man said after a silence.

That one cracked Jack a small smile, “I feel like there’s an implication there.”

“Ah, don’t misunderstand. I was thinking and not saying anything, wasn’t I?”

He thud his cane on the stone floor, “I was wishing. I wish I could see them again. I want the students in their seats with their well-fed, nervous futures who were going to save the world.”

The other boot dropped, as it sometimes did with History-man, but Jack didn’t know what to say this time. They were far off from the facts of any matter they usually discussed. Jack was a poor substitute from the Wasteland where they read people, or he was a decent enough replacement to keep the engine on the road. His interpretation was unimportant, as History-man kept talking all on his own.

“I saw so much, and I sat here for a lifetime to put what I remember on the page. This is what I decided to do, when it fell apart,” History-man gestured at the vastness of his knowledge piled outside himself, “but even dying, I want to fly above it again and see it all. Maybe it’s that you’re leaving, and you won’t come back to say what you’ll see…”

The old man gave Jack more than he ever had of himself, stuff he didn’t write and didn’t say why. Jack should tell him to do so before the end because it was a wrenching that would stop with him and never pick up again. More importantly, it was too old to bear and unwanted by Jack to hear, better left as silent letters to carry through the market for someone else. 

History-man yearned to revisit his watch tower for the stars. It sat empty, far out in nowhere because the light from all the people of Before used to crawl over the world so thick you couldn’t see the dark. He wanted to follow the ground rock trail of glaciers that might creep back with everyone gone and face the twisted wreck of their nuked graves. So many places he’d been without driving, and he didn’t have pictures to remember that he used to hold in his hand.

“Yeah, I had one of those for a while,” Jack said. 

Not of his parents or grandparents, it was a photo without color, thick to withstand time and hidden away. Another family that was still his own stood in front of a house they built in the way-back. A young man on the edge stood straight with an ancient rifle. Jack took a break to nowhere, and History-man went on without him a while.

“...Even if it’s destroyed, I find I want to go see it. I’ve had more than enough, but the world isn’t dead yet. If I’m the last, then it will be new again, and I’ll never know.”

Jack leaned forward into his own hands, face covered. Nothing he tried to say stopped the outpour of History-man’s memories, which washed over Jack as a horror. He balked to remember the living Earth even his parents missed. Everyone who cut, burned, and killed the world rested while new people carried out the agony on each day that kept happening. Who killed the world? Immortan Joe would ask them to match the unfairness to anger with no place to go but where he pointed.

At least Jack’s resentment made sense within the Citadel. Sanctuary had short-lived people with meager bads and goods. History-man valued their children in proportion to mutation, but they would feel the loss when they ran out his brain leavings to trade for gas. Jack couldn’t point to real atrocity, but History-man had gall to express any need to comb through what was far from his by right. Jack’s little crew knew more of the real world, and to teach them wasn’t petty.

“I’ll tell you some, if you want to hear it. What’s out there,” Jack said. 

History-man stopped at last, when Jack offered a glimpse at the maze of three pillars far away in his mind in exchange for silence. This wasn’t mercy. Whether History-man recognized Jack recently changed and made a last trick, or the two of them were simply mismatched in cares, it was a deal. History-man could savor the pain of knowledge, and nevermind what Jack got except that it was help he’d thank him to have.

To make new hope and carry it for others, Jack must do better next time the weight of his word swung around toward old Joe. He wanted to share the burdens of others as they tried to do for him, but there was a balance to find against the poison of the Citadel that would stay inside him forever. There was no shame for something he’d always known to grow around in spite. This was a test of Jack’s handle on what he wouldn’t say as he meant to do good. 

Jack knew how to get things over with. They were both leaving, anyway.

“I won’t tell a soul,” History-man said.

“Not even where you’re going,” Jack insisted.

“I’m not going anywhere.” He was coming from somewhere, that was all. Jack started their detour.

There was a new world in the Wasteland with only three sharp corners, where the present moment ruled over a road that cut back on itself. Jack was raised to drive a perpetual war machine fueled by people and steered by the only man who wanted to live forever. Healthy women were the last livestock aside from rats and roaches and the maggots they grew with their own bodies, cultivated from a mass of broken people without the instinct to lay down and stop writhing. It’s what History-man called an ecosystem, centered on an irradiated god’s hands on four aqua-cola siphons. For a long time, Jack prayed to them.

He set the frame to show cruelty, to give a voice to one facet of the way life caught him, but to keep a steady head in the telling. This wasn’t a conversation for healing his heart, so he stayed above his deepest dark. Jack picked something from his childhood, where History-man could see another dead way of living, more recently past.

A series of disasters decimated Joe’s original gang, but the Citadel filled to bursting with the first batch of warboys who brewed a revolt. Young as a pup, Jack watched forty-four of them each lose a hand for wasting chrome spray to make their handprints on the cave wall in mockery of what belonged to the Immortan. They were supposed to disappear. Jack and some other full-life kids caught and bagged the bloody pieces for a People Eater, they cheered with the crowd, and the stumped young men petted Jack when he snuck back to see which ones wanted to live. When he was older, he stopped meeting any that knew they did.

Jack made a second story for good measure, something worse that wasn’t real. All the pieces of it happened, just not together or to him. He tested whether he still spun words fine enough to convince a man as smart as History-man, but between the falsity Jack told himself something true.

He bent low beside someone he grew up with, eyes at the level of dirty boots, and they were clammy with wasted water from a tussle where Jack deserved the blood dripping from his face to the floor of the war room. It was his fault and his desperate plan to lie through their teeth to the Praetorian who beat them further. Jack kept the act up right to the Immortan’s face on the evening he discovered that wouldn’t kill him because he was clever.

When he finished and folded his memories away, History-man hummed as though he found another level of understanding but said no judgment or praise. Jack approved of himself in absence of feedback, to speak of the Immortan without hesitation. He still wasn’t too soft to survive.

“It’s terrible, Jack. Thank you.”

Back in the big room, Cirrus spread out a long map down and along the good seaside without rads and stared at Jack over the top of History-man’s head as the old man settled into a stool with Jack’s help. He was here on time, ready to present their case without knowing Jack planned to get his own chat in early. Nothing Jack learned about the Vuvalini said he should scheme as he saw fit or assume their best interest as the driver, but they both knew he was better favored by History-man for requisition.

Since he switched from Waystation straight into that last survey run, they hadn’t seen much of each other. A short time apart grounded their new, unsaid opinions, and Jack meant to reinforce them by not asking what Cirrus and Andy spoke with Royce about alone, as they didn’t offer. Cirrus moved first with a nod and weighted the map edges. It seemed they were still okay.

“You’ll be glad to know,” History-man told Cirrus after the silence which began their meeting, “that Jack arranged to carry goods for Sanctuary on your journey. You’ll have papers for travel if you take the railway.”

“Did I?” Jack asked. He looked at History-man with a warning against whatever this extra push was about, but the old man shrugged. Cirrus raised a doubtful brow.

“I suppose we forgot to circle back after I gave you the survey rig. We also forgot to confirm that you’re taking my best scouts. So, tell me where you’re going, and we’ll put together a last haul. I have business to complete.”

On the way back from Waystation, Cirrus spread as much of the route as he could on the dash for them to explore. From what study Jack managed, none of it made a secret way. It was as likely as it was unfortunate that they might meet many caravans or pass raiders partway down and around the Basin across the high ground wedge. A well-worn path, but there wasn’t much for trade.

“What I send goes far downstream, but we can arrange a drop-off,” History-man said with a gesture to the map.

The settlement they aimed for wasn’t secret either. A decorative illustration of a bridged chasm in an escarpment marked it as the boundary of another branch of civilization, one that reached toward mountains of the proper Wasteland. There being a known crowd at the end of the route hid the Vuvalini, but Jack glanced at Cirrus whose eyes pointed away from the table in thought. They discussed how sneaky History-man could be many times before, Cirrus didn’t look sure about giving anything more than required, and Jack trusted him.

“Here.” Jack grabbed two straight edges from the mapping table and marked an area of smaller focus, but with room enough to slip the old man, if Cirrus wanted.

“Any place in there,” Jack said.

“Not so very far,” History-man hummed. The farthest part Jack included sat weeks out of the way, but it looked small on paper. History-man reached for a few of his baubles and stroked his white stubble in ominous thought.

“Quiet morning, Jack?” Cirrus asked. He rolled his eyes as they stood and waited, and Jack had to look away to keep from doing the same. They could hear bootstraps creaking, as History-man was likely to drop another one.

“Not really. Got some things out of the way,” Jack said.

“I guess so,” Cirrus looked him up and down with arms folded but with the hint of a smile. It was a bluff. There was nothing different about Jack aside from a thorough clean-up after the run, “Are you growing your hair out?”

They were good, and Jack smiled, “Didn’t get around to fixing it. The crew wants to polish the rig for me. You should send Andy up for some mech work.” 

“She can butcher your hair again, too.”

Jack also meant they needed to brush up together to train for a fight, which there was room for around the garage even through the rain. They needed to go over anything likely to happen with Andy and refresh their signals for communication, and Jack should spar against them to test his scarred left side. Cirrus nodded at ease through their silent agreement about it plus whatever was in his own plans to prepare.

“Tomorrow, then.”

History-man placed the things he turned over in his hands as marks on the map. One tumbled near Jack, followed by his crooked finger to reposition it rather than make him strain to stand.

“There,” History-man said when it was right, “Any of these settlements is large enough.”

There were six places. The spread leaned on the Wasteland half rather than the coast, and one was the escarpment town high on the lip of the Basin. Jack met Cirrus’ eye. What would it matter for History-man to know the exact place, when the next closest would take several days by his quick estimation? But Cirrus was Vuvalini, and Jack would rather show he meant what he said to Royce. He would say the right words and follow.

“There’s no convenience on the road, I hear,” History-man looked at Jack to answer, “I assume you’d prefer what’s closest to your path.”

“This one,” Cirrus decided, faster than Jack expected. He revealed the route's exact end, and History-man sighed thoughtfully.

“Interesting.”

“What’s the haul?” Cirrus asked.

Jack pulled over more stools, so they could sit on either side of History-man as he muttered half to himself and half to Cirrus about prized components in the Sanctuary stash, water pumps, and generator schematics.

“These are things needed there?” Cirrus interrupted him.

History-man shook his head, “Things they may have and not take. It isn’t my goal for your cargo to stay there. I’ll choose something for you to trade there as well, a distraction.”

The whole point of History-man was to be smart. Still, Jack found himself impressed and shared that with Cirrus quietly as the old man muttered on. Business never compelled him to ask how History-man chose cargo, or what Jack should look out for. He couldn’t guarantee what the survey crew might find on a run. If the long-relayed messages Jack passed from Waystation held more than news, then it was power revealed at the very end. The apparent waste of it, from Jack’s perspective, tempered further interest.

“How do you know the place? How long will you stay there?” History-man asked.

Cirrus was silent, and Jack shrugged.

“Just picked it now. We don’t know it,” Jack said.

“Of course.” History-man leaned his arm on the map, fingers playing at chuck of pretty crystal that marked a town not chosen, as though they told him all. That did interest Jack, but there was nothing to gain from interrupting History-man again.

“That girl of yours is a bright one,” he said with a far-off look, “Tell her to come pick something to keep, before you go. I’d like to see what she’ll choose.”

Cirrus glanced at Jack with a sudden question he didn’t voice.

“Thank you. She enjoys your books,” he answered, “Did you get one, Jack? Is that what distracted you both before I arrived?”

“No,” Jack said.

“Something around that way,” History-man said with a wave, distracted.

Cirrus gave Jack a knowing look right in front of the old man, “I’ll tell her to come by soon.”

History-man scribbled down a list of things he might forget as they came back to business. All three of them toyed with the rocks he gathered up to think with, until he made the effort to stand and lean over the map. He traced a hand down their branch into the Basin and back up the line that went through the escarpment on the other side. Their margin of the Wasteland under his fingers felt like a taut thread he pulled with a relay of resources. The other side was rumor, but he spoke of a stronger river, more water though not better people. An abundance of interests grew there, and they should take care.

“The raiders come from up there?” Cirrus asked.

“Raiders come from the Wasteland,” History-man said with a huff, then a laugh, “I’d leave any consideration for that, with regards to your travel, to Jack.”

“I know I don’t miss-judge you two,” History-man said over the last, uncounted look that passed between them, “If you haven’t told him what you told me, I hope you said enough to not leave unprepared.”

The old bastard tipped the deal like it was nothing, and Jack bet he had a bit of fun doing so. Cirrus would never resist asking now, once they left.

“He knows what he knows. I’m not going soft on you, History-man,” Jack said, for all that it mattered to threaten a dead man, “We don’t have a war rig. Nothing we can do about that with what we have here.”

“Then that’s what you should reconsider while the weather holds. That’s what I know about the world out there,” History-man said.