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She was altogether too beautiful, too pure and unblemished.
She glowed in the harsh red sun, exposed skin peeling and lips cracked. As she tucked a long, golden lock of hair back behind her ear, Max had to look away. Furiosa caught him and smirked. He glared, tugging a blade at his belt warningly. It only made her laugh, but at least she turned away to do it. When he risked a glance back at Angharad, she was watching with a confused expression.
Quickly, Max screwed the fuel cap on his car shut and grunted at Nux to move on with the jerry can. Bending over his bonnet, he squinted at one of his more recent maps. A body made it’s way into his field of vision. The Vulvalini had found clothes for the Wives at some point when Max had been gone. Angharad had her hair curled into a bun, a red bandana tied around her head, a grey Henley stretched over her belly, long, nut brown skirt with motorcycle boots to protect her legs. She wore a bandolier for the sawn-off shotgun nestled in a holster on the front of her bike, a four-inch long knife and a pistol on her belt, extra magazines secreted in a dozen holes in a Kevlar vest, currently unstrapped around her shoulders because it didn’t fit over her belly.
“Water?” she prompted when he didn’t move, startling him. “You look thirsty”
He got a hold of himself by looking deliberately away from her shy smile, grunted and snatched the canteen she offered.
“Where are we going?” she asked as he sucked down a mouthful.
“Somewhere safe. Where we can stay for a bit” he muttered, voice gruff from disuse.
He didn’t always travel with them: too many people around, too much talking, agitated him; made his skin itch. He didn’t like waking them with his screaming at night, but his Ghosts weren’t as angry when he was with them. So he’d run with them for a while, and then branch off on his own, eventually finding his way back to them. The three surviving Vuvalini were experts at travelling unnoticed across the ruined earth, but Furiosa left messages, clues, that he could follow.
Max nodded to the stretch of her tummy to explain further, and handed her back the water. She held his gaze and took a sip. Droplets glistened on her bottom lip. He looked away.
“Not long now” she agreed, rubbing her stomach.
“Hm” he grumbled and whistled to Furiosa, who looked at him with a raised eyebrow, but nodded when he gestured they should move out; a ‘wrap it up’ twirl of his finger.
He made to move away.
“Wait, Max-” he stopped dead, stiff as a board, evaluating the threat from the corner of his eye, not moving his head in Angharad’s direction. She swallowed, fiddled with the water container. “-Would it be okay—I mean, do you mind, maybe, if I went with you?”
She was looking at him from under her long lashes, chewing on the corner of her bottom lip. A shudder went through him.
“You gun’ let us die, bunjee!” the shout from the old man came from over his shoulder. Max gritted his teeth and didn’t look in his direction.
“You don’t—don’t feel like—I can ride, it’s okay” Angharad said quickly, mistaking his silence for reluctance.
He cleared his throat and shook his head, gesturing at the car.
“Get Toast. Take your bike. Get your stuff” he snapped gruffly, shifting away.
He threw himself into the driver’s seat, tossing some stuff from the passenger’s seat into the back. Without looking up, he raised a middle finger to Furiosa, who was leaning against the handlebars of her bike eyeing the exchange. She made a sound that might have been another laugh and started her bike.
The Vuvalini led the charge, with Max taking up the rear. Angharad was quiet for a long time, moving as little as possible once she noticed that he flinched and ratcheted tight every time she shifted. With a huff, she slung her boots up onto the dash, wound down the window a little and untied her hair. The waft of the long, sweat tangled locks rushed over him and out the other window, past Max’s nose. He glanced sideways at her, her eyes half-closed, hands folded neatly over the taunt balloon of her stomach, the wind playing with her hair, tugging it this way and that, off her high cheek bones and then over her face. She smiled without opening her eyes.
“You’re staring”
He looked sharply away, changing down a gear and manoeuvring them over a sand hill. Angharad sat up in his periphery, combing fingers through her tangled hair.
“I don’t mind. Nux stares at Capable all the time”
His fingers twitched on the steering wheel. Capable’s bright red hair flew out behind her where she sat behind Nux on the bike, face raised to the sky, arms outstretched. He couldn’t see, but he knew that the War Boy was grinning broadly.
“Stupid” he commented, rough.
“Why? Because he’s going to die?”
He gave a nod as he frowned at an outcropping of rock to the east, trying to discern whether it was the right landmark to turn towards, or whether it was further on.
“We’re all going to die” she replied calmly, earning her a side-eye from Max. She stroked her belly and smiled, slightly vacant. “We might as well be dead, just drifting around out here, existing just to be owned…” she trailed off and then looked at him, direct and unpretentious.
Max looked back, cataloguing the fire in her eyes and the fierce set to her mouth.
“When he looks at her, it doesn’t matter. That he’s dying and we’re...property. That’s living. It has to be living, when it doesn’t matter that you’re dying”
He grunted. Angharad looked away, embarrassed.
“You’re not things” he mumbled, suddenly.
It was said quietly enough that she thought she might have imagined it. Her own mantra must have been echoing in her head loud enough for her to hear it aloud, she thought. When she studied him, surprised, Max was looking at her seriously. He was as harshly beautiful as the landscape, brow furrowed at her. He shrugged at her wondering expression and went back to staring out the windscreen.
“You’re not” he confirmed clearly.
That night, he sat the last watch with Furiosa, because neither of them could sleep any longer. The Wives curled together in the moon shadow cast by his Holden, Toast golden to Dag’s glowing silver and Angharad between them, her arms protectively encircling Cheedo. Capable smiled in her sleep, curled under Nux’s chin.
Starlight danced in Furiosa’s eyes as she scraped steel over a whetstone, rhythmically.
“I don’t have to tell you to be careful with her” she said when he moved his gaze on from Angharad.
“So why are you?”
She stopped sharpening.
“Maybe I don’t trust you”
“Maybe you’re full of shit” he grouched.
She snorted and tossed the knife end-over-end at him. He caught it with one hand and stabbed a lizard that dared poke it’s head out from under the rock he was sitting on. He sliced it in half, wiped the blood and sand off the blade and handed Furiosa her half and the knife back.
The Vuvalini were shifting, making as if to wake with the dawn now creeping stagnant, hot fingers over the horizon, when Furiosa spoke again.
“Maybe I don’t trust her”
Max fixed her with an incredulous look. She shrugged, looked away with the shadow of the Citadel in her eyes, the red brand on her neck angrily eating the first of the daylight.
“What he did to them…they’ll survive. Eventually. It’ll scar. Hers already have. She’s strong”
Furiosa paused, studied him intently.
“Your scars are still bleeding, still screaming. It could ruin you both”
Angharad’s son, Freedom, was born in a hastily erected tent on the far side of the Salt Lakes. Max stood watch with Maddy and Nux. Dag and Capable paced while Toast stripped and cleaned every weapon she could lay her hands on. She was tough and practical, brazen; mostly, Max disliked her the least. Capable chirruped at him and smiled too much and thought that his discomfort when she kissed Nux in front of him was amusing. Dag still hissed and swore at him sometimes, just because. She’d been a little crazier than usual since the Keeper of the Seeds died, cut up by Pole Cats from Immortan Joe’s hunting party. Cheedo flinched a lot and cried for no reason and Angharad…
She confused him. Unnerved him. Made him want to run, made him want to stay and protect her, in a way he hadn’t protected anyone in a long time. Since his picked his wife and daughter’s corpses off the bitumen road. Their ghosts, his friends, allies, strangers, his daughter and wife and lovers, screamed altogether as the sun set.
He dropped suddenly into a crouch and covered his ears as best he could without letting go of his rifle.
“Best get used to it, laddie-buck. There’ll be a lot of that from here on in” croaked the oldest surviving Vulvalini, emerging from the tent.
The others scrambled to their feet and all swept in. Looking up from his knees, Max saw bloodied blankets and bloodied sand, her naked legs and sweaty, grey face. He staggered upright, thinking for a wild, insane moment that the old woman had killed her. Then she looked at him, too weak to lift her head from Cheedo’s lap, and smiled.
“It’s a boy” he saw her mouth before the tent shut, enclosing her in the feminine coos and steady, comforting murmurs of her sister-wives and the Vulvalini.
Furiosa saw him head for his car when Capable spilled out, joy loud and shrill bursting from her, throwing her arms around Nux and proclaiming that the baby’s name was Freedom. She slammed her prosthetic down on the bonnet to stop him taking off without a single word, glared at him.
“This taking off without a word shit is old, fool” she growled at him through the windscreen.
Kicking open the door, Max rounded on her. She matched him, teeth gleaming spit as she bared them ferociously. When he reached into his jacket, she grabbed his wrist, twisted and snuck a pistol under his jaw.
“Map” he snarled at her.
“What? You going to tell us where you’re heading this time?” she growled at him, tearing the ink-dotted fabric from his inside pocket.
With one hand, he batted the pistol away, with the other he snatched it back.
Unfolded the correct piece onto the bonnet, he jabbed his finger at a rocky outcropping hard enough that the joint cracked. She dragged the map closer to her and stared at it a moment before turning a calculating look on Max. Clenching his jaw, he used his whole hand to point in the right direction.
“These caves are three—maybe four—days, that way. I don’t know if they’re safe. There could be others-” now he twirled his finger around to indicate the wide, empty space that surrounded them.
“-You’ll see anyone coming for miles here”
Furiosa put together his plan from between the lines and finally, nodded. Max slumped in relief as she folded the map and handed it back.
“You should say goodbye” she said, offering her hand to him. He grunted, clasped her hand, and left.
“Your hair is different” he muttered when he saw her next.
Dusk was quiet over the sand dunes and they were a day from the caves he’d secured. Nux and the Vulvalini had seen him coming and Furiosa had come out on her bike to meet him and guide him past the booby traps they’d set in a perimeter around their little camp.
Angharad touched her shorter hair.
“Do you like it?”
Max shrugged and looked around. He failed to see what his opinion had to do with her hair, and didn’t see her face fall.
“Where’s the baby?” he asked.
“Asleep”
With a grunt, he circled around her and took himself and the big bungara he’d killed over to his car. He showed Toast how to cook the meat on the hot engine of the vehicle. Then he sat up with Furiosa, the two of them leaning on the bike watching the night steal over the dunes.
“You’ve been a fool again” she said, catching him watching Angharad changing Freedom.
He furrowed his brow at her and grunted.
“Should have told her she looked nice”
The crease of his brow deepened, teeth exposed by the creeping upwards motion of his top lip. Furiosa rolled her eyes and looked over her shoulder. Capable bounced over with chunks of thick meat for them.
“What did you say to her?” she demanded immediately, before handing Max his food.
Furiosa took her own dinner and grinned meanly.
“What?!” he snarled, gruffly, staring between the two of them.
He made to grab for his food but Capable jumped backwards, stuck a hand on her cocked hip.
“You were nasty to her and now she’s hurt”
Max tensed, slow like a predator, and looked over his shoulder. His palms twitched. His Ghosts were too silent. Angharad was cooing to her baby, laying on a shawl on the sand, making tiny baby noises up at her.
“Not. Not hurt” he growled at Capable, folding his arms.
“Give Max his food, child. He’ll work it out” said Furiosa bluntly.
The young woman huffed, pushed his food at his chest and flounced away. Furiosa took a vicious bite of her own meat and bared her teeth at him when he shot her a quizzical look.
He cornered Nux in the morning, demanded to know what Capable had been talking about. The War Boy, wide-eyed half with terror and half with his usual worship, grimaced.
“Ah…well…aw fuck. Just tell her she looks nice, okay?”
“Nice?” Max echoed, staring at him.
Nux clapped a hand to the back of his neck and looked helpless.
“Yeah. Just. She thinks you don’t like her haircut. Tell her she looks nice, or pretty. That usually works with Capable”
Max grimaced, but he could at least say he had tried if Capable cornered him again.
She was checking over Freedom’s cling, astride her motorbike, when he slunk over. Sweat prickled the back of his neck.
“Max-save-us-Max-Papa!”
He startled, froze and swung his upper body towards the Ghosts shimmering between bars of haze.
“Max? What is it?” Angharad’s voice crawled over him.
The Ghosts disappeared. He blinked, slid his blade back into it’s sheath and faced her.
“Ah-hmph-you wanna go in the car? With…with the little one” he muttered.
Her golden head tilted curiously to the side, glaring dawn catching the blue orbs of her bright eyes, framed by long black lashes.
“Yes. I would like that, Max”
Freezing again, Max nodded jerkily and forced his body to obey his wish to quickly move away. Toast moved from the back of the other bike to Angharad’s. She squinted angrily at Max, but he ignored her because she more or less did everything angrily.
“Your hair looks nice” he blurted, the words half lost in the roar and rumble of engines as they started off.
She looked up from where she was settling Freedom in her arms.
“What did you say?”
He shook his head and focused on the road.
She pressed a kiss to his cheek when she saw the caves for the first time. For a full three days afterwards, his ghosts were quiet because he made them silent.
“Max, I…I don’t know what you’re thinking” Angharad blurted. “I never know what you’re thinking, or what you think…about…me”
He looked up from the guts of the vehicle and stared at her, blinking slowly. The woman braced herself and planted her hands on the edge of the engine bay.
“So…I’m just going to kiss you, and hope that it doesn’t break you, to be honest. Yeah. I’m-I’m taking Capable’s advice, oh God. Okay”
With that, she leaned over and planted a soft, nervous kiss squarely on his mouth. Her eyes drifted shut, but Max kept his wide open, revelling in the abrupt, ringing silence her kiss left in it’s wake. A thin strand of saliva connected their mouths as her brilliant eyes opened and she retreated. Clenching his jaw, Max quickly put down the rag in his hand and rounded the edge of the car.
“Are you okay? I didn’t-Max?”
“Okay” he replied, briefly, and chased the silence again, cupping her face carefully in his large hands and pressing his closed mouth to hers.
Angharad gasped softly. A shudder rushed through him. Her strong, thin hands caught the edges of his shirt at his waist and clenched. Gentle, careful, he stroked his tongue along her bottom lip, cautiously tasting her mouth. She pressed closer, the softness of her stomach vulnerable against him. Memories, strong and bright, erupted from the deep casket he’d buried them in. He sucked on a breathless inhale, pulled back, blinded by the explosion and dropped his hands.
“Max?” she questioned, soft and careful, like he was the breakable one, the one who needed protected, not her.
He shook his head and looked at her clearly. The half-curve at the side of his mouth felt alien and unfamiliar. Angharad’s answering smile was wide and brilliant as the sun, exposing neat rows of white teeth. Her hands were warm, trembling, on his unshaven jaw. Her fingertips were careful on the scars on his chin, the roughness of his chapped lips. She left her hands on his jaw to raise herself up on her toes and kiss him again. Her back was against the side of the Holden as he pressed closer, hands fluttering unsure by her sides until she covered them with her own and guided them to her waist. She gasped and laughed incredulously as he dropped them lower and hitched her up the side. Her laugh rattled around inside his mouth, breathed down his throat into his lungs and she encircled him with her legs, wrapping both arms tight around his neck and kissed him hard.
Desire like a shot of whiskey coursed through him, white-hot and out of the blue, a shock to the dusty, abandoned core of him. He was frozen in astonishment, unable to respond to the dozen tiny, light kisses Angharad scattered around his face, whispering his name. His voice caught in his throat, but his heart and blood sang with her name.
Then Freedom awoke from his nap with a howl and a screech. They parted, abrupt, and Angharad landed lightly back on her feet. Max jerked around, the hunted look back in his face, yanked away when she reached for him.
“It’s just Freedom, Max. It’s okay, he’s just hungry. Max”
Slowly, he looked down at the hand she’d placed over his where it had clenched over the butt of the handgun at his thigh. His bones cracked as he peeled his fingers away. With a brisk nod, he picked up a socket wrench and gestured to the car, breezing past her.
From the corner of his eye, he saw her unsure expression become guarded before she turned her back. His hands shook with indecision.
“Pa!” she sounded cross as he turned his head.
She stood by his gear near the mouth of the cave, tapping her foot over the blankets. When he looked, she rushed him, throwing out a hand. The hand he used to guard himself from the attack had a socket wrench in it, cracking his forehead and raising a welt. He dropped the tool with a curse and glared at her. She just stood there, hands on her little hips.
“Pa!” she said again.
“Oi!”
It was probably the loudest Angharad had ever heard him speak, so she turned in a hurry, braid swinging. Shifting his weight, Max cleared his throat and jerked a thumb at the blankets.
“You want, I could…set up…you could sit here…if you want” he muttered, gesturing again and then bending to pick up the wrench so he wouldn’t have to see her expression.
“I’ll bring us some lunch” she said sweetly.
Without looking at her, Max nodded and turned back to the car. Sometime later, not long enough for the old man or the woman to crawl back, Angharad returned with Freedom in his sling, carrying two bowls of stew. He pretended to concentrate on the underbelly of the car, listening intently as she cooed to her son, settled on the blanket he’d spread out. He waited until she’d quietened before he ventured from safety, crawling out and wiping his grimy hands on his equally grimy jeans.
Angharad sat cross-legged on the ground, Freedom tucked to her breast in his sling. The baby murmured contentedly as Max crouched and grabbed one of the bowls. He stayed there, balanced on the balls of his feet, watching Angharad until she caught him.
Once, he saw Capable stick her head in the door, broad grin flashing brightly, before the luminescent streak that was Dag dragged her away. Angharad must have seen them too, because when Max looked at her she was blushing, gaze fixed on Freedom. She unwrapped him from his sling to burp him after a bit, wiping his milky mouth with a giggle that made his blood run ice-cold. His throat clearing made her look up, a confused frown etching her brow as he put aside his bowl and sat on the blanket, the leg with the holster stretched out and the other folded under him.
“Here. You eat” Max muttered, holding out his hands for the baby.
Unhesitatingly, she slid the tiny, precious bundle into his huge, rough hands. His heart caught at the absolute, unquestioning trust in the gesture. A wrecked scream rang in his ears and for a moment, the bundle in his arms was a blood-soaked, broken mess. With a shake of his head, he ignored it, tucked the corpse that he saw in his mind against his shoulder and gently patted the infant’s tiny, strong back. He gurgled and hiccupped a few times before settling and cooing away in the crook of Max’s arm.
“You’re good at that” commented Angharad, watching with her shy, bright smile.
Max looked down at Freedom’s blinking blue eyes. “Had a daughter” he admitted, quiet, dredging up the buried coffin from the black matter in his head.
Her ghost screamed at him from the corner of the cave, drowning out Angharad’s next words; possibly asking what the girl’s name was. He wasn’t sure, and didn’t want to answer, so he shook his head instead. Angharad didn’t push, didn’t pry the coffin open with spidery fingers. Instead, she picked grasshopper out of her teeth and stacked their dishes. Her long legs stretched out, boots resting near his knee, skirt settling a few inches above the calf-high tops of them. She was watching with a smile and hooded gaze as he raised a hand to stroke Freedom’s tiny, soft head, downy hair tickling the rough skin of his palms.
“They’re coming-someone’s coming-Max!-They’re coming Max-Max!”
His head jerked up at her watery echo, a sharp inhale cataloguing sweat, grease, gunpowder and hot metal. Angharad tensed beside him, his name on her lips drowned out as the Ghosts marched in.
“Max!-Max-Max-save us Max-Max”
“Max”
His head twisted on a swivel, identifying the living voice amongst the dead. Furiosa stood on the opening to the cavern, prosthetic harnessed on and gun in hand. She jerked her head to the other entrance, the one that faced the dunes towards the Citadel.
“Dust on the horizon. Could be a Rig” she explained, expression unreadable, like she wasn’t taking in the scene before her at all.
Max grunted a vague affirmative, sliding Freedom back to his mother with a gentleness that belayed the way he shucked a rifle from the door of his Holden, slung a magazine and his jacket over his shoulders, all as he moved towards Furiosa. They slithered down the narrow track from the cavern into the canyon, where Capable, Nux and two of the Vulvalini waited for them on bikes. He swung a leg over the bike, put the gun in it’s holster.
“Max” she said his name in a way that made him whirl, looking for trouble.
With Freedom in her arms, she stepped close to him, bending a little, and kissed him briefly, chaste and undemanding. He didn’t respond, said nothing; just started the bike.
“Not a word” he growled to Furiosa, who passed Angharad on her way back up to the cave.
Her eyes sparkled. “I didn’t say anything”
“Shut up” he said firmly, kicking the bike into gear and leading the way out of the canyon.
Nux’s half-life came to an end on the Fury Road. Max took him there when it became clear that the end was in sight, the two of them dodging bandits from Gas Town and Bullet Farm and the Citadel: without Immortan Joe, civil war erupted and the region was in chaos. They fought with a party of Pole Cats and Nux took a spear in the chest meant for Max’s back. He burned the War Boy and collected his ashes the next morning, taking them back across the Salt Lakes to Capable. It took him a month, there and back, and when Angharad saw him, she threw herself across the cave to wrap herself around him and didn’t let him go until he had to push her away.
“Capable is having his baby” Angharad told him, when the unusually subdued teenager took the jar of ashes and sat alone in the canyon.
“It’ll be a War Pup. It’ll die bad” he whispered, his voice disused again.
“She knows” Furiosa explained softly.
Nux’s son, Chrome, was born too early, and lived ten years, stunted and hunch-backed, but beloved and adored by his mother, his aunts, Freedom, his grandmothers and Max.