Chapter Text
Leaning against each other because the only other option was collapsing to the floor, they had to survey their options.
“We could still go,” Jack said, looking out over the parking lot.
“How?” She was infinitely tired. Every part of her felt shattered in a way that couldn’t be put back together. The place where her arm should be howled in agony.
Jack, who always had an answer, said nothing.
No car, no money, no plan. Their great escape had terminated in ash. Jack scraped through pockets and found a coin. Somehow, he managed to make the call even though his voice sounded like raw meat and sand.
They sat down heavily on a broken bench as far as they could manage to walk from the makeshift hospital. No sense bringing trouble to their doors after they’d done so much to hold them both together. Folded in Furiosa’s pocket was a long list of things to avoid, close instructions on wound care, and several pill bottles. They weighed her down. If they had been only for herself, she might’ve done something foolish like throw them into the winds.
But some of the bottles have Jack’s name on them. Jack, who had nearly died, and still dragged himself to her bedside as soon as a nurse looked away. With no one there who knew them, Jack had risked holding her hand. When he got too tired to hold himself upright, he had slumped forward to rest his forehead on the crook of her elbow.
The pills and directions stayed where they belonged.
Two hours later, one of the roadsters that the boys doted on roared up to them. They both got to their feet as if they were healthy as they had been on the day they left. No weakness. Nothing, but a lick of dried blood on their clothes and sand in their hair to show time had passed.
The charade cost them both and in the darkness of the way back, they took turns dozing. It was dawn when they roared up to the bunker entrance. Furiosa stirred as the boys hollered and whooped.
Stuck to the front gates, spiked there like it was a thousand years ago, was the head of Dementus.
“When?” she demanded.
The boys cackled and boasted. Not long after Furiosa had made her sacrifice and managed along with it to drag Jack’s body with her remaining strength away out of sight, another patrol has spotted Dementus’ tiny remaining gang.
In the moment, she had intended to go back to kill Dementus once she had Jack’s body well away from him. Until Jack had rolled onto his back, coughed and coughed, bringing up blood, bile, spit and horrors and still somehow sat up after.
“Are we dead?” he’d asked, even his voice was a ghost.
“Not today,” she clutched at a strap on his jacket and pulled him to his feet. “Not if we can still move.”
The stolen car, the race through the dark and then their strange savior delivering them. She had almost managed to forget what they’d left behind. Now, even Dementus’ death had been stolen from her.
“Easy,” Jack rumbled.
“It was mine to take,” she hissed.
“Dead is dead,” Jack opened the door and nearly fell out, but gained his feet before anyone else noticed. “He doesn’t walk the earth anymore. That will have to be enough.”
Furiosa wants to take down the decaying head and kick it across the world. She wanted to reanimate him so she could kill him a thousand times.
Jack stumbled and made a guttural sound that corkscrewed into her stomach. A million times. A million painful deaths wouldn’t be enough.
“Immortan Joe wants a report first thing in the morning,” one of the boys said. Furiosa sometimes knew their names, but right now she could not place one from the other.
They wanted to drag their prize of two barely surviving praetorians triumphantly before their leader, to show off and gain his eye. Too bad. The victory of Dementus, the retaking of his brother’s territory would make the Immorten gluttonous with pleasure and he had doubtless passed out after some excess or another.
It gave them a little time. There was nowhere private to go, but the space they slept in was always given a wide berth. At this time of day, almost no one would be in the sleeping hall, except a few night workers. Furiosa risked overlapping their blankets enough to hide where her hand rested on Jack’s chest. The bandages were stark white, painfully real.
“Are you checking for blood?” he asked, head at her feet. Their calculated distance sometimes felt like barely enough room to breathe and sometimes, it was an ocean that she didn’t know how to swim.
“No,” she closed her eyes. “I know there’s plenty of that.”
The hand that no longer existed ached fiercely. Her head pounded and her stomach roiled. Yet if she focused, she could feel the rise and fall of his ribs under her hand. Right now, it was the heartbeat of the world.
How could Furiosa know then that she would spend the rest of her life listening for his breathing? Jack’s lungs would never fully recover (never enough medicine, never enough time to heal), a hitch in his breath that deepened to wheezing whenever he pushed himself too hard.
Neither of them could see the damage that had been laced under the more obvious wounds and loss. That first night, it was just enough that she could lay her hand on his chest and all through their sleeping hours, never doubt that the other was alive.
The next morning Immortan Joe blustered and lectured. In the end, their feats outweighed their mistakes in his victory drunk eyes. They were given fresh clothes (pulled off fresh corpses no doubt), a week’s worth of water and orders to be ready to begin work on a new rig by the time the last drop was drunk.
A week was more time than either of them had had to themselves since they were children. It wasn’t nearly enough time. Jack had managed to stay upright and solid in front of Joe, then held onto walls back to their sleep spot then sank down there and stayed. Furiosa struggled with everyday things in a way that made her gnash her teeth. It took each moment of those few precious days for her to relearn how to do basic things and for him to walk more then ten feet without needing to sit.
When they finally managed to get back outside to breath in the day's air, a new issue manifested. As soon as the sun touched the damaged side of Jack’s face, he sucked in one of those horrid wheezing breaths. The eye that had been in the grit through the worst of it had gone a little clouded. It could not take the intensity of sunlight. It pierced through his head to give him the mother of all headaches.
“I can’t drive like this.” He hunched over the edge of their little oasis (a thimble of space and not even that private with the gaping maw of its opening available to any driver or boy who swung themselves curiously upward).
“I drive,” she said.
They both looked at the place that her arm wasn’t. Their eyes met.
“You drive,” he repeated, her conviction becoming his in a single breath.
Jack’s hands now shook, but he had two of them. Furiosa had one, but it was steady as a rock. Between them, they made her first prosthetic. It wasn’t bad for the first iteration, though she could see all the places that needed fine tuning. From the ruins of Jack’s old jacket, they made an eyepatch, and Furiosa beat it with rocks to soften where it would sit on his torn skin, even as he lined the prosthetic with a strip from his own blanket.
There was so little they could do for each other, but there were the simple kindnesses. Furiosa had to clutch at them to those to hold onto herself and her sanity.
A sanity that went well tested as they were forced back into the shape of their old roles though their bodies no longer slotted cleanly into them. The noise of the garage hurt in the same way it had when Furiosa had first dropped into it. The vicious ring of metal on metal making it impossible to think.
They’d only been back a day when the remains of their old rig made it back into the garage. It was torn to shit and broken in a thousand ways.
“Ten days,” Jack estimated and Furiosa nodded.
The boys vulture-swarmed the rig, picking its corpse clean.
Exactly ten days later, a new thing emerged. It lacked the gleam (no more polish in the shop, the very last tiny bit of it stolen by Jack to make that first ungainly prosthetic more palatable) and the artistry (the boys were so tired and there were so many fewer of them in the wake of the stupid war) of the old rig. It was tougher though, armor valued over flashy weapons. The new rig was made to withstand a siege.
They handed the wheel to Furiosa and she held it above her head as if it were a medal of some honor instead of an unbearably heavy weight. The boys cheered.
That night, she came to Jack with a razor. Her question had no words, but he answered it anyway. The last time Furiosa had done this, it had been without a mirror and pure concentrated determination behind the blade. It had been a mess of nicks and strange tufts when it grew back out. Jack, shaking hands and all, took his time and made neat work of it. She met the next morning with only a strange lightness about her head and not a single drop of blood shed.
(It became a monthly ritual they made between them, one of an eventual many. A religion of two.)