theroadwarrior | IC Contact for etraya

[ A couple of sutures are no big deal. Furiosa's been through worse (pretty obviously), but the spot is just annoying enough to have difficulty managing it by yourself. Add a missing arm, and it becomes near impossible.

She checks the peep hole before letting Max in. He'll hear her click open the extra locks and chains she's reinforced the doors with. She may not be as paranoid as Max, but that doesn't make her trust her neighbors naively either. ]

Come on.

[ She seems well enough, gesturing him in with the jerk of her chin. He'll see the sticky blood, blooming into a stain through her shirt from her popped stitches. She gave up trying to fight it. A little blood doesn't bother her.

She's only been here for a few days, but Furiosa's started piles of eclectic scavenged bits. Here, a pile of scrap and sheet metal. On that surface, stripped wires and a pair of pliers next to a small collection of colorful glass. Her project isn't immediately clear. There's more utilitarian stores too, of course. Food and medical supplies stacked into piles into the kitchen. ]

Hospital supplies there.

Edited 2025-03-03 02:06 (UTC)

[He had expected Furiosa would already have a collection started, when he walked into the — home? The living area. A place for living, that's easier to call it. Max's home had been a car, one that was only big enough to carry him and a few seats full of supplies, and so it already feels too big in this place. Cavernous. The walls bounce sounds, amplify life as it moves and speaks. But he wonders — what does it mean to her? Is the silence of this place compared to the frantic, echoing walls of the Citadel a blessing? Is she at ease here, a place where the walls are not metal and ragged rock, but instead smooth drywall that can have things hung from the walls neatly? No devotion or self-sacrifice needed to exist in this place. No brands necessary.

If it doesn't suffocate her, he sees no reason why he should let it suffocate him.

Well, too much, anyway.

He slowly puts down the travel pack over-stuffed with supplies, looking around in quiet interest. He reaches down to pick up some of the colorful glass, holding it up to the light that comes through one of the apartment windows; green and blue colors glide over the bridge of his nose and cheekbone, over the faint scar there.]

What's this for?

[ Anyone else, Furiosa might be a little bit more territorial over her things. Even up to the rank of Praetorian, personal property was kind of an abstract concept. After all, how could you own something when you yourself belonged to someone?

Max, she finds, does not inspire the amount of ire she might expect with someone poking around her stuff. ]

Was thinking about what to put in front of the window. [ She pulls out a string where she's started winding wire around the bits of glass and metal. She jostles it slightly, demonstrating how the pieces chime musically when they clink against each other. ] Makes noise if someone tries to climb in. On a sunny day you can see how the light shifts even if your back is turned.

[ And the aesthetic of casting the apartment in blues and verdant greens evoking the sense of life is purely coincidental... ]

Setting up a home base means you can make the effort to always secure it.

[He studies the color, twists it in his hand to watch the reflection cast itself this way and that. Hm. Pretty. That's what he thinks, something that rarely ever crosses his mind. But instead of saying as much, he instead offers:]

Smart choice.

[The glass is put back where it rightly belongs. It would be a good set-up for Furiosa. Something to look at while she keeps herself safe. Or as safe as she can be, anyway. He can't help but think of what he'd told Jayce: how easy it would be, for someone to target this building in its entirety. He doesn't want to be anywhere near this place, not long-term, but now that Furiosa is here... A dilemma. The junkyard isn't very close, not if something dangerous were to happen. He couldn't be reliable.

... For things like this, also.

He clicks his tongue as he looks at the bloody patch on her shirt, before turning and moving toward the kitchen. His brace has been oiled once again at least, so there's less comical creaking in his step. As he sifts through the medical supplies Furiosa had alluded to earlier...]

Going to try to ask Aurora for rifles, soon. Something long distance.

You should work on getting something, too.

Let me know if you wanna work on your aim.

[ Little curl of her lip. If he can give her shit about getting stabbed and popping stitches, she's earned this. Yes, of course, she's going to ask for guns. She needs to have one within reach in every corner of her apartment. ]

I'm planning on it, [ She does add, in sincerity. ] But trying to figure out how many errands I need to run for something else. Need a harness or something for any rifles in the meantime.

[ She gestures to her stump. She's scavenging for materials but it's harder to come by what she needs here. Her arm was a great arm!! She misses it.

But Max isn't here for small talk or reminiscing about lost limbs. She reaches her hand behind her head, grasping the neck hole to pull her shirt off in one practiced motion. For the most part. Blood had crept up her torso, staining the edges of the sports bra, but her wound is fully exposed, the last several sutures pulled open. ]

[He grumbles like a bitter old man.]

Shoot better when I've got more blood in me.

[Or so he says. Whether or not that's true is left to be seen. He gestures for her to sit in what was probably a pre-established seat, oh-so-kindly already furbished by Etraya and it's AI system. Max couldn't imagine such a thing -- that the being in charge actually bothered giving out more than any kind of bare minimum on a good day.]

I can make 'em. Make harnesses. Made the one I'm wearing now.

[Solmara wasn't good for much, but there was plenty of old, sun-cracked leather. Rusted metals. Some of the parts of his knee brace where swapped out while he was there; one thing he could say was the place at least worked eerily close to home most weeks.]

Not used to seeing buildings so... cared for.

[The inside of the apartments, he means. He saw a very small roller rink and some entertainment stuff. But even without the extra goods in the apartments, the whole place had a crazy amount of working infrastructure compared to the other city. He studies the bloody spot thoughtfully before he starts to dab away the mess. Methodical, his gaze hyper-focused and vigilant.]

[ The couch. That makes the most sense. She can lean back and he has access to her side. Belatedly she wonders if maybe she should have put down a towel? She's not used to caring about upholstery. Leather is decent at repelling blood, but this is cloth.

Eh, too late. If she bleeds on it, it just means its hers. Those are the wasteland rules. ]

It's weird.

[ She admits, humming a soft agreement. The wound stings, but it's minor all things considered. But the way she flinches away from his touch isn't from the pain. She's rusty with this type of casual vulnerability. Can't imagine Max is used to playing nurse either. ]

Quiet. [ Even though there's tons of people (Max's major objection to the apartment building). These people are mostly quiet and polite, at least relative to what she's used to. ] Don't know how I'm supposed to sleep without a pack of warpups stomping past my head every hour.

[Honestly, she's in the worst possible company to remind her not to bleed on things. All he ever does is bleed on his things. And of course, that means it's his. Those are the wasteland rules.

His hands are steady, and he tries not to flinch when she flinches. She'd be right in assuming he's so unbelievably skittish; it takes his focus to not feel like he's somewhere about to get a wrench smashed across the top of the head. Won't take too long, at least; he's more gentle as he carefully touches his fingertips to the skin beneath the wound, making sure the wound's edges stay together.]

Lot of healthy people here. No lumps and bumps.

[Max always wondered if he would end up sick. His father had died from cancer when he was terrible young — couldn't say if it was from how sick the planet was getting, or if it was from bombs he'd been too close to, or if maybe it was simply an older man getting sick, as some older men tended to do before the world fell in full.

He doesn't think too long about those things, though. Nothing's killed him yet.]

Never really slept in the company of other people.

[Not like that, anyway. He slept in the War Rig after struggling tooth and nail to pretend he doesn't require it like other people. But it was — soothing enough. For a while. The whir of an engine is a bit of a lullaby.]

[ Meanwhile, Furiosa has had the opposite experience. The Vuvalini was a collective. Her earliest memories are sharing a tent with her mother or sleeping under the stars with her clan. Then the Horde before the wives and her stay in the vault she cares better to forget. The black thumbs, acolytes in the House of Holy Motors, couldn't even dream of a private place to sleep. She's fairly certain only Joe and his sons had the luxury of a place their own.

She slept best with Jack at her side, boots on and weapons tucked between them.

There is little else to do but wait for him to finish. He's careful. Reliable hands, stitching her as well as they kill.

There is one point she feels to counter this. Her head tips to the side, examining him, wondering if she should broach it. Hers said it too. Did he read it? ]

That thing said you were widowed.

[Max's hands freeze, needle still between red fingertips. Decades ago, his fingers were stained red. The widower, hunched over a small and even smaller figure splayed on the ground, he was screaming — screaming and screaming, until the ambulance screamed in his stead. Blood on his fingertips then, too. Blood all over the place, coming out of mouths and ears.

"He's been standing there like a zombie all day," he hears, crystal clear all these years later. It's a nurse in a perfectly clean uniform, unaware that the last few safe havens of society were about to burn with the rest of the them. DOA for one body. Brain-dead for the other. He stole their shells and buried them himself, just outside their home. What was left of an ocean would be bone-dry the year after. Recede so far away, that all you'd ever see was cracked, flat plains of salt. He left and never looked back. Or maybe he did visit that place again. Visited and never knew it, because nothing was left he would remember.

(Furiosa is lying in a car, dying as he gently cradles her neck, holds her head up for her. Does she know that the baby who had taught him how to speak so kindly and so softly has been dead for years and years now?)

Max doesn't realize he's been quiet for — too long.

Max does realize it's the first time someone has called him what he was.

Softly, firmly, as he steadies his hands again to finish his work:]

Don't.

[Not an angry sound. If anything, it almost sounds like a plea. Because if they don't amputate this conversation before it spreads, he will hear his wife and son crying out for him somewhere he wasn't fast enough to follow.]

[ She turns her head away. Grief is a wild, untamable thing. It rolls in quickly like the most intense dust storms, thundering and relentless. It's suffocating and disorienting, blocking out the sun, thunderous and loud. It blinds you and traps your feet, making it impossible to move. It howls, wild winds whipping while stings and cuts at your skin, at your throat. It wears away at you, torturous until the quiet calm of death seems like it would be a welcome mercy.

And then the winds calm, and you are still standing. Weathered and worn, but still standing.

Softly:] Okay.

[ Not 'sorry.' Because, while she is sorry for this misstep, an apology feels like it would belabor the point. This is the quicker course correction. And she doesn't make the same mistake twice.

The wasteland is littered with ghosts. Best to let them be. ]

You almost done?

[He wouldn't want a sorry. She didn't beat him down and steal his car, and she didn't trick him out of supplies. She didn't bind him and use him as labor, or starve him until he complied. To be sorry for a simple question? It's not necessary. Not to him. Not when sorry is never afforded when it's rightly deserved in the wastes.

If anything, he feels a little mortified by how much such a simple thing had tail-spun him into memories that are likely older than even some of the Wives.]

Mm.

[He appreciates the quick bounce back. He can focus on fixing her like he would a car. Perhaps not quite so generous a thing to say — well, anyone who knows him knows that a particular car is more valuable to him than almost anything else in the world. Being compared to a car he's eager to work on, that's a compliment.

Breathing out, he clips the lingering suture thread.]

Not too tight?

[Can't be, or it'll risk infection. Wound dehiscence. He's seen it happen before, with unskilled organic mechanics. Ones that pretend they have some idea of what they're doing, anyway.]

[ It's funny. Furiosa feels a bit like a cherished car in this moment. Black Thumbs and Rev Heads always seemed like they were more tender with the cars than the Organic was with bodies, and it wasn't just the holy reverence that they paid to cars. People always seemed more replaceable.

She presses her fingers softly to the flesh just below the wound, rolls her shoulder to feel the way it moves and stretches with her. He did good work. ]

Mm-hm. [ She shakes her head. It's good. She has to be gentler this time, she knows, but that's hard for her. ] Feels good.

[ And then wryly: ]

I'll try not to waste anymore of your blood.

Edited 2025-03-08 02:17 (UTC)

[Max wipes the blood off on a rag, closes the small coin purse worth of suture line and needles; his own suture kit is in one of the small tactical army pouches he'd sewn into a functional soldier vest, not unlike the one Furiosa had last seen him in. That's the thing about him — everything just slightly different, but impeccably him still.

And of course, he still has a spare tube and needle strapped to his vest, too.

Just in case.

He's reminded of it all over again, and huffs a discontented breath that is all bark, no bite.]

Better not. It's high octane — best you can get from a raging feral.

[He looks like a raging feral, huh? Clear-eyed, grumpily putting things back where they belong as he hobbles around a kitchen. Strip a man of all of the frantic energy near-death situation brings, and he's just a tired bastard like any other.

... One still in desperate need of a shower, but what wastelander isn't?]

Thankfully that's just my type.

[ She means it in the way she would say she'd say fuel is a vehicles type, or the way she'd say she'd want nitro to top off her rig. Mostly guzz with a boost to keep her going, speed and power to keep her alive.

But, somewhere in between saying it and letting go of the amiable half-slap-half-squeeze she swats at Max's shoulder as she gets up off the couch Furiosa feels transported to how another man, maybe a year into their partnership stitching her up, wouldn't have let a comment like that slide so easily without needling at the double meaning.

Furiosa is far beyond feeling socially awkward, but maybe she brute forces herself brushing past it a little more quickly than she might have otherwise to fix them both some water. ]

Least I can do is feed you and let you clean up before you go back to your junkyard.

[Max, useless that he is at blatantly obvious nudges these days, just blinks at the comment, glances over at her with a sort of puzzled look not unlike the stare he'd given Furiosa just before they realized neither of them had been driving the rig. He watches her hand work for a moment to collect water into a cup before his eye catches something shiny and chrome and familiar among the rations.

Oh.

Reaching over, he picks up one of the dozen cans of Coca Cola, eyebrows raising.]

... You found this at the shop?

[Does she even realize what it is? Max barely remembers, and that was from the last standing bastion of society, when productions stopped and all that was left was expired cans that were usually more flat than not. He would see the old rusted shells used for different things — shrapnel in bombs, or filled with rocks to make an alarm system.]

Yeah. It's so... bubbly. And didn't know about the color.

[ Furiosa was boggled by it. She has plenty of other things to taste, so she did not want to try her luck with the brown liquid. Usually things that color have gone rancid or belong in a vehicle. Plus something with acids in the ingredient list seem like they'd be better for removing rust or oil stains than fueling a person. ]

You seen it before?

It's what they named Aqua Cola after.

[He looks at it, studies the ingredients. You don't get things with ingredients like this anymore; a lot of it would sound fake to anyone out there. Just imagining a knobheaded war boy trying to translate...]

Water's nothing like it, though. Haven't tried it yet? [He pulls the tab; the hissing sound conjures a series of blurry memories. As he pushes it toward her, he speaks with a touch of amusement:] Not poisonous.

[He knows well enough what her thought process was.]

[ The AquaCola name makes sense, but still... ]

You want me to drink it?

[ Even if he affirms it's not poison. She opened one before. It hissed and fizzed. It was brown! It looks like water she's scooped out of the most rank mud puddle she could find on a good day.

She takes the can from him, fingers grasping around it while she lifts it to her nose. She sniffs at it suspiciously, the fizz hitting her nose strangely. Cautiously, she takes a sip, her mouth still pulled into a near grimace as she does. Taunting someone into eating or drinking something rancid is among the easiest and most popular entertainment available to the Black Thumbs and War Boys, so she's really trusting Max on this. ]

Mmn— [ she pulls away quickly with a mildly offended noise. Her face scrunches, considering, like she can't even really identify the flavor. Her tongue roves over her teeth, the odd flavor coming with a strange feeling. ]

It's so sweet. I feel like my teeth are gonna fall out.

[Her genuine bafflement is funny, and funnier again by the way her face contorts. Max snorts at the sight of it, stifles a chuckle in amusement; it's an endangered sound for him, too uncommon these days as his lips twitch into a ghost of a smile.

He takes the can and swallows down a few swigs, then hums.]

Mm. People used to like how it burned.

[Not unlike moonshine, but, well. Moonshine is harder to keep down.]

Any back home would be flat now. No bubbles. Tastes much worse then.

[Is this Max admitting he has drank really, really old sodapop?

Uh. Yeah.]

Edited (my brain short-circuited grammar) 2025-03-14 18:44 (UTC)

[ She watches Max as he drinks. As he almost laughs. It's strange hearing that noise come out of him. Makes the corner of her lips pull up just a little to mirror him.

And then she huffs. Old worlders, they didn't have enough adrenaline in their day to day they had to microdose drinking acid. She'd say she doesn't get it like the garage rats wouldn't get bored enough to try licking batteries or touching live wires just to feel the spark of something.

She takes the can back for a second. There's a whole pack of them, she realizes belatedly, that they could each have their own, but sharing a limited ration just feels so much more embedded into how she operates it doesn't even occur to her.

She takes a bigger drink this time, not as surprised by it. The carbonation makes her burp, which she does naturally and without concern or any concept of why it might be impolite as she passes the can back to him. ]

Yeah but when all you've got is dirty Aqua Cola and mother's milk that's turned rancid, can't say I'd turn it down.

[Listen, burping is healthy. People who don't like to openly burp are weird.

Max will sign that decree, but that's probably not a surprise.

As he takes another swig, he toys with the can absently between his fingertips. The two healed fingers that the wheel of the war rig had crushed don't quite bend the same way the rest of them do, but that's to be expected. Parts of you stop working, and it's a sign that you're long-lasting, that you made it where you are with a lot of stubbornness and grit. It's easy to lose track of all the marks you get, the patches of hair you no longer have thanks to the scars ricochetting bullets leave.

But then suddenly, they're in a normal apartment kitchenette, drinking brand new cans of soda.

It's bizarre.]

Lot of different kinds, too. Rainbows of flavors.

Should see the long list of options at the diner.

IC Contact for etraya

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cw reference to canon variety human trafficking

cw: loss of a child and spouse

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