MAD MAX SANDBOX POST

[iamawaited]

Welcome to the Wasteland: a sandbox/open post for Mad Max RP

(Seriously, go nuts.

That's what this canon is for.)

Comments

[preciouscargo]

Capable placed a gentle hand to the center of his back when he coughed, though she knew he wasn't truly choking. When he was finished, she led him over to a bench and urged him to sit down beside her. Rest was another thing he sorely needed and she took more than a little comfort in tucking herself against his side. To anyone who might have walked into the room, they looked fairly 'cozy' together.

"It belongs to Cheeto, Dag, Toast and I at the moment. To be honest, I've never seen half the rooms here." Immortan Joe did keep his wives locked away in an old bank vault. His most precious possessions. That no longer mattered. What mattered right now was that Nux was alive. He might not be in the best shape, even for a War Boy, but he was here with her. "Dag is pregnant, so there will be an addition in seven months." They were all secretly hoping the child would be a healthy girl. That would surely make Immortan Joe roll over in his grave.

[iamawaited]

And indeed, he was right to say it to Furiosa and not to any of the Wives first; her response honors him in a way he's not sure they would understand easily. If they brought him back here, they don't want him to die. He's sure Capable doesn't want him to die. Only Furiosa would know to help him find a good death. He softens, truly touched by it, something swelling almost painfully in his chest.

"I thought this was the green place," he says, but with a small, crooked smile. "Green on top." He doesn't know if it's true -- the only parts of the Citadel he's ever seen are anything but green -- but he remembers why this had to be the place.

[witness_this]

"The women know the stories. Ask Capable."

She says, but starts to tell him anyways; he's going to be trapped in that bed for a long time, maybe for the rest of his life, even. She can give him something to dream about.

"The ground is grass, long thin stalks of it, light and swaying in the wind, like soft wires, but brittle, bending and breaking under your feet. Thousands, millions of blades of them, carpeting a ground made of a moist, lush earth, damp between your toes. There are trees, too- remember the one you saw? But hundreds of them, standing so thick together you couldn't drive the smallest bike between them. The tree we saw was dead, but when they're alive, trees are covered with leaves."

She doesn't know how much purchase any of this is getting, but she spins the story anyways, like she did for the five wives a hundred times over, letting her tone and his imagination do all the work.

[iamawaited]

Nux's imagination is paradoxically both limited and endless: he's never seen grass, has no idea what it looks like, and the image that's coming to life in his mind is probably absolutely nothing like the truth. She says wires, so he thinks something like green wires, thin and light enough to rustle in the wind but woven together in a loose mat, springy underfoot. He thinks of the sun glittering off it, and thinks it must look very, very shiny, indeed. She says damp earth and he thinks of mud, but... maybe a better mud. Not a sour, sandy mud. A mud where things can grow, like trees with...

"What's leaves?" he asks, caught by the story, even though something in him tells him it's not true. She'd said as much. It's a story; they're making a new faith. She's dismantling Valhalla and putting up something in its place, and if that had been a fiction -- which he's still not sure he can believe -- then so is this.

...But he had seen a tree out there.

[witness_this]

"Wait here."

She instructs him, and then gets to her feet. Furiosa is moving very carefully- a punctured lung is not something you walk off, and she'd had a dozen other serious bumps and scrapes besides. But she makes it to the shelf where some of the room's old trinkets still live, and brings back to him one of Joe's baubles for the girls. A book.

It's fairy tales, not that that makes a difference right now, what she wants him to see is the paper. She limps over to him and settles, with something just shy of a gasp, down on the edge of his cot, and opens it up to the centre, so the sheets fan out. It's stained, yellowed, and old, but still, she offers it for him to touch.

"Gentle, but feel this. These are like leaves, except this is dead, and leaves are alive. Imagine, this, with the feel of skin warmed by the sun. Alive, and with a scent like the freshest, cleanest thing you can imagine. Each one-" Making a circle with her forefinger and thumb "-small, like this, and attached to the tips of the branches. Millions, on every tree."

[iamawaited]

Nux watches her curiously, though he respects her enough to purposefully take no notice at all of the way she limps or the tiny hitch in her breath as she sits down. She is here to show him something; he masks his own discomfort, too, as he shifts painfully to look. Fortunately, his hands are undamaged, as agile as the day he first picked up a socket wrench. He takes the leaf from her with due caution, holding it by the stem and twisting it carefully back and forth in his fingers as he examines it. When she says scent, he gives it a sniff.

This is dead, and leaves are alive, she says. He tries to imagine it alive, maybe rippling in the wind like the shiny wire-grass. Fresh and clean aren't words that come up often in his part of the Citadel, so he looks around this room -- easily the cleanest place he's ever been -- and breathes in deep, though his ribs and Larry and Barry all complain at him for it. There they are, his old mates: shrunken with whatever they've given him, but never forgotten. Not worth thinking about, right now. He turns his attention back to the leaf.

"Do we have them in the green place here?" he asks, twisting it again. "Leaves? Trees? Grass? Or is it all in..." The other one. The one she wants to grow in the ruins of Valhalla.

[witness_this]

"We do. And Capable will take you, once you've had a little more rest."

She says, taking it gently back, closing the book and setting it aside- but in reach, in case he needs.

"Do you think you could try to sleep, until then?"

It would give her a chance to, as well, and they both need it.

[iamawaited]

He only just woke up, he wants to protest, but either he's in worse shape than he thought or they've given him something, because he finds when she says it that he probably could if he tried. He doesn't really want to. It seems like a waste when they both agree that his time is limited, and besides, he wants to hear more about the new world he helped create.

He's more used to following orders than not, though, so he gives a reluctant nod and gingerly lies back down, curling up on his side this time so that both the book and Furiosa's cot are in his line of sight. "I'll be strong again soon," he murmurs. It won't change the outcome, but she'd offered him a choice, and he still wants to go out fighting.

[sheiscapable]

She'll think it's strange later, when and if he recounts this moment to her, because to her, he is exactly that - a glow in the moonlight, thought without the accompanying fire. Instead, it's the brightness of his blue eyes, something she's marveled at since he's been so sick.

"You made it." she replies, hopping down from the lift and walking toward him slowly. She reaches out a hand and fits it to the curve of his cheek gently, and then lets out a sigh. "And you're real." she nods, confirming this to herself.

[iamawaited]

"Somehow," Nux agrees with a quirked, crooked smile, though it warms as she touches him and he finds himself leaning into it like he's turning towards the sun itself. The comfort in that one simple touch is incredible; it disappears every memory of pain and grit and thirst stretching from the ruined war rig to here. If this was the only thing he was spared for, he thinks -- if he dropped dead right now -- it would still be worth it.

But he doesn't, so he brings his hand up to twine through her thick red hair, marveling at the feel of it between his fingers, and moves in to rest his forehead against hers. "I'd hoped..." he begins, but fades off when he realizes how many ways there are to end the sentence. He'd hoped they'd made it; he'd hoped they took the Citadel; he'd hoped she was well. And even as he'd skidded into the canyon wall, there had been a part of him that had hoped he would see her again. "I'd hoped," he says again softly, and leaves it there.

[sheiscapable]

The press of his forehead against hers makes her sigh and smile. "Tastes good, hope. Doesn't it?" she asks him, perhaps rhetorically, but perhaps not. "It hasn't been long, but so much has changed." Her hand remains on his cheek. "The citadel isn't the same place anymore."

[iamawaited]

Close as they are, he keeps his eyes on hers, not so much searching as having already found something he doesn't want to let go of. "Will you show me?" he asks, still soft, still smiling. He probably needs the Organic sooner or later, or whatever they've done to replace him, but he's a War Boy -- later can still be a good long while from now.

[sheiscapable]

"Mmhmm." There's a quick nod of her head as she gently tugs him onto the platform and pulls the bell to let those at the top know she's ready to come up. She keeps an arm curved around his waist, noting quietly, "You may not find all the War Boys you know. Some have left. Gone to Bullet Town, I think. They wanted it like it was. The rest are trying to figure out what to do, who to be now that Joe's dead. But most of the Pups are still here. They're young."

[iamawaited]

He nods along as she speaks, resigned to the idea that the War Boys' barracks will be much emptier when he gets back to his little spit of bed. He knew that already. Even without the mass migration, he'd seen so many of them die on the Fury Road. Morsov, Ace, Slit... Nux doesn't quite know what he wants or who he is either, not yet, but he finds that there's still a part of him that hopes their Valhalla is real just as fiercely as he'd hoped to find this place again.

Maybe it's still his Valhalla, too. Maybe-- he just-- he doesn't know, and his face changes when she says now that Joe's dead, eyes going wider and sadder like it's still a terrible surprise. He looks away, up at the rising Citadel walls, pressing his scarred lips tight together. "That's good," he says, and he means it, but... he doesn't know if he blames his brothers for leaving.

[sheiscapable]

The lift starts to move, and for a moment all she can do is stare up at him and be grateful he's alive. "The others will be happy to see you. They need...they need someone who understands that the world can be more than what they've been told."

Her second hand comes up to frame his other cheek. "Whatever you want to do, I'll help you figure it out."

[iamawaited]

He looks down at her again when her hands cup his scarred cheeks, and though there's still something a little lost in his eyes, they brighten with gratitude when they find hers again. Want. He's never had a want before that hadn't been given to him by somebody else.

Well, no. He does have one, he realizes: an impulse that's gripped him a few times since she first lay down with him in the cab. He hasn't done anything about until now, not the least of all because it's not a thing he's ever done before, but she says whatever you want to do, and he doesn't think she'll mind -- so he ducks down and kisses her, very quickly, very briefly.

[sheiscapable]

She blinks. This is there and gone before she can really do anything. Her fingers touch her mouth as she looks up at him in awe. "You did that." she says, like she finds it to be some kind of miracle. "You did that on your own."

In his way he's been a slave his whole life, and seeing him make his own choices fills her with wonder.

[iamawaited]

"Yeah." He grins, though it falters slightly after a second as he thinks back on the words and hesitates. He touches her hair again, then drops his hands down to her arms, like he's trying to reassure her and himself at the same time. "Is that okay?"

He thinks it was. He hopes it was. He'd like to do it again, if he can.

apologies in advance oh my god

[candeur]

When Capable leaves the shelter through the side door and spots him for the first time as he tries to jimmy the door of Furiosa's car open, for a moment she thinks that he is a ghost. He is pale in the half-light, stick-limbed and terribly gaunt. She stands with her hand still on the door and her breath in her throat until she realizes what he's trying to do, and then she gathers herself and takes a step forwards, the heel of her combat boot smacking on the pavement.

"What are you doing?"

She steals a glance over the back of her shoulder as the door thuds behind her, heart lurching into her throat at the thought of having just cut herself off from the rest of her sisters. Surely they'd hear her if she shouted.

[antiseed]

(the sound of her slave name burns in her ears, makes her turn sharply at the waist. the war boy is standing in the middle of the field and looking about himself.

angharad's arms drop to her midriff, hands wrapping around her stomach instinctively. he looks lost to be here, as much as she is confused to see him. the war boy, so intent on journeying to valhalla. how is he at her green place?

she looks at him for a long moment before she speaks.)

I pushed you off the rig, (she recalls, shoulders jerking backwards as she draws herself up straight. he is so thin and spindly, like a spider. she has thrown him from her safe space before, and she won't hesitate to do so again.)

Why are you here?

[iamawaited]

[Nux doesn't feel sick anymore, but his gut still gives a wrench at that.]

I... lived. I lived long enough to see--

[She had pushed him from the rig and he had lived. She had fallen from the same rig -- out of the same door, even, he thinks -- and been crushed by his blood bag at the wheel. It hadn't been anything like glorious, he'd thought even then. It had been brutal and ugly and senseless. He looks down.]

I lived long enough to try to help.

[He doesn't know, now, if there was much glory even in his death, but he knows he at least died for something better. That doesn't help as much as he would have thought it would.]

[iamawaited]

Nux startles at the harsh sound of heavy footsteps behind him, spinning around to face her. He's not much better face-to-face: a tall, looming mess of scars with blue eyes made too piercing and too pale by the heavy eyeliner circling them. He's too thin and too ashen to be truly terrifying, though, and below the dark lines around his eyes there are softer, bruise-like circles of exhaustion. His clothes are ragged and mismatched.

He also doesn't entirely seem to know what to do with himself now that he's been caught out. There's a moment of anxious hesitation in him. He glances up and down the alley, then looks down at the jimmy bar in his hand. That seems to give him a boost of confidence. He looks back up at her and bares his teeth. "I'm commandeering this rig," he crows, lifting his chin.

whoops, thought it ate my comment so i rewrote it. ignore that first one!

[antiseed]

(angharad doesn't answer for a long moment. she hadn't thrown him from the rig in order to kill him; rather to save him, from both furiosa's anger, and hers. because angharad knows the immortan and his legions of young soldiers. the war boys fighting (dying) for him fight for a lost cause: he won't ever care for them. he won't carry a single one of them to the gates of their precious valhalla. it's why she had been so insistent upon saving them. they didn't understand. not really. they were only mindless pups, following the order of the hand that fed them treats.

looking at him now, angharad isn't sure how the war boy before her factors into this.)

To try to help? (she echoes, confused, and then realization hits so suddenly her expression blows wide open, mouth hitching in a startled smile.)

The Green Place. The Green Place of Many Mothers. They made it?

[candeur]

He looks awful up close, like a strong gust of wind might knock him off his feet. Has he come off the street? He isn't a very good criminal. He's sizing her up, staring at her with bright eyes set deep into his face; probably thinks he can intimidate her into leaving him to his business. Unlikely.

"You aren't," Capable tells him firmly, and surprises herself by reaching out to grab the end of the jimmy bar quite without thinking. She gives it a tug, to try and take it out of his hand.

[iamawaited]

[He glances up at her face, then immediately away again as he sees the hopeful glee spreading across it. The shake of his head is quick and contained, as though it might cushion the blow if he keeps the movement small. As though he feel smaller for being the one to tell her the truth.]

There is no Green Place anymore. It went sour.