wordburger | MAD MAX SANDBOX POST

It's a long time before Nux comes to again, and at first, all he knows is that he should be dead and isn't. It doesn't take long for the pain to come blazing along after that to confirm it. This is no Valhalla. He's not sure at first that it isn't someplace else; someplace much, much worse. Eventually, though, when he gets upright and pain recedes and memory starts kicking back into gear, he starts to understand the truth. The remains of the war rig and the war drums lie smouldering in the canyon pass, what seems like miles of wreckage behind them. Corpses everywhere, glorious and inglorious. And Nux, thrown clear of the battle, bizarrely alive and alone.

After a time, he starts scavenging, because he doesn't know what else to do. He cobbles together something like a car out of spare parts and leaking guzzoline. It's not even close to chrome, but it limps along better than he can. He stows away the few supplies he can find and then... then he makes for the Citadel, because whoever holds it, it's still the only place he knows to go.

Still, he prays to whatever he can pray to now that what he did meant something. That the Wives have their water and that Capable still lives. He clasps his hands in makeshift prayer over the best approximation of a steering wheel he can make, and then he sets out west.

Edited 2015-06-10 00:46 (UTC)

Everyone had a purpose now. A real one, one that spoke for their skills, and not their bodies.

Toast had her books, her knowledge to share. The Dag had become the new Seed Woman, and even Cheedo began to find her way. That left only Capable, who took it upon herself to look to the War Pups and the War Boys grown, who now found their half-lives without purpose and wondering whether Valhalla could be reached. Some had cast away entirely to seek their own fortunes, hoping to find Valhalla in the desert or perhaps in the remnants of Bullet Town, while others carried on because they simply knew nothing else. Some, particularly the War Pups whose half lives were ending before they barely began, went to sleep held in Capable's arms, lulled by ancestral memory of the lullabyes she crooned to them before they closed their eyes and didn't open them again.

In every one of their faces, Capable saw Nux. And every night she went to the highest point she could find and look out at the Fury Road as if somehow by the sheer force of her will, she'd spot him driving down its winding path.

When the car he'd cobbled together finally did come down the road, Capable knew. And when it pulled up to the great lift, it was already down, and waiting upon it was Capable, no longer dressed in white gauze like some fertility idol to be worshiped on an altar. She waits, breathless, existing in a state of both hope and disbelief.

It's dark out by the time he makes it home, and she looks different without the glow of white surrounding her or the sands of the wasteland on her face, but he knows the burst of flame that is her hair long before he arrives. There isn't much engine to flood, but he floods it anyway, yanks on the throttle and slams on the gas to send it flying the rest of the way as fast as it can go.

He is awaited.

It's more or less a suicide run for the rig, which sputters out its last the moment he skids to a stop in front of the lift. The War Boy who climbs out of it, though, is very much alive. Mostly alive, at least: he's limping, coughing, looks near to the end of his half-life, but he's not there yet. He limps onto the lift and looks up towards the Citadel, smiling faintly. "You made it," he observes, voice hoarse but full of relief.

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.

"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.

Edited 2015-06-14 16:45 (UTC)

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."

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.

"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."

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.

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."

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.

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.

"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.

"It's more than okay." Capable murmurs, glancing on each side at the way his arms are coiled around hers. She looks back up at him. "We don't know how much time you have." The truth of it presses down on her the way Larry and Barry press down on his windpipe. "But we're going to find a way to give you more." It still won't be enough, she thinks. The only amount of life for him that would be enough is a full one. And almost every minute of it with her.

The first part relieves him. His smile widens again, and he runs his hands up and down her arms just for the pleasure of the touch, then rests his head against hers again. "Good."

The second part... The lift grinds to a halt and he takes advantage of the distraction for a moment, because her proposition sets his head to whirling. The only reason anyone has ever considered prolonging his life before -- the only reason he's ever considered it -- has been to spare him for a greater death. The idea of living just to live is supposed to be something for other people. Full-lives, not half-lives.

But in those last few moments on the rig, just before Rictus had come up on him and torn his engine out, hadn't he thought: what if? Hadn't he thought, skidding into the canyon wall, that maybe he might have hoped to live after all?

He slips his hand into Capable's as the lift stops and limps with her into the Citadel proper, oddly quiet in the face of her declaration. It's a lot to chew on, and not only for his tumors.

Leading him in, she considers his limping form with concern. "Do you want to go see the Organic Mechanic?" she asks, keeping her fingers curved around his. "If you can wait, there's someplace I want to take you - someplace I don't know if you've ever really been allowed in."

Because now all places are free, and accessible, and she wants him to know that freedom.

He shakes his head. "I can wait." He knows he can -- he hurts, and he's tired, but he knows the difference between pain and weariness and something closer to fatal. He'll know when there's no choice but to see the Organic, but he's not there yet.

And if it's a choice between sitting around on a rock with a tube in his arm for hours or going somewhere with Capable, he knows which one he'd rather do. It'll spare him from his thoughts a while longer, anyway. There are suddenly so many of them.

She wants to ask if he's sure, because he really does seem like he needs a medic, and at this point the Organic Mechanic is actually too frightened of the Wives (a revelation, imagining anyne would actually be afraid of them!) to not do as he is bid - Nux is going to get the best care. But she doesn't, trusting him to know is own mind.

Instead she keeps hold of his hand, an begins to guide him deeper into the Citadel. It's just as much up as it is in, and the stairs cut out of rock that she's guiding him to lead to the very top of the Citadel, an heretofor forbidden zone full of lush greenery. Her fingers tighten around his. She's taking him to a sacred place.

Through all of this, from the very beginning, one hope has been recurring in Nux's heart: that whatever the reason the gates refuse to open for him -- or whatever the truth out there might really be -- that he's lived all this extra time to be able to do something great. He'd thought to do it with his death, and it's still an adjustment, trying to think of it as something he could do with his life.

But that's all to say that when he first gets to the green place, he wonders if this might have been it all along. He'd caught glimpses, the faintest glimpses of it before, moving through the aquacoladucts, and he's seen the produce, but... he'd never imagined that there was this much of it. It's almost too jarring to be beautiful, like he doesn't know how to love it. He grips her hand tightly, staring all around them, astonished.

MAD MAX SANDBOX POST

Threadstarter #1: The Fix It Thread

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