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“Yes, escape.”
“We had to get away from him.”
“Away from Joe.”
The War Boys took one step back away from them and Cheedo watched Rachet’s body language close up, watched Kompass’s anger grow stiff. She looked to the Dag who’d simply stared at the two, one and then the other, head tilted.
“Why would ya want to get away from Joe?” the younger War Boy asked, his voice gone hard. “wouldn’t that be the best place to be?”
“It’s no place to be,” Toast spat. “I’d rather live in the wastes.”
Cheedo didn’t really want to live in the wastes; it was more comfortable in the Citadel. But Joe had hung over everything there, like the poison he’d professed he’d kept out for them with their air filters and their clean water and food. It was enough to make everything taste of ash, and Cheedo didn’t even realize it until the night she’d spent under the stars with shared food and easy laughter.
"You shoulda felt honoured to be Treasured by the Immortan!"
It was startling how quickly the younger Warboy, the one who'd been helpful and chatty and seemed so genuinely fond of Furiosa, changed when they made any sort of suggestion that Joe hadn't been so wonderful.
"And what do you think that 'treasuring' means , huh?" Dag asked. "That belly-soft wretch forced us. Hurt us."
There was a second of blinking as this was processed, and then Rachet burst out, "Well then maybe you shoulda given Him what He asked for! So He coulda been gentle-like with ya, like He were with the Boss! Weren't Joe's fault you couldn't hack it as His wives—"
Cheedo made a choked noise as Dag hissed, Toast went pale with fury, and Capable reminded herself that these men were brainwashed, and that of her sisters, she was probably in the best position to remember that.
"—the Boss, it was just she couldn't have children, she loved 'im, woulda been with 'im forever if she could'ave!"
"Did she tell you that?" Capable said, before Toast could react, her hand having drifted to her gun. Capable looked from Rachet to the other one, Kompass, who’d backed even further away from them. "Did Furiosa tell you that she loved Joe? That he was gentle?"
Not that it meant anything if Furiosa had told them that - she'd obviously had to lie to her crew about some things to get accepted by them. But Capable couldn't imagine Furiosa opening up about this at all, not even to trusted crew. Not into this kind of detail. She'd barely confirmed to them in the vault that she'd been one of Joe's wives, and only after Angharad had asked her directly.
"N-no." She saw him think. The idea was obviously ingrained, but how had it started? "She didn't want— The Ace, he said—"
Kompass broke in, his jaw clenched with anger, his voice low and tight. "Said she was used to better'n us, so if we wanted to make her feel good we had to be as gentle as the Immortan."
Dag made a soft sound, and Toast tried not to react to this tacit admission that Furiosa had slept with her crew, in more ways than one. It wasn't anything they hadn't suspected, but from the sound of it it was also a very different thing than they'd expected. Toast had pictured a swarm of Warboys, out only for their own satisfaction - how could it be different? They were made in Joe's image. It was hard to imagine Warboys being gentle with a woman; it was even harder to imagine them being concerned with making somebody feel good.
She wondered how that had come to be, after Joe; how Furiosa could stand grasping hands on her, let alone more than one pair.
"See, that's the thing," Dag said. "That smeg was old and weak and poxy and took that out on us whom he locked up. Joe never gave a hand full of sand about making us feel good."
Kompass blew out an angry breath through gritted teeth, like he realised he'd said more than he'd intended and that the response was more than he could hear and stalked away. The War Boy threw over his shoulder, like a lance, “That’s just ‘cause you weren’t worthy .”
Capable felt an odd, light feeling in her stomach as the hit landed, as she watched him go, a gut-sore wound at words that hurt more for the intent than their meaning; the insult falling short because her own worth and her own truths were never something she’d been concerned about, the locks on their Vault assured that. Around the hurt, she felt a swell of sympathy and pity for these men who were being confronted with how their God was so much less worthy than they'd always thought. Who had been comparing themselves to a false image for their entire lives. For all of the bigger Warboy's simmering rage, he hadn't intentionally intimidated them; he’d kept backing away the more agitated he got, like he was the one being attacked.
She wondered if this would have labeled him ‘soft’ in the eyes of his peers; she knew it would have in Joe’s.
“You’re wrong ,” Rachet yelled out as well, turning his back on them, and they heard him mutter under his breath, “you have to be." He half turned back around, biting out, "An’ he wasn’t 'soft’, he wasn’t ‘poxy’ . He can’t have been.” He opened his mouth as if to say something more, but then snapped it back closed and ran after his fellow crew, spitting on the floor at their feet before he left.
Capable looked at her sisters. They looked back at her, thoughtful and angry and hurt and confused, and she felt the echo of it all inside herself.
Kompass stalks blindly down the hallways, turning at intersections more out of instinct and habit than with any real thought.
This is what he remembered: Ace and him going over new crew, the Ace with obvious judgement and Kompass quietly from the side, trying to get several sightlines on the guys and waiting for a particular moment, a particular light to hit their eyes, a particular tone to hit their voice when they say, “Boss.” The moment they turn crew.
Sometimes, they never do. Sometimes they resent the way the crew furls around the Imperator, and the fault lines in the crew become more and more obvious as some stop hanging out with the ones that don’t fall in, without quite knowing why.
These times the Ace would arrange for these members to staff the most dangerous perches. Perhaps crew reactions were slower from those supporting those positions, reflexes that weren’t as instant, a lunge that was a little less desperate. It’s not things that Kompass dwells on, but that he notices and then immediately tries to forget.
This is what he remembered: watching their Imperator go distant sometimes, and quiet. How the crew whispered about her past when she’s far away, what to avoid sayin' or doin' to not hurt her or anger her. She wouldn’t even lash out necessarily at the hurt, but do something much worse; if it were bad enough their Imperator would forget you. Her gaze sliding past you, her briefings no longer mentioned you... And something in the eyes of crew agree that any trespass that merits such a thing means a death casually forgotten, unWitnessed.
This is what he remembered: Furiosa, reaching out to him and dragging him into their pile, many different times, many different days. It was usually the best sleep he’d have, within that nest of crew, waking up feeling solid and metallic and shiny and new.
This is what he remembered: Crank, when he was newly invited to her quarters, fumbling and grimacing, his gearstick not functioning right. Furiosa gesturing for him to come close, and saying, so soft only Kompass had overheard, "Don't have to. Only if you want ." because this was not a Use like with the other Imperators, this was sexin' like it must have been with the Immortan. Crank had nodded in relief and shifted up to let her lean against him, while Kompass was only too happy to take his place.
This is what he remembered: Furiosa looking at him one night, contemplative, after he was dragged up next to her, face still wet with her liquid, prick at attention. He’d ignored the throb of it and curled up a little to avoid grinding it against her, getting ready to sleep if that's what she wanted. If she was done for the night he’d let himself come and then pass out, Kompass knew he was always fairly useless, after. But he found himself being rolled onto his back, and Furiosa saying "Don't move."
She’d climbed astride him with a determined look on her face. “Hold him still,” she ordered Ace and Boker. Kompass couldn’t wrap his mind around what was happening. They'd never— nobody had suggested, because they hadn't been Worthy, and that was fine. They were there to make her feel good. Oftentimes that made them feel good too, and the Boss liked that, long as she didn't feel like it was her responsibility to make them come. They'd get themselves off if they felt like it, or helped each other, until they all curled up together, sated and happy.
So this was—
Breedin' was dangerous if she wanted to stay Imperator, she couldn't risk getting a full belly, though he had the notion the scars on her meant it wasn't a risk for her anymore. Still, he could barely comprehend what was happening even as she'd sat herself on his hips, the wetness of her on his prick, pressing it against his belly, rocking back and forth a little. And he was thankful for Ace pressing his hips down, for Boker at his shoulders, because he’d reared at the sensation. Or tried to.
She'd closed her eyes, seeming to wait for something, he didn't know what. But she seemed to find it, because she leaned up a little, reached to take him into her hand, align him.
And the look in her eyes had been… for a moment he could have sworn she'd hesitated. His fingers darted out, on instinct, to hold her hand while Ace reached down to guide him in instead, and her eyes had closed and her body slowly sank down onto him and he thought her trembling only noticeable to him because he’d trembled, too, at the sensations. She’d breathed out when she was fully seated and when she’d opened her eyes, they'd shined. He’d squeezed her hand.
Kompass remembered this and thought that the sisters had to be wrong. This was what it must have been like with Joe, careful and calm and so, so good.
They’d finally got it right enough to be worthy of her, of what the Immortan had done with her.
So the widows were wrong .
( But then, why did she run? a little voice inside him asks, and that voice makes him so angry .)
“Ace!” Rachet opens the door and immediately gets yanked backwards by a hand over his mouth.
Kompass shoulders himself into the room and takes a look inside. Nods firmly and strides into the room hauling Rachet in with him, shutting the door quietly.
“Rachet?” Ace questions from the side of his mouth, looking at Kompass whose his face is revved, grill a full snarl.
“Ace, step out with me.” Kompass all but orders him.
“Kompass?” Ace’s taken aback, the man’s usually simmering with anger but this is the first time it’d come out as disrespect.
“Ace,” Rachet pleads, “You really should go, I’ll stay with th’Boss. You need to hear this.”
Both of the crew’s nearly vibrating, Rachet settles on Furiosa’s other side, his hand reaching out to lightly pet her hand as if reassuring himself, but otherwise not touching her. Ace looks at the distance between them and then up at Rachet’s face and the younger man seems afraid.
Furiosa’s in danger , the Ace realizes.
He gets up even as Rachet asks again, “Jus’ go .”
Kompass is storming off already. Ace manages to softly close the door, and catches up in several long strides and follows his second as he navigates the twists and turns to one of those odd locations in the Citadel with dead air and low-grade white noise, right under one of the wind generators and battery storage.
“So what’s the sitrep,” the Ace demands, trying to catch his breath. “What kinda of force we looking at, are the war parties returning sooner 'n Janey thought, how’s our weaponry?”
“What?” Kompass whips around, “There’s going to be an attack this soon? Council discussed nothing of it, expected them in ten days at the earliest.” He starts pacing.
“Isn’t that why you’ve led me here? The Boss is in danger isn’t she?”
“What made you think that?” Kompass jerks to a complete stop and looks at him strangely.
Ace stands down a notch, it might be Kompass flying off over nothing, the uncertain situation has got everyone riled especially while Furiosa’s ailing. He could see it in the tenseness of the War Pups at their door, in the eyes of the women who came in to discuss things, “So the Citadel’s still safe?”
“Yes!” Kompass passes both hands over his skull, “Well, I mean she took care of it, but—”
“It’s Corpus?” The Ace demands.
“No!” he yells, “Where are you getting this?!”
While sometimes it’s best just to let Kompass blow off steam, Ace knows that he should update his second in command on what he’d learned from Furiosa about Joe. He’s not looking forward to that conversation even a little, even less the one with Rachet; Ace is still nauseous with all the implications.
“If it’s none of that. Kompass, I need to tell you about—”
“Would you just let me say my piece!”
“This is more important! I need to tell you—”
“The widows say she wasn’t staging a coup!” He roars, looming over Ace despite his stature.
Ace shoves him away, heart nitro’d, “What—”
“That Furiosa wasn’t staging a coup against Joe!” Kompass hisses, eyes wild, “That she was running.”
Does he know?! Ace wonders, how could he?
“Start from the beginning,” he orders.
Furiosa woke slowly, aware that people were moving around her but not able to drag herself to the surface in time before it had gone quiet again.
There was a warm, lean body beside her, a hand lightly petting hers, and this was familiar, this was good.
"Sprocket," she sighed, curling toward the warmth. Sprocket had been the head of the War Rig's Blackthumb crew when she’s first got the War Rig, and she'd spend a goodly amount of time crawling around the rig with him, discussing what she wanted changed, where she wanted perches, how everything could be better. Then Furiosa had spent her spare hours helping out the crew, getting things exactly how she liked, trusting only Sprocket to help her in the cab. He was small, for a War Boy, lean through the shoulders, and she never felt suffocated by him even in that small space.
When Furiosa decided she wanted more crew who could do on-the-go repairs, he was the first to come to mind, knowing Sprocket had been a scout driver before he became the repair crew’s head, and he quickly became driver of the lead car before she’d expanded his role. She's never regretted it. He's proven his worth many times over, and his trustworthiness too.
Sprocket was the first she'd welcomed touch from, wanted to touch in return. He knew how to touch without grasping, his lighter body never pinning her or making her feel trapped. She'd gradually grown accustomed to the others and they to her, to how she could stand to be touched. And from there to what she enjoyed— but Sprocket was the first, still, always welcome at her side, whether it's in bed like now or at the meal table or even, during long, boring drives, on the road beside her cab for a shouted conversation. One time he'd treated her to eleven verses of The Sand Song before she'd screamed for mercy and laughingly threatened to ram him off the road.
"It's Rachet, Boss," she heard a soft voice, and her mind jolted, re-oriented itself, cut away from the time where Sprocket would come and ease himself against her side, when she'd wake from a nightmare to find him lightly petting her hand.
She tried to choke down a sob and buried her face against Rachet's upper arm, raw and confused and feverish. Sprocket and Ace, the first of crew she’d started trusting and she now has the sensation of having lost them both. Sprocket to Valhalla, and that has never hurt as much as it does now, as if she had believed in Valhalla after all and not mourned him until now.
And Ace she'd lost to her own decisions, first to the sandstorm and now to her revelation. Furiosa didn’t know if he’d keep his respect of her, having revealed the cracks in herself like that, and revealed the many thousand-days of her lies of omission.
Despite everything, the cracks were a relief to reveal, even if she still wants to hide them; even if a part of her that was long-used to the Citadel thinks they are a weakness that will get her shredded. She had waited for some response from him, some outburst, but he’d just stared into the middle distance for a good long time, and Furiosa did not feel she could interrupt, not knowing for once where his thoughts lead.
Now she found herself running through the many possibilities of his reactions needlessly, a useless circle that could be fixed if Ace was only here to ask. If only she had the words to ask him, words that would repair this instead of breaking it further.
If only he'd give some indication that he might be willing to hear such words.
Rachet started telling her about the cloth he'd been given, his voice a little too high and tense, like when he didn't know what to do with himself. It was a good distraction from her own thoughts. He talked about how he thought he had enough to make a new shirt for her and something against chafing once she'd built a new arm… she was dimly aware that he had something on his mind, that he was tense, and probably babbling to distract himself, or perhaps both of them. But the steady stream of talking was soothing anyway, and the cadence of his voice lulled her back to sleep.
“...and then they said she was running,” Kompass yelled, “Have you heard of anything so unlike Furiosa? Running. And why would she run from the Immortan Joe?” He scoffed, and Ace thought he was angry all out of proportion to what he was saying.
If Joe had been like the Mechanic... except Joe had been the Citadel’s everything; he was all their strength and all their source of strength, he gave them life with the water and then gave their life meaning, he was everything worthy and determined your worth. And to think otherwise was— Ace realized that he didn't even know what that would look like, on a War Boy. He knew what that looked like on ferals that they’ve brought in from the Wasteland, those they’ve locked up to bleed or to breed.
Ace was suddenly staggered with the realization that Furiosa had been one of these ‘ferals’, and missed most of Kompass’ next words, only watching his second’s angry denials, and violent gestures, and pacing.
This is what the Boss saw, Ace realized with a sinking feeling.
This is why they hadn't been told. Was this what she'd expected, not just of the men, but of him too?
Despite his initial thoughts, the more Ace listened the more he thought that Kompass didn’t know the extent of it, but even worse: didn’t believe what little he’d heard. Didn't want to believe it.
This was the man Ace had trusted to take his place on the War Rig if Ace had sped to Valhalla. A man he’d brought in after their first run, much younger and less stocky, who’d risen through the crew to become one of the most trusted, one Ace had fought beside for many thousand days, who he’d sought opinions from both in war and out of it. To whom he’d trusted safeguarding their Imperator, in all matters.
Have I been wrong in this too? Ace wondered, throat souring. He couldn’t figure out the words to tell Kompass what he’d learned earlier from Furiosa. Not in the face of this much defensiveness. He hoped Kompass just needed some time to get past his refusal to actually listen and to see , because the more Ace thought about it, the more he’d realized there was little things he’d always seen, but rationalized into something else because it didn’t make sense with his fundamental knowledge that Joe had saved them all.
But if Joe was fallible…
If he was not so ‘Immortan’...
“—those, those breeders, they’re wrong!” Kompass spat. “They don’t know what they’re talking about, spreadin’ lies about our Redeemer!”
Even so, maybe that was not enough to make people question long-held truths. Even Kompass, who as far as Ace knew had never before referred to Joe as Our Redeemer, barely had ever spoke of him come to think of it, suddenly seemed more invested in defending the Immortan than he'd ever been.
“You see it, don’t you, Ace?” His second looked up at him, face uncertain, eyes almost pleading.
Ace thought that if he disagreed at this point, Kompass might not turn to him in the future. Maybe his ears would be closed to anything Ace might say otherwise; he’s seen it before, in different forms, when he’d had to let down an aspiring crewmember and then they’d ignored his advice on how to improve. So Ace just shook his head.
Only said, “I see.”
He looked for more words but couldn’t find any, how would he even convince the other War Boy that his perspective was muddy? That the women had a point? That every word Ace had ever said on the matter needed to be retracted, rethought? How could he even let Kompass know that Furiosa had—
What if he reacted like this to her?
Ace didn’t even know how to wrap his mind around all of what Furiosa told him, let alone put it all into words for someone else, and then to convince them of it. Clearly the widows had failed in this task, if Kompass’s reaction was any indication.
“I get it,” he said only, clapping a hand to his shoulder, and Kompass looked slightly relieved, even if his shoulders were still up around his ears like he was in the middle of a fight. As if that answer also hadn’t been what he’d wanted to hear, either.
Maybe this was it, Ace blinked, shocked, maybe this is what it looked like, the moment of someone starting to doubt. But how could he even help the other War Boy expand on it? He thought about it, and kept on thinking.
That evening was quiet.
Furiosa had slept most of the day, exhausted after their conversation and her breathing worse - Ace flinched every time he heard her struggle, knowing that he'd agitated her, caused her to get up and move far more than she should have.
He was still glad they'd talked because, even though every time he looked at her it felt like she had her metal hand around his throat and was squeezing none too gently, it was better to know what he knew now. But he should have been more mindful of how his standing up, his raised voice, would make her feel she needed to be on her feet also.
She was awake for a while, wan and drained but lucid enough to rummage in the crate of small parts Rett had brought around. Apparently the widows — the sisters , Ace reminded himself, had asked the the Repair Boys to collect material the Boss could use for an arm.
It gave him an odd swell of warmth for the young women, an unexpected appreciation for the way they seemed fond of Furiosa in their own way. Maybe in time he'd get used to dealing with them.
Furiosa wasn't well enough to make anything just yet, her attention span and energy levels non-existent. Mostly she was just stirring in the box idly and occasionally selecting a part to look at. She'd laid a few things aside, and now and then she nudged Rachet, who was still sitting next to her, had been all afternoon, to lend her a hand in experimentally fitting two parts together.
Kompass was stretched out on her other side, back pressed along her leg, his face grim, like he needed the contact but he was resentful about it. Or perhaps he was just trying to sleep and annoyed with Rachet, Ace wasn't sure. Kompass was often angry as a rule, but their conversation earlier certainly gave him enough reason even if their younger crewmate was working on Ace’s patience too. Rachet had been talking non-stop for the past hour at least, about whatever came to mind - Ace knew it was the younger man's way of working through a thing, letting something idle in his brain while his mouth took the driver's seat. The Boss didn't seem to mind the chatter, and occasionally hummed or nodded in acknowledgement.
Ace was trying hard to tune it out, needing some quiet to handle his own roiling mind, wishing to find words himself, but didn't want to leave the room— even in her weak, feverish state Furiosa would know something was wrong.
So now he sat on the other side of the room from them, looking back at two thousand days of being at Furiosa's back and seeing every look, every touch, every moment in a different light. He wasn't sure, just now, if he'd even known her at all. Or if he could trust himself to read her right, or anyone around her right, and then say the right thing. Not when he'd failed so bad for their entire time together.