Chapter Text
Furiosa’s eyes burn from too many hours out in the dry heat and her shoulder aches as it continues to support her custom prosthetic. She tries to keep it down and rests the metal arm against her thigh, steering the old pick-up with only her flesh and bone hand. At least at this hour the road is practically deserted - dark, quiet, and hypnotically winding. It eases her shoulders down from her neck and makes her forget. So she fangs it, hearing her mother’s voice form the words and brings her mechanical hand back to the wheel so she can shift down to maneuver the bend. There’s nothing like it -- the roar of an engine, wind sweeping through the cabin, the power of metal and chrome moving to her will.
Tail lights come into her view up ahead, but they’re off to the side of the road at an odd angle. Its a dangerous sharp right near a concrete ditch. She’s seen many totaled cars dragged into her shop for an official opinion after a drunk or a some kamakazi kid who thinks he can drive has miscalculated the turn. She edges closer as she slows and mutters, shit, as she makes out the overturned vehicle.
She pulls to a stop and then gathers her flashlight and phone from the glove box. She eyes the steep concrete slant into the ravine and pockets the cell and flashlight. She eases her feet downward with a huff and does her best not to scrape up her hand or prosthesis whenever her balance falters, nearly tumbling her forward.
Once her feet are on relatively flat ground she retrieves the flashlight. The car is an old Ford Falcon that has probably seen better days even before it toppled into a ditch. She zeroes the light in on the driver's side closest to her. But as it turns out, it’s not the driver’s side at all -- it’s fitted like a european car with the wheel to the right. It’s a once beauty a long way from home.
She crouches down and sees a pair of boots, toes down, struggling to make their way out of the driver side window. Furiosa pops up and then crawls over the underside of the hood, boots slipping against the metal. The driver's grunting, head down, and fingers digging into the concrete as he tries to pull himself further out. She points the light at him and he looks up before his eyes flutter, blood trickling down his forehead. Then his head hits the ground.
“Hey!” she calls and kneels next him as she checks his pulse. “Hey. Come on. Fuck.”
She pulls out her phone and dials 911.
//
She follows the ambulance into the city. It's completely out of her way, but she figures he’s on his own and his car will probably end up in her garage anyway. Least she can do is give its driver a lift to a motel or something. So, she finds herself sitting in a blue plastic chair just as the sky is starting to turn pink. It's been hours and there's no sign of the man in the scarred leather jacket with a gash on his head. She finally pushes herself out of the chair and strides to the nurse's station to ask about him only to learn he checked himself out against medical advice a half hour ago.
"Oh." She blinks, shuffling backwards, and then turns to leave, feeling oddly disappointed. She shakes feeling off and heads to her truck, grateful that it’s still early enough that she won’t have to pay a fee for the deck.
An hour later she pulls up to her house -- a two story number with rounded windows and doorways that her grandparents lived and died in. They call the neighborhood the Wasteland because behind everyone’s backyard there’s nothing by salt with a range of desert mountains separating them from the city. Toast, one of her current tenants, is there on the porch with a cigarette and a cup of coffee as if she’s waited up all night.
“Where have you been?” Toast asks as she eyes from the rim of her mug.
“Got distracted,” she replies as she starts loosening the belts of her prosthesis. “Where’s Capable?”
“Early shift at the dinner.”
Furiosa nods absently and then head in to climb the stairs to her bedroom, ignoring Toast’s calls of, “hey, where were you?” She drops the metal arm to the floor and then collapses onto her mattress hoping for just a few hours shut eye so she can at least make an appearance at the shop.
That afternoon, after five cups of coffee, the stranger’s car is towed into her garage and she has no idea what the fuck to do with it.
//
Two weeks pass and the old car sits in the least used garage bay, which the police, insurance crooks, and the owner have seem to forgotten. Ace and her repair boys wonder after it from the doorway of her office, but she just shrugs. Maybe it’ll be a good night time project -- something to drag back to her home garage and tinker with when she’s not sleeping. She’ll give it a month and then claim it as hers.
She and Ace close up the shop at 5:30. He asks her if she wants to grab a drink at The Citadel as he often does on payday. He’s a salty old man, but for whatever reason he likes her. Never has given her shit about working for a woman or asked about her arm. She usually says “no” because she hates The Citadel -- hates the man who runs it, while most everyone else sees him as the savior of their neighborhood. She thinks she might actually call Ace a friend if he didn’t fall into the later category.
But she finds her head nodding yes to his invitation. Maybe it’s because she’s tired. She’s run back in forth out of the Wasteland three times in two weeks, securing two women with her old friend, Val, and collecting a new tenant for her spare room. And so a glass of smooth burning liquid sounds like the perfect way to take the edge off the hours and hours of sleep she hasn’t been getting.
They walk the two blocks from the shop to The Citadel. The happy hour crowd is still filling in and there are only raucous corners instead of one booming choir of clinking glasses and testosterone filled whoops and hollers. It’s almost bearable. Ace immediately veers to the calls of Slit and Nux, two of their apprentices at the shop. They're at a back table with a few low-level police officers who all seem to think they’re Dirty Harry.
Furiosa vaguely hears Nux ask after her to Ace as she goes to the mostly empty bar, save a couple older men who’ve probably been there the better part of the afternoon. The bartender, a man she doesn’t recognize, has his back turned as she approaches. He’s not exceptionally tall, but fairly broad, solid with his shirtsleeves rolled up to his forearms.
The scratch of her stool mingles with the crash of plates and he swivels at the waist, hand going to his hip for some holster that isn’t actually there. She stills halfway onto the stool as he eyes her like he’s not really seeing her, but something else. Something that won’t leave him be. She really looks at him then. He’s surprisingly tan with roughly shorn hair, bristly cheeks, and a still healing cut slicing through his hair line.
“It’s you,” she says.
He cocks his head and eyes the perimeter. She pulls herself completely up on the stool and shoots him a calm the fuck down stare. After a moment and a jerky nod, his shoulders ease slightly and he finally actually seems to meet her eyes.
“I’m the one who found you. When you ran off the road.”
He hums and nods his head. She’s not sure if it’s in acknowledgement or appreciation, but he turns around to survey the clean glasses and bottles of liquor.
“What do you drink?” he asks and she hears some vague remnants of an accent that she can’t place.
“Whiskey.”
He places a shot glass in front of her and then pours her drink as he says, “on me.”
“Well then, you’re welcome,” she mutters and then throws back the shot. She slams the glass back down eyes closed and mouth open as the liquid burns down her throat until it settles in her gut. When she opens her eyes he’s looking over her like he doesn’t quite know what to do with her. Its a look she’s gotten used to between her short cropped hair, black boots, and makeup-less face. Not to mention her metal arm, which he may or may not be able to currently make out since it’s covered in the arm of her jacket. She taps the glass on the bar and quirks her eyebrow for another. He nods and she takes another shot on him.
He turns to wipe down the corner of the bar just vacated and she finds her eyes swaying towards him as she plays with the shot glass. She notices a slight limp on his left side as he turns back in her direction and he catches her staring. She brushes her hand over her hair and then meets his eyes.
“I have your car back at my shop.”
His eyes change then as if there’s finally some feeling of relief and he hums out a sigh.
“With the right care she might be salvageable,” she continues.
“I, uh, I knew it was in a garage here. Was waiting to get some cash before I asked about it,” he says, gesturing with his thumb in the general direction of the bar, as if it’s a clear explanation as to why he’s here.
She begins to nod, but then there’s a roar from the building crowd. She and the stranger look towards the door and there he is -- The Immortan Joe. They call him Immortan because of the times he should have died, but survived -- leukemia as a kid, being the only surviving POW from his platoon in Vietnam, and then the three bullets he’s taken as the local Sheriff. He’s become a legend so married to his own myth that he might actually believe he’s immortal. He’s flanked by his wall of a son, Rictus, and his very pregnant and very young wife, Angharad.
Furiosa can’t help but zero in on the girl’s rigid back, a sign of defiant pride or fear or, probably, a mixture of both. She has to look away and down to the bar. The stranger hovers over her and when she looks up his eyes are fluttering between her and the wife.
“She’s young,” he says as if it’s more than just stating the obvious. As if the word encapsulates how she’s not really a wife at all. Not by choice anyway.
“Yeah. Well, he likes them young,” she says and hops off the stool before he can eye her or actually question what she’s not saying. She shoves a few dollars from her pocket towards him as a tip and he tries to refuse, but she just slides the cash harder against the wood. “My shop’s two blocks east. Come by whenever you’re ready.”
Furiosa doesn’t wait for a silent nod or a hum or the slight possibility of more sparse words. She just heads to the door, ignoring Ace’s call of “Hey Boss!” She does, however, against her better judgement, find her eyes glancing to the right to Joe’s table. He smiles that smile that’s almost a sneer and tips his glass to her. She storms out the door and she isn’t sure if the laughter she hears is real or in her head from memories far, far away.