Chapter Text
It’s been one hundred days. There’s no deceiving herself when one of her first thoughts each morning is a tally of how long it’s been since she’s spoken to him. She misses fucking him, and worse than that, she misses the feel of his arms around her. Worst of all, she simply misses him.
Toast is worried. If a hundred days isn’t enough to cease wanting some War Boy, then how long will it take. The baby inside her moves, and Toast decides it is to blame. It is the reason she misses its father. If it had died, she’d have ceased caring whatsoever about Slit. Instead it’s persisted in living, and the Vuvalini and the Organic Mechanic and a midwife from among the Wretched all agree that this will probably be a full term pregnancy with a live birth. Toast can only imagine what sort of malformed creature will crawl out of her.
She groans as she climbs out of bed. She’s certain that she wakes up bigger each morning than when she went to bed the night before. She passes the Dag on her way to the lavatory. The Dag looks as miserable as Toast feels. Her baby should have been born by now, but it seems reluctant to leave the comfort of her womb.
The Dag has gone from trying out the sounds of various girls’ names back to calling it Warlord Junior, though the Vuvalini try to convince her it’s normal for a first pregnancy to last a little longer. “Out,” she’s mumbling. “Out, you damned parasite.”
There isn’t much for Toast to do these days. Things are running smoothly. She mostly just checks on the various groups of workers and addresses any problems that have arisen. Perhaps it was the desire for some excitement as much as pragmatism that made her insist the Pups should be taught to shoot by the Vuvalini.
The War Boys didn’t like that, of course.
“They’re better shots than you all,” she’d told them bluntly. “You waste bullets because you’re used to a steady supply of more from the Bullet Farm. They’ve had to learn to make every shot count.”
The younger Pups went along with it just fine, but the ones entering puberty seem determined to make the lessons more difficult in some twisted attempt at gaining the approval of their older brothers. Just the other day Toast had to swat one of them in the rear for referring to his new instructor as a ‘dried up old breeder’.
But they are quiet today and Toast soon finds herself bored and restless. She paces back and forth and tries not to be annoyed at the baby for being restless too. As she turns to begin another length of pacing, she catches sight of Slit walking by, carrying a tire in each hand. True, she can’t see his face, but she’d recognize that swaggering walk of his way anywhere.
She hurries after him, not actually breaking into a run because she thinks she’d look silly running with this big belly sticking out in front of her. “Slit,” she calls, lowering her voice so that it comes out a loud whisper rather than a shout.
He stops and turns to face her, and Toast has no idea what to say. She waits for him to speak, but he doesn’t. She finds herself getting annoyed. He ought to at least ask the woman carrying his spawn how she’s feeling.
“Give me your hand,” she orders.
He lets go of the tires and extends a hand to her, looking almost wary.
Toast holds his hand flat against her belly and waits for the baby to kick again. “I thought you might want to feel that.”
“It’s real shine,” he says. “Thanks for letting me feel it.” He hesitates before adding, “Immortan always said his sons died ‘cause the breeders were mediocre, but you’re so chrome this one has to be perfect.”
Toast could not be more shocked that Slit thinks this baby is Joe’s. Stupid man, she thinks, how could he not realize it’s his.
But she remembers how strongly Joe had pushed the idea of himself as everyone’s ‘Daddy’. The mothers and true fathers of the boys who grew up to be War Boys hadn’t mattered; Joe was the only father anybody was allowed to have. Joe had given his men women to ‘breed’ sometimes, but the resulting offspring belonged to Joe, the boys to serve as warriors and the girls to be breeders and milkers. Joe was the only person in the Citadel who’d had a family. The rest of them probably didn’t even understand the concept, or at least they couldn’t apply it to themselves.
It should be so easy to tell him that her baby isn’t even Joe’s anyway, but Toast can’t say it. She decides it’s kinder not to tell Slit it’s his baby. It’ll probably be born a monster or die soon anyway, so really it’d be crueler to get his hopes up.
Slit lets the subject of Joe’s sons drop. He asks, “Am I forgiven?”
Toast doesn’t understand what he’s talking about. “Forgiven for what?”
“For letting those new War Boys die after you told me not to.”
“Don’t be silly,” she says. “Their deaths aren’t your fault.”
“Then I’m sorry I got this-” He touches a small scar on his shoulder that she doesn’t remember. “After you told me not to get any more scars.”
“That’s even sillier. I know you didn’t ask to get shot. That new scar was unavoidable.” Toast can’t imagine what the hell is wrong with him.
“Then what did I do to make you angry?”
“I’m not angry with you,” she says, though it’s hard not to sound angry. It’s impossible to have patience when there’s a little monster kicking her insides.
“So you just got tired of me.” He sounds resigned. She’d have expected anger or wounded pride. This hurts to hear. She belatedly realizes that it might have been selfish and cruel to end things with him the way she had.
“No,” Toast tells him quickly. She owes him an explanation. She can’t admit the truth, though, not that he’d understand it anyway. So she lies. “I’m just not in the mood for a bedmate when I’ve got this thing growing in me.”
“So after it’s born…” he asks hopefully.
“We’ll see,” she says, though she’s certain she won’t be stupid enough to go through this all over again.
He reaches out as if to touch her face or stroke her hair or something, and Toast shrinks back to avoid it. If he touches her like that, she might just throw herself into his arms and demand he never let her go.
The rejection hurts him. That’s plain from the look on his face before he puts on a nonchalant expression. “Got to get these tires over to the blackthumbs, but you can always ask a pup to find me if you need me.”
Toast is oddly pleased by the new knowledge that he’s been if not heartbroken then at least emotionally bruised. The only thing worse than caring about a War Boy would be caring about a War Boy who didn’t care back.
She smiles as she watches him pick up the tires, admiring the way the pull of their weight makes the muscles in his arms flex. She feels both powerful and guilty as she watches him walk away because he’s lost that cocky swagger.
Toast wants to talk to someone about all of this. But she’s certain that Capable will disagree with her decision not to tell Slit that he’s the father of her baby. Capable is still disappointed she stopped inviting him to her bed.
She certainly can’t waste Furiosa’s time with this, and while the Vuvalini had been more understanding than she’d expected, there were some things she didn’t think they’d be happy to hear about. Like how she and Slit had first met. She’s quite sure that Furiosa has figured that out, but Furiosa had been a warrior of the Citadel for so long that she has to understand even if she doesn’t necessarily approve.
When she returns to the vault, she finds the door to the nursery open. Joe had treated this room like a holy place. It held half a dozen mismatched cradles, precious relics from the world Before. The walls had been painted white and there was even a large picture of a fantastical brown bear dressed in a red shirt. Joe had collected toys too, mainly soft fabric things shaped like animals.
Teddy bears. Miss Giddy said in the old world children were given teddy bears to sleep with and cuddle for comfort, and that she herself had had a dozen of them she’d line up neatly on her bed. Toast can’t comprehend a world of such plenty that people could expend resources on something so trivial.
The Dag is holding a teddy bear as large as a toddler. “I want to set fire to everything in here sometimes,” she says.
“I want to set fire to his bed,” Toast replies. “I have to remind myself that if I burn everything he touched and claimed for himself, I’d have to light myself afire too.”
“Did you fuck your War Boy in his bed?”
Toast shakes her head.
“A pity. You should have. Maybe I will if I find one I like.”
It’s as good an invitation to confide the whole sordid story. Toast is deciding where to start when the Dag cries out and drops the teddy bear to clutch her belly.
“I think it’s finally starting!”
Toast helps her to her bed before going to find Cheedo and summoning the Organic Mechanic.
But it’s almost two whole days later before the baby is finally born. None of them are pleased with the little cock between its legs.
“Perfect in every way,” the Organic Mechanic proclaims, smirking.
“I knew it,” the Dag says gloomily. “What are you doing?! Don’t give it to me. I don’t want to hold it and it’s not sucking on my teats.”
The Organic Mechanic pauses and then looks to Furiosa for guidance. Furiosa doesn’t offer any. It’s the Dag’s baby, the decisions are hers to make. It’s one of the base tenets of this new Citadel of theirs. No one could force a woman to bear children, or take her children away from her. Toast expects this to be the only instance of a woman not wanting her child because this will be the last child born here from rape.
Cheedo takes the baby and cradles it gingerly. “Dag, it’s not any uglier than any other infant.”
“I don’t care. Toss it down and let the Wretched eat it.”
“You don’t mean that. I’ll take it to the Milking Mothers. One of them will be happy to nurse it.”
“Bring it back,” the Dag says, granting permission for this course of action. “Got to keep our eyes on Warlord Junior.”
Surprisingly, it’s the Vuvalini who take the optimistic view. Apparently their dislike of men doesn’t extend to male infants.
“I think it’ll be quite some time before little Junior is ready to oppress anyone,” Gen says dryly.
Patrice strokes the Dag’s hair. “Dear girl, the best revenge on Immortan Joe would be to raise his son to be the opposite of what he wanted. Let the boy grow up to be a farmer or a healer.”
Toast slips out of the room. The last couple of days have been a preview of what’s in store for her. She’s terrified of the pain that awaits her and the helplessness of not being able to do anything about it. It’s not fair. It takes two people to make a baby, but only one of them suffers for it.
She remembers making this point to her grandmother when her mother was giving birth to her youngest brother. Gran had said men suffered when they had to listen to their women in pain. But of course that only worked if the father gave a damn about the mother.
She wonders how Slit would feel if she insisted he stay by her side when the time for the birth came.