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Max comes back to her later, like one of those satellites the Mothers had talked about. In a long, slow, looping arc, yes, but one that always comes back to where it started.
They’re standing by his car. He’d waved away any attempts to bring him closer into her home, her little fiefdom in the Waste.
She slides her eyes over at him, studies him. His hair sticks up in odd places. She wonders how long he’s been cutting his hair by himself, never trusting anyone to approach him with a blade, no matter how dull. She can’t remember the last time she looked at a man and expected anything other than a fight.
“You’re back.” She looks directly at him this time. He scuffs his hand nervously down the back of his head and flinches at the shift his shadow makes with the movement. Furiosa doesn’t insult him by pretending not to notice.
He works his mouth for a second, grasping for words with the same kind of half-feral helplessness he showed before. His head shakes a little, side to side, as he fixes himself upon a course of action. A part of speech.
“I brought.” He stumbles for a second on the next group of words. “I thought you might need these. Ranged can be good in fights.”
He gestures expansively at the crates he’s unloaded from the seemingly tiny space for storage in his car.
“Bullets,” he says at last, and nods to himself.
The majority of the combat-ready War Boys had perished in what the Pups called The Battle of The Fury Road. Her tenuous grasp on the Citadel relied primarily on the zealotry of the remaining War Boys, and the unthinking devotion of the Pups. So many of the vehicles and their defenses had been destroyed on the Fury Road, and one could only throw a spear so far.
Guns were better. In the end, it wasn’t wood and barbed wire that won a war, it was bullets and cold steel.
After a brief instant of suspicion sears through her, a learned fury that she hates but knows she can’t unlearn, she feels oddly touched. This was an excellent gift.
“Don’t you need some of your own?” She ventures, although she knows it’s likely Max won’t answer.
He makes eye contact for once. “I’m good.” He nods to his leg, where a pistol is hitched into the top of his brace. “I’ve got what I need.”
She thanks him, then. She never got a chance to thank him for the first gift. The one that remade her, in ways she couldn’t see but could feel the effects of all the same as she recovered. His blood in her veins, rushing with a purpose to where it was needed most. Did blood remember the intentions, the purposes of its host?
The wives had told her later how close it had been, and then even later, in awed tones, how Max had cradled her head in his dirty hands and whispered his name like a prayer, like a gift to be given with his very blood. The wives told her later, so she could know the name of the fool who had fought so fiercely by her side.
He nods again in acceptance. Just like before, so much of what they say isn’t ever said. She won’t question this gift, though. Although the neighboring gangs were all but obliterated on the Fury Road, chaos abhors a vacuum.
Already, the scouts she sends out report steadily growing bands of men, and even some women, rising up to claim what has been left. When the dust settles, she thinks she might send an envoy. A gift of water. A silent plea: leave the Citadel to its own devices. Let it grow, like the seeds The Dag has been planting, a trail of War Pups following in her wake as she flits around her new gardens.
Max reaches his hand down to his brace to fiddle with one of the bolts. She knows the reflex. Her new arm is shiny and well-oiled. Lethal if she wants. But she still can’t resist the occasional urge to adjust, to make allowances for what is no longer there. That doesn’t mean that she isn’t immediately shifting her weight forward, resting ever so slightly on the balls of her feet: ready and able to fight. She rocks back almost instantly, feeling more tired than she has in a while. Max doesn’t insult her by pretending not to notice. He just slowly slides his arm back to where it was. They don’t need to speak to understand each other.
She can’t stop herself from asking, “Do you want to come inside?”
He flinches again.
Of course. He wouldn’t want to return to where he was so ill-treated. It’s different now, quieter, greener, but Immortan Joe’s skull carvings still loom over his former domain, an irreversible reminder of his reign. The brides have been trying to cover the skulls with plants, the Mothers with woven wool. Now the eye is drawn even faster to the deathly shapes. Only time will put things right.
They stand in silence for another few minutes. It’s companionable.
“I’ll be on my way, then.” He smiles at her a little, nods, ever so slowly rolls his shoulders back to stretch his arms. He’s trying not to startle her this time. Trying not to put her on alert. She’d seen him do the same with the wives, lowering himself so gingerly into the hold with them, avoiding their hands as they handed each other things. He doesn’t want to be feared. He doesn’t want them to be afraid.
He leaves, and she wonders if he’ll be back. If they’ll ever be able to stand in the sun and speak freely and without fear. She hopes so. She knows now that hoping isn’t a mistake.
It’s a few months later. Things are at once noisier and quieter. The Citadel is peaceful now. The Boys, Pups, and wives have fallen into a routine. The Wretched are less wretched by the day now that they are granted the same access to the aquifer the rest of the Citadel enjoys. Things are steady. Furiosa keeps her eyes on the horizon, always looking for the next threat. It’ll come. Something always does. Thanks to Max, though, the Citadel is better prepared than before for what may come. What will come, if the rumblings in the distance are any indication.
She’s working on a rig. They just call them rigs now. No capital. No war. She’s fastening a particularly troublesome catch in place and absolutely drenched in sweat when Capable comes running. Capable’s different now, her idealism not shattered but tempered by her loss, the strange sort of grace she briefly found with Nux. Capable is beaming as she pulls on Furiosa’s slick and grease-stained flesh arm, urging her to a lookout point and shoving a scope into her hand.
Furiosa puts her eye to the spyglass and smiles.
This time he stays the night. They already had a room for him, set up at the end of the hall from her chambers. She didn’t know the wives had fixed Max a room until they ushered him into it and refused to let him set off again until he’d slept.
Furiosa remembers how deeply he’d slept in the War Rig, how he’d burst into wakefulness and immediately settled into fatigue in what was clearly a familiar pattern. She thinks maybe a lot of what is broken in him could be fixed if he could just sleep a night through, or two nights, even. She feels a sort of longing-by-proxy for him, for the nights he lies awake and the days he doesn't rest. When Max looks to her in supplication, she just shrugs, and he gives in immediately. He’ll stay. Only the night, though. Then he really has to go.
She sits with him and keeps him company as they eat a late dinner. She asks him how he’s been and he just grunts noncommittally. She asks him what he’s been doing and he just stares at her. Okay. Fair enough.
Finally, he starts to reach into his jacket, very slowly, for something. He pulls out a bundle of cloth and pushes it towards her. When she unrolls it, she sees a intricately inked and inscribed map of the area. She knows the land surrounding the Citadel like she knows herself. She spent so many years circling it and waiting for a path to redemption. She doesn’t need a map.
Then her eye catches on some strange symbols inked near the remains of the battle. Then on the legend.
He’s brought her another gift. Information.
He begins to fill her in on what the newest denizens of Gas Town and the Bullet Farm are up to. What their numbers are. Incredibly, what their plans are. They don’t plan to take the Citadel. They recognize that Furiosa and the women of the Citadel have what has always been the trump card in the hands the Wasteland deals: water.
She’s so relieved. She forgets herself, presses his left hand with her own, flesh and metal and flesh so close. Max stiffens and then relaxes.
“Thank you,” she says again. Max takes a deep breath, mumbles something low to himself, and lowers his head to where her metal hand is still clutching his scarred and wonderfully solid hand against her own. His lips, gently, lightly, softly brush a metal knuckle. He sits back again in silence, steadily meeting her gaze.
Tears threaten to spring to her eyes. She hasn’t cried since Splendid went under the wheels. She won’t cry now. She has to be so much for so many.
“Max,” she says. He nods and lightly squeezes her hand before delicately pulling away from her grip. She didn't mean for him to pull away. She hopes he knows that. He knows everything else, anyway.
They fall into a halting but no less companionable conversation about the minutiae of the Citadel. He raises his eyebrows in wonder at the changes she has brought, the life she has cautiously and fiercely settled into. Her redemption.
She sees him off in the morning, and when Toast pesters him for a straight answer as to when he’ll be back (not if, but when, now), he says nothing, commits to nothing, but as he turns to walk back to his car he catches Furiosa’s eyes and offers her a small smile, and she smiles back, full and toothy and a bit feral herself.
She knows satellites always come back to where they started.