The Green Place update (Patreon)

http://archiveofourown.org/works/4030117/chapters/10177004

Max came in on a horse, a body slung over the saddle. Seeing his return, Furiosa wondered if he’d become a bounty man—one of those who’d Joe used to get back his Wives when they fled, back when he hadn’t expected them to be ungrateful. Back when they’d been Mary, Alice, Sue. But no, when Max dismounted, guards offering the greeting of water and food like he was a stray dog, he took them to the boy on the saddle.

He had the beauty of a trophy and the mien of a used thing. The golden youth, his body too thin for muscle, too pampered for scars. No bruises, no cuts, but only because he had long ago learned not to fight back. He reminded Furiosa of the girls—how they convinced her to help just from the being of them. He wasn’t crying, like Capable had, at first. No, he cried without tears or sound or shakes, like Angharad had with her belly bulging.

“I couldn’t leave him with the Rock Riders,” Max said. Furiosa hadn’t asked.

His beard was coming back, growing out like the spikes on a Buzzard wheeler. His hair covered the nape of his neck. After he’d gotten out of his car, Max had gathered up a fist of it, sawed the excess off with his blade.

Since he’d last been there, the lean-tos the Wretches used for shelter had been replaced with basalt rock domes, a field of them surrounding the Citadel like some weird crop. Sod cladding on metal-worked frames. Bits of debris from all Joe’s war. But far too many of the humpies were still made of kerosene tins, bags, corrugated iron sheeting, bark from the few trees they had growing up in the green. Never enough for everyone. Never enough.

“We’ll take him,” Furiosa said, though he hadn’t asked. But she didn’t bother to ask if he was staying. “Take some guzzoline with you when you go.”

“I don’t need it.”

“Then trade it for whatever you want.”

Max’s words had a way of haunting Furiosa. What he said next would haunt her a long time. “There’s nothing out there I want.”

He sounded relieved.

***

Furiosa always felt a trace of guilt, going from the fiery outside to the chilly climate inside the Citadel, or even the humidity of the War Boys’ keeping, with the pump of the water all around like she was inside some great ripe heart. She clung to herself in the girls’ domain, her bad-arm throbbing with the chill that got into its metal, the leather of its mount shielding her, making her stump numb, but when she crossed her arms, it burned cold on her real arm, across her breasts.

She went to visit Toast—the encounter with the golden youth, who still had not spoken or even given his name, had made her feel once more… yearning, almost. Wishing she could do more to comfort Toast, all of them, to blot out the past.

Toast was fine, of course. All of them, more resilient than they looked, wandering the cold stone with their linen-wrapped feet, a back and forth as they hassled the Dag to do the exercises Angharad had showed them, to prepare for the baby almost-made in her belly to slip free. They threatened to tell the Many Mothers on her if she didn’t stretch and breathe and preen as she was meant to, promised her their cocoa rations if she would go through with it. The Dag gave in, probably only so she could whine more, looking to Furiosa for sympathy that Furiosa wouldn’t give.

Toast caught her watching as the others breathed with Dag, showing her how to carry the weight in her (“I know how to breathe, slaggers!” she protested fiercely.). She went over to join Furiosa, in an alcove that let in the sun and gave her a welcome glaze of sweat.

“Greatest show on Earth,” she joked, nodding her head to the Dag mockingly repeating Cheedo’s attentive words to her.

“She’s sure she wants to keep it?”

“Angharad would’ve kept hers,” Toast said simply. “It’s not his. It’s all of ours.”

“Anything I can do…”

“We know. You’ll die before you’ll let anyone put us back to clay—make something out of us or our new’s.” Toast smiled. Furiosa was still getting used to the girls doing that. “You kinda already did, remember.”

Furiosa unconsciously touched the little place on her arm where Max’s blood had gone in. Where not being metal had saved her. “We haven’t really talked about that night.”

“We did all our talking when you touched me.”

Furiosa nodded. She wished this could come as easily to her as it did to Toast—even Nux and Capable had seemed to be able to feel it out. All she knew was that she’d made Toast happy, felt like she was protecting her even when there was no threat. “I liked what we did.”

“You said that,” Toast grinned.

“But it still doesn’t mean you’re mine. No matter how much I appreciate… whatever you choose to give.”

“You’re not like them.” Toast inclined her head to the burning sun, the desert, where Joe was buried, where others like him had gone before and more would come. “If you were, I would never offer.”

Furiosa nodded. Uncomfortable. Unsure if she’d been able to articulate any of the things that were bone-deep in her, not knowing if she’d gotten them out of her, put them where Toast needed them. If Toast needed them at all.

“I like talking to you,” Toast said suddenly. “If you’re wondering what I want from you, it’s that you keep coming here and telling me… whatever. We know a lot about this place. We can help.”

“I AM PULLING OXYGEN INTO MY LUNGS AND THERE IS CARBON DIOXIDE COMING OUT, HOW AM I DOING THAT WRONG!?” the Dag demanded, all the other girls shrinking back from her.

“She seems to have breathing down to a science,” Furiosa said wryly.

“A natural,” Toast agreed. “Do you need to go?”

“Some things I should check on. Didn’t know you would want me this long.” That hadn’t come out right. That dizzying sense of black smoke coming from under her hood.

“As long as you want to be here,” Toast countered. “But I think you have better things to do than watch us tend the green. Although I think you are the only one who could get the Dag to help out…”

“In her condition?”

“She’s just supposed to learn the makings of the stuff with the rest of us—what the seeds need—but damn if she won’t slip off into her own little world. And we all supposed to carry the knowledge when the Vuvalini are gone…”

Furiosa nodded, a little depressed—one more thing to worry about. She’d come to rely on the Vuvalini, and already them older than anyone in the Citadel, except maybe Joe, and he’d had the clean air. She put her hand on Toast’s shoulder, let her feel the weight of it, then left. Moments later, before she had even started to feel the heat of the endlessly circulating pumps radiating from the walls, Capable ran to catch up to her.

“Furiosa! Furiosa!”

She turned back. Capable was running after her, her red hair grown out into an open flame, plaited down the small of her back. In motion, it whipped behind her like a tail. When Furiosa visited, sometimes she found the girls braiding it together, all playing with it, the crimson hair no one else had. Joe had liked it short.

“You’re cold, right?” Capable brushed a stray lock out of her face. She’d stopped wearing the goggles—they’d used to be a kind of hairband. “The others don’t see it—who’s ever cold here? But you have goosebumps.”

“A little bit,” Furiosa admitted, uncomfortable with her concern. “It’s nothing.”

Capable had in her arms a little bundle. She unrolled, forming a shawl made of the same pure white linen the girls had all used for their clothing—now dirtied, battle-scarred from the trip in the War Rig. “We made you this. It’s not too heavy… put it on.”

Furiosa tried it on. It was light, a cloak she could bundle around herself, with a hood she could draw up over her ears. No sleeves. It had been cut away at one side, so it wouldn’t catch on her bad-arm, and there was beaded little clasp she could do up across her neck to hold it in place. Furiosa smiled. It really was kind of clever. And enough to keep her warm with the sunlight far away, in the bowels of the Citadel where there was only cool air circulating.

“It’s lovely,” Furiosa said.

Capable nodded. “You’re worried though.”

Furiosa let out the sigh she was holding in. Maybe they were a sinking ship, Max just the only one smart enough to get himself a lifeboat while there was still time. “I miss the rig sometimes. Driving somewhere… even with people coming after us, at least they were behind us.”

Capable leaned in and kissed her, tugging the shawl tightly around Furiosa so all she felt was warmth.

Furiosa would’ve been less surprised if Capable had pulled out a gun and shot her in the head.

“If you want to be cheered up,” Capable said against her mouth, “no one’s sleeping in the Big Bed right now. We could have it all to ourselves.”

“Maybe later,” Furiosa said numbly.

Capable nodded, a look of disappointment on her face—the cutest look of disappointment—and she went back to tend to the Dag, tend the fields.

Furiosa wondered which of them was supposed to be in control, when Capable had just made Furiosa want her so badly…

***

She laid awake in the bed, the sheets around her feeling like the shawl, Capable’s clothing as she pressed their bodies together. She still didn’t know. The girls were warm, affectionate. The kiss could’ve just been a kiss. The offer as simple as a massage, a snuggle. Odd, but everything about the girls struck her as odd. Everything of them was delicate and tender. One of them being tender towards her was just how they were. It didn’t mean Capable yearned for her. Toast did already, and that was strange enough on its own.

Then the door opened and she was back in that night with Toast—that wonderful night—only this was Capable. Her clothes now were less intricate than ever, easy to remove, simple sheaths for her body. A skirt. A top. Her red hair unbound, Capable nervously playing with a loop of it as the door shut behind her. The darkness. The moonlight.

Furiosa felt wrapped around her finger, the way her heart rushed, the way her sweat ran—because Capable wanted it to.

“You’re not my property,” Furiosa said. “Not mine to be told what to do.”

“Knowing said you’d say that.” Her smile. It was so sweet. So sweet, it could only be in a world without Joe, without the War Boys—without the desert or sun or bullets, how could it be here? “She said I could still be yours. If I wanted to be.”

She kept coming closer. Furiosa kept seeing more of her. And kept wanting to see still more.

“Toast and I are…” Furiosa bit her lip. Didn’t know how to explain. She only had half of it, Toast had the other half. “I don’t want to dishonor her.”

Capable laughed, sitting at the foot of what passed for a bed, all moonlight and soft, supple dark. “I didn’t even think you’d mind. But of course you would. You’d think even of her feelings, as well as her body. Furiosa, we share everything. We only had each other and still we’re all we want. We’re everything to each other. I don’t have… strength or hope or support or pleasure. It’s all in them. And some part of it’s in me. And I want it to be in you, too. Like it was with Toast. We all love you. We all want your happiness to be in us.”

“I don’t know if I have any happiness for you to hold,” Furiosa said honestly. Too honestly; she looked up at Capable to see if she’d hurt her.

Still, Capable smiled. Moonlight. “Let me look for it.”

She pampered Furiosa, making herself the woman’s servant, her slave. She wanted nothing more than to please Furiosa—her sheer need to satisfy Furiosa was daunting. She spent long minutes just preparing Furiosa. Slow kisses that stretched into each other, gently ending, gently beginning again, leaving Furiosa’s lips wet and warm and swollen as she turned to Furiosa’s neck. Adding her own mark to the faint one that Toast had left with teeth and suction. She undressed Furiosa, every shed article of clothing an excuse to return to Furiosa’s lips with one more kiss, to keep Furiosa on the verge of frenzy. When she was bare, Capable looked at her like the sight was all the satisfaction she needed.

She moved lower—a slow, sweeping perusal of Furiosa’s body, lavishing attention on her breasts, her tummy, the tops of her thighs. Evocative nips of teeth and tongue at Furiosa’s labia, not penetrating her, not licking her, but making her want it even more than she already did, making Furiosa’s body need with a fierce hunger that the Imperator hadn’t known she was capable of. She wettened, her body surging into Capable’s touch, an arm across Furiosa’s belly and she realized she was being held down. Furiosa would allow it as long as she could. Those elongated kisses, outside her sex, upon it, slow suction and quick brushes of those wicked lips… wetter… she was drowning, drowning from the inside. Capable tasting her with slow, kitten lapping.

“This was Toast’s scent when you were done,” Capable said with a kind of wonderment, like she was leaving the Vault again, seeing the outside world in all its crazed splendor. “We all kissed her… we were so happy for her, but we all wished it was us. We just weren’t brave enough for you to reject us. But Toast wasn’t afraid. She knew. Toast the Knowing…”

Supple licks that went on and on, just enough strength to part Furiosa, to let Capable in, but still so gentle, so tender. She felt tasted. She felt shared. Capable drew an orgasm out of her by painstaking degree—Furiosa blinked away tears when it was over, but it wasn’t over. She had the experience of being played, like a pipe or the taut strings the Vuvalini made music on. Capable stayed with her through everything, her tongue never quickening, never tiring, Furiosa’s climax ebbing and flowing and ringing, but never ending and never beginning. She sighed and she moaned and it was music.

Then Capable turned her over, Furiosa feeling absurdly embarrassed of her bare rump being seen, touched, but Capable kept feeling it, plying it, spreading and massaging her cheeks, then kissing, then licking, endless circuits along the flatness of her ass, then the rounded inner curve, then hands parting her, tongue in between. Capable showed her that she could feel the same pleasure somewhere else, with its own excitement and its own intensity. The gentle song continued, overture, build… crescendo.

By then, the nagging guilt of feeling all this pleasure and knowing how little Capable was having grew to being unbearable. Furiosa stopped her—relief cool and sweet—but Capable still wanted her, hands pressed together, begging. Furiosa agreed, but only if they could do it as Toast had teasingly suggested the other night… flirtatiously whispering in her ear that it was possible, though they’ve never gotten around to it, fingers and mouths and exploration feeling so good all on their own.

They parted, this time long enough for their bodies to burn for each other, relief bitter and recriminating, and they met again, bodies flipped, upside-down to each other, Furiosa tasting Capable and Capable tasting her, both of them giving, both of them receiving. Capable had a fine taste, sweet but not too sweet. The sweetness she shared with Toast, the bitterness was all her own, a spice that made Furiosa ravenous. Desperate to learn this new flavor. To have its scent. Perhaps to kiss Toast and see if she recognized it.

The unfaithful thought made Furiosa’s guilt, always close to the surface, breach again. But it couldn’t survive the onslaught of sweet taste, the satisfaction in Furiosa’s loins she hoped desperately was mirrored in Capable. The song played on, a duet Furiosa learned better and better, stopping only when Furiosa’s sex grew sore and Capable insisted on stopping before pleasure became pain.

They circled each other, graceless in their ebbing satisfaction, bumping against each other until they’d oriented themselves to each other, straightened out the sheets, found out again how to nestle together. Only then, in the still silence and the voluminous innocence of looking at Capable, could the guilt come swimming back.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” Furiosa said, not knowing if Capable was awake.

She was, of course. As concerned with Furiosa as Furiosa was with her. “I would never have done it if it hurt Toast, she’s my sister—“

“I believe you,” Furiosa promised. “It’s not her, it’s you. You lost Nux and you wanted someone else… I took advantage…”

“No. I lost Nux. I remember him and I’m at peace with his memory. Now I’ve been alone long enough. I want to feel together again. Like I did with him. And like Toast does with you.”

“I don’t know how I feel with Toast.”

“Yes, you do. If you touched her anything like you touched me… I’m glad I have you. I miss Nux, but I’m glad I have you. And I’m glad to share you, so all of my sisters can feel as loved as you make me.”

Furiosa started. “All of your sisters?”

Capable snuggled closer, until Furiosa could feel her smile against her neck. “You can get to know Cheedo better soon. Tomorrow night, if you want.”