Written for both fivewivesweek and my own personal 20 Fandoms challenge, hope you like it!
The question still haunts her in the night. She has never been a sound sleeper, not even before Immortan Joe (oh, how she hardly remembers those days, curled next to her mother in that small hut, watching with frightened eyes as the world crumbled). She wakes drenched in sweat, chest heaving, flashes of a hard mask and cold eyes flickering in her mind's eye. The sheets are crumpled around her, tangled around her legs (so long and smooth, and she could like that now) and wrapped around her waist. She sits up, shaking, running her hands through dark hair.
Who killed the world?
But she is not alone; she knows this, and when she is joined by another, sliding up from the soft bed, because even though she and the others enjoy the toil of the days they also love to slip unders the covers when they are over and the sun is shut. She smiles at the thought of work, of the reworking of the Citadel into something good, something pure…or as close as they can get, for what could be pure that was touched by Immortan Joe?
"Trouble sleeping?" asks a voice, a chin settling on her shoulder. She relaxes. She is proven so wrong so easily; for The Dag has been touched by Immortan Joe, and no one is more pure than her, no matter the harsh way she makes her words sound.
"It isn't easy to get out of your head," she says, running her hands through her hair again. Another set of fingers joins hers. "What happened, I mean."
She doesn't mean the end, the freedom that had awaited them in the place that had thought could only be a prison, but rather all the long days before it. She knows The Dag understands her. She always does.
"Mmm," agrees The Dag, swaying slightly, stomach pressed against Cheedo's back.
She is large now, as large as Splendid had been. The child will be coming soon, and their lives will change. Some of the Vulvalini, they know about raising a baby. Cheedo will be the second mother to the little one; The Dag has said she heard it said so in a dream, and dreams are important.
Cheedo turns her head so that her lips met The Dag's, gripping the hand in her hair so that The Dag can't move it as she presses against her, sliding her free arm around her waist and tugging her closer as she drags her teeth over The Dag's lower lip.
The kiss is long and heated, their eyes shut against the world, reveling in each other with hard breathing and soft laughter and the taste of each other. Cheedo had thought their life was comfortable, before all this. She had thought she was happy, or happy enough. She had been wrong. This feeling is what you strive for when you know that you could dream, the weightlessness of knowing someone wants you (in the right way, in the way that saus 'I want to be with you, now and forever') and cares for you like no other.
Cheedo and The Dag, and soon, their child.
"I love you," she says softly. They have begun practicing the words to each other, repeating them over and over until the fear that had washed over them in days past trickles away like cold water down their spines.
"You too," says The Dag. "I love you too." The words always come harder for her, but she means them as fiercely as the War Boys had believed in their Walhalla. This, unlike that false haven, is not a futile hope, for Cheedo is here, and she is not fragile in her affections.
They part slightly, the intensity of the moment passing. Cheedo moves her hand and The Dag begins to stroke her hair in earnest, long fingers pulling out tangles. She is not so gentle as she thinks she was, but Cheedo never says a word. The Dag likes this, and she likes The Dag.
"Do you think we'll ever know who did it?" she asks finally, putting words to her thoughts, wondering if she'll ever feel the urge to put her words to her skin the way Miss Giddy had. She stretches her hand, thinking about it. She wonderes if The Dag would like that too. Maybe it doesn't matter if she did. Cheedo will never live under another's rules, no matter how much she cares.
"No," says The Dag. "The smeg who did it is gone! Long gone, buried in his own ruins. He cracked the earth and reaped what he sowed."
The Vulvalini taught them that phrase. Sowed. They hadn't known that word before.
"I hope it hurt," she says. "I hope he knew what he'd done before the bugs crawled in his eyes." Cheedo regrets saying the last part when The Dag sticks out her tongue and wiggles her fingers, making Cheedo shriek, half with laughter and half with the thought of the creeping crawlers slithering in the dark of night.
The Dag drops her hands. "He knew what he did," she says, voice quiet now. "He knew what he was doing and he did it anyway."
Cheedo smiles, thinking of something. The Dag tilts her head at the gesture.
"We may never know who broke the world," she says. "But we will know who heals it."
The Dag grins with all her teeth in the way that she likes to scare others with. Cheedo has not been frightened by that smile in a long time. Instead she puts a hand on The Dag's pale thigh and listens.
"You don't give us enough credit," she says, white locks swaying as she leans back with her face in the air. "We will be among the ones to heal the world."
The night air does not feel quite so stifling when they return to their sleep, curled around each other in a way that speaks more than words ever could.