Notes: I am fascinated by the use of words and silence in this movie, and by the way all the characters find their voices.

So this is a fic about those little moments of voice. There will be one chapter for each of the eight members of the war rig family, all either expanded or missing scenes, posted in chronological order as they fit into the movie.

First up is Angharad!

Warnings for: references to past abuse, including sexual abuse, but nothing explicit. It's handled in much the same way as the movie itself.


Chapter 1: The Splendid Angharad

It's quiet in the hold of the war rig.

Well, not quiet exactly. Every beat of her heart feels loud and heavy, and she can hear the rasp of her sisters' breathing and the occasional soft grunts of the strange man with his gun trained on her.

He's already shot her once. She wonders, distantly, if he'll do it again.

Angharad doesn't like the silence. Sometimes she feels she's been silent all her life, like the loudest words she's ever spoken were written in white paint on her prison walls.

Cheedo makes a soft whimpering sound, and the man grunts again and gestures with the gun.

Angharad wants to tell him to stop, that they're all in this together now, but she can't be sure they are, really. He's running from Immortan Joe just as much as they are, but that doesn't mean as much as she thinks it should. And he's terrified. Angharad knows all too well what people can do when they're afraid.

Toast reaches for Cheedo's hand, her movement unthinking, and the man grunts again, quiet enough not to be heard outside, but loud in the breathless stillness of the hold. Angharad shifts slightly, catches his eye, and gives him a slow nod she hopes is reassuring. She isn't sure if it's meant to reassure him, or the others. The man watches her, skittish and feral, but he doesn't make any further move.

Toast's hand grasps Cheedo's and she squeezes. They wait in the silence.

Angharad decided a long time ago that she won't go back. Maybe she doesn't know exactly what they are running to, but she knows what they are running from. Furiosa had said that out here everything hurts, but at least it's a different kind of hurt.

She eyes the strange man and his gun, and watches him eye her in turn. Outside the rig, Furiosa is speaking in the even, deliberate tones that Angharad knows mean she has a plan. She watches the man Furiosa had called Fool tense, crouching and resting on the balls of his feet. The gun is still trained on her, but all his attention is for Furiosa.

Angharad meets her sisters' eyes, and a wordless understanding passes between them. They all feel the charge in the air. They won't go back.

Something spikes, jagged and piercing, in her stomach, and Angharad clasps her heavy belly and stifles a scream.

Everyone is looking at her. There's concern and terror in her sisters' eyes, and Capable reaches out unthinkingly as if to comfort her. She's too far away, and there's nothing she could do in any case, but Angharad is grateful. In this wasteland of silence they have each other. No matter what happens, no one can take that away. She won't allow it.

She glances again at the man and his gun, and is surprised to find him wearing an expression nearly the same as her sisters'. He looks at her, his eyes asking silent questions, and she grits her teeth against the pain and nods back with only the slightest whimper. She will not be the reason they're discovered.

He eyes her for a long moment, then nods in turn.

Furiosa has decided to trust this man, whether out of necessity or some other sense, Angharad isn't sure. But she trusts Furiosa. She trusts Furiosa with more than just her life.

It's gone quiet outside. The other women look back and forth at one another. Toast and Capable lean down just a bit more, trying to see through the opening of the hatch beneath the rig. Cheedo trembles, and Toast's hand squeezes again around hers.

Furiosa yells, "Fool!" and the man is up and springing into the driver's seat, moving so fast that Angharad takes a moment to realize she is no longer being held at gunpoint.

And then the rig is rumbling, roaring as it picks up speed, and Furiosa is scrabbling desperately at the hatch and kicking behind her at a man clinging to her legs. The others reach for her instantly, grabbing her arms and dragging her up into the rig. With one last vicious kick she sends the man flying under the rig. Angharad doesn't watch where he goes after that. She is lifting Furiosa up, climbing up out of the hold and back into the cab.

The man drives on, gun in one hand and wheel in the other, and without a second's hesitation Furiosa takes a gun and turns to fire on their pursuers. They fall smoothly into a wordless teamwork. The desert lights with gunfire and flame. It is not silent any more.

Angharad huddles together with the others. They have all seen the war boys chanting and massing beneath the tower of the Citadel, preparing for war. They've even seen the kind of injuries people come back with, sometimes. Angharad remembers Joe coming to her once, his breathing harsher than usual, his pockmarked side bruised and his arms slick with blood. She shudders.

But they've never been in the thick of a fight before. They've never driven the Fury Road.

She can see the fear in her sisters' eyes, but Angharad finds she can't comfort them. Her belly is stabbed with shooting pain, and her breath comes in short, staccato gasps. She's afraid she might be having the baby. She's never birthed before, but she's heard how it hurts, and right now, her whole world is pain. Maybe Furiosa was right.

It's too soon. She knows that much. Miss Giddy had said she would have another month and a half at least, and probably two.

Capable and Cheedo both reach to clasp her arms, pressing themselves closer to her and watching her in alarm. All around them, the world is loud with gunfire.

Furiosa sinks back into the cab, tosses a gun at her almost without looking, tells them to reload the clip.

Angharad has never loaded a gun before. She stares at it, this strange and dreaded device, this thing that plants anti-seed. She doesn't know what to do. When they left, they had all agreed there would be no unnecessary killing. She'd known there would be some. She isn't naïve. But she hadn't thought there would be this much. She doesn't know how many shots Furiosa and the strange, feral man have fired, but she knows that the majority of them have found their mark.

She'd managed to keep that war boy alive, though she wonders now what good it will do. Maybe it will even do evil. But she's glad she didn't let Furiosa kill him. She's saved one life, at least.

Toast takes the gun from her and begins loading the clip, but she isn't fast enough. Furiosa improvises, and then reaches for the flare gun. She has so many guns. Angharad wonders if they'll have to use them all, before this is over.

But then the fuel pod flares up, and they leave it behind in an unfolding blossom of roiling black and blood red. For just a moment, she thinks that they've made it.

Then she sees Joe.

Her sisters surround her again, and they all turn to stare at him. Dag curses. Capable's glare looks as lethal as one of Furiosa's guns. Cheedo shrinks back against her, and Angharad presses her close, but her eyes don't leave Joe.

He's looking at them like they're things. Stolen pieces of property. There's an anger in his eyes that's all too familiar.

He jerks the wheel, and she can't hear his growl of rage but she can see it. He's pulled nearly level with the cab. There's a gun in his hand, and he's aiming it at Furiosa.

Angharad doesn't hesitate. She grits her teeth and ignores the pain in her stomach, crawling over her sisters to the door of the cab, flinging it open and placing her own body between Furiosa and the gun.

Capable's arm stretches out immediately and holds her steady, anchored to the rig and to her sisters. She hangs in air, the wind whipping at her hair and the thin rags that are all Joe allowed them to wear, and glares across the space of the desert at the man pursuing them.

"That's my child!" he screams at her. "My property!"

He doesn't even see her. Only her swollen stomach.

Angharad stares him down. Thoughts and words are boiling up inside of her, coursing through her blood. She doesn't speak them aloud. She doesn't need to.

We are not things, she says with the slant of her body, the steady accusation of her gaze. You cannot control me. You cannot kill her. I forbid you, and it's my choice that matters, not yours.

Victory sings in her veins. They won't go back. There is nothing in all this poisoned world that can make them. She has spoken.