Max didn't come back for two months, which Furiosa understood. There were times Immortan Joe sent her on raids, and the things she did—they didn't leave her easily. She had to sweat them out, like poison. She didn't think Max cared about the people he'd killed. But remembering that he didn't care, remembering what he was… comparing himself to the Many Mothers and the Wives and even Nux—Nux who didn't know any better, sweet and innocent—he had to go away and forget, as much as possible. Just like cars, people needed fuel, and some of them only got it by being alone.

But he came back. Seventy days, by Furiosa's reckoning. Like a breath she'd been holding. Brought her right back to that interminable wait between him going after the Bullet Farmer and his return, the blood that of course wasn't his own. He hadn't made her go on without him after all.

His car was one of the V8s they'd never been able to find, his beard was full and thick, his wounds a little faded. No new ones. Furiosa didn't think there were many out there good enough to put a scar on him. But he still had a little red crack in his jawline: skinned-over scab from where she'd decked him. The thought birthed in her, the first gulp of cold water after the dry and the heat: it's him.

She gave him a look, a nod—shoulders slumping, unguarded, her weakness open and apparent. She'd needed to look strong when he'd left. She didn't anymore. One more thing that had changed. He returned it for the briefest moment before looking away, the barest nod of acknowledgment before he was looking at the Falls.

"Water's still flowing," he said, though she'd slowed the pumps to a steady trickle. Only let it avalanche out first thing in the morning and just before night. Otherwise, the slow crawl of the water was enough for drinking, cleaning—even a little laundry.

"We're not going back," she replied. She nodded to one of her men—tanned skin, full head of hair. "He used to be a War Boy." Another nod. "He used to be a blood bag."

They were the full-lives now; all of them. She gave blood. So did the Wives. So did the Vuvalini. So did the Wretches, for extra rations. All her people now. Her blood in their veins. And in her, Max's.

She understood now the touches she'd seen in the Wives, the Many Mothers. Those fast, ineffectual embraces, tangles of limbs and words, lips in brief quests for the taste of someone. The sweat of their cheek or brow. The warmth rose up, too big for your body, and it burst out of you and it pulled you to the other person. He'd saved her and she'd never even gotten to thank him. Never gotten a chance to say the name he'd gifted her with.

"Max," she said gently, and his ears perked at hearing his name, a curious look at her, suspicious and weary—a dog that'd given up on its human returning, only to finally hear the key in the door. "You can stay. You know that, right?"

Max nodded—not acknowledging her anymore. More to himself. "A little while."

She didn't contradict him. Not yet.

The others were happy to see him, but guardedly so—warmth from a distance. He had helped them, but memories of the help came with memories of the bad. The dust had finally settled and the Wives, they couldn't help but resent it a little—him dirty with violence.

But the ice soon broke, each wanting to show him the little world they'd cultivated now that Joe's shadow no longer blotted out the sun. The Dag and her seedlings, Toast teaching the War Pups to read, Capable learning the black-thumbs' trade, Cheedo picking up the bio-mechanic's and merging it with what the Vuvalini knew of medicine. Everything a struggle, a headache, but the hard work was invigorating. They complained with smiles.

They ate the fruits that had started to grow, drank from Joe's liquor stash—Furiosa always looked for an excuse to get rid of it. Max was never quite the mad dog he appeared. The liquor went straight to his head, made him quiet and clumsy. Not in the sullen, dangerous way Joe could be, but simply contemplative. All his awareness turned intensively inward.

When Furiosa took him by the arm, he let her lead to her quarters, the bed, the window continuously washed over by the flow from the pumps. He stared at the glossy, shifting world through the water and the glass. Maybe thinking it almost could've been his, all the little spikes of change hidden, washed away.

She pushed him toward the bed and finally he resisted. "No." He easily pulled out of her human hand, and she reached for him with the other one before stopping. He wasn't leaving, anyway. Just standing there, running his hands over his face. The shaggy hair that'd grown out over his forehead, the beard like briars over his jaw.

"It's fine," she assured him. "I'll sleep somewhere else. You deserve a good bed."

He stomped on the carpet—moth-eaten and threadbare, but plush enough for his heel to sink into. Then, unhearing, he sat down on it, curled in on himself until he was properly small, laying on his side, head on his bicep. Furiosa looked wearily over him. His back was hard and straight, even then.

She crouched down behind him. Touched his shoulder. He didn't shy away. Trusting her enough not to think it would be an attack. She left her hand where it was, feeling the grit of his dirty clothes, the slow breathing like an old engine going up a hill, the hurts and pains crawling in his skin that nothing could banish. He shivered under her touch. Could stand it, but wasn't used to it. She rubbed gently at him, trying to relax, trying to comfort.

"Why'd you leave?" she asked.

Max didn't turn his head, but stared straight ahead at the window, the endless shifting sands of its visage. "Because this place is going to burn. I don't want to see the ashes."

Furiosa felt like arguing with him—that they really could fix things, that they'd done so much already, that they could keep on the path—but she didn't need to. With him, she felt like not being in command, not being certain. He would let her get away with it.

"Why'd you come back?"

His head bowed slightly. Seeing not the view, but the water. Easy to forget that, looking through it, but all of it was someone's drink, someone's clean… eventually, someone's tomato, apple, potato. Maybe enough water for even a baptism—even in this place.

"Couldn't stand the thought of this place burning. I had to see it wasn't."

"So you'll leave again. Because you can't bear to lose us. Then you'll come back, to make sure you haven't lost us."

"I'm aware of the plan's holes," he said with the seriousness of the drunk.

She laid down beside him now. Immortan Joe's seal was still on the back of his neck, but it had cooled to a ghostly white. Something echoed in her throat. "You can stay. You know that, right?"

"I don't know if I can."

"Then you can come back. As often as you like."

He seemed to accept the offer—his body language willing—but something croaked out of him like a boil being lanced. "It'll hurt more when you're gone if I can still remember your face. I'll hear a voice accusing me and know it's yours."

A flash of anger… being blamed for how he would mourn her when she was lost. She didn't want that responsibility. Not without having a say in how he remembered her. "You think it doesn't hurt me when you leave?"

"You know I'm alive. I always survive." He didn't sound unhappy with the idea, though his words had the old cadence of that—now, he was just resigned to it.

"Then I just don't like the thought of you being alone."

She moved—the unoiled winding of her mechanicals giving him notice. She pulled herself closer to him, pressed into his back. Flesh and blood arm around his chest.

Her fingers dangled down to the carpet. After a moment, his—blocky and large, not soft, but gentle in how carefully they moved—circled around hers. She felt the heel of his hand against hers. "I don't like the thought of you waiting for me… you shouldn't think you can fix me. It's only ever made me worse."

"I was thinking we could be broken together."

He grunted meditatively—still drunk—and his head lolled down further along his arm. Furiosa let him sleep.

In the morning, he was still there.