Author's Note: My attempts at writing weren't going well tonight, so I went digging into my WIP archives, and stumbled across this piece. I wrote it back in July 2015. It was meant to be an opener for a larger "Immortal Max" fic. Since the chances of that ever being written are slim to none, and since I think it works fine on its own, I decided to clean it up, finish it off, and share it with the world.

Hope you enjoy!

Max lost count of the years some miles back.

He knows that the sun rises, and sets. But one day falls into the next like a long stretch of road that has no end that he can see, and no beginning that he can recall.

So he segments his thoughts, in those precious moments of coherency, to before and now. (Because the concept of after is but an empty tank.)

Before, there was order. Rules beyond kill or be killed. Water and food enough for most, if not all.

Before, he never knew real hunger. Never understood the gnawing sensation that will dig at your gut, and strain your grip on right and wrong until they snap.

Before, he knew what it meant to sleep on a pillow soft bed, surrounded in warmth, and safety, and eight solid hours of uninterrupted peace.

Before, he had a sense of purpose. Something he was good at, and something that helped people. A reason to wake in the mornings that went beyond: Move. Eat. Drive.

Don't die.

Before, there was a woman that he cared for, whose smile made his knees go weak, and whose laugh was brighter than the noonday sun. A woman that he would die for. Kill for. A woman that he would watch the world burn to save.

Before, there was a Sprog. Small and perfect and soft and hers and his.

Before.

But before came to an end, as all things but Max seem to do, leaving him with now.

Now is a vicious, unrelenting thing.

And now has lasted far longer than he can recall before existing.

There was a war, battles that rumble in his brain like a rusty carburetor. A war which led to bleak and rot and fallout. For days and weeks and months. Struggles that went on for years, then decades. They have piled on and on, until it is of no use to try and figure out the when or the how or the why.

It all just is.

So he circles the wastes, a spiraling pattern that leads him from one poisoned sea to the next. Up to the husk of a forest that was, and through the limitless desert that is. The monotony of the oft-repeated course broken up by bandits and raiders. Corpses and crows.

Whispers on the wind that growl sanctuary or hope.

But there is very little of either now.

Now, the miles are punctuated only by pit-stops of pain. Cults of chrome and dust, vying for scraps of metal, and drops of liquid life.

The latter of which Max has more than he needs, more than he wants.

That doesn't mean he's eager to see it syphoned off like so much stolen guzzolene.

Also doesn't mean he's not willing to lend a liter, drip by drip, to someone running on fumes.

Someone who reminds him that there are words like decent and good. Someone who reminds him that people can be those things. In part or in whole. From moment to moment. Or even all at once.

It's no hardship then; not to him.

Not when the giving of it is like a cool drink on a sandpaper tongue. Not when the giving washes away the grit of the world, until he can see things clear.

Leaving behind a now that's a little less cruel.

No, it's no hardship.

Not for Max

~End