The first night Max slept on her floor was the first night Furiosa had been without the nightmare. She had been waiting for it when he arrived, putting off sleep as long as possible. The dream was always the same. Angharad. Her lovely face and fierce smile. Her white fingers ripped off the War Rig. The crashing roar of sound, and her scream piercing through it all. Immortan Joe roaring in fury as the wheels struck the woman's pale, swollen body and two lives were extinguished at once. Sometimes Angharad remained awake and alive, screaming in agony in the desert as the vehicles rolled on, unheeding. Each night, the dream lasted every hour of Furiosa's unconsciousness, pinning her to itself until it pitched her mind back into her body rolling in sweaty agony on her bed.

But Max's first night was different. As he lay down on the floor she felt a murmur of surprise that he had not simply joined her on the cot. She lay in the dark, staring at the wall for several minutes before her body relaxed slightly between the sheets. She had covered him with a blanket, as though this small effort could shield his mind as well as his body, and she was thinking of him when she fell asleep. Concern for his own nightmares choked her mind, worry over which manic image had driven him to seek out companionship in the middle of the night. She thought of how he looked when he awoke in the War Rig, jerked awake and reduced to a child-like, unheeding stare as his consciousness realigned with reality. Her mind was filled with him, rather than awareness of her own impending visions, and her fingers uncurled softly towards him as she fell asleep.

Then she was awake. Gently wakened by an already heated wind pouring in through her small slit of a window. She breathed deeply and laid her hands on her stomach, marveling at how thick and soft her muscles felt after a night of uninterrupted sleep, how cool and dry her own skin was in the peace of a quiet morning. She turned to find the blanket folded carefully in the corner and the man was gone.

The nightmares returned the next night. But she had tasted the relief and now they were shorter and weaker. She had other things to think of before she slept and occasionally now, another morning would come when she could open her eyes to the coolness of a morning free of dreams.

Furiosa sang. It was her deepest connection to the Green Place. She kept alive the memories through songs: two soft lullabies and a love song that still looped through her mind, almost complete. She had repaired them through the years until she could hardly remember the broken parts, fitting words and notes into the empty places. During her years in the Citadel, she sang in her room, hummed in the hallways and murmured broken bars as she drove the Fury Road: anywhere she was alone. But her favorite place to sing was in the garage, during the few hours each night in which it was devoid of War Boys. Her voice was low but strong and it filled the huge area with her vibrations, with the notes of her family, her mother, her land. Her music swelled inside and made her bigger and grander, filling the rooms with herself and her rebellion.

When she returned to the Citadel she did not sing for several weeks. She still ached deeply inside at the death of her homeland. But gradually, the habit returned. Now it was not a sign of rebellion, but just a piece of self that had been woven into her identity as surely as she had woven the missing words into the tapestry of lyrics.

One night, Max did not come to her room. She waited, without realizing she was, until later than was usual for her to sleep. She began to hum as she sat on the bed, looking over a medical book found among Immortan's supplies. Distracted, she began to sing softly to herself and she heard Max's last footfall as he came to a halt at her door. Her lips trembled as she hesitated. It was too late, he had already heard. He was silent outside the door and she took a breath and continued her song. The trust that allows a warrior to sleep in the presence of another warrior is not lightly to be laid aside. She trusted him fully, even with her song.

It was weeks later when his roar woke her. She scrambled to light the lamp, moving towards him instantly, reaching, comforting. His jolting body would have been frightening had it not been so frightened. Her hand reached to curl around his face and he stilled slightly at her touch, leaning into her as if for comfort, for the control he could not find in himself. She realized that she was murmuring constant, broken words and phrases of comfort, but once again she seemed to leave herself. She was looking searchingly into his eyes, seeking for them both that calmness, that unshakeable certainty and fathomless faith that they found in each other, at the meeting of their eyes and the understanding that structured them like iron. As she fumbled for his eyes, all of the other barriers around them that formed naturally between two broken warriors came shattering down. They folded, crashed into each other, as he curled in her lap and her tears joined his on his face. She realized only then the vast echoing danger of such a connection, of allowing this understanding to grow as it had every moment since their eyes first met in savagery and hunger, the danger of allowing yourself to grow into another, to find your strength to be strongest in its meeting with another's. And yet there was a power in it too, she realized, not putting it into words as her hand combed through his hair, so soft and full in her fingers, gentling her. There was a power in this and a strength that met the danger head-on. This was a kind of completion and she breathed it in and succumbed.

In the calm which followed, filling the little room like incense, they breathed together. All tensions and the indefinable nature of Them had broken under the weight of his body on hers and their tears falling together. Peace. And a growing, dawning sense of protection, Furiosa the protector, Furiosa the savior, Furiosa the brave and adored. She would fight for him and beside him and that was what she knew. So she sang to him, the best way she knew to express the victory of her mind. They had fought the waking world of demons and had stood victorious. Now, together, they knew they could face the night.

As he said her name she looked at him and, not for the first time, she reveled in his beauty. Beauty was scarce in her life, and she had learned to drink it in when she could. The girls were beautiful, and the planets, but Max had a fragile beauty that aligned naturally with her perspective of him. She looked down at him, simply appreciating his full lips and even skin, and the eyes that balanced her. Everything was highlighted by his tears: his eyes glittered with the precious water and his lips and cheeks were stained red.

Beautiful one, beautiful one.

It was fitting. The words were natural, and so was the urge that brought her lips to his, with no battle plan, no exit strategy. Only peace and trust.