A/N: MAJOR trigger warning for self-harm and some pretty unsexy masturbation; if you'd like more information about the scene before reading it (or not) I'd be more than happy to provide a detailed summary of the scene so you can decide whether or not you want to read it.

Thanks to those who read, reviewed, liked, subscribed, etc. It means a lot!

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She drifts in and out of sleep for the rest of the day, keeping Nux's cuff pressed close to her chest. The only thing that pulls her out of this haze is the arrival of her sisters around dinnertime.

"Are you feeling okay?" asks Cheedo, ever solicitous.

Capable eyes each of them. Their faces look blank. "So Harper didn't tell you?"

"Tell us what?" Toast demands. "Are you sick or something?"

Capable takes her time giving an answer. "I'm pregnant," she says finally, rotating the cuff over and over in her hands. She doesn't look at them, but she doesn't need to to know that they're all exchanging looks.

"Oh, Capable," Cheedo says, easing onto the bed. She looks as if she wants to reach for Capable but isn't sure if she should. Capable isn't sure either.

"You don't want it," says Dag. It's a statement, not a question.

Capable shakes her head.

"Can't Harper do anything about it?" Toast asks.

Capable shakes her head again, still focusing on the cuff. "I already asked. She said anything she did would put my life at risk and she won't do it."

They're quiet for a long moment.

"Is it...you know...his?" Toast asks carefully.

"Toast!" Cheedo admonishes.

Capable stares at the two of them. "What do you mean, his? Joe's?"

Toast looks too embarrassed to respond.

"What?" Capable presses, clearly missing out on something.

"I think she means...it's not Nux's, then?" Dag checks.

Capable nearly drops the cuff.

"Dag!" Cheedo squeals, looking embarrassed.

"I didn't know," Dag says defensively. "None of us knew what you two got up to."

"We're not judging if it is his," Toast adds quickly. "We were all a mess after Angharad. If you, you know, with him..."

"We're happy for you," Cheedo says in a firm voice. The other two nod in agreement.

Capable has a hollow feeling in her chest. So this is what they think of her. "Nux never touched me like that," she says around the lump in her throat. "We barely kissed. He was gentle. Safe."

Cheedo nods. "He loved you," she says softly. "We all saw it." The other two nod again.

The hollowness turns into an ache. "I wish it was his baby," she admits. A few tears spill from her eyes and she wipes at them angrily. "I wish it was his and not...not..."

She doesn't need to finish; the sisters crowd in on her bed and wrap their arms around her. The hole where Angharad should be feels bigger than ever.

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Capable doesn't get out of bed all the next day. She doesn't even sleep, just lays there and lets herself think about Angharad. Now, more than ever, she wishes Angharad was here. She would have had her baby by now, would have sat with Capable and held her hand and said just the right thing to make her feel better. They would've made plans for the babies they never asked for, and before long Capable would actually start to look forward to having a baby.

But Angharad isn't here to talk her through it, no matter how hard Capable pretends, and at the end of the day she still wishes she wasn't pregnant. Cheedo comes by once to bring her some food, and Capable eats it because Cheedo won't leave until she does—but as soon as Cheedo is out the door, Capable heaves it back up. On purpose or on accident, she isn't sure, but she feels better when she does.

She knows the girls will be coming back to the room around dinner time, so she pulls on loose clothes that make her feel like she's hiding (which isn't too far from the truth) and steals out of the room that they share—but not before snatching Nux's cuff and slipping it on her wrist. Her feet carry her to the top of the Citadel. No one's up here—probably all gone to get grub—so it's just Capable alone with the green and the first stars that dot the night sky. She doesn't get to see the night sky that often these days—she's always working herself to exhaustion so that by the time dinner rolls around, she crams some food in her mouth and almost immediately passes out for the night. She'd seen it as a child, before the Immortan had locked her away and it had only been a black blur outside. That black blur had been all she'd seen of the night sky until she'd escaped in the war rig. That night with the Vuvalini had been the first night in years that she'd really and truly seen the night sky. She'd been almost reverent as she curled against Nux and just stared for hours. Her chest tightens at the thought, and for once she doesn't try to push it away. She lets herself remember what it felt like, with his arm around her and her ear so close to his chest that she could hear his heart beating. They'd climbed into the cab where they first met (really met, not fought each other) and he'd wrapped one of the Vuvalini's blankets around them and sparked the lantern, and for hours they'd just watched the sky. They'd been in the middle of the desert with three war parties still pursuing them, but somehow, Capable had felt safer then than she'd ever felt in her entire life.

Immortan Joe is dead and his old order abolished, but somehow Capable feels as if he's looming right over her. His baby...

She lets herself imagine, for a moment, that Nux was the father. It's a stupid thought, she tells herself hastily—but not a bad one. She sinks down amongst the greenery and lies flat on her back, staring up at the sky. More stars are coming out now. It's nowhere as blue and beautiful as it had been that night, but for someone who spent years in a virtual prison, this is breathtaking. Her hand inches up to her belly and rests there. It's still blissfully flat, and she knows from Dag and Angharad that it will be a while before signs of life start to form. But it's there.

Her mind drifts back to Nux. What if he was the father? She knows she shouldn't dwell on it, because he isn't...but her mind lingers on the thought. She'd want to keep the baby if it was his. Nux's baby would have been conceived out of love and tenderness, not violence born out of greed. She tries to imagine it, how that baby would have been conceived. It's a dangerous thought, and one she shouldn't be having—she can barely get over Nux as it is. But the "what if" is too tempting.

It would've been in the cab that night that she found him. It would've had to be—the night with the Vuvalini was too open, too exposed. In reality, she had stroked his face and lain with him for a while before going back up front. But it wouldn't have been hard for that gentle face stroking to move further if they'd been inclined that way. She probably wouldn't have done it anyway, the reminder of Immortan Joe's nightly visits fresh in her mind, and Nux...well, would a War Boy even know how to make love? It doesn't matter, because none of this is real anyway. She would have kissed him, and he would have kissed her, and they would've kissed each other all over. She isn't sure if people really do that, but she thinks she'd like it. She closes her eyes and imagines the feel of his mouth all over her. She feels a twitch between her legs. It feels good. She imagines pushing off her wrappings and Nux kissing her between the legs and...

She can feel something down there she's never felt before. Curious, she slides her hand from her belly, inside her pants, and down to the apex between her legs. Her fingers brush a sensitive spot and she gasps. She brushes the spot again, her fingers now wet with the unidentifiable dampness between her legs, and she bucks her hips at the feeling. She does it again, and again, and again.

Nux, she thinks, gasping and rolling her hips frantically against her hand. Would it have felt like this? She wants to believe so.

And suddenly the world goes black for a second and she can hear her blood rushing in her ears and has to throw a hand over her mouth to stifle the cry she's letting out. It's a few moments before her vision clears and her pounding heart tries returning to normal. She's never felt anything like that before in her life. It felt...good. Very good. Is this how it is for other people?

But as soon as she sits up, licking the wetness off of her fingers, she feels suddenly ashamed. Stupid, she thinks, hot, shameful tears pricking at her eyes. What are you doing, touching yourself while thinking of a dead boy you barely knew? It's Immortan Joe's baby you're carrying, not Nux's, and no amount of pretending is going to change that.

She feels disgusting. She wants to take a scalding hot shower and scrub until she's red and raw. But that means going back to the room, and it's entirely likely at least one of her sisters is there, and Capable cannot face them right now. She hugs her knees to her chest and wraps her arms around her legs, dropping her head to her knees and trying to make herself as small as possible. She's a grown woman—she's been a wife and now she's going to be a mother. But she feels so like a child right now. It hurts, she thinks. She can't say what exactly hurts or how it hurts her, but she knows that it does.

"Out here, everything hurts," she remembers Furiosa saying what feels like a lifetime ago.

She pinches her leg and feels a satisfying twinge. She pinches again, in another spot, and in another, and pinches until she hisses in pain. Her shins are too hard, too bony for her pinches to do much damage. Curious, she pushes up her sleeve and pinches her arm. It doesn't produce the same feeling, so she takes her fingernails and twists. This hurts, so she does it again, dragging her nails along the skin. It's too dark to see, but she knows she's leaving marks. Good. She does it over and over, rakes her nails deep into her skin and clamps her lips shut against her whimpers. She knows she should stop, should just go back to her room and let the girls talk some sense into her, but she can't bring herself to stop scratching and scratching and scratching.

"Stop," she finally says, and she stops. But her arm itches and she wants to scratch it again.

She wonders if this is what Angharad felt like in those first days as Joe's wife, before Capable joined her in the vault. She'd had scars all up her arm and on the side of her face, still red and raw. "He made me his property," she'd said whenever anyone asked. "I wanted to damage his property." Capable had never been able to imagine what it must have been like, locked away in the vault all by herself with the knowledge that she was a thing for this man to use and abuse feeding at her all day. She'd felt scared in the Citadel, and lost, and afraid, but she'd never felt alone. She had always had her sisters.

She has them now, she knows, but it's...different. None of them know what this feels like. Dag is actually excited about her baby, and Toast and Cheedo...well, what do they know? They'd pity her and hold her and tell her it would be all right, but those were hollow comforts. She's not even sure Angharad could help her right now. Well, that isn't strictly true—Angharad did know what it was like to love one man and carry another's unwanted child.

Angharad had been married before the Immortan; they were young and had just started their lives together when a raiding party killed her husband and carried her to the Citadel. The Immortan had been so taken with her that he'd declared her his wife and locked her away so she could give him healthy sons. She'd tried to escape, and this had only made her isolation greater. By the time Capable had been captured and delivered to Immortan Joe, Angharad had nearly been broken. She would have given herself more scars when she found out she was carrying the Immortan's baby if the other wives hadn't stopped her.

And no one's here to stop Capable now.

It's a terrifying thought. She could do anything up here and no one could stop her. She could throw herself off the top of the Citadel and no one would be there to tell her not to. But she doesn't want to do that. She just keeps methodically scratching until she decides to do something else. It's soothing, in a twisted sort of way.

There's a sudden flash of light out of the corner of her eye, and Capable is so surprised that her nail drives harder than it meant to and drags through her skin. She cries out at the unexpected sensation.

The light bobs closer to her, and looking up, she sees Max running towards her with a lantern in hand. "What happened?" he asks, coming to a halt beside her.

She looks down at her arm, visible now by the light of Max's lantern, and watches blood bead up along the gouge her fingernail made. The rest of her arm is covered in long, angry red scratches.

"This wasn't an accident." It isn't a question.

She shakes her head.

He kneels beside her, setting down the lantern. "What made you do a thing like that?"

She opens her mouth—to tell him why or to tell him to fuck off, she isn't sure. But instead of words, a strangled sort of sob comes out. She heaves a breath to steady herself, but suddenly she's crying, long, shuttering cries. She can't stop crying, no matter how hard she tries, and she realizes that she's been holding in this cry for days. Max hesitates before scooting closer to her—and to both of their surprise, he puts his arms around her. It's awkward at first, as if he has forgotten what other humans feel like, but suddenly it clicks into place and he's holding her close and she knows that he knows how to hold someone. She wonders vaguely who it was he learned to hold—a wife or a child, perhaps. He'd never tell her anyway.

"Hey now," he murmurs. "Don't do that."

It's a long time before she can speak again. "I thought I was free," she chokes out. "But I have his baby inside me just like he always wanted."

Max goes still and she wonders if he knew about this. Probably not, she figures.

"So you did...this...to spite a dead man?" It feels stupid when he says it out loud. She pulls away from him, toying with the cuff around her wrist. Max heaves a sigh. "Nux, you know..." He tries to find the words. "He died to, to protect you. You think he, he would want this?" Max gestures to her arm.

"It doesn't matter what Nux would want." She tugs her sleeve over her arm. "He's dead."

"So is Immortan Joe," Max says quietly.

She thinks about this for a long moment. She feels embarrassed and not a little stupid. "Please don't tell anyone."

"Only if you promise not to do this again."

She frowns at him, but she knows she should listen to him—even if he is a crazy man they found muzzled in the desert. "Okay," she agrees. She lets Max wash her arm and bandage it; by the time he's finished, she's exhausted. She stumbles blindly to the room she shares with her sisters and sinks into the bed she shares with Toast. The others are already asleep and it doesn't take long for Capable to follow.