"And now you'll be telling stories
of my coming back
and they won't be false, and they won't be true
but they'll be real"
― Mary Oliver, A Thousand Mornings
Furiosa was on the Lift and she couldn't remember how she had gotten there. Capable and Cheedo huddled by her side, holding her up with trembling muscle. The Vulvalini stood fore and aft, flanking, protecting, and wary of the writing mass around them, unaware of the actual danger far above.
Toast and The Dag pulled at Wretched hands, hefting men and women onto the lift and a long ingrained habit made Furiosa say "No. Don't," but the only sound she made was a sloppy wheeze.
Bodies shifted and tumbled around; all grit covered skin and soured sweat. Her vision weaved, wavered and blackened.
When her sight came too, and she found they had lost the Fool. The Imperator's eyes flicked between faces, bodies, trying to find him on the Lift and on the ground below. Until she saw him, finally, down below, amidst the Wretched. He looked back at her once; their eyes met and held, and then broke away. He turned, pushed through writhing bodies and disappeared into the crowd.
The lift rose unhindered before grinding to a halt and for a moment all is silent in the Lift bay. Not a sound emerging from the beleaguered Wheel Rats or the spectral Pups. Though eyes turn and flash and gather. Take Furiosa in, from the littlest details of her skin, to the coating of dust on her clothes. They eye the blood at her side, the blood on her hand. And they know it is Joe's blood, Gods blood.
It is one of the Home Guard who moves first, long barreled rifle slung across his back, hollow point bullets forming a collar around his neck. He raised his arms, his fingers crossed, and his head dipped and bowed.
"Hail Furiosa." His voice rasped.
"Furiosa!" The pups echoed, voices stuttering around her in an echo.
"Don't Honor her!" A Lift Boy snarled, his rotund muscles jittering in distaste. "She killed him! Killed Immortan Joe! She's a Traitor!"
"Furiosa killed the Immortan! By the Old Rules what was his is hers!" Home Guard snarled, hand slashing the air from shoulder to hip.
Cheedo whined and shivered against Furiosa's side, eyes wide, adrenaline crashing. "Why are there War Boys? Didn't they all go with Joe?"
Even with the Wives support Furiosa found it a struggle to stay upright, her legs long gone numb and shaky beneath her. "No. No, not all, some would have stayed, couldn't just leave the Citadel entirely -."
Furiosa faltered then, knees buckling beneath her and Capable let out a surprised gasp at the deadweight suddenly transferred to her arms.
The War Boys eyes flashed to Furiosa, harder and encompassing, even Home Guard had paused in his affirmations, watching her with stilted breath. They were so intent, those watching eyes. Eyes that saw her weakness and knew that if they offed her then they would have top spot, that they would be the new Immortan of the Citadel, controller, and Ruler of every scrap of metal, every drop of water, that could be seen from those high, tall rocks.
Heavy boots edged closer, fingers wrapping loose around knives, and spanners, and screwdrivers, eyes flicking white and wide and feral.
A body shoved through the circling figures, wiry muscle and black stained fingers. Diagram after diagram was scarred into torso and back and arm. The thin pink lines crawled up neck and nestled behind ears.
"Just going to stand around and let the Imperator Rust Out." The words could have formed a question, were it not for the flat disdain that left Fletch's mouth. "All of ya is slag."
Furiosa's head of Repair strode towards them, sparing no more than a glance at the Vulvalini, at the Wives. He pushed past Cheedo and Capable to wrap his arm around Furiosa's torso, and heave her weight against his shoulder. Fletch's blackened hand coming to rest hard and insistent against the hole in her side.
"You stay away from her!" The Dag snarled, fingers curling to sickles by her side. Stepping forward out of her group of Wretched.
"I-It's alright." Furiosa wheezed.
The Repair Boy snarled at The Dag, powering over Furiosa's remark. "You gonna to stop me?"
"Anyone here gonna try to stop me?!" The next part was lobbed at the crowd as a whole, an aggravated pitch to his voice "You gonna try and fang the Imperator? My Imperator? "
The eyes that met his quickly flicked down and Fletch took his first step forward, heaving Furiosa along as he went.
Fletch walked her through the crowd, a glower on his face, and uncharacteristic flash of tooth bared from under thin lips.
The Vulvalini and Wives followed.
Followed him through the narrow halls, and past skittering Pups, and lounging groups of Repair Boys. Followed him to the corkscrew stairs that could be taken up, twisting for stories to the Imperator's Hall, and the wider stone carved steps that led down into the bowels of The Citadel. Down to the Organic Mechanic and the Flesh Shop.
It was there the Vulvalini waylaid him, Mari wrapping a firm hang around Fletch's bicep and pulling back, stalling him with her weight.
"Where you taking Furiosa?"
"What's it matter to you?" The Boy snapped.
"It matters a lot to me." Mari said, her chin tipping up, jaw settling firm. "And the rest of the Girls too. So you best get to talking, before the six of us decide you're not worth listening too."
"It's okay," Furiosa slurred, "Fletch is chrome, h-he's good. Trust- trustworthy."
"Ah-Priciate you sayin' so Boss." The Repair Boy said to his Imperator, though she could feel the rumble strum up from his chest more than hear the words cross his lips.
Janey piped up next, breaking her silence. "Still didn't answer Mari's question, Chrome Boy."
"Boss needs a Patch up." Fletch said in response. He started forward again, slower now that he was more dragging Furiosa than supporting her, but just as swollen with agitation as he had been through the entire ordeal.
"The Flesh Shop is down those stairs." Toast said, voice growing hard in realization.
"The Organic Mechanic's domain. A Butcher Shop." The Dag added.
"No." Said Mari, her trigger finger jittering down the haft of her pistol. "I'm fixing her up. Not some damn Sawbones."
It was Mari's words that seemed to put the Repair Boy over the edge. His hand jerked like electricity pumped through his nerves, fingers curling like spiders, biting sharp into the flesh of Furiosa's side. "Then why haven't ya slagging done it!"
Furiosa snarled, revitalized by the flash of pain, shoving at her boy with her half arm. "Stop it, enough! No Flesh shop! Take me to my room, now."
"Ok, alright boss." The Repair boy seemed to deflate at Furiosa's words, his aggravated bluster leaking from him like air from a tire.
The Repair Boy turned a hard eye to Mari and Janey, before pulling Furiosa against his chest, wrapping his arms under her legs, and lifting her like a child. Her arms crossed around his neck, and her face slotted into space by his ear, so as he took to the stair, she could watch the women who followed.
Fletch led them high into the Citadel, through a narrow stair where the women's shoulders rubbed the stone as they walked side by side. The Wives back's growing tense and their steps jittery as their ascent brought them closer and closer to the Vault.
Fletch kicked open the fragile wood door that separated Furiosa's space from the Imperator's Hall, and entered to lay her on her cot.
The sheets, Furiosa saw, were still mussed from where she and Ace slept all those mornings ago, her worn out boots remained by the footboard and her sagging pillow in its place under her head. She struggled to raise a hand to brush along Fletch's shoulder, approval of a job well done. When her flesh had left his, he stepped back, though his eyes never left her face, not when Mari shoved him back farther still, or even when his hand rose to his chest and left a large smear of red over flaking white paint.
Fletch watched as Mari stripped Furiosa of her belts, her shirt, all the trappings that marked her Imperator. He watched the bones under her skin and the blood drip from the hole in her side and fall in little puddles against the sandstone floor.
Watched until the shortest of Joe's wives turned to him with a snarl, waved a snub nosed pistol in his face and demanded he look away.
"Get out." The Dag agreed, rising wraith like and caustic at Toast's side, to stare him down with pale hateful eyes.
They forced Fletch back with frigid looks, and the Immortan's Protection, for all that he was dead. One did not touch a Wife, One did not Harm a Wife, One did not…
No, Fletch though, No.
Furiosa was growing blurry with distance, though he could still hear her labored breath. She needed him. He needed to be there. They couldn't just- Even if they were Immortan's Wives- They couldn't send him away, not from his Imperator, not from the Boss.
They couldn't act as if he weren't cataloguing all of his Imperator's Hurts. Growing knowledgeable in all the ways she had bled and suffered, and existed in the three days he was without her.
He was a Repair Boy, he wanted to explain, one of the best. Hand chosen by The Ace, kept on by Furiosa. All he wanted to do was fix her. Fix her like he did his cars, to drive back the rust, the leaks, the signs of age, and wear and battle ware. Make her like new with a bit of knowledge and the right parts.
He wanted to explain but could not with him limited words, could not give sense to that which they do not want to hear, and it is with a gun to his stomach and a firm wall of body that forced him from her room, into the Imperator's hall, to see the door thunk shut, and hear the slide of rope lock, and metal tumbler fall into place.
He stood outside that door for long moments, staring down the battered wood as if it would open before his eyes. Fletch waited until he was sure that Furiosa would not call for him, then turned and ghosted down the stairs. His hands are covered in chalk, and grease and blood and he knows what he must do, just as he knows what will be on his hands tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that.
He goes to the Flesh Shop. He goes to find the Ace.