-Slit-

It was just one thing too many. Two people in the room called out the names of their deities in revulsion, Wilson cursed but not at me, and then there was the ratty ghost, loping at me on legs too thin to look fit for supporting any weight.

I had hot bile in my lap and my fists up. It was too much, I couldn't process what or who I was looking at, so... He wound up on his ass with a bloody mouth while I stood there, on the futon with my back against the wall, choking on air with vomit dribbling down the front of my slacks.

There was shouting, somebody roaring, "Who are you?" and "What the fuck! What the fuck are you?" It was me, I was howling that.

Wilson joined in, "Git down from there before you fall out and crack your head open!"

"Who is that?" Flick or Jawbreaker or whoever the fuck he was fumed, pointing down at the rat-ghost on the floor.

"Ask 'im yourself! Slit, come down, c'mon... Will somebody get their thumb outta their ass and help me before he hurts himself!?" the senior threw orders at everyone.

The world was spinning and pulsing darkness consumed the edges of my vision. Once Wilson and Jaw pulled me down, the tunneled vision cleared but was replaced by stars shooting around the edges of my eyes. I was being restrained loosely, sat down on the floor against another wall with Jaw's arm thrown across my torso so I couldn't move. He also, thankfully, held out an arm to stop the ghost before I could kick him away with my whole but only somewhat good leg.

Nux, a dead thing, just kept trying to get closer, arguing with Jaw as he tried to reach around his blocking forearm to touch me until Wilson pulled him by the back of the shirt to stop him.

"Just back up a minute! This'as gotta be like Night of the Living Dead to 'im," Wilson said.

"What?!" Nux voiced his own as well as everyone else's confusion.

"He probably thinks you're dead, and he woke up this morning not even sure where the hell he was, ease up."

Things felt unreal, like I was standing outside myself watching all of this.

"Mate, it's me, I came and got you jus' like she told me to," Nux said reaching out again over Jaw's thick forearm.

It came to me, that I could incredibly vaguely remember being told this while I was fed cola, while the ghost spewed more cola from his eyes, but at the time I might've thought the ghost had been sent via Dune's prayers or something. I was so, so confused.

I couldn't speak, all I could do was stare at him in baffled disbelief. I was still doing nothing but gawking and ogling when Jaw let him have me. I was leaning back to look at Nux more clearly while he kept on pulling at me to bring me closer. In an out-of-skull state, I was trying to scrub the blood of his split lip out of the hair around his mouth because it disturbed me worse than anything else at that particular moment. Never mind the fact that a man I thought was a corpse three minutes ago was practically in my lap and trying to wipe chunder out of the stitches in my chin and chattering around my right palm.

"Thought you were dead! Then thought you were gonna quit on me again, then thought they were gonna shred ya for bein' an arsehole! Ugh, you stink."

"Gotten a whiff of your own breath lately?" I jabbed back as my head began screwing itself on right.

Jawbreaker and Wilson were murmuring over us. It felt like another fucky dream to be disappointed about when I'd inevitably wake up, but I never woke up. Nux and Wilson helped me hobble back to that sweat soaked and piss stained cot. I got a short explanation that my pants were trash. Cola was tight, and to be used for drinking or trading only unless you were a doctor. Even given flexibility for Wilson's meat mending services, washing was for instruments and cutlery only.

Nux kept on talking endlessly about this place and what he's had to do to get ahold extra aqua-cola. If I wasn't looking at his haggard face I kept phasing out of my head and sliding back into thinking I was home at the Citadel. My brains were still fried, and by the time the puke was cleaned from my face with a dry rag, I was so damn tired I couldn't sit up.

I was lying there, considering all the rage I'd held onto for Nux for so long but lost along the way, wondering how Dune could have told him to go find me, how he was alive and why he looked like this, and where Larry and Barry went.

Nux wasn't right. He shook all night, jerked at any sudden sound, crawled into the cot and put himself under my left arm just as he had when we were pups. He also winced at the sound of a woman's voice when one came to visit Wilson in the night to have something looked at while he gripped my arm.

I asked where he came from, hoping the Citadel under new rule hadn't done this to him. No, where he'd been was a kind of hell beyond my imagination. It wasn't something I didn't think could exist, but it was appalling to the highest degree. He was held in servitude to a gang who'd populated an old Scrotus camp, like salt on an injury to be tortured in a place that once belonged to a sort of War Boys.

He just shook worse the more he talked, so I quit asking about that place and tried something else, a trick I learned from living with Dune. It was hard to find anything else to talk about. I hadn't seen him in years, but we couldn't exactly catch up because thinking about the last three years involved thinking about Dune and I just couldn't do that right now without having a fit. Him filling me in on what he'd been doing would be more shaking and sniveling out of him. We talked about home instead, but it wasn't much better.

Everything had been shit before that final war. The food had been shit, his health had been shit, I'd been shit. We both remembered the fighting, the resentment, how bad it got before the end of everything. Talking of and recalling this could only lead to one thing.

"...Slit," he shuddered and quit grasping at my wrist. "I was afraid of you, what you were gonna do if I failed again, or got hold of me after I screwed it all up right in front of Immortan. Thought, maybe you hated me since I got so weak. Thought you might jus' kill me yourself after what I did."

I my guts churned as I thought about it and what I'd felt when I saw him spitting guzz into the war rig's intake, because he'd been right to be afraid. Completely right. A phantom of the anger I used to carry around like a badge of honor surfaced, overshadowed by words I'd spoken to Dune once. The door swings both ways, or it doesn't swing at all.

"I did, an' I think I might've if I got the chance," I told him, knowing it'd hurt and unsure if I said that for the sake of honesty or because the black pit of sludge which made up my soul had demanded that pound of flesh for petty grudges.

He wormed his way out from under my arm and sat on the floor by the cot instead. I watched his bone thin shoulders hunch and his back tense. He wouldn't look at me.

"I needed you, missed you, but hated you, every day. Because of what you did to me ever since you got it up in your head that I jus' wasn't livin' up to your stupid standards. Way Dune talked, it sounded like the War Boy I came up with was dead an' somethin' else sprung up outta his rotten body... If he isn't dead, I will leave you here, in your own shit and piss to rot, because I'm not letting anyone do that to me anymore."

He lay himself down then on the thin stack of flattened cardboard. I didn't sleep that night. I don't think he slept either.

In the morning as Wilson was moving around the room beyond the curtain and muttering to himself, Nux sat up and scrubbed at his eyes with his hands. I don't suppose he thought I was still awake since he jolted when I said something.

"You need a shave," I told him.

He seemed bite back what might've been a curse after a jump and a gasp, then continued scratching through his overgrown face and massaging at joints as he recovered.

"Don't think too much about that 'nymore," he murmured groggily.

"Been that long?"

"Since I flipped the war rig,"

I came up on my right elbow at that. Fucking what? "You flipped the war rig?"

"Yep," was all he said. His tone told me cola-clear that he wasn't in the mood for me to press any further about what he did do the legendary rig.

"...Wilson might be able to spare something of his to shave with. He's got sharps,"

"No grease or anything to do it with," he told me. That sucked. I could feel myself getting real prickly too.

"Can still trim it. Where's my flip-blade? I can do it." it wasn't really an urgent matter, I just wanted to see more of his face, I guess to make this feel more real. Maybe to help take the sting out of the night before too.

He looked at me funny for a second, shook his head a little and turned away. He must still be sore from getting slapped with the truth. This was what it was always like right before those blow-outs with the raging and throwing fists. He used to shut himself up and me out, then I used to be keen to whittle at him until he snapped and slugged me. Now it just seemed stupid.

Picking and prodding and jabbing buttons hardly worked on Dune, and when it did she would just leave for a spot of hunting. That had been early on when I was still nothing more than freshly barbecued road kill. I'd stopped needing that, the verbal fight, after just a few months in the caverns. I don't exactly know why I needed it in the first place.

The more I thought about now and before the road war, the more I could remember just being angry. Always angry, because anger was allowed. Everything I was let to do or feel when I lived with Dune was never permitted at home. I couldn't articulate any of this to Nux, the wall between us was built up too thick, so I said nothing. I didn't feel allowed to be anything but a War Boy around him because it's easy to fall back into old habits with the person you were with when the habits formed. I fought my urge to goad him, realizing that being a Scav is easier.

Jaw came. I recognized the voice and my guts lurched anxiously as he pulled back the curtain to look in at us. Trousers were tossed over the end of the cot, then a small bottle of water pushed at Nux.

"Wash with that," was all he said before pulling the curtain back in place.

I heard Wilson's chair squeak with protest as it took considerable weight. "You should have told me there was two of them,"

"You could have told me who the hell you were. Didn't even recognize you." Wilson grouched.

"Didn't recognize you, either. Never saw enough of your face to memorize it in the first place."

"...Do you have a vehicle? Anything? They can't stay here, I might be old and not from around here but I know the price a War Boy will fetch in this shit-hole."

"I'm not important enough to have wheels, and I wouldn't worry much. Those two... Lemme put it this way, they aren't exactly mint."

Wilson grunted with irritability on our behalf at this insult. I felt like a pup again, completely denied any part in a discussion among the apparent adults.

"...if they can work, save up enough water, they could barter for a ride out. It'll cost. No one ventures into the old Joe territories anymore without a big payoff. It's their damn civil wars."

"So it's that bad out there?"

"It's what I've heard."

Nux rose just enough to park his backside on the end of the cot and leaned in to whisper at me. "I heard that from one of the thrall captives a while back. Citadel had problems for a while, then Bullet Farm cut ties with 'em."

My guts clenched around their emptiness. Crank and the whole clan of Crow Folk drove right into that mess. I bleakly wondered if they made it, and what greeted them if they did. That reminded me, Nux had no idea Crank was alive. Tank never shredded him like we were told had happened.

"Nux, Crank is alive,"

He looked at me, eyes wide and brows risen high before furrowing together. "What do you mean?"

I swallowed hard. "Remember the bog when you an' the... The wives? Remember the bog?"

His expression crinkled under the mop and beard, I could only tell because his eyes took on that injured pup look as he no doubt relived whatever had gone on with him and the traitors that night. "Yeah, I remember."

"He's been living there for years, with the Crow Fishers."

"Why?"

"I'm not completely sure. I think the pup he took, Jackie, was from there and remembered,"

"...he used to draw all that weird stuff on shit paper," Nux muttered.

"Yeah, still does that," I informed him.

"Still doesn't explain why Crank deserted, Slit."

"It kinda does. He was looking for somewhere better."

"Without us," he hissed bitterly.

"For us I think,"

His expression softened a bit, then twisted back up into disgust. He was still all War Boy. Made sense, he was stuck somewhere rust with others of our kind ever since the road war. All that had happened in all of that time for him was learning how to survive on not enough food and the occasional beating. He was the same, only the meat on him had changed.

"How'd you find him?" He asked me.

My bloodpump pounded harder at the misery of remembering how the Nutter and I got into this mess.

"Dune was all screwed up, I thought taking her home might help. Ran into him and some of Dune's people out there." V8, it hurt to say her name.

Nux went quiet after that, fiddling with his hands in his lap. I let him be. Seemed he was through talking, so I kept listening to Wilson and Jawbreaker talk. I strained to hear anything, being half deaf. I kept thinking I was hearing Dune's name and it made my stomach churn bile and my chest hurt.

I heard a sniff at my left, just one to snort back snot, and when I looked I saw the salty drops falling out of Nux's face as he sat hunched over and shaking. He was wrecked and it had something to do with me, I was sure of it. V8, he looked like cooling shit.

New habit: I reached out like a might with Dune, but he jerked away like I'd tapped him with a cattle prod when my palm landed on his shoulder.

My guts felt like they were melting into a festering stew. Did I make him like this? Or did the slave camp do this? It couldn't have been just one or the other alone. I made him afraid, the camp stole his ability to fight back.

What the hell had I become before getting blown up?

I reached behind him for the trouser thrown in over the cot, pulled them on and had to fight with the intact pant leg to get my metal leg on with the sleeve of denim bunched up around it. I didn't look at Nux to see if he'd protest. I got up, leaned on the wall for a moment until the dizziness cleared, then pushed aside the curtain to step out, not caring much what conversation I interrupted.

"Need a rag or something to wash with, stuff for him to clean up with, too," I said, motioning very generally around my head so as not to make a big deal of him shaving again.

I just figured, he probably needed the option. Not getting that option or being forced into taking an offered "alternative" sucks and I know it.

"The old doc always looked clean shaven, there's got to be a razor or something around here. None of his stuff ever left the room, 'cept his body." Jaw explained.

Wilson didn't let me rummage for long. He made me sit where he'd been and did his own digging about the room. Jaw and I just looked each other over awkwardly. I was starting to see faint resemblance between him and Dune. Same upper lip shape, though hers were thicker, and the brows fell into the same position in his resting expression.

"Your name is Slit, huh?" he asked, bluntly opening a conversation. Wilson must have told him.

"Yep,"

He motioned side to side across his face, "because of the- nevermind." he stopped himself as I glared.

"...almost thought you were gonna ask if I had another name before I got so drop-dead gorgeous," I grinned sarcastically, though the gesture was halfhearted.

"Actually, I was," he snorted.

"That was the first thing she asked, too,"

Silence for a moment. This was torturous. Thank V8 he steered the conversation toward something else, the thing I'd overheard about working our way out of here.

"What skills do you and Nux have?"

"Cars, explosives, Nux can solder some electrical shit, too." I offered hopefully.

He grumbled, "not much work around here for any of that. You'd need vetted for any mechanic work, and that brand on you means you aren't allowed anywhere near my boss's garages.

"I'll keep an ear open for anything that might get you boys more cola and rations. For now, only job I can promise has you workin' the fighter barracks with a broom in your hand."

I clenched my teeth and shut my eyes as he finished telling me we only had one option, menial labor. I had this creeping suspicion that we might not ever get out of here. If Flick was here and had never been able to leave, we were fucked. The way Dune lauded her brothers in praise for smarts and being creative enough to survive in the Green Place where they were always under suspicion and at times the target of outright hate from 90% of the population, I expected- well, I expected better than a burnt-out ring fighter who'd abandoned his name.

Wilson nudged me with an elbow, "found it, I think."

He was wiping on his shirt a greasy old eating knife sharpened so many times that the blade had been worn back to half its original width. There was a jar in his other hand. Thick black hairs clung around the lid. Gross, but better than nothing. I looked to the curtained off cot. I could hear the springs creaking slightly as Nux moved. If I listened carefully, I thought I heard sniffling too.

Jaw Stood, "I have work to do. Expect patients tonight. We're beginning eliminations for this year's House Wars."

Wilson shrugged, "I gather I'll find out what that means based on the disfigurements the poor bastards crawl in here with."

Jawbreaker shrugged back, but knowingly. He dropped a wrapped bundle on the table as he left the room. Wilson opened it and sighed.

"...I really didn't want to start appreciating that prick," he growled as he looked down at three forearm length, dirt colored things that looked like thin bricks. They had seams on the sides and dimples from kneading fingertips as if they were pressed in moulds. Rations. People Kibble.

Wilson passed two toward me. "Give him his, will ya?"

I paused, watching the curtain and hearing that all movement behind it had stopped. I passed one of the two bars back, shaking my head.

Wilson's brows lowered as he mouthed a few words silently. He alright?

I shook my head and turned up a palm. Don't think so.

Wilson rumbled a single "huh-mm," before taking the stained cloth the ration bars had been wrapped in, folded the third bar, the blade, and the grease jar into it, then shuffled toward the cot to pass the bundle behind the curtain.

Wilson and I ate in silence for a while. The stuff was hard and brittle, it hurt my broken teeth to chew, but I was too hungry not to force it down.

"We'll pull those once your a little further outta the woo- er. When you get some zip back in ya," he promised. I just nodded. I didn't have it in me to care much and nothing in me looked forward to that. "Nux needs a few out too, but that's from a soft diet for too long, I think. I'm no dentist. Clearly I'm no good with teeth."

I tuned him out. He eventually left me alone to sit there at his desk, head rested on my right arm with my left curled close because it ached. I didn't want to bother Nux right now. I didn't know what he needed and probably didn't have what he needed either.

I fell into the worst half-sleep. My face was sticking to the desk when the sound of shouting and pained yowls woke me. Wilson had patients, just like Jawbreaker promised. Seven men and three women crowded around clutching bleeders, Wilson zooming about, snapping at some to keep pressure on, forcing the ones who've already been treated to help him deal with the others.

A few minutes of trying to sort everything I saw and heard, I learned that some absolute glorious nut-job did in everyone here in the arena. Some bloke called Lighty Boy, who'd now won himself a spot on a team which carries out a higher form of combat. Those House Wars Jaw mentioned, I guess.

I couldn't process all of the noise for too long. It ground against the gears of my senses. I left the room, limping out and choosing to sit in the hall instead. I could still hear everything, but it wasn't unbearable. I slowly started sliding back into sleep, sitting up against the wall. My neck would ache later, but it was better than the howling of wrecked fighters and the way it felt to sit too close to Nux in the state he was in.

Time passed. Only a few of Wilson's patients left the room in that short period while I slipped in and out of foul dreams. I was nudged awake with sharp, thin knuckles.

"Slit?" It was Nux. He had one of the unused oil lamps from the office lit in his hand and had sat himself down beside me. The bottle of water, the shaving shit, and the cloth now damp and coated in filth sat over his crossed legs. He wore no shirt, he was just bones and irregular tan lines. He'd scrubbed himself, but dark lines of dirt still stuck in the ridges of the engine seared into his chest.

He wouldn't look at me, but pulled on the long tangles of hair sprouting from his chin, "I- I don't even know where to start."

His fists clenched in the mattes all around his skull and his shoulders shivered while he tried not to heave and sob. All I could think about was the fact that Dune let me do this, be a wreck. She never punished me or declared me rust for it once I couldn't lock it up anymore. I didn't feel like myself when I spoke up, but it didn't feel wrong to be someone else for a minute.

"It's, uh, it's okay. It's a lot of- er, hair. It's a lot of hair." I said, knowing this wasn't about hair and hoping he knew that too.

He nodded, but cringed out a few sobs and yanked on his hair some more. It hurt to see this, It looked wrong, what little of me that was still War Boy railed against the majority that had gone Scavenger. It's a gut reaction to shun Boys who act like this, because the soft become crow food wicked fast.

I took the knife from his lap and he jerked away but I didn't chase him with it to try taking the tangles off by force, like I know I'd have done years ago. I let him come to me. It was slow, and he still gripped clumps of hair in his fists as he leaned closer.

My hands shook and my elbow hated me for this, but I started taking whatever chunks of hair he wasn't holding onto and sheering them away with the blade. He didn't flinch again, and the blade was good and sharp, so I hardly had to pull at all. It got easier to clear the hair as he let go, but the act itself got harder.

He still choked on his sobs, his cola-works flooding down his face lubricated the blade just as much as the grease from the jar did as I began to truly shave him. He was hardly more than a skull and skin. A mask of sun abused hide circled his eyes and sharp cheek bones. I hadn't started on his head beyond cutting out the matted knots, and I was afraid to. I didn't want to see how he'd have lost even the thin muscle across his temples. I could feel with my fingers they had withered and sunken in to cling deathly close to his skull. His teeth were chattering.

"M'cold," he breathed.

"...yeah... Uh... Dune says, hair on top keeps you from cooking but keeps you warm? Maybe we'll just... Uh. Leave it."

He nodded again, this time he looked me in the eye, and he wasn't whimpering so much.

"Don't wanna go back in there 'til they all go," he said, and I nodded in agreement.

So we sat, both idly watching that pile of grungy hair as if we expected it to get up and walk off on It's own. He still trembled and chattered his ivory.

"...hm, you'd be warmer if you were over here," I was just repeating shit I'd said to Dune weeks ago. It was easier than a fight, or being miserable.

Nux took a second to decide as I watched him, but scooted closer and balled himself up against my ribs.

It -finally- fully registered that Nux wasn't dead. I had to cover my mouth in my right hand while the left arm stayed rested over my driver as he started to snore. I didn't sob or bawl or even whimper, I didn't have enough guzz in me to spare that kind of energy and I didn't want to wake him, but I'd look like both my eyes were busted by morning.