Her broken nose had actually saved her, and it was the reason she was currently muscling her way past dusty war boys, snarling at them when they refused to move but otherwise tolerating them well, as she usually did. Had her face been intact and her gait perfect, she probably would have been taken as a wife, the last thing she would ever want. Thankfully, Immortan Joe hadn't even considered her, and she was immediately tossed in with the rest of the pups and when she was old enough, the boys. They looked up to her, crooked nose, bad hip, nasty snarl and all. The boys that had brought her up were all dead now, ten years later, killed either on the fury road or by their own half lives. She hoped she would meet them in Valhalla, assuming the doors had opened to them and both she and they were awaited.
War pups stared as she stomped past, their bald little heads swiveling to follow her and the limp body she dragged along behind her. Another blood bag, hopefully a universal donor. She was known to take blood bags from Gastown and Bullet Farm even, resulting in a few nasty skirmishes between "allies" and several angry words from Immortan Joe. He would have killed her long ago, were she not so valuable when it came to keeping the boys in line. She was troublesome, but good at what she did.
She deposited the blood bag in front of Organic Mechanic and continued on her way, only stopping when she had reached the cars. She sat on the nearest available hood, exhausted and in desperate need of nursing her hip. The mechanic gave her creams for it, but past that there was nothing that could heal the old injury. She wished she could forget how she received it, but unlike the rest of the boys, she found that she remembered most of her childhood. Sometimes she thought about her mother and wondered if she knew where her little girl was now, or if she was even alive. Her father surely wasn't, and the baby, well…babies didn't last long in the citadel.
Violence suddenly erupted as a few war pups in front of her started throwing punches, arguing over wrenches. She watched them for a moment before intervening from her place on the car. "Hey!"
They froze at the sharp tone, both looking up at her.
"Cut it out," she said sternly. "And come here."
They both hung their heads. They were young, fresh and new and only just now ready for their first ride on the fury road as real war boys. They each had a few scars, but not nearly as many as their older counterparts did.
"Apologies, Warbird…" they both saluted her with the triangle.
Her nostrils flared in irritation but she sighed instead of chastising them. She supposed it frightened them to some degree, her constant state of anger. But it wasn't because of them, no…never because of them. She outranked them, and so she felt that they were her pups, her boys, her flock. It was her damned hip, constantly flaring up, making it so that she sometimes couldn't walk without some sort of aid. A few of the older boys would occasionally help her, and at least it showed the new recruits that she was something to be respected. Were she not so adept at her job, she would have been killed while she was still a pup, but thankfully she was good at what she did: training, leading, keeping the boys in line…she could do it all, despite her disability.
"Apology accepted," she saluted them lazily in return and they tilted their heads.
"Are you alright, Warbird?" the one on the right asked.
"Sit." She commanded. They obeyed, one sitting on either side. She feared that she would need one or both of them to help her back to her sleeping place later, and none of the older boys had returned from their day out on the road yet. She might as well teach these new ones a thing or two. "I may need you two."
"Is it your hip?" the one on her left blurted out.
She looked at him in irritation. "Yes."
"How'd it get that way?"
"It was a long time ago. Never healed."
He was about to ask another question when the three of them suddenly heard cheering and engines growing closer. The boys were back, presumably with something good, based on the amount of noise they were making.
"Another lovely day on the Fury Road!" a voice called above the rest.
As the cars drove in, the younger boys that had remained inside for the day all jumped up, running alongside and cheering with the rest. The one sitting on Warbird's left couldn't contain his excitement and sprang from his place, sprinting ahead to see what was going on. She motioned for the one on her right to help her stand, and as she leaned heavily on him, one of the returning war boys climbed from his car with her in his sights and leaped forward, scrambling toward her. The others all crowded behind him, still cheering and chanting various things.
"For our Warbird," she raised an eyebrow as he held something out toward her and bowed his head. She smiled as she saw what was in his outstretched hands. Three short feathers, all glossy black.
"They're wonderful, Nux." she said as she took them from him. He watched her hopefully, glancing at the feathers and then her face and then back to the feathers. He wanted to braid them into her hair. "You caught me just as I was wanting to head back for the night."
His face fell and her mouth twitched in a smile. She always tried to give back to them as her way of apologizing for her sour moods, and one of those ways was by allowing them to put feathers in her hair if they brought them back for her. This led to them bringing her countless gifts and trinkets each time they went out on the Fury Road, and she wasn't complaining. It was a nice game for them, and she enjoyed it as well.
The others all began dispersing, going to tend to their cars or find blood bags for those who needed it, and she dismissed the pup that was holding her up. He happily ran off to find someone to bother, but the boy with the feathers remained, still looking at her hopefully.
"Help me back to my rooms," she requested. She knew this boy from his recent successes out on the road, coming back with blood bags and keeping his team alive and well almost every time. Each time she saw him it seemed like he had new scars on his chest, additions to the engine carved into his skin. She had actually added a few herself.
He happily obliged, offering a pale, clay and dust covered arm for her to use as they slowly made their way across the citadel. They only stopped when they passed Rictus Erectus and Nux struggled to make the triangle while still allowing Warbird to stand up straight. She didn't salute Immortan Joe's son, and the two exchanged angry glances and wrinkled brows, his expression much icier than hers. He wanted her dead, probably, and he probably had for a very long time, but his father wouldn't allow it and so she was safe for the time being. There was no telling how long that was, but it was longer than it could be, and that's what mattered. She didn't like him because of his power, and he didn't like her because of her disrespect; at least the feelings were mutual.
"You're allowed to speak," she commented to Nux as they neared her room, eager to rid the air of the negative energy that followed Rictus. He wasn't a war boy…at least not a war boy like her and Nux. He did was his father asked him to, and while she couldn't condemn him for that, it left a bad taste in her mouth whenever she accepted orders from him, especially on a day like today, when he had glared at her like that.
Nux cleared his throat as they pulled the red curtain obscuring the doorway aside and stepped into the small chamber. "I've never been in one of these rooms is all." He let her go to sit on her bed and he looked around, peering at things in jars. "You have goo?"
She smiled. "From Organic Mechanic."
He whirled around to look at her. "For what?"
"My hip. It makes it hurt less."
"Oh…" he left the jars to stand before her. "What happened to it?"
"I might tell you someday." He took that as his cue to drop the subject and instead sat down next to her. "Here." She grabbed a small pot sitting on the stand next to her bed and handed it to him. "Oil."
He smiled and dipped his fingers into the black goop, slicking some into her Mohawk before reaching for the feathers. She always smelled like an engine, and he loved it. All the boys did, but him especially. He enjoyed what little time they had spent together, he enjoyed it immensely; he only wished she spent more time with him and less with the older war boys. As he twisted the oil into her hair, he couldn't help but sigh happily. She was like a car. Tough, decorated, and always working, never failing or falling apart. She was also the only war boy he knew who had hair.
"Rex almost went to Valhalla today," Nux said, breaking the short silence that had fallen over them.
"Almost?"
He began braiding the feather into her hair, winding the strands around it until it stuck in place, blending it with the others. "His car flipped outside Bullet Farm just as he was 'boutta grab his chrome." His eyes lit up as he relived the moment. "There we were, out in the wastes, the fury road stretchin' on for days, when outta nowhere—"
The sudden tearing of cloth and a loud, angry grunt made him freeze and look up, then immediately shrink back. The curtain in the carved stone doorway fell to the floor in a tattered heap. Boots stomped over it and Nux was pulled to his feet and promptly shoved out the door by large, pale arms. Warbird recoiled as they lunged for her as well, scrambling over her bed in her attempt to get away.
"What do you want, Rictus?" she snapped as she watched him step back from her.
"Out," he ordered, staring sternly down at her.
"This is my room!" she fumed, practically hissing. "I sleep here, I make the rules. You're in my room, so you can leave."
He was unimpressed by the small angry war boy in front of him and moved toward the bed again, reaching over it to grab her. She didn't have the guts to fight past a few lazy kicks and a good amount of wiggling; as much as she hated it, he was in charge. It felt wrong to do anything other than voice her displeasure. She had been taught better than that.
Nux looked on nervously from the doorway as Rictus threw an extremely displeased Warbird over his shoulder. Immortan Joe's son didn't have time for pleasantries, and the easiest way to accomplish his goal was to simply carry the small angry Warbird away from her so called "room." She began trying to snatch up some of her belongings as he turned, swinging her dangerously close to the stone wall as he did so.
"Nux, grab my oils!" she huffed as she clawed halfheartedly at Rictus's back. The war boy looked nervously at the two of them before creeping past as quickly as he could. "Put them in a bag," Warbird grumbled, giving Rictus an angry punch in the spine.
"Stop that!" Rictus roared, jostling her. Her right hip slammed against his jaw and she screeched in pain, struggling for real now against his grip as pain erupted at the site of her old injury. "I said STOP!"
She was growing light headed from being upside down like this so she obeyed, hanging limply. She glanced up, the blood rushing to her head almost making her sick right there, and saw Nux hurriedly shoving jars into the bag she had told him to get. Rictus began stomping away without another word, and Warbird was left to hang her head and squeeze her eyes shut in hope that he would let her go to regain her dignity soon. Hopefully he wouldn't parade her past all the other war boys, and even more importantly, wouldn't drop her onto the cold, hard floor.
That fear was probably the only reason she wasn't more determined to get into a more upright position; she could trust the other war boys. She had almost always been able to. She knew they wouldn't purposely let anything touch her bad hip, because if she were to get hurt, not only would she begin throwing wrenches and tire irons, but the older boys would come down on them like a second end to the world.
Thankfully, Rictus walked quickly, although she couldn't tell where to, and she didn't have to keep clinging for a horribly long amount of time. She heard Nux following along, the jars clinking against each other in the bag he carried for her. Wherever they were headed, she hoped they would get there soon. She could feel the blood pooling in her brain as she clung to him, her hip still throbbing as he stomped through the stone corridors. She could hear the confused mumblings of boys as they passed and groaned quietly to herself. Thankfully she was too lightheaded to get any angrier than she already was, and her limbs began tingling before she could yell at them.
"Where are we going?" she grumbled instead.
"Right-" Rictus turned through a doorway and stomped to a halt. "—here."
In the second she felt him begin to move, she knew her fears were coming true, and he dropped her. It didn't look as impressive as it felt to her, as she was tossed to the floor, but it felt very slow, and something that wouldn't have even phased another war boy felt like a death sentence to her. She yelped as she first began to fall, and against her will she cried out when her hip took the brunt of her fall, tears of pain immediately flooding her eyes as she instinctively curled up. Her heart pounded in her ears, drowning out everything but Rictus Erectus's roaring laughter. As if she didn't need another stab to her honor today, he nudged her with his foot, pressing the toe of his boot just a bit too threateningly into her side as she lay still with fear, pain, and embarrassment all rolled into one emotion, her breath coming heavily as she swallowed back screams of pain.
"You live here now, little broken bird," she heard him say amidst his rumbling laughter. Thankfully he was the only one making any noise past her pained breathing. Maybe he and Nux were the only other two in the room.
She heard him leave, his chuckles growing quieter as he got further away, and almost allowed herself to sob like she wanted to. This wasn't what war boys did. When they were hurt, they got back up again and kept going, and she had always done that before. She choked back more tears and rolled weakly onto her belly, pushing herself up on shaky arms. She needed to be alone, and she needed to heal herself, and she needed to find out what she had done to deserve this, and—
She felt herself being lifted faster than her arms would push as someone picked her up around the waist and then guided her to her feet. Together they walked a few steps to a musty pile of old blankets, and before her knees could buckle, she looked up to see an entire room of war boys and pups staring at her.
Her stomach dropped slightly as she saw all of them there, unmoving, unsure of what to do after watching the Prince of the Wasteland drag her in and leave her. They didn't know why she was there, and she didn't know either, but it must have been important for Rictus to be sent for her. He was in charge of the war boys, but he almost never did anything of his own volition.
She looked at their pale faces, a pit forming in her chest as she began to feel more and more like she had somehow let them down just by appearing this weak in front of them. They valued strength and then death, with nothing in between. Life was too short to be a crippled war boy. As the seconds passed by and no one moved, she began realizing that they were going to leave her now, and before she knew it she would be alone in the sand, left behind like she should have been all along.
"Hey," Nux looked at her with concern as she swayed dangerously. "You need food."
As if that was there cue, the older boys rushed into action, a few running to find her a few roasted lizards or rats and a few others hurrying to take her from Nux. She shoved weakly against them as two balled and fluffed up the blankets to form a cushion and a third supported her weight for her with his arms beneath hers as she sat lopsidedly on it. She was pathetic. She couldn't even sit down on her own.
The younger war boys and the pups suddenly surged forward, all sitting or laying near her so closely that when the older boys brought her some measly food scraps, they could barely find the floor between the pale bodies that covered it. She accepted a skewered double headed rat and began picking at the meat, trying to eat it but suddenly finding herself not very hungry. Even as Nux kicked a pup out of the way to sit next to her, she admitted that she didn't want it and put it down, much to the dismay of the crowd watching her.
"Right, speak up," Morsov said. "Tell us what happened."
She opened her mouth and her voice came out much differently than she expected. "I did something wrong."
"What was it?" another war boy kicked a pup out of the way to sit next to Nux.
She shook her head slowly, trying to remember the past few days or even moon cycles. She couldn't think of anything that she had done, and especially nothing that Joe would have found out about. She hadn't done anything unusual lately, just going back and forth between the Citadel and Fury Road, the same thing she always did. It didn't make sense, none of it did. She had stayed in that room for a long, long time, and no one had ever even come in to interrupt her sleeping, much less throw her out.
"Nothing?" Nux asked. "Nothing at all?"
She shook her head again, pausing midway. There was something she had done recently. Something that she wasn't at all supposed to do. Something that, if he had found out, would make Immortan Joe extremely angry with her, angry enough to isolate her with the war boys once again.
"No," she said slowly. "Nothing."