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He comes back.
It's as inexorable a fact as it is that he leaves, as it is that the sun will rise over sand, rather than sea, but he does come back. It might be sixty days, it might be ninety, it might be fourteen. But he comes back.
The longer he's away, the more likely it is that his work will be evident out in the wastes. That, while he may not be back in twenty days, somehow, an engineer will make her way to the Citadel on the word of a mad-eyed stranger of a place where there's water and welcome for hands that are willing to work. That a family on their last few sips of musty, cloudy water might host a shadow at their fire that night, a shadow that speaks haltingly of a green place of safety, where they might find supplies and refill their water tanks. The shadow's gone by morning, but there's a full jerry can of the cleanest water they've tasted in many hundreds of days waiting by their car. And the mother, she's just got this quiet way with children and the injured, and the father knows his way around an engine, although he wouldn't really call himself a blackthumb. That a young man who thought for sure that the raiders were going to have him, will suddenly be pulled into a black car and taken to this little traveling caravan that happened to be heading this way, and it turns out he's just got this way with plants. He says it's the way he sings to them, but whatever it is, Dag likes the way he works the soil.
It's when he comes back quick that the Sisters know that they had better be ready. Bandages and water, and maybe some extra supplies waiting to stuff into the Interceptor, just in case, because they won't know how much he has burned through in the ten days, fourteen days, thirty days, until he's up the lift and the bodies start spilling out of his open door, his eyes flickering more quickly than normal, darting here and there like a cornered animal, whites visible all around the blue-grey iris as he swallows back even the few words he would normally say as he almost desperately looks for Furiosa.
Because when he comes back quickly, it's always with children.
Maybe just one, maybe a brother and a sister. Once, it had been a whole car load of them. Silent, scared little wisps of children, more rag than skin, all tumbled over one another in the back seat and the front like a knot of snakes. And Max... That had been the only time that Furiosa could recall that he'd ever been present when he'd returned with kids. Not half out of his mind and looking for the quickest way out. He'd been there, eyes more grey than blue, focussed, not darting about. But anything but calm.
He'd felt like a deep waste sandstorm, one of the big nasty ones that could bury entire towns, just waiting to erupt.
All of the Sisters had been shocked when he'd hopped out and circled around to the other side of his car and opened the door and knelt to start coaxing the children out with gunpowder-stained hands and a soft voice. Max just didn't do that. Max barely acknowledged the children he brought. Ever. Which had been why Cheedo had turned and sprinted for the Infirmary to get the Vuvalini and the nurses there. She'd known right then that either Max was sick, or the kids were. Which had been why Furiosa had simply nodded and stepped back and sent Toast for the Milking Mothers when Max had quietly answered her question about what he needed with, "Soft women, with quiet voices."
He hadn't stayed that night. He'd made sure every child - a dozen in all he'd managed to pack into that car of his - had found her way into the arms of a Milking Mother who would look after her, before stalking off into the bowels of the Citadel long enough to replace his supplies. He'd needed everything but guzz, and had taken a few extra mines with a grim look, before telling Furiosa that there would be salvage near the Powder Lakes, but not to bring it back. At least not in any recognizable chunks. And then he'd left, the Interceptor's engine snarling like a feral itself. He hadn't touched her once. Had barely looked at her, as if afraid to let his eyes rest on her for even a moment, lest his very palpable rage infect her like a sickness.
None of the children had been younger than eighteen hundred days. But none of them had been older than thirty five hundred days. His fear might not have been unfounded, come to that.
Outriders had found a body, staked out, it's entrails spilled out into the sand, next to the bombed out wreckage of what might have been some sort of bus or camper or big truck or something. They couldn't be sure that the body had been dead when the entrails had been pulled free and the body left to dry out in the sun, and there really hadn't been enough left of whatever the vehicle had been to even be worth scavenging the bare metal.
But the Interceptor's tracks had been clear enough.
He comes back, though.
Even if it takes one hundred days - which is what it had taken after that memorable trip. The longer he's away, the more of his back seat will be taken up with "trade goods" that he has no intent on trading. Gifts for the Sisters and the Vuvalini and Furiosa. On one trip, he finds the remains of a strip mall after one of those nasty deep wastes sand storms unburies what was left of a Before Time town, and stumbles upon a treasure trove of a craft store and an office supply store. He spends the rest of the trip back to Citadel sleeping on the bonnet of the Interceptor, because every interior nook and cranny is so stuffed full of yarn and paper and ink and thread and needles that he can't recline any of the seats anymore. The surviving Vuvalini almost adopt him into the clan on the spot when they see the bounty he brings them, despite the tackle between his legs.
Most of his returns aren't nearly so exciting, though. A few books, a new tool, a little medicine, a blanket, some new cloth, plants, seeds. Smaller things. A litter of feral dog pups that are young enough to be tamed and trained into sentry dogs. Maps of his wanderings. A handful of colorful beads. A small drum with little tin cymbals set around the edges that shiver with every strike. Before Time pictures. Glass. A small statue carved out of colorful stone.
Once, he comes back after being gone sixty days, and coming in hard, but not as if he's being pursued, just fast, and serious, without the usual pause at the boundaries he normally gives for an escort to pick him up. Furiosa worries, wondering if he's hurt, or if there are children curled up in his back seat, and Toast and the other Sisters get supplies ready, just in case. He's alone, though, when he drives off the lift, and he's asking her how quickly she can have a convoy ready to go as he's pulling out his map and laying it out on the bonnet of his car.
Ten days, hard driving, he's found another miracle: a Before Time auto parts store, almost completely untouched, buried in the sand. His back seat is filled with spark plugs and electronics. All the fiddly little bits that they just don't have the means to make any longer, and belts and bulbs that he'd judged sound enough to make the journey. But there is so much more, just waiting, they just need to get back there, as soon as they can, and clean it out, before someone else does. All of it. A trove of parts and goods that could give them the upper hand against Bullet Farm and Gastown for hundreds of days in trade, much less get their own fleet of cars and bikes so shine they wouldn't even be able to stand looking at them in the sun!
It only takes two days before the convoy is on the road, Max leading the way. Furiosa is driving the new War Rig, of course, and Toast is in command of the Gigahorse. It will take them twelve days of hard driving, so that they can circumnavigate any of the Gastown and Bullet Farm outriders, and Max leads them on a weaving course around other, smaller territories, to avoid stirring up conflicts with anyone else. Citadel forces would win those conflicts, but it would be stupid to kick up the fuss, if they didn't have to, so far from home.
Their speed and caution is well rewarded, though, because Max's treasure trove remains unfound by anyone else when they arrive. One day to unbury the way in well enough, and two more to strip the place bare, right down to the shelving. Maybe someone else will come along and be able to make use of the deep, cool artificial blue cave in the sun. Further exploration reveals a few other buildings buried nearby, but nothing of any value remains behind after all the years, time and sand having been less kind to the old convenience store and house.
It's on this trip, though, that Furiosa has the chance to see the most amazing thing happen. Not just once, but twice, in fact.
Getting the parts secured is only half of the trip, but it's the more harrowing part of the trip, really. Even Max seems more relaxed now that they have everything in hand, the uncertainty of what they would find when they got to the store having been solved now. It's all just a matter of getting back home, which they can't assume will be simple, because that's the surest way to get dead out in the wastes, but the most uncertain part of the journey is done, Max has proven that he's reliable once again, and now it's just the long run home. Everyone is on alert, but there isn't quite that same edge to it as there was on the way out, and even Furiosa can feel Max's edges smooth out, just the tiniest bit. Not enough to join her for sleep in the War Rig, of course - he's back to sleeping on the bonnet of the Interceptor, his seats once again stuffed to the gills with parts and salvage - but he probably wouldn't fit in the War Rig with her, anyway, since it is likewise stuffed. Every vehicle is. With more tied on top and the sides besides.
With everything secured, though, they have time to take their time on the way back. Time to stop past some of the settlements Max had skirted them around on the way out, make some trades, learn some news first hand, scout the land, make an impression first hand. Maybe sow some goodwill, perhaps. The night before leaving out to head back, Furiosa and Toast and Max discuss it, Max explaining where and what types of settlements are out there, and they decide on a general path that will take them fifteen days to return, instead of twelve, a little bit more straight through, with stops at five or six different trading posts along the way. They have supplies enough to trade water, greens, maybe even part with a few of their new spoils along the way. Furiosa and Toast think it might be worth it; Max doesn't think it will hurt anything.
Their second of these stops is a little outpost with a trader's market, less a community than a neutral space with a permanent well head with potable, if not perfect, water, where people from all around the area come to trade and size one another up. The arrival of the Citadel convoy is probably the biggest thing to happen there in a hundred, maybe two hundred days, and it's here that Furiosa gets to see the first occurance of Max's apparently amazing talent.
For all that it is a smallish outpost, it's the only outpost for a day's drive in any direction, and so, any trade, any supplies to be had in a day's drive in any direction, come from here, and the Citadel convoy, obviously weighed down in trade goods, had attracted attention, as it lumbered toward the outpost. It's busy. Busier than normal, or so Max informs Furiosa, and half the Crew is tasked with watching their convoy while the other half is allowed out to trade for a couple of hours, before they need to be back and switch off.
Max and Furiosa are standing shoulder to shoulder in an open space near the center of the market square, facing in opposite directions, looking about themselves, as he explains a little bit more about what this outpost is normally like, when two young children suddenly pelt up out of nowhere from the surrounding crowd and latch onto Max's legs, panting hard and whimpering. They can't be more than 3000 days, thin in the way of the perpetually hungry and thirsty, dirty blonde, a boy and a girl, the boy with a bruise just starting to blossom over his right eye, and the look of siblings about them, maybe twins. They're hiding fearfully behind his legs, hands fisted in the bottom of his leather coat, alternating between burying their faces against his leg and peering around his hip fearfully back the way they had run from. Furiosa turns back that way, her hand dropping to the grip of her pistol; Max's hands have dropped to the heads of the children first, interestingly enough.
There's a disturbance breaking through the crowd, like a rock breaking up the flow of a stream, except that the disturbance is approaching them quickly. The man that bursts out of the milling people is dirty, with missing teeth and long, unkempt nails, and all of his clothes seems to have holes, just layered so that the holes don't overlap one another. The children tuck their faces against Max and stifle a cry against his leg as the raggedy man comes to a halt a few paces away. Not far enough away, though, that his stench doesn't carry, unfortunately. He points and demands his property back, his hand dropping to a pistol on his thigh. From the corner of her eye, Furiosa sees Max's shoulders squaring, his chin tucking closer to his chest; she knows that look that she's certain is coming into his eyes just as well as she knows that deep, dangerous rumble coming into his voice as he growls, "They're not things."
The scav steps forward threateningly, yelling about the thirty whole gallons of guzz that he just traded for the brats-
And that's it. Furiosa doesn't even have the chance to reach over toward Max before the scav is on the ground with Max on top of him, Max's glock shoved under his chin so hard, that Furiosa can see blood welling up from the scrape caused by the sight on the end of the barrel, Max's braced knee on the scav's gun arm, and his good leg ready to thrust him back onto his feet.
"Children. Are. Not. Things. I ever see you again, I'll kill you on sight."
Max takes the scav's gun, three knives and a derringer from somewhere amongst the layers, then shoves to his feet. He gives the scav a kick hard enough to roll him twice over, never letting the Glock waver from the dirty smeg's head. With a cough, the scav makes the wise choice, and slowly scuttles away, clutching his gut as he vanishes into the crowd. Despite the violence, despite the absolute rage now simmering under Max's skin, the children are back to clinging to his leg; while Max had been perched on the ground, they'd clung to each other, and had made no move toward Furiosa. Max's gaze swings over the entirety of the market, back and forth, almost daring someone, anyone, to challenge him. No one does. It's only when he slams the Glock back into the holster strapped to the top of his brace does Furiosa realize that she'd been holding her breath the whole time. She lets it go in a rush and asks him if maybe they should go look for the parents, or whoever it was that traded the children away.
"No."
He turns, takes the girl's hand and starts stalking off back toward where the convoy is awaiting the return of the first group to go trade. Furiosa has to jog a couple of steps to catch up with them. She gives him a look.
"Don't deserve 'em back."
He slows his steps after a few strides, suddenly aware that the children can't quite keep up without running. They don't reach for her hand, and she doesn't offer it. They don't seem afraid of her, really. No more afraid of her than any other stranger. But they clearly just prefer Max, as if they know him somehow, except that she's fairly certain that neither could have ever laid eyes on him before that day.
Toast, waiting in the shade of the Gigahorse, somehow doesn't seem the least bit surprised when they return with two children in tow. She just quirks up one eyebrow and wanders toward them with her thumbs hooked in her belt, uses her tongue to flip her toothpick to the other corner of her mouth. While Furiosa ponders aloud what could be moved around in the War Rig to fit them, Toast asks if they really have enough rations to support a couple extra mouths on the way home, even though she knows that they do. She just wants to make sure that someone is thinking this through, really, and that they aren't leaving enemies behind them. Plus, it still is a dangerous run, after all.
"They c'n have mine. Children aren't trade goods."
Twelve days out, at least, and Max is absolutely dead serious about giving up his rations to a couple of stray kids. Toast can see that the pair coming with is non-negotiable, no matter what, and that, by the way they started clinging even harder to Max's arm when Furiosa mentioned putting them in the War Rig, they'll be riding in the Interceptor with him. Both women just share a look and a sigh, and Toast goes to the Gigahorse to dig out another tarp to help bundle up some of the stuff from Max's back seat to make room for the pair.
It's just easier that way.
By the time they stop for the night, he's twitchy, eyes darting here and there, but not as badly as Furiosa had privately been fearing. Perhaps having to be on guard for the convoy might be keeping some of his ghosts at bay. She brings her blanket with her, and joins him on the bonnet of the Interceptor, reclining against the windscreen with him, their heads and shoulders touching as they lean toward one another. He's almost calm in the morning when they pass around their canteens and thick slices of potato bread with bean and mealworm paste to break their fast, though she doesn't miss the deep breath he takes, steeling himself before sliding back into the driver's seat of his car as they head out for the day. She decides then that she'll spend every night on the way back with him like that, then. It's actually just as comfortable as being in the War Rig. More, actually, if she takes into account being with him. And it seems to help. She doesn't think about how much it helps her, too.
Six days later, six days out from Citadel, and a day and a half out from their latest stop, it happens again.
They see the smoke start to rise up from more than a dozen clicks out. It's right on their path, and detouring in either direction around it is just as chancy as sticking to the planned route. In one direction is dicey terrain that is likely to tear them up too much, and that's assuming that traps haven't been laid in that direction. In the other, nasty scav tribes that it would be better to avoid, and that's assuming that they aren't waiting there in ambush for the unwary. If the smoke isn't a diversion, itself, it may be a scav tribe incursion on someone else on their route, in fact. Probably is. After a quick conference, they decide to chance sticking to the route, after making sure that everyone is extra ready for the fight; Max gets the kids down into the footwell, and covered with all his bedding to protect them, and allows Furiosa to talk him into tucking in behind the War Rig, rather than running point for once.
By the time they arrive, the fight is long over, not that it could have been much of one anyway, really. The raiders have been and gone, taking what they wanted, and wrecking what they didn't. Two of the four vehicles of the little convoy are just burning husks, almost down to their frames already, a couple... three charred bodies twisted into sooty piles nearby. One of them much smaller than the other. The other two vehicles have been torn apart, their contents scattered across the sands, tossed about like trash. Some clothing. A doll. A few books. A battered canteen. A spray of dark black dirt and a withered little green thing. A man with his throat cut and a look of anguish upon his face. A sack full of little colorful fabric scraps. The broken blade of a knife, dark with blood. Torn pages from a book, scattering across the sand in the breeze.
There's tracks in the sand, leading off over the crest of the dune. Max shuts the Interceptor off before he steps out, and Furiosa joins him. It's fresh, all fresh. Fresh enough that Max could probably catch them, if he knew how many he would be facing, but he can't risk the children, and he doesn't even know what he would be risking them for, except vengeance. Looking at the bodies, there's at least one adult missing. Maybe as many as four. And maybe as many children as that. But that's a guess, at best. Realistically, they should just leave before whatever raiders did this come back for what is left.
It just doesn't feel right.
Furiosa is looking at the way his jaw is clenching and unclenching as he stares out over the tracks, suddenly truly understanding for the first time just what her Fool spends his wandering days doing, when she catches the buzz of engines roaring up the dunes. His head comes up, eyes wide, as he hears it, too, and moments later, bikes and quads and buggies explode over the top of the dune where the tracks had vanished as a dozen vehicles, more, race to cut off the Citadel folks who had dismounted from their vehicles to check out the carnage. She doesn't look back as he shoves her toward the War Rig; she has two pistols on her, but her biggest firepower is back on the Rig, and she knows that he can't keep up with his bad leg. She needs to get to the Rig and get to her rifle, to trust Toast and the War Boys to cover him so that he can get back to the Interceptor. If she hesitates, Max will hesitate to stay with her, and that will get them both killed. By the time she makes it to the cab, shots are ringing out from all around, but she can already hear bikes going down.
She can also hear his Glock firing, and it's not coming from the rear of the War Rig. Damn him. Her rifle is finally in hand, and she's swinging up to find him, to find a target. He's been cut off, surrounded by a swirl of bikes and quads and one of those damn armored buggies. Even as she is lining up her shot to thin those odds, without risking Max in the crossfire, a raider flings himself from the buggy onto Max's unprotected back and they tumble to the ground in a flurry of limbs. Furiosa loses sight of Max amidst all the wheels and dust for several long breaths, so she concentrates on taking down as many bikes and quads as she can, trusting her own Crew to protect her and the Rig from anyone else. Max finally resurfaces, minus his Glock, with a knife in each hand an a face full of fury and blood. He goes down again under two more bodies and Furiosa snarls as she chambers round after round, always making sure that Max isn't on the other end or beyond as she squeezes the trigger.
It seems to take forever.
It can't be more than a few chaotic minutes, though.
There's a buggy slowly rolling off into a dune, on fire, and a motorcycle on it's side, wheels spinning, on the hood of the War Rig. Scattered in a loose arc around Max, is a wall of tangled steel and iron, bikes and quads twisted together where raiders had gone down or had been unable to avoid one another in the dust as Furiosa and Toast had picked them off in the scrum. And in the center, Max, half covered in blood, the other half covered in dust, looking every bit the Psychotic Feral his back tattoo proclaims him to be as he crouches over a half dozen bodies and spits out a mouthful of red colored phlegm.
The War Boys spread out in a perimeter as Toast and Furiosa cautiously climb back down from their perches and join Max back on the ground. There's a few parts they can salvage, and the guzz for sure, before they leave, though it's a shame they don't have the room to take all the bikes. An embarrassment of riches on this run, and that's the first time that Furiosa has ever had that happen. Maybe they can come back out for some of this later.
Max has finally managed to retrieve his glock, and is systematically checking the bodies, making sure that every single one of the schlangers is dead, and assisting them on their way with a bullet to the head if necessary. He's not limping, or favoring anything, so Furiosa can only hope that none of that blood is his, but it will take a little while until he's calm enough to really check him over to be sure. Toast is too impatient to wait, though, and has just turned to him to ask if he's okay, while Furiosa kneels a few feet away to check something in the dust, when there's a quick movement from under one of the two original unburned vehicles.
Despite the fact that Furiosa is kneeling closer, that Toast is standing closer, that Max is still half-feral and covered in blood, it is to Max that the girl runs.
She's probably 4000 days. No more, certainly. The babe clutched to her chest is less than 300 days. The girl bursts into tears as soon as they get to him, and it's quite clear by how fiercely she clutches his leg that she is not going to allow herself to be pulled away for any reason.
Toast and Furiosa share an incredulous look as Max blinks down at the girl, his hands held out away from his sides for a long moment, as if he's afraid to touch her, which, he probably is, seeing as how he still has his Glock in one hand and the other is still covered in tacky, red blood. Of course, so is the leg she's clinging to. He stands there, frozen, for a half dozen long breaths. It's when the baby begins to cry, that he jerks as if slapped, as if he'd been outside himself for those moments, and just suddenly slammed back into his own body.
Max swallows hard, then holsters his gun and takes a shaky breath.
"Hey, h-hey. c'm on." He looks at his hands, wipes one down a dusty part of his shirt, and then offers it to her, and waits to see if she will take it. When she finally does, he flicks a nervous glance from the girl, to Furiosa, then to his boots, flinching as the baby wails hard. "Gonna... uh, hose... h-hose off."
Furiosa can't remember ever having seen Max crash from feral fight to dazed flight that abruptly before. She doesn't think it's an injury that makes him stumble a little, as he leads the pair off to join the other two kids at his car. Beside her, Toast just stares after them, until they disappear behind the back end of the War Rig, before turning toward Furiosa, a look of almost comic bafflement that Furiosa can't entirely be certain that she isn't mirroring. She's not quite sure what happened there, herself. Furiosa knows that she isn't exactly the most... approachable woman there is, to be certain, but Toast... Well, Furiosa has always privately considered Toast to be, almost... a little bit adorable? Not like Cheedo, to be certain, but in a badass kind of way, and definitely more feminine than Furiosa considers herself to be, at any rate. Simple survival in the Citadel over thousands of days dictated that to be a necessity.
And right this minute, Toast is certainly not covered head to toe in raider blood and snarling fit to be muzzled.
Furiosa rises to her feet with a shrug, and then turns to have a War Boy help her get that damned motorcycle off the hood of her Rig so they can siphon off the guzz from it before they get back on the road. They're still six days out from home, and apparently it's a damn good thing that she'd let Capable talk her into taking a small store of Mother's Milk with them for food or trade, because, apparently, they now have a baby to feed on the way back.
At this rate, Furiosa won't be surprised if they don't end up with a goat or two by the time they make it home. Although, with Max's luck, it's probably going have to be a baby goat or two for them to be able to catch it.
She just hopes that he'll at least stick around Citadel long enough for them to at least unload all the stuff from his car, much less get him restocked. Might be time to try stealing the Interceptor's distributor cap when they get back. Of course, he probably already has a spare from this run, stashed away somewhere. She'll figure something out once they're back. Even if she has to get all the Sisters to help her sit on him.