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ilovehighhats · 6 years ago

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Missteps, ch. 02

Next instalment is here! Again, many thanks to @ihaveauseforyou

AO3 version here.

And you can find the first chapter here.

oOo

PART TWO:

COMMON PITFALL OF CONCEIT

oOo

For all the complaining I did, for all my snide remarks on the dangers of trekking through the desert under cover of the night, it is I who got his ass in a hole.

Right in the middle of a bright bloody day.

In my defence - the crevice was well concealed. One moment I stepped through loose rocks trying to find a path wide enough for the Reaver, and the next I was falling down an almost vertical wall of sandstone.

So, I’m in a ditch. Literally fucking trapped like a stupid animal.

For all the thoughts I wasted on the woman I never once suspected that I'd be the idiot who steps straight into a chasm. Like a sleepwalking baby.

I don't know, what was I thinking?!

My left arm is incapacitated - at best dislocated, at worst... No, I’m not even thinking about it. It’s only disjointed. Nothing I can’t fix. Pity that the bike is hanging right over my head. When I fell I didn’t want to let it go, so that got my shoulder sprained and the machine locked just above me. One water tank broke too.

The most idiotic thing is, I can’t even wiggle sideways. I’m like those deer, which got into a hole in the mountains - nowhere to move, only sing lower and lower into the chasm, until all that is left is a beautifully arranged cage of bleached bones.

Just my fucking luck. I could have died a thousand times over. I could have made it count. For someone. For something more significant than my sick, absent, filthy mind.

But no, I just had to make myself die the stupidest fucking way possible.

A misstep.

oOo

How long am I here?

I keep drifting in and out of consciousness. Funny thing, that. For once I can’t seem to find Sprog. Did I leave the kid with Jesse in the shop? Or are we at Aunt May’s?

No, I'm dizzy. I was just at the Citadel. Both Sprog and my wife are dead. All of my family is gone. Everything is destroyed.

I’m so alone…

Is it night already?

“Hey!”

I look up. There's the sky, midnight blue with a twinkling scar of Milky Way. The moon got so thin it barely gives any light, but I can see a dark blob hanging just ahead. Right, the bike.

“Hey, you fucker, are you dead?”

I don’t know that voice. Better stay quiet.

It’s so cold though. I can feel my teeth chatter, a distinct staccato of enamel hitting enamel fast like maracas in a tropical bar.

The voice gets muffled, and it sounds like I’ll be left in peace. Good. I just want to sleep. Maybe then I’ll get warm again. Maybe after I wake my head won’t be hurting as if it split in two…

That’ll be the day. A bright light hits my eyes, and I groan, too hurt to care; I just betrayed my position and condition to whoever is torturing me.

“Oh good, so you are alive after all. Wait there.”

There’s amusement in the voice. Stupid cunt.

Then I realise. It’s the woman I rescued. She trailed behind me, then I thought she changed course, but she must have just beelined to my trail. And she found me without falling into a ditch like a moron herself. Even though she was the one riding the bike by night.

How fucking unfair is that?

But of course, nothing at all is fair in the wasteland. Not one goddamn thing.

oOo

I must have drifted away, because when I come to again - right fucking now - the only thing I feel is piercing, searing pain.

“Don’t yell, you moron!” She hisses above me. Closer, than she should be. “Help me get that rope around you.”

There is a thick coil of strings under my right armpit. I look up to see the sky and a slender silhouette of the woman.

Where’s the Reaver?

“What?”

Did I say that out loud?

“Barely. You sound like a mumbling, raving lunatic.”

That’s because I am.

She chuckles, but it dies down soon in a grunt of exertion. I can’t feel anything.

When was the last time I heard a woman chuckle because of me?

“Don’t be a drongo mate, help me here.”

I try, but the darkness spills under my eyelids before I can do anything more than let out a grunt.

oOo

Another stab of pain, and then a relief so intense I can feel my mouth water, the salivary glands working so fast it’s unpleasant. Before I have a chance to finish a groan at the sharp ache, I can feel tepid liquid at my lips.

Water!

I gulp it down and try to gather my bearings. I’m sitting up, propped on something semi-comfortable. The crevice I fell into is close, on my right. There’s a bike standing neatly beside the Reaver. My ride has landed in a heap but is seemingly intact.

Where’s the woman?

I have my answer when a slender hand grabs the canteen from my palm. She’s the thing I’m resting on.

What in the actual fuck?!

Reflexively, I try to hit her with my elbow, but she deflects easily and bounces my limbs off as if I was a weak kitten. Flailing, I scramble away in a panic, patting my legs for a weapon. None. My left arm is less than useless. Good to know.

“I wouldn't get you out just to drown you, so don’t get your panties in a knot, handsome.”

She has them. My knives, my guns, everything.

She notices my eyes darting to the weapons, and her head sways slightly in a disappointed way.

“Nor would I like to be rewarded with a blade through my gut.”

The canteen drops at my feet.

“Drink. You need to rehydrate. I reset your shoulder, but you should spare it for a while.”

I nod and frown at her even as I take another blessed swig of the water. A sparse movement of my head towards the hole is all the thanks she’ll get, and I don’t care if she gets the meaning behind it.

She does.

“We’re even.”

I grunt in agreement. It seems that we are.

“It also seems we’re heading the same way.”

I try to shake the confusion away. My brain is fogged with exhaustion, and for once I can't mobilise enough to feel threatened. I need time to think.

“Dawn is near. I’ll set camp. Rest.”

There's no way I’ll sleep with someone this close.

No way in hell.

oOo

Under the scorching sun, I wake up.

It seems like I’m dreaming still. It’s so unfamiliar; two bikes are standing on each side of me, a canopy of softly rustling fabric over my head, stretched on the handles of the bikes. A canteen of water by my hand.

The only familiar detail is the barrel of a gun aimed at my face. This I know, intimately. The hand holding it is darkened with an extensive tattoo, for a while I thought it was a glove, and it doesn't tremble.

I smile and grunt, and get up, slowly and carefully, mindful of the hole beyond the safety of the makeshift camp. My back hurts, and the awareness of a stranger with a weapon trained on my head is tensing the muscles further. But I need a leak.

She follows my movement with her outstretched arm but otherwise does nothing.

I piss straight into the ravine. Take that, death. Not today.

“I didn't get your supplies from down there.”

Shit.

“Please, don’t.”

How in the hell can she be amused?

How in the hell can I smirk at her lame joke?

I turn back and crawl under the canopy. It’s the first time I see her up close in actual sunlight.

There’s not much to look at - a haphazard collection of rags, just like my shabby clothing, long and dusty hair in two thick, braided ropes trailing from under a dark hood. Her face is barely visible behind dark goggles, and a scarf draped all around her head. Evidently, she knows her way around the desert, even though her complexion is proof of how seldom she must have ever been here for extended periods of time.

I remember seeing her naked that first night. Her skin was abnormally white then, but now whatever was exposed to sun turned into an ugly shade of red. Nothing in her clothes hints at what is hidden underneath, and I imagine it's intentional.

Despite what she came through she boldly returns my appraising stare.

My eyes drop to her hands. Only one palm is adorned with a tattoo, but it's an actual work of art. Nothing like the abomination carved into my back. Hers is flat and subtle, rusty brown lines flowing delicately around themselves to form the shape of a drop. Like an intricately woven drop of blood.

Her taxing gaze is getting on my nerves. If my hand wasn’t lame, I could easily overpower her. Especially in this close quarters.

I close my eyes and calculate my odds.

My legs are still working. She’s not too strong. Fast, perhaps, at this moment surely much more agile than me. But I have the advantage in weight. And obviously - experience. How old is she? A decade younger?

An unfamiliar sound has me snapping my eyes open in an instant. I cautiously trail her hand as she reaches behind her back.

Food.

She rests the armed hand on one knee, and casually stretches the other foot towards me.

“I have a proposition for you.”

Of course. Nothing is free in this land, nothing is without a price. I listen, with a knowing smile, acknowledging her with a grunt.

“I need a bodyguard to get back home. You could use some help as well. Let’s move together for a week or two.”

I snort a short laugh. What an idiot!

“No.”

She smirks and chews on my fucking grilled grub.

“Suit yourself, fool.”

That nickname.

Curiosity gets the best of me. I always was reckless, the passing years didn't change this trait.

“Where to?” I speak automatically.

“That’s a funny question,” she says like it was the least amusing sentence in the world, drawing the words out. “Do you know Rainbow Valley?”

I do. It’s more than a fortnight away. Especially on foot.

“Not enough fuel.”

“We could scavenge.”

Already - we. Who's the fool now? There are no guarantees out here, nothing to rely on but the things at hand. And right now we have one tank of gas between the two of us. At best.

I shake my head.

“I make my own way.” It’s all I have to say on the matter.

“Fine,” she says.

Oh, this one I remember. I roll my eyes because it's the only way of expressing the exasperation every man feels at this word.

It's never fine. It never was fine. Nothing in this wasteland can ever be fine again.

“I'll leave you when the sun comes down, then. You'll find your weapons half a day that way.” She points her hand casually to the east.

oOo

Overpowering her was too easy.

As soon as she nodded off, I slid closer. She didn't move, didn't notice. Where was she living, that on the one hand she could hold her own out in the desert, but in the other - didn't have the necessary survival instincts? How could she not wake, when I was taking the gun from her loosened fingers?

But she did open her eyes alright when she felt the barrel by her temple.

Although, I could only glimpse a shadow of a movement behind the tinted glass of the goggles.

One movement of my head was enough to signal her to take them off. I frowned and settled firmly over her hips, sneaking right knee to the inside of her left elbow, pressing her steadily to the ground.

She slid the cover down, and when her eyes bore into mine, I lost my drift.

Green.

How?

The deep and lush green of moss growing in perpetual shade and moisture. The most unusual colour on the planet. I never knew how much I missed it, until now.

She’s crafty. That moment of hesitation was enough to butt me in the head and press that hand with the goggles straight into the junction of my bad shoulder. Fuck, does it hurt! I’m bloody pissed and act on instinct, tightening my legs around her rising body. It puts us both off balance, and we thud on the rocky ground, dangerously close to the ravine.

She whines but never stops her blows right to my injury. Something is missing in her attack. There's no edge to it.

I manage to press her back down flat on the ground and restrain her movements with my right forearm on her throat. Where's that fucking gun?

During our scuffle, her scarf slid down and finally, I can look at her. Her pupils are blown wide even despite the sun, the treacherous emerald of her iris mostly hidden. There's a tint of pink on her cheeks - so unbelievably pale! - and her mouth is wide open, gulping last panicking breaths.

"You really do need protection." I'm surprised at my own words, and it probably shows. With luck, she'd take that as a reaction to our little exercise. "That was pathetic."

Her eyebrows knit together and I can see she saw through my bluff. At least in part. She licks her lips, and my eyes involuntarily travel down with the movement. I catch a glimpse of teeth, as she bits down on her bottom lip, considering.

“How are you going to get your stuff from down there?”

Fuck. She could at least try not to be this smug. I do know that with a useless arm I’m nowhere near able to climb down for the supplies and then back up with the additional weight.

Shit.

I need her as much as she needs me.

She grins, once she can see capitulation written clearly all over my face.

“Let’s grab a shuteye and sort it out in an hour or two.”

Right. The sun is still scorching – no way we can reasonably do anything in this heat. Too wasteful, especially since nothing is rushing either me or her.

"You can tag along for a while," I say before she has a chance to speak.

Neither of us really sleeps, but we rest under swooshing wind. Tarp over my head dances on the breeze. Everything else is perfectly still, bracing under the sun for the respite of the evening.

For the first time in a long while, I have a set destination to drive to.

oOo

I thought I'm resilient and patient. Apparently, I'm not.

She takes all firearms with her when she climbs down the ravine for my things, and I can feel apprehension in tensing muscles on my back. As I feed the line down the hole, helping her descend gradually and safely, I have this overwhelming urge just to let her fall. I could just take her supplies and maybe go down to get three or four essential things.

These are just thoughts. I'm never going to actually do that.

At least that's what I let myself believe.

She makes a fast job of getting everything back to the surface, without complaints and comments. Before sunset, we have everything strapped down securely to the bikes. Ready to go.

Without any external threat its difficult to let her move with me.

I let her guide my way. It's to the best of my advantage - she’s lighter than me, so smaller risk of falling down a hole. And there's something uncanny in the way she moves in the dark, just like a bat, sure of everything in her path. The deciding factor though, is that I can't have her behind my back. She’s just fine letting me watch her, pretending she doesn't feel my gaze at the back of her neck.

Maybe she really doesn't. I could be projecting.

I catch myself thinking that I haven't seen Sprog in a while.

oOo

There is a rhythm in any journey.

Once the goal is set, you can measure leaps you do every day, weigh them against each other.

Every morning, way before sunrise, we break camp. She deals with fire, while I carefully distribute water and food. I don't sleep well with her by the other side of the bonfire, so every effort she makes to lure me into a conversation is snuffed out with my irritated grunting.

As a matter of fact, I don't talk neither with her nor with my ghosts.

Byt the end of the first week, we've entered a sandy patch of desert again. The dunes wind up and down, and we're using the fuel we've been conserving, to get through them. Midday sees us sitting under the tarp, resting. Then, it's trekking through the wasteland again, up until we find a suitable place for the camp, or are too tired to go on.

She is a good walker. Both bikes have small tanks, and a little bit against myself I'm impressed with her stamina and tenacity. Her bike is light, and she takes every shred of advantage she can, using that to conserve as many resources as she can. She rides only if the terrain is too difficult to get through on foot, even if it means scaling the desert by the moonlight.

oOo

There's a truck, right bang in the middle of an erg.

"It's a trap," I notice mildly.

The woman scoffs and dusts her goggles off with an errant end of her scarf.

"Maybe it is," she says, "but if it's not there could be supplies."

There also could be traps, I think. Greed kills just as quickly and as often as stupidity. The two are inseparably linked.

"Check it out then. I'll look after your bike."

She sends me a pointed look and shakes her head.

We slide down one dune, then drive up another, and find a similar picture. This time it's a bus.

"Now that's definitely a trap." I shake my finger at the raddled vehicle and look around saying that, looking for any signs of hostiles. But the sand is untouched, moving only with the wind. Not a soul in sight.

"Maybe it is," she repeats. "Your offer still stands?"

I frown and feel the wrinkles on my forehead crack a thin layer of caked on the sand.

Why not let her kill herself? Less trouble for myself.

I grunt an acknowledgement.

"Anything we find, I take seventy per cent."

"Okay."

That's not important. I'll take only as much, as I need anyway. Which will probably be all her supplies, as she heads straight down to the bus.

Lucky for me, she took only one gun.

Then, there's a flash. Yelling Sprog, creamy fabric flowing on air, dust, dust, so much dust. A crash and the sickening echo of bones crushed under thick tires.

Angharad is smiling just before she slips.

And then there's Sprog again, asking so sweetly, so innocently...

'Max, is that you? Where were you?'

It's gone.

I blink rapidly and lower the hand I raised to shield my eyes from the vision. It never worked before, so now is no different. I shake my head to clear it a fraction. That never works either.

The woman is still descending the dune. Carefully, but steadily. She doesn't know what lies there, doesn't know if there are monsters beneath the sand. And still, she goes.

“Hey!” I yell after her. “I'll come with.”

She turns back. Her face is hidden behind cloth and glass, but I imagine she's frowning in confusion.

All this time and she never asked my name. I never offered it, and in return never inquired after hers.

She's still measuring my sudden change of heart.

This is the moment where one can just say a name and convey everything that's important in that one word. What am I supposed to say now?

Then she starts back, resolutely saying nothing as she reaches her bike.

I grunt and nod, she nods back. That's all it takes.

Were scaling the erg side by side.

oOo

She cleans her bike when I get back from a recon walk around the camp. The opportunity is rare, so I postpone entering into the scattered light of the bonfire to have another look at her.

Something is not right. She is both wise and foolish. The knowledge of how to remove sand from the machine may not be obscure, but she religiously tends to every single part of it each and every night. Knowing it's vital is one thing, but caring for her it like she does reveal a lot about her experience.

But then, she goes into what very well could be a trap, with her head high, one guna a hooray to keep her spirits up.

Something moves just beyond my peripheral and I act on instinct, sending my knife straight into the intruders' flesh. A goanna. I pick it up by the tail and return to the camp.

The noise reached the woman of course, and she slid into the shadows beyond the fires reach. Smart again. She moves back in, still aiming the gun she grabbed right at me - the source of the noise. I dangle the lizard before me, like a mock peace offering, or a white flag.

There's our dinner.

I clean the carcass and throw it onto coals. It will take a while to cook, so I use the time to tend to the Reaver.

The woman goes back to the maintenance of her own bike, wordlessly. When she's done, she fusses by her sacks, working with her back turned.

I listen to the mysterious rustles and scraping, then tearing, all accompanied by soft humming. She exhales sharply before turning towards me and scaling the few steps across the camp.

"Here," she says handing me something wrapped in a piece of dark cloth. "For sticking out your neck for me."

The jab is playful, and I smile a little. It was fortunate that the bus wasn't really a bait.

"Let's check out the truck in the morning, okay?"

I grunt in agreement, peeking curiously at the object she gave me. It's a white, waxy block of... Paraffin? I smell it.

It's fragrant. Sweet, flowery, decadent. Soap.

For many, it's worth more than my life.

My head snaps up in surprise, and I manage to catch a polite yet indifferent smirk from her before she tends again to her kit. Her white hands are a stark contrast to the worn, dark leather of the sacks.

"What's it for?" I ask. "The tattoo."

The reply is automatic, I'm sure because it comes in an instant. "It signifies my rank in the clan."

She seems to regret saying it the moment the words leave her tongue.

"Is it high?" I push.

"Nah, not really."

I can tell she's lying. Not because of her words, or their delivery. But no one regular treats a luxury like soap as a souvenir of an eventful trip. The bar is apparently cut in half, so she probably left herself the remaining piece. Not enough to bargain for anything significant. But just the right amount to use.

Sadly, that won't be possible. The water is just too valuable to use on frivolous things like cleaning up.

#fandom: mad max #mad max #Fanwork: Fanfiction #fanfiction #ilovehighhats #ihaveauseforyou #max rockatansky #tom hardy

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