Chapter Text
Furiosa had forgotten how cold it was up there, in the Vault. Sunlight streamed in, hazy and diffuse through the glass, but it did little to warm the place. She continued her work, both hands deftly positioning the glass and gluing it back in, hitched to the heavy metal frame of the pane by a pulley and her harness. Recaulking individual planes of glass had to be done every few years; the dry atmosphere meant that the binding that held things in place dried up and cracked away to nothing, letting in the wind and dust. One pane at a time, inch by inch. Carefully, Furiosa reset those valuable panes of glass; they were each worth almost as much as a new War Pup, and she knew what it would meant if she broke anything.
A sound slowly pierced her consciousness, two notes, something that sounded bright and rich with a strange, warm resonance that she had never heard before. Sometimes one note played before the other, sometimes the other note played before it. Sometimes they sounded together in unison. There was both a lightness to them and a wistful mournfulness.
As she finished for the day, she winched herself down, rappelling off the stone wall and freeing herself from the harness. Furiosa walked around the great black hulk that ate up the space in the middle of the room, that was new; she noticed it earlier when she came in, and had no idea what it was, but from the look of it, the design, it was from the old days, from a time beyond memory.
Something else new sat at the black bench, the fine drapery of her clothing pooling like water around her hips where she sat. The girdle was around the young woman's hips, that hateful metal thing, and there was a little clutch of pain as Furiosa recognized it.
Odd that it didn't hurt as much as it used to.
Furiosa glanced at the girl's face.
Latticed scars. Hair the color of wheat. It jolted a faint memory of a bright glowing light in the darkness, but Furiosa couldn't place it.
“I'm trying to work.” Furiosa put her hands against her own hips, the outer curve of her thighs, feeling the reassurance of tools against her palms. “Knock it off.”
The young woman met Furiosa's eyes, her long fingertips on the black and white keys. “You're not working right now.”
“I'm done for today.” But even as she looked to the door, Furiosa hesitated.
“Fix this for me then, War Boy.”
“Not my job.”
“I'll tell the Immortan on you. I'm his favorite.” Her cool eyes met Furiosa's, and Furiosa hesitated, knowing what that meant all too well. A long time ago, she too had been his favorite.
Furiosa swallowed, stepping back. “I can't fix everything.”
“You can't know until you try.”
Furiosa walked around, appraising the machine, focused on it to the exclusion of all other thoughts. “I don't know even know what this is.”
“Miss Giddy calls it a pianofuerte. It's a machine that makes music. But of all the keys, only these two work.”
“Let me see.” The young woman slipped deftly out of her way, leaving the perfumed sweetness of clean skin in her wake.
Furiosa sat down at the machine. She looked down; there were three pedals. All right, this made sense. Accelerator, brake, clutch. There were wheels; it should move, but perhaps it needed guzzoline. New sparkplugs. A rebuilt transmission.
“Show me the working keys.”
The young woman leaned over and pointed them out, one black, one white, a distance from each other, maybe about a handsbreadth. Black paint had worn off of them; they were slightly brown. Perhaps a coded kill switch? Furiosa considered all the possible options, trying to troubleshoot the problem.
“All right, stand back. I'm going to see if I can get this to start.” She waved the young woman back, settled in her seat, pressed the working keys, and slowly depressed the accelerator.
Nothing happened. The engine didn't turn. Even giving the brake a few pumps and jiggling the clutch didn't seem to do anything; it was all frozen up inside. But maybe that made sense; perhaps the wheels were to help move the machine around instead of propel anything; they were pretty flimsy wheels for something so big that it could carry two Lancers, easy. And the bench wasn't even attached to the machine.
“I'm going under the bonnet.” Feeling around the machine, she lifted the heavy lid and propped up the hood strut. “Hit the keys that work.”
The young woman leaned down, her hair falling in a cascade around her face, and she hit the keys. Inside, little pedals moved up and down, striking long wires.
“What about the other ones?”
The young woman began touching different keys, her long thoughtful fingers stroking over them, and it distracted Furiosa for a moment before she looked under the bonnet again. No intake, no valves, no pistons. Just more little pedals inside that no longer moved, though here and there she could hear hollow, thwarted thumping.
“Whatever it is, whatever music it's supposed to make, I think this machine is trashed,” Furiosa shrugged and moved to close the lid. “I can't fix it if it's not an engine. I don't know what it runs on if it doesn't run on guzzoline.”
“Wait.” The young woman's hand stopped Furiosa's, and Furiosa flinched away, afraid to soil the soft, smooth hand with her own grimy, calloused fingers.
“What is it?”
“Don't shut the bonnet. I like the way it looks now.”
“Like a fatally fractured bird in a glass giant's cage,” a new voice said and Furiosa twisted around to catch a glance, a flash of pale skin and even paler hair. But then Miss Giddy came out of the other room and shooed her away.
*****
“Nux?”
Nux looked up from the hood of the engine, finally pulling out the defective spark plug that had been causing all the problems. It somehow broke free and dislodged itself mid-drive, and a large piece of it had knocked about, damaging the engine. It took Nux about three hours to find the piece; next was to patch up everything it had damaged. He had a running list in his mind.
“What?”
“There's a Lancer waiting for you. Says you set up a meet with 'em.”
“Oh, right.” Absently, Nux handed the defective part to a War Pup, wiping his hands off on his work rag. Tell Slit I'll be right there.” He turned to the crew that maintained the car; they had borrowed him from his crew to troubleshoot the engine failure. “Here's what's gotta get fixed now...”
“Nux, you're doing it wrong.” Slit took the practice lance from him. “You don't choke up so high on it, best placement for your hands is here.” He showed Nux, miming the action with the practice thunder stick, an inert dummy, its canisters filled with sand to replicate the weight of the explosives.
Nux stood at Slit's left, his unscarred side, where Slit could hear better. “You're not going to get as much distance that way. If you gripped it here,” Nux pointed, tapping the pole. “You'd be able to throw it further.”
“Finally you're listening. That's what I've been trying to say. I want to throw. But it won't balance right the way the shop makes 'em now. Right now it's made for sticking prey, not throwing.” Slit mimed the action. “Like a guided drop. I wanna throw it, like a distance.”
Nux considered the problem and briefly struggling with the fastenings, he removed the practice canisters, handing the blank pole to Slit.
“Hold it up like you're going throw it.” Nux picked up his test lance, watching where Slit's hand was positioned on the pole. In his mind, he subdivided the pole of the lance into tenths and then halves, breaking it down into hand-lengths. Eyeballing the measurements, he guessed at how many hands down from the end the optimum position of the explosives there could be for the best possible balance.
Nux took the thin, dented metal canisters and repositioned it a few hands down from the end of the long, flexible metal pole, securing it neatly.
“Try this.”
Slit hefted the shaft, and gave it a toss. It flew across the room, the wobble of the end keeping it straight.
“Thirty hands accuracy. Maybe more.”
“It throws, but that's not the point.” Slit shook his head. “How are the explosives going to go off if they're not at the end?”
“Oh. I didn't think about that.”
“This is stupid.” Slit picked up the practice lance. “This thunder stick idea is no good. I'm going back to the shop. There's better stuff to do than waste time on this.”
“No, no wait.” Nux gestured for the test lance, and taking it in his hands, began unfastening it. “I have an idea.”
“What?”
Nux took off the dummy canisters and opening them up, began redistributing the varying amounts of sand within them, tapping out excess. He hefted them with both hands in turn, gauging their weight before resetting them on the end of the pole, the way they normally were set.
“Okay, try this.”
Slit picked up the lance and nodded. “Yeah, yeah. This feels better.” With a sharp twist of his torso, he launched it across the room.
“Thirty hands and I wasn't even really trying.” He turned to Nux, showing him the good side of his face, grinning. “Yeah, I can see this working.”
“The shop should have been measuring them even in the first place.” Nux shrugged. “You should tell 'em that.”
“Don't tell anyone else about my technique. It's my idea.”
“Course not. It's yours. So when will you be my Lancer?”
“When are you getting a drive?” Slit met his eyes, and Nux suddenly realized that finally they were about the same height. He had finally caught up to the older Slit, if only in height. “If that'll ever happen.”
“It will.”
“Keep dreaming, Revhead. Don't you have some oil to change?”
Later that night, Nux woke and couldn't sleep. His mind was abuzz with ideas; he shifted around in the loose sand, trying to get comfortable.
“Stop that, I'm trying to sleep.” Slit's arm pinned him, hard muscle cutting across Nux's chest for a moment before letting him go with a sharp shake.
“I had that dream again. About the engine I want to build,” Nux whispered. “Six gears forward, four gears backwards. That way I can get up to almost full speed backwards if I need to.”
“So you can run away faster in a fight?”
“So I can run you into the Buzzards faster.” Nux closed his eyes; he could imagine it already, going full bore backwards with his Lancer on the perch, thunder stick in hand, so they could always face their enemies. “It'd give us a competitive edge, once you're my Lancer. I could position you anywhere you like.”
“'Once I'm your Lancer.' Keep dreaming, Revhead. Who's gonna give you a drive? You're just gonna have to wait your turn and take one from someone who gets shot out from under you. Oh but you're not a Lancer.”
“I'll be driving sooner than you think.” Nux traced the V8 on his chest, his ticket to a better life.
“Fine, then I'll be your Lancer. But it better be the best ride in the entire War Party, or I'm asking someone else.”
“You better hold to it.”
“Engine performance.” Slit scoffed. “Is there anything else you dream about?”
“Fuel efficiency, sometimes.”
“Shut up, stop squirming, and go to sleep.” Slit shifted, putting his back to Nux's. “I got patrol all week, early.”
Nux closed his eyes, the design was so clear in his mind. If only he were promoted; then he'd have a car and be in charge of a Revhead crew to customize it. And the parts he'd get, once he showed he could pull his weight. Shiny and chrome. There should be flames, yes. Something with long streamlined curves...
Somehow Nux managed to fall asleep, Slit's whistling breath beside his ear, the familiar warmth of Slit's body against his back.