Chapter Text
Jack spends just a handful of days resting in privacy, strength slowly seeping back into him. He goes from spending hours laid out on the bed to sitting with a leg curled under himself and his back against the wall. Fingers fiddling with a bent set of gears he tries to straighten out. There’s still a lot of exhaustion resting on his shoulders. Sometimes when Furiosa checks on him, she finds him sitting up but asleep, his puzzle loosely held in his open hands.
They eventually cannot hide the fact that Jack’s fever has broken. Once it’s known that he’s no longer a corpse wasting everyone's food and water, suddenly there’s time to care about him. The baby the was so precious before is already dead. Had used up all that blood for nothing, though Furiosa holds no anger towards the wife for it. Only towards the Organic Mechanic, who pulls Jack back into his clutches. For all her disgust of him, she admits he’s skilled at mending flesh. He re-does her stitches while Furiosa watches at Jack’s side. She feigns interest while discreetly laying her palm against the top of Jack’s head.
Jack pretends he feels better than he does just to get out of the workshop. It’s still a full day he spends trapped. A day Furiosa spends nowhere near him but casting her eyes in the direction he is, over and over. When she comes by to see him after her supply run prep, he’s sitting up on a slab. Looks more exhausted than ever. She brings his jacket with her. The shrapnel cuts have been sewn closed by her hand. Haphazard, if she’s honest about the work, but sturdy. He pulls it on quickly and zips it closed, looking over his shoulder while he does.
Furiosa is exhausted, too. She’s spent days doing both their work. Checking loads and weight distributions, checking the work of the black thumbs, running down parts and back up parts, arguing for back-ups for the back-ups. Keeping war boys focused on the boring tasks of moving boxes, cleaning, and all the other un-epic things they must do before throwing their lives away on the road. But she won’t let Jack do it. Organic sends Jack with her, hand waving a warning about doing only light duty. Furiosa has already ensured there are no duties left for him at all.
They walk slowly away together. Limping in Jack’s case, his arm tucked over his jacket to support his aching stomach. That slow pace carries them to food that Jack makes himself eat. All the way until they make their way back to the shared quarters that neither has seen in days. The entire distance they say nothing to each other. Just like the days and days that came before. Her silent at his shoulder, in step beside him.
The pattern continues like it never ended, if a bit slower to accommodate his struggling pace. It’s days later, when they’ve been scheduled for the next run, that any of it seems to matter.
Furiosa leans against the side of the war rig while waiting to run the next mechanical test. To put their beast through a dry run and check all the bullets have been shaken out of its chest. Jack limps his way across the garage towards her. Back straight and head up, no one questioning his gait or ability to fight. Teasing over a weakness like that is reserved for the war boys to sling at each other, and never aimed at Immortan Joe’s favored Praetorian. The one he brought back from the brink of certain death.
When he’s close, she opens up the cab door and climbs in. Climbs over his seat and into hers. Passenger, look out, second-in-command. Waits for him to climb in beside her and set his wheel where it belongs.
Instead, the door on her side of the cab opens.
“You’re driving this one,” Jack says. “Move over.”
She does. Sits herself in his seat, and watches him wince as he climbs in. They both shut their respective doors, and he hands her his wheel to slot into place. It locks beautifully. Smooth and clean. There’s no need to ask how to turn their rig on. Furiosa’s fingers fly over the controls, the exact same way Jack’s do. Even including the subconscious flourish he uses on the last switch, flicking it with the a snap of the thumb. The war rig shudders and rumbles to life and outside it Furiosa hears a war boy bang the tanker and yell a rejoicing chant at the sound.
Jack snorts out a soft breath. “I see you’ve been watching me.”
“Always am,” she says it without thinking. Furrows her eyebrows at herself and looks down at the center of the wheel. The skull built from piecemeal gears and washers screams back at her.
His hand reaches across the gap between them. Here in the cab, there’s a kind of privacy while the war rig rumbles and the war boys worship its roaring engine. So his hand can reach for her, and she can lean away, but not far enough to avoid him. His fingers touch her lightly on her forehead, just above her temple. So soft she wouldn’t have felt it were she not watching it happen. He draws his hand back, fingers bent like he’s holding something in his fist, and touches his knuckles to his forehead.
They cannot say it here. Cannot come so close. Cannot be so bold with a single eye upon them. In their silence, Jack has said a thousand more things than he could ever whisper to her while sleeping beside each other. Could ever mutter across the aisle as they drive through death in the wasteland.
He has seen her body between him and the shadows in the hallway. Her arm beside his head. Her neck open to his blade as she turns and spits her venom over her shoulder in his defense. They are two beasts in a pack. Fearing the world and trusting each other.
Furiosa’s heart is racing as she shifts the war rig into gear. Trying to keep her hand from shaking, she lifts it off the carved bone gear shaft, curls it into a gentle fist. Turns her eyes to Jack, and presses her knuckles to her forehead.