Chapter Text
Rumblings of an ambush at the Bullet Farm reach the gardens—a staggering loss of the war rig, an entire crew, two of the Colonel’s most valuable praetorians missing. Jane clenches a fist at her abdomen at the news, fights the tide of nausea and the throb over her eye. She thinks that Jack and Furiosa are both dead and this will be what breaks her. She will dissolve and scatter into ash, finally, finally incinerated by this place.
And how is it that Jane—half-life, half-dead, burned to her core for well over thirty years now—how is it that Jane is the last one of her people still alive.
It’s horrible how she laughs at that, but she does. She cackles at the utter cruelty of the world that would keep her living so many years after her time’s surely run out, when there’s nobody left who would miss her. Her laugh turns watery and she coughs up vile phlegm as darkness starts to close around her field of vision. She forces her breathing steady to keep herself from passing out.
She really has no business laughing at all, anymore.
So Jane pretends in her way that Jack and Furiosa are down the Citadel somewhere, perfectly fine, thank you very much, doing whatever the fuck praetorians do when they’re not on one of their endless missions—Jane has never cared to figure what that job even entails beyond driving or standing guard over the Colonel.
And if they’re doing their job—even if only in her mind—Jane might as well do hers too, so she gathers her basket and her scissors with shaking hands and unrolls her shoulders and goes to cut back the sea celery that she’s noticed is starting to get overgrown.
She’s just coaxed herself into her daydream of normalcy in which her little brother is decidedly not dead and Furiosa still fiercely alive when a broad male figure appears through the scrubby growth of catci that border the gardens.
Jane watches him for a second, takes him in through the leaves of the plant she’s been tending. He looks more like himself today than usual. Praetorian grease smudged to a fine coat, a little flame-colored fuzz starting to bloom on his scalp—good. Jane has always liked his reddish hair. She’s missed it.
Sebastian’s eyes land on hers and she lets him approach. As he gets closer she sees that the corners of his mouth are ticked up like he has a secret, some special mischief that’s just for her, like he’s still just the boy she knew.
“I’ve come from scouting the Bullet Farm,” Sebastian starts, and Jane blanches but he’s smiling. “The rig was destroyed. All the crew dead.”
Jane nods, balls her hands into fists, meets him with a hard stare. She wishes he’d wipe that look off his face.
Sebastian does not. He only leans forward, lowers his voice. “But there’s other vehicles missing. One of the pursuit cars.”
She keeps watching him, waiting for him to get to the point, and he looks like he’s about to deliver the punchline to a joke. “Bikes, Jane. Two bikes are gone.”
Furiosa’s left arm swinging, nails scraping her face, the flicker of tattooed stars Jane had peered at while Jack was distracted. Jane’s own words to that brave, strange girl: ‘You’ve got somewhere else to be.’
Her face cracks into a smile as the enormity of Sebastian’s words hits her.
Jack took her advice, and he and Furiosa are out there somewhere, fanging it.
Sebastian is grinning at her now, sweetly delighted. “Probably stolen by scavs or the Bullet Farmers, scrapped for parts or some such,” he says, kicking his toe into the sand, and god, he is more beautiful now than he ever was. “That’s what the others thought.”
“Probably,” she replies. Her voice trembles on the word.
They are standing in the gardens, Jane is smiling, and Sebastian is looking at her like he’s just found something precious he’d thought long lost.
He can have absolutely no idea of the details, but Sebastian has some inkling of what’s happened—that Furiosa and Jack have left. They will get where they’re going, find somewhere better than here.
For the first time in years, there is something that feels like hope lifting in Jane's chest, and it’s this that she lets carry her into his open arms.