Chapter Text
Nux sat on a stony bench with his chin against his chest. His legs were shaking slightly.
Everyone was returning to their normal duties: a small squirmish between the haul crew and Buzzards was more everyday business here than any kind of real event. Nux couldn't tell if the jitters were part of the after-effects of banging his skull real good or if he was angry at himself, for everything he messed up that day. It was his luck that Immortan himsef hadn't been riding with them that day. It had been miserable. Worse than mediocre. He tried to keep the pervasive thoughts away by concentrating on making Cricket laugh.
They heard the running footsteps approaching and looked up to see Puck dashing at his direction. Nux perked up immediately, had to grab a hold of the edge of the slate of rock he was sitting on. Puck's small white-and-black-painted face was hard to read. He stopped in front of Nux and leaned his hands on his knees to catch his breath. Nux grabbed his elbow immediately.
” How is he doing?”
Nux had seen their car, hauled in the back of the transport rig, back to the citadel. Apparently the engine was still there and in one piece, but they had successfully exploded the whole hood and half the front of the car clean off. His car, his precious car. Nux hadn't had the chance (nor the stamina) to go and check on his precious rubberpaw yet in the repair bay. He had instructed his brothers to check up on it and clean it as good as they could but he himself wanted to be there to actually put it back together and running. If it was possible. The Sick Boys and Organic had been adamant to keep him in the sick bay, what with the banged-up skull and the blood loss and all. He was bleeding out precious blood pumped into him and that was just a complete waste. The bleeding from his ears and his nose had already stopped, and he was left with a blinding headache, and he still felt a bit dizzy and swimmy in the head, but he had gotten it easy, hadn't he.
He had thought it was a brilliant idea to take the pups with them. It was supposed to be just a fun little fuel run: haul some greenies to Gas Town and return back to the Citadel with tanks full of guzzolene. A small armada of cars had been sent scouting to secure the way. Nux had been anxious to join them. He knew exactly how sick he was becoming, and that he should embrace every chance he was offered to die gloriously in a battle. What could be a more chrome way to ride to Walhalla than to die in the Fury Road?
Instead they had picked a whole other group, and Imperator Furiosa, who was in charge of the haul, had put him and Slit in the rear guard duty. She had softened the blow with the suggestion they took some pups with them to train for the real thing. The thought of having some pups on board had actually cheered Nux up a bit. He had immediately picked Cricket to ride with him. He had grown accustomed, and attached, to this small thing who kept him company while he was being fueled up in the blood shed. Cricket was a happy pup and good company in the depressing soundscape of the surrounding sick bay, especially at nights (the deathly quiet mixed with the occasional bone-chilling wailing of someone in the throes of some nightmare of dying soft). Besides Cricket wanted to be a driver one day. He hardly reached the wheel and the pedals at the same time though. Cricket had been over the moon when Nux had told him about the haul run. It also meant that Joe himself would send them off with his blessings. The pups would get to see Immortan himself, front and center, when the convoy with it's escorting vehicles would take off. It still made Nux's insides feel warm.
And then cold. He knew that it was an exceptional honor for a pup to die in the Fury Road, and he should not even allow himself to think like this.
When the explosion went off, he hadn't even stopped to think twice: he hadn't thought at all. He had just grabbed Cricket by the back of his too-big cargo pants and scruff of the neck and thrown him off the car. He still can't fathom how it was possible. He had acted purely out of instinct, the instinct screaming at him save the pup. The next thing he knew was that the car bucked and threw him off the lancer's platform like a bundle of rags and he landed, skull first, and the impact was bright blue and white and then, just black.
There had been an ambush of a small group of Buzzards: not a real threat but enough to cause trouble. Their group accompanying the War Rig had been returning to the Citadel, maybe too confident in the wake of the scouts, and since the trip to the Gas Town had been uneventful, they had trusted that the rest of the trip would be alike. They had been only a few clicks away from home; the Buzzards were becoming bold, attacking them with such small numbers and venturing over to their territory. Maybe they just wanted to mess with them.
Nux was grateful that they didn't attack on the way to Gas Town. That's when he had let Cricket drive half the way there. Cricket had been in front of the car with him. Slit had been incessantly bitching about how Nux let everyone else drive their car but him. Nux had told him that was because literally anyone else was a better driver than Slit, literally, even the small pups were more skilled than him, a rock jammed on the accelerator was a better driver than him. Slit had told him to fuck off with so many words and climbed on the War Rig, leaving them defenseless, which usually was a serious offence. Nux kind of wished that Imperator Furiosa, who was profoundly awe-inspiring and actually scary as all hell, would have noticed and ripped Slit a new one. She didn't though.
Slit stayed in sight and made rude gestures at Nux and Nux was happy to have both his hands free so that he could return the favor. Cricket was lauhing in stitches. None of the escorting crew was taking this peaceful haul trip very seriously. Nux had managed to lure Cricket's mate Puck in to their car and had Puck pretend to be their lancer for a while, until Slit had had enough of arseing around and jumped back into his station. He had actually let Puck stay back there with him until Gas Town, where he had finally tossed the pup back into the War Rig. There, Nux had promised Slit that he could, in fact, drive back home, just to keep him from moaning for the rest of the trip. So, when the attack happened, Slit had been in the cab of their car, and Nux and Cricket were standing in the back, eyes squinted against the bright and the wind and just enjoying the ride.
Maybe he had heard the scouts on top of the Rig shout a warning. Maybe no-one noticed anything until the Buzzards were already on full attack, and the first hit was on their unsuspecting car – just a random escorting vehicle, not even in the front of the convoy but safely in the back – because they had pups on board. The explosive had hit from below. Maybe Slit had steered into some kind of hidden explosive in the ground. Nux still couldn't understand how he managed to throw Cricket off the lancer's perch before the car leaped into the air. Maybe there was another explosion after the initial one. He could not remember, his memories of the incident after that felt like they had been ripped to shreds with a blast from a sawed-off shotgun.
Many small hands on him, grabbing him by the shoulders and trying to prop him up – high, distressed voices in the distance, calling his name. His mouth, eyes and nose full of dry, choking sand. Can't see or hear a thing. His whole head hurts like it had been laid on an anvil and hammered into a new, unpleasant shape. Careful hands wiping his face, his eyes first, then his nose and mouth. A rag being pushed against his face. He feels burning inside his face, a searing hot liquid building pressure behind his eyes and inside his nose. He is bleeding profusely from his nose.
Cricket is the one holding the rag against his nose and still wiping the sand off his face. Three pairs of other hands are holding him up in a sitting position. Imperator Furiosa's voice: she's asking if the war boy is in one piece. He hears the vicorious shrieks of his brothers in the distance, somewhere a small engine screaming it's last. Nux thinks he hears Puck answer her yes. Imperator orders the pups to get him in to the nearest car and to the Citadel; then she runs, Nux can hear her retreating footsteps pounding the ground. She's running with the War Boys to check their exploded car, where Slit is. Slit is in the car. Slit, Immortan damn him, if he got to Walhalla before him, Nux thinks, half drowning in his blood pouring down his throat, disgustingly thick and sickly sweet. The pups are pulling at his arms and pushing at his back to get him up on his feet.
The world is a blur of red and blue and the spatters of black and white, his mates and the cars a dizzying caleidoscope of shapes in his stinging eyes. The world tilts and spins in his eyes and in his head. He feels like throwing up immediately after getting upright. And there he goes, he throws up, a foul mixture of blood and tummy acid. The pups don't care, they keep coaxing him towards the nearest car and one of his brothers is there to steer him inside the car and lays him flat on his back in the back of the cockpit, propping his feet up against the nitro tank. Apparently, while he was out cold and eating and breathing sand, the battle had been over as soon as it had begun. Nux feels too shitty to care much about his sad mediocricity though. Mediocre or not, it feels much better to be horizontal than vertical.
Nux wipes the gritty muck out of his eyes and sees Cricket climbing in after him. He has bloody scrapes all along his shoulder and arm and half his face, and his brown eyes are brimming with tears that have washed white streaks down his dust-grimy face. Worry hits Nux like a fist into his abdomen. Is the pup all right? He tries to ask, but his tongue is all woozy, and Cricket just stubbornly shakes his head and worms himself in to the small space between Nux's head and the back door of the cab, and lays Nux's head on to his lap. Admittedly, it feels a lot better than the hard floor against the banged-up back of Nux's skull.
Cricket sniffles a little. He's trying to be hard, Nux can tell that even through the haze of his pain and nausea. Nux reaches his hand to pat the pup reassuringly wherever he can reach. Tells him that this is all wrong, as he was supposed to look after Cricket out in the Desert and not vice versa, and that Cricket shouldn't worry about him. Cricket tells him to lay still because his ear is bleeding. Nux hadn't even realized. Cricket, however, had been stationed to the sick bay long enough to notice such things. Nux wonders dazed, if it's a bad sign, the bleeding. He's bleeding out precious refueled blood and it feels like such a waste. Cricket holds a wad of cloth against his bleeding ear and holds his head still, and the car starts and jerks into motion. The battle is definitely over, then. He hasn't heard a word about his car or Slit. What will they leave behind in the battlefield, except the scavenged corpses of the Buzzards? He tries to ask the driver about it, but the roaring engine drowns his words and he feels too sick to shout any louder, and Cricket is already shushing him.
The motion feels like falling endlessly and without any destination. It makes Nux feel violently ill, and he has to squeeze his eyes shut and concentrate on Cricket's gentle small fingers running across his forehead and his quiet comfort and whispered words, that he'll witness Nux if – and Nux considers, if the first words Cricket ever said to him, at the sick bay, forty-five days ago, when the Organic Mechanic brought the skinny little pup to his bedside, will also be the last he'll say to him. He doesn't want to die like this. The thought fills him with despair, cold as the eternally sweating stones in the bottom of the caves where the sun doesn't ever reach. But he just says, don't worry, little brother – and then it's just fear, and nausea, and motion sickness and fear until he, by the grace of Immortan, passes out and only comes to after already being dragged in and laid out to a slab in the Blood Shed.
The bleeding finally stops. Maybe his skull hasn't been smashed to smithereens by the impact after all. The nausea still lingers, and his head feels like it's been filled with wet sand (it's not a good feeling). Cricket keeps him company, after his own wounds have been attended to. That much Nux demands of the Mechanic, who rolls his eyes and sighs exasperated but checks on the pup and announces that he's completely fine and only in need of a good wash. It's Nux, with the help of Puck and the tiny twins, Nut and Bolt, who had been riding with Imperator in the War Rig and who had ran to Nux's aid with Cricket, who carefully clean the long, grime-filled grazes on Cricket's arm and side and face.
Sitting up makes Nux's head spin sickenignly but he needs to do this. He needs to take decent care of Cricket.
Cricket and Puck carefully take him to see when they hoist the car up. He ends up puking twice and spending the rest of the time by the small opening in the thick stone wall peering at the dock dry-heaving – being upright just isn't something he exels at right now, but he needs to see his car. It's missing half of it's front, both front wheels and the whole axle missing probably – then he spots it, it's been stuffed inside the cab that looks like it has been torn open by giant hands. By a miracle the engine seems to be inside the engine bay, mostly intact. Nux feels strangely proud, since he was the one who put that particular engine together. He has accomplished something sacred. He has helped create an engine eternal. He crosses his hands and breathes the salute, and the pups join in, heads bowed. Nux suspects they don't know what they are saluting, but their devotion is sweet nevertheless. Then the pups usher him back to his bed, waiting to get a refill of full-life blood, and there Nux remembers – Slit had been driving the mangled car.
Slit, he says, breath suddenly catching in his throat, not knowing if it's because he is hopeful or afraid. Puck says he'll go ask someone. Someone ought to know what happened to Nux's lancer, who should not have been driving at all, but standing on the lancer's perch on the back of the vehicle, in the spot, where Nux and Cricket were when the explosion tore at their car.
Wrong, mistake, failure, failure, failure. Nux's heartbeat drums a tattoo Nux doesn't want to hear inside his already hurting head.
All he had done all day was one mistake after another. He should not have taken the pup with them – he had put Cricket in grave danger, however blasphemous it might be to think like this, but the pups, they were new and they should not rush towards Walhalla –
and their doctrine was, you shall not inflict any harm upon your little brothers, and you shall not purposefully put your brothers in the harms way, for it is not your judgement but Immortans, who Rides Shiny and Eternal.
He should definitely not have let Slit drive home. He has to grab his skull, throbbing in pain, with both his hands and bow his head down and silently curse, and beg, because he fucked up big time. If only Immortan might have some mercy and be forgetful towards his fuckups.
Cricket carefully pulls at his braced hand until Nux lets it fall limp, then slips the needle in the vein on the inside of his wrist, with steady certainty, obviously used to this work. He might want to be a driver one day, but he was already a skilled Sick Boy. He straghtens the tubes as the older Sick Boys haul in the chained full-life and Cricket leads him by the hand to the free fueling station. The bloodbag mumbles quietly and indistinctly as they drain him. Maybe he's praying too. Cricket stands in watch for a while, checking that the blood flows evenly, until he crawls next to Nux and presses against his side. Nux wraps his free arm around the bony shoulders and hugs the pup close, resting his cheek on top of his head. The presence is comforting.
Cricket says he's glad that Nux took him with him to the haul ride. Nux says he's glad that Cricket was there with him. Which is, in retrospect, a little white lie. Then he adds that he's glad, that Cricket is with him, now. Which is not a lie. Cricket puts his arm around Nux's back. Then they just sit there, Nux half-leaning on his small companion and Cricket stoic, calm, serious in his duty. Quietly studying at the lumps jutting at the junction of Nux's neck and shoulder. Nux introduces them. Say hi to my mates, Larry and Barry! Cricket looks up at him, dark eyes pondering, if Nux is teasing, then cracks a wide smile. Pulls a pencil out of one of his several pockets and they draw stupid faces at Larry and Barry until Puck's running footsteps alert them. Nux drops the pencil.
Puck's running like someone had doused his rear end with flaming nitro.
” He's alive,” Puck is panting.
The constant humming-ringing in Nux's ears swells, drowning any other sounds and the world seems to gently pull away from his senses.
” Oh,” he breathes. Doesn't know if he's relieved, or disappointed in behalf of his lancer, who could have ridden to Walhalla, shiny and chrome, but who was apparently alive – at least alive, but how? He had seen their car, or, what was left of it.
” He took some shrapnels and bled out a lot, but Organic fixed him!”
Puck sounds awestruck. At first Nux thinks it's because of the Organic Mechanic who fixes flesh. Then Puck points at his stomach and draws gruesome lines for their imaginations to see.
” He was all torn up here, and down here, and then he got stapled there, and there, at least four times! Four chrome staples!” Puck's eyes are glowing, he is so excited about the apparently very chrome staples. He's holding up four fingers to their faces. ” Organic wanted to sew them, but they said, that Slit had asked for the staples.”
Suddenly Nux grins. Slit would ask for staples, wouldn't he? Slit is definitely alive and, apparently mostly, in one piece. Nux feels dizzy and ill and yes, definitely, relieved. It mixes with the ebbing and flowing nausea and stops Nux from laughing out loud in fear that he'd end up puking all over the place again.
” Sorry, Puck, looks like my lancer's post is not free yet, then,” Nux grins at Puck, who doesn't seem to mind but keeps on gushing about the gory and undoubtedly, not just a little embellished details of Slit's amazing story he heard from the War Rig Crew and other War Boys. Of course Slit has to one-up Nux in the aftermath of the surprise attack. Nux looks at Criket, who's drinking in Puck's animated story. He nudges him a little.
” Are you disappointed that you got stuck with the mediocre, soft dying one?” Nux asks with a small smile.
Cricket looks up to him, a little surprised, almost baffled.
” No! Never.” His small face is so earnest it makes Nux's chest hurt a little. Puck finally slows down and sits next to Nux, listening to their exchange. Cricket jumps up and stands facing Nux. His eyes dart nevously towards Puck. Nux thinks that whatever Cricket has on his mind he doesn't want to share it with Puck, and it's unusual.
The Organic Mechanic barges in to the refueling bay and barks at the boys to haul the bloodbag back to the cages, since he's gone all quiet, to recover. Cricket jerks into action and removes the needle, and Puck springs on his feet and gets tossed out of the Blood Shed altogether, since it's not his post at all. Even the older boys who come to lug the bloodbag away, find the faces Nux and Cricket drew on Nux's tumors funny. It lightens the mood, since Cricket is suddenly so glum. Organic snorts at the sight of Nux's freshly decorated lumps.
” I can tattoo them for you if you want.”
It cheers both Nux and Cricket up.
” What a waste of ink, but hey,” he grunts as he straightens his back after a moment of work.
” Everyone is happy to see some friendly faces, huh?”
He winks and limps away with his machines, another pup lugging the huge battery of the tattooing gun after him.
Cricket is still there, sitting next to Nux lying down and wiping the seeping blood of the fresh faces of Larry and Barry. Nux isn't any use for anything since every time ge gets up, the low humming in his ears gets deafening and the world turns sideways and he just pukes, so he's been confined to a bed till morning. Nux is worried if he'll be better then, but he keeps on a happy face, because of Cricket. The pup is so quiet, so serious, almost vibrating with something he needs to say but does not dare. Nux can't come up with anything to encourage him to talk, so he just lies still and tries not to be sick again so that at least Cricket doesn't have to clean up after him.
The refueling always makes sleeping easier, though. The night fevers aren't so bad after some fresh blood. The cave-cold fear inside his core seems to be melting away. The fear of dying – or not-dying – he doesn't even know, which. He knows he has to die, it's the only way to Walhalla and riding eternal. He wants to go to Walhalla, that much he knows. Why didn't he want Cricket to get there, then? It would have been so easy. One bright blast, witnessed by their brothers and Imperator Furiosa herself, and her crew. Instead, he's here, laying useless and sick as a mutt, and Slit is somewhere, recovering from the shrapnels, and neither of them have died gloriously. The worst is the thought of Cricket dying and that makes the cold and empty chasm inside his stomach crack and inch further open. He is being unfaithful. His thoughts are blasphemy. He knocks his head against the stony slab once, to get the thoughts to stop, to get them out of his head, but the impact sends a bile-green lightning bolt of pure concentrated nausea and blinding pain right through his brain.
Cricket is quick to fold a piece of cloth and slip it under Nux's head, while Nux keeps his eyes firmly shut and tries to will the world from throbbing and spinning and cheerfully encouraging him to just spill his guts all over the floor.
Cricket's small, cold hand rests on his shoulder. He should wrap himself in a blanket, the night was going to be cold without the warmth and comfort of his brothers piled around him. Nux had never thought how lonely it must be, the burden of witnessing, standing in guard of someone probably dying, in the empty refueling bay or in the occasionally overcrowded sick bay (that was, however familiar, always slightly depressing). Without opening his eyes, Nux gathers the edge of a blanket into his fist and haphazardly pulls it over the shape that must be Cricket, sitting behind his back with his legs crossed.
” You should keep warm, little brother. It's going to get cold as a Rock-rider's colon.”
Cricket snickers obediently and spreads the blanket over Nux, too. He didn't really need it, the hot and cold of ebbing and flowing nausea washing over his clammy skin, but is grateful nevertheless.
” And sleep. I promise I'm not going to die this soft.”
” The Organic Mechanic said I should wake you up if you fell asleep,” Cricket points out.
” Fork the Flesh-mangler. We're sleeping,” Nux announces and grabs Cricket by the neck by surprise and wrestles him down, finally making the pup laugh a real, happy laugh. Nux holds him in a gentle chockehold, daring to open his eyes a little without feeling too sick and is happy to see Cricket's eyes meeting his, glimmering gleefully. And then watch the glimmer die, and the gloom, strange and too dark for such a young one, creep into his features once again. This time Nux is sober enough to find at least one word.
” What,” he says, quiet, fighting the nausea to keep his eyes open and answer Cricket's stare. His eyes are like black holes to the moonless and starless night.
” Don't be angry at me,” Cricket peeps, his voice unusually small. It's Nux's turn to look puzzled. He releases Cricket from his grasp.
” Why in the name of The Eternal Engine would I be angry at you?”
” Because I don't want you to die,” he says in a barely audible whisper, eyes terrified, and Nux knows, he's fearing a divine retribution, a lightning bolt to strike him dead for such blasphemy. He is gripping at the muscles in Nux's shoulder so hard it almost hurts, nails as white as his painted hands.
All the thoughts topple over each other inside Nux's already battered head. What can he say to the pup? That he agrees, that he still isn't sure if he wants to die either, but he is sure he doesn't want Cricket to die, that they are both brothers in their blasphemy, too?
He purses his lips and stares, maybe too long, because Cricket's serious mouth starts to tremble slightly.
” It's all right,” is all Nux manages, and he pulls the pup into a hug, letting him bury his face against his shouder. ” I'm not angry.”
It's so little he has to offer for this scared pup. In the unusual silence of the dim and empty Shed, they are alone together against something unfathomably huge, and dark, looming outside the stone walls and wanting to find it's way in.
” Like I said. I'm just … happy you are. Here. With me.”
Cricket nods his head vigorously against his shoulder, face hidden away, gripping tight with his skinny arm across Nux's chest.
Nux stares at the ceiling for a long time after Cricket has finally relaxed against his side, snoring ever-so-gently and sprawling, like the small pup he is, across the bed.