Zero to Sixty

by battle_cat

Chapter 5: Epilogue

Max wakes as the first morning light is coming in the window. He winces, cursing himself for falling asleep sitting up against the cold rock. His hand stings, but he hasn’t bled through the bandage. It will heal.

Furiosa is sleeping curled up against him, her forehead pressed into the curve of his neck. Her eyes are still swollen from crying last night, and it doesn’t make her any less disarming.

He remembers waking up another morning like this, exhausted and aching and dizzy from blood loss, looking down and feeling such a wave of relief to find her still warm and breathing against him, if not completely with ease, and having no idea what to do with the feeling.

He doesn’t know how long he can stay like this, when he will get restless, if he’ll have to leave and for how long. But for the first time in a very, very long time, he doesn’t want to. Or if he must, he wants to be able to come back.

It seems strange to think that the waves of terror at being welcomed and cared for and wanted would ever go away. And it seems even stranger that he would ever come to think of this maze of tunnels and rock and gears and scrap and impossible gardens as home.

But maybe, he thinks, home isn’t a place.

Notes:

That's the end of this fic! Thank you for hopping on this smutty, feels-y Rig with me and for all your lovely comments.

This story is complete, but I have a few more ideas that might end up as PWPs or smutty one-shots in this timeline. These two are just too much fun to write about.

Notes:

I think this is going to be a short-ish multi-chapter fic, something like 3-5 chapters. It will only get smuttier. And feels-ier.

All uses of prickly pear/nopales are true to the best of my knowledge. Those fuckers are amazing. The internet tells me they were an invasive species in Australia that got so out of hand they had to be controlled by introducing a certain moth species, so I think they would definitely survive the apocalypse. And I just thought the idea of Max cradling a cactus and knowing a ridiculous amount about its properties was inherently funny.

And yes, the scene Furiosa is remembering is the one from First Light.

Come say hi on my blog.

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 3 of Together