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[Furiosa spends most mornings in the gym. Honestly, she'd prefer the Enclosure, but she needs to be moving long and often enough that she can't justify using more than her share of the precious time in the false environment. She works out quickly how to run on the treadmill, but most of the other machines remain a mystery to her. If the right person is using them, they may see her watching, or so may decide to approach.

Some mornings her prosthesis is on, and others it is off, tucked protectively and nearly underfoot, out of habit, though this doesn't seem like the kind of place where anyone is likely to get any ideas.

When she is done, she usually ends by slipping upstairs, showering quickly, and permitting herself what feels like the decadent luxury of putting her feet into the pool. It takes her until about the fifth time to get up the nerve to walk in to the water, to lower herself down in it until she feels it lap up around her neck, then to hold her breath and gingerly, cover her mouth and nose, and cautiously, gingerly slip under the surface and just let herself float, suspended.

She can be found in any of those places.

Still, a workout isn't the same thing as practice, really, and the conversation that has been going on here has weighed heavily on her, though she hasn't participated. So, finally, she takes a break one morning in the gym and turns on the feed.]

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[She has to clear her throat to start, and wipe the sweat off her face. She's sitting in the frame, bare feet apart, elbows rested on her knees, metal arm down at her side. Furiosa isn't comfortable, exactly, talking to a little plastic box that will take her words all over the ship, but this is important to her.]

My name is Imperator Furiosa. I'm human. No powers. I'm in the gym.

If you need, I've been teaching people a little about how to fight. If you don't need, but you're--

I could use the practice.

[Short, unceremonious, she disconnects.]

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[The touch changes his smile, slightly- a little less grateful for putting up with him, and more slow and charming. He wouldn't have been where he is today without the aggression, but he likewise would never have succeeded without some of that charm.]

Coffee? No, thank you. [He makes it a policy to limit his non-alcoholic fluids intake to about 20% a day, Furiosa. The rest of it must be whiskey.]

Coffee.

[Echoing, testing the word.]

We never heat water deliberately. Loses too much into the air. This tastes like a canteen left in the car on a hot day, but with flavour.

[Drawing her hand back, carefully unruffled.]

Edited 2015-06-30 16:49 (UTC)

[He toys with his cup a little- drawing his finger over the rim, turning it so that the ear is perpendicular to the edge of the table. He's still smiling a little as he explains.]

It's made from beans. They roast them, then grind the beans down to little particles and let the water run through that so it gets its flavor.

Do you like it?

Much better than the pink fluid.

[Fruit punch.]

But it's nothing compared to iced water. I've never tasted cold like that, even back when I was a girl.

[She hasn't passed blood in her urine once since she's been here, either. It's miraculous, as far as she's concerned.]

Was the world different when you were a girl, or were you somewhere else? [He's not sure what questions will be too painful and which will be alright, and there's really only one way to find out.]

When I was a girl, I was one of the Vuvalini, the Many Mothers. I was part of a clan.

[Swaddle Dog, the recitation pushes her to add, but these are details he doesn't need, and a mantra it leaves her throat a little tight to think of.]

I had a mother, MaryJo Bassa, and an initiate mother named Katie Concannon. We lived in the Green Place, which was then an oasis. A lingering stripe of green, nestled in behind a mountain range, while the rest of the world around us seemed to shrivel and wither.

When I was fourteen, JoBassa and I went out on bikes to trade food for what passed for medicine, and a raiding party nabbed us. We never told them where we came from.

[The smile slowly fades from his face as she speaks, and he stops his moving around. He is focused on her and her story. He is proud, and it shows in the hardness of his eyes and the set of his mouth, when she says that they never gave up that information.

It's not his world, and he can't imagine being part of it, but one of the names is familiar enough that it throws him: makes him think, momentarily, that this might not be a different world-- just a future one. It doesn't bear thinking about for to long, and he doesn't want his attention to wander.]

And you bided your time.

[But he knows how it ended. She told him in the greenhouse: now the whole world is probably sand. She doesn't need his anger, nor does she need his sympathy, or his reassurance. But they are there if she asks for them.]

Seven thousand days that I remember.

[And many more lost to pain, disorientation, fever, infection, and the deepest, darkest weeks of captivity, in the bottom of that place.]

But it means that for me, there is a now, but there is also a before. I remember what trees are. The children do not.

[A shrug, and a nonchalant stretch.]

It means I'm lucky.

It's more difficult to accept a situation you know could be different. [And that she did what she did despite knowing-- well, if he didn't know anything about her, this would be all he needed to know to judge her character.]

The Enclosure takes us home. Well- not quite home, there aren't faces you know, exactly, but if we wanted to, we could walk over there, and speak to the door, and then be there, in my world. Or in yours.

[She explains, thumb drawing a circle around the rim of her coffee cup.]

You could see it. Or, for that matter, so could I. I want to know more about you but I can't quite-

[A frustrated gesture. She still has no idea what to ask, he's better at gleaning things than her.]

[He wants to see it, but he can't do it now. He feels a headache blooming sharp behind his eyes, and he's tired-- to tired to see her world and understand it for what it is. But he can do something else, now, to give her context, give her some words.

He stands up, touches his fingertips to her shoulder and jerks his head in the direction of the door.]

Come on.

[She slips to her feet, and follows, unquestioningly.

Furiosa isn't precisely sure where he's taking her, but trusts it will be well-considered, important.]

[He leaves their tray for what it is and starts walking. If she won't ask, he won't speak; despite the fact that they're going down six levels before they arrive he doesn't feel the need to fill the silence.

The door they stop at is simple, green painted wood. When he pushes it open they end up in something that she might recognize as a kitchen- a wood stove in the corner, a fireplace, a large wooden table. One wall is covered with small patterned tiles, and there's a large wooden cabinet with patterned china against one wall. The double doors leading to the next room are closed, but he'll open them after showing her this first.]

My family's house. I've lived here-- all my life. My brothers, my sister, aunt Pol- this is where we eat, sleep, do business.

[The whole room is old, with cracks in the ceiling and tears in the wallpaper above the door, but it's clean, and it's cozy. It's as close as he can get to showing her his family, without them actually being there. She needs to know: they are why he does anything at all.]

[She's a very different person than he is. She grew up in tents, and then grew the rest of the way up in caves. She's lived off the back of a bike or the boot of a car most of her days. Even now a week into her stay on the barge, she's never seen decoration like this. She can't assess new from old, rich from poor, or anything like that.

She goes to those tiles first, focused, feeling impelled to touch. It's like the tile in the roof of the war rig, except flowers, instead of skulls.]

Pretty.

[She says, before turning to the stove. A critical glance and she guesses it must be for heat, but;]

It gets cold?

[He leans on the table as she explores, the artificial light shining through the windows enough to see by.]

Very cold. It rains more often than not, and snows in the winter.

[She casts a look back over her shoulder at him, amazed. Snow is as much a fable to her as werewolves are to him.]

What do you burn?

Wood. [Right- the trees, he should have remembered. He nods at the cupboard underneath the sink.]

We keep it in there. We use it to cook on, and to keep ourselves warm.

What do you do with your days?

[Trying hard to picture it.]

Do you all get along? Do you trip on each other?

[He doesn't answer her first question immediately, but stands back up and walks to the doors. They open up into a bigger room, filled with long tables. It looks more worn than the kitchen, and there's scuff marks and sawdust on the floor. None of the money is here, and none of the people are, but it's obvious that it's usually a hub of activity. There are small office spaces to the side, and on the far wall is a little podium and a chalk board. While he walks slowly towards that board, he talks.]

Yes. We trip on each other, and we fight, but we're a family. I'd be more concerned if we didn't argue.

[There were times, of course, that they hated each other- their father will never enter the house again, and Ada's period of silence had cut him deep. But that's not the story he wants to tell right now.]

[Furiosa is quiet again, taking in the space, walking after him- but a little more slowly, struck by the sight of all of it.

It reminds her of her sense that Tommy had been a man in charge of a city. This isn't quite the kind of space you'd need for that, but it makes her own small quarters make a little more sense in context. She'd lived tucked away in a private nook in a hive, where Tommy had inhabited not just a family living space, but quarters from which he commanded soldiers.

Once she gets caught back up to him, the podium, the chalkboard, she gets a sense that it's a lectern, and sits expectantly down, with a little quirk to her mouth.

What did he do here? What did he lecture? What, she especially wonders, was written?]

[He had been, in a sense- the people who ran the city on paper reported to him, or at the very least were in his pockets. It's not that difficult, once you figure out what people want from their lives. It's usually something Tommy can give them, with little cost to himself.

He leans against the railing protecting the podium and smiles back at her.]

This is where we controlled the gambling. Over there-- [He points at the chalkboard] is where we write down which races we're taking bets on, which horses, the scores as the races proceed. The rest- [and he gestures at the tables, the safes in the offices, the papers hanging by the door] is where the best are placed. A horse wins, we lose money. It loses, we win.

[It's a small step from there to fixing races, but she might not even get the idea.]

Before I came here, we were on the brink of becoming the third largest legal bookmaker's in the country.

Write one.

[She's curious to see if she can parse it, if they use anything close to the same language, same letters. She's curious about how the board works, honestly, she can't see the chalk from this angle.

She leans her elbow onto the table, and slouches into it comfortably, making herself perfectly at ease, watching him explain his space, his system. Hearing everything that's being said, and some of what isn't.]

How much did people bet? I mean, on the scale of it. A handful of bullets? A gun? A newspun shirt, a turn with a woman? [And then she realizes that commodity won't work, because betting an apple would mean a different thing to her than it does to him.] A day's work, or ten?

[He wonders, for a second, what it is about her that he finds so compelling. Her strength, her intelligence, the sheer dissonance between their worlds, the way her mind works: the way she speaks to him, the words she says, they keep drawing him in. She asks her questions, leans on the tables and she looks completely out of place but not so at the same time.

He'll give it more thought later, because Tommy needs to know why people are in his life, so that he doesn't run the risk of being overtaken again.

For now, he smiles like he's at a fair and his job is to charm people into buying his wares-- he takes the few steps onto the podium and picks up the chalk from its little box to the side. He starts writing, quickly and methodically: Epsom, Ascot, Cheltenham, Liverpool; underneath each location, names: Monaghan Boy, Cobweb, Ormonde, Hurry on. There's numbers to the side, and he finishes off with a flourish.

With a jerk of his head, he invites her up there with him.]

Usually have a lovely assistant by me side, of course. [He leans against the stepping stool, watches her as she inspects his writing. He'd heard her say 'a turn with a woman' and he itches with questions and concern, but tampers the instinct.]

It depends on how good the rumors have gotten. A week's worth of pay, sometimes more. More often less. The men 'round here don't have much to spend, and their wives run a tight household lest they spend it all on whiskey and horses.

[She stands up, and comes closer, slowly, taking in the effect of him like that, narrow and long and scribbling with a practice that she's never seen the like of.]

Your handwriting.

[Helplessly, stepping closer, like she's never seen anything so dainty. Honestly, she hasn't; everything by her day has shifted to a blocky allcaps, with nary a flourish in sight.

She lifts a faintly snide eyebrow at lovely assistant, but lets him off the hook for it when she sees more chalk. Furiosa picks up a piece, and touches it carefully to the board, before commenting.]

There's that whiskey again.

[She keeps her hand still, as she thinks of what to write. Lowers the chalk, and glances back at him, to check first;]

This will come off? It's a kind of chalk.

We'll have some. Later. [There's still a smile playing around the corners of his mouth, but he just crosses his arms and nods when she asks.]

Yes. It will. Just some water and a sponge to take it all back off, clean slate.

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