author's note: hi all. i'm SO sorry that it took this long to update. i got sick - really nasty sick - and it turned into bronchitis. i'm just now starting to feel better, but i wanted to update so bad. maybe i shouldn't be writing in this condition, but i couldn't help myself. sorry if it's terrible. until next time!

also, i just wanted to take the time to thank you all so much for your lovely reviews! they really made me happy, you have no idea, and i couldn't wait to get the next installment up for you. 3 3

disclaimer - mad max and all its characters belong to george miller. i'm just taking them out for a spin.

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The girl wakes with a scream.

"Adam!"

Eyes wild as they search their surroundings desperately, glassy and red in the firelight.

He watches her as she comes down from the sort of high that comes with the rush of adrenaline and fear. It turns humans to animals, reason to madness, and he's seen it before – in himself. The fire crackles and fills up the empty spaces between her shallow, heaving breaths. She looks around, settling back down into the sand as the adrenaline high cools in her seething blood. Her eyes lock on his, the focus shifting into place as she realizes she's not alone. The glassiness leave them and they're clear, their darkness sharper now. Big, round, like the moon shimmering behind heat waves.

"Who are you?" She rasps, like it's the first time she's used her voice in weeks. It's not a question, he realizes with a vigilant sort of amusement...but a demand. "Where am I? Where are you taking me?"

A talker. He doesn't care for those.

The makeshift spoon in his hand circles aimlessly (a broken piece of old carburetor he found a while back that was dull enough to put safely in his mouth). It sifts through the gruel as if hoping to find something better, more substantial than wet slop. His lips curl around the tightly locked gates of his teeth. He had learned to accept the quiet as a way of life. That the only sound he would ever hear were the ghosts themselves, echoes of his guilt bouncing around in the great big void. The last few days had been strange for him, full of the sounds of roaring engines and war cries and shrieking, cowering woman in the back of the rig. He had heard enough to last him a lifetime. Now, he wanted nothing more than to curl back up in the nothingness, where voices and engines and fighting did not exist. He wanted to smother in the blanket of it, let it make him forget there was anyone left in the world. That he was alone. Alone in the quiet.

But he is not alone, not anymore. The demons in his head had stopped their thrashing as soon as he'd thrown her lifeless body into the seat next to him. Somehow, taking this living, breathing, wilderness of a woman with him had quieted their blood lust – for now, their need had been sated, and now they waited. They still haunted him when he closed his eyes, just the same. The darkness in his head was their territory after all...and he was trespassing.

Without a word, he offers her the tin tray in his hand. She appraises it like a predator, hunger gnawing at the deep, angry shadows carved under the arch of her cheekbones. They look sharp to him, gleaming like knives in the glow of the blaze. Another scavenger, he guesses. Someone who walks alone and does not mind the stillness of the heat and the sand, but becomes one with it.

Quickly – a whiplash of a moment, and it's over before he blinks – she swipes it from his hands and dips her head into the soupy gray mush. The mass of dark hair hides her face like a tangled veil. He cannot help but watch, fascination worming through the holes in his head. This must be what he looks like to other human beings. Like a starved animal. A savage beast.

He is staring at the fire – the way it dances over blackened roots and twists through the dead hollows of wood – when she speaks again.

"Why are you helping me?"

He hums, shrugs once (who knows? not me, maybe them), and runs his fingers against his temple over and over and over again, as if to appease the vengeful ghosts caged within. Truthfully, he doesn't know the answer himself. Why did he take her?

When he doesn't answer and she realizes he has none to offer, she switches tactics immediately. "The rocks -" pointing behind him, to the vague shadows of the Citadel he's long since left behind. "I was trying to get to them. I was almost there when I ran out of water. That's all I need...water. I can find my own food. Part with some of yours and I'll go, I'll leave you for good."

He shakes his head. Impossible, he smirks. "There's none."

She's still for a long time – maybe it's not so long at all, but feels that way out here in the darkness. Calculating. Wondering. And then she makes her move.

Three quick motions. One, two three. Hand to her waist. A flash of silver stained red like blood in the firelight, almost blinding him. Her arm is around his neck, the tip of the blade pressed against his pulse. She is fast, he realizes. He might be strong – built like a mountain, but a mountain is slow to move – but she is like water. And water, if he has learned anything in the last few days, is an efficient weapon.

Her thick, hot breath pools in his ear. "I find it hard to believe you."

"See for yourself."

He gestures toward the Interceptor and she releases her grasp. He listens to her as she rifles through provisions with little interest, knowing that the only gun he keeps is tucked safely away into the secret layers of his jacket. It would be easy, he knew. To kill her. So very simple. He wouldn't even have to think about it, the muscles in his hands remembering the shape of a gun so well that he wouldn't have to tell them what to do anymore. He's become good at killing without thinking. Snap a few delicate bones in her neck with one good hard twist and pull. Methodical. Clean. There wouldn't even have to be any blood..

Max,

You must help her Max.

Help her for our sake.

His hand shake as they release him, their vice grip on his brain. Behind him, she's found the empty water canteen, shaking it violently once, twice, three times only to discover that he had not lied to her after all – empty. She throws it at his feet, the sand invading every seam and hole.

She spits at his boots, and he furrows his brow at the lump of saliva and brittle foam as it disappears into the dust beneath. "You are an idiot to travel with no water."

"Water is there." He says, now pointing at the specter of fumes that hovers in the shadowy distance. Gastown.

She studies his face as he turns to look up at her.

He, in turn, learns the angles of her face. Young, but the heat and the cruelty of living in a dead world has made her old before her time. He can see it in her eyes. The bloated black corpse of her innocence that was burned away in the fire that destroyed them all. It's why he isn't afraid, isn't angry, not at all. Beneath the skin, deep down where blood and bone weave together like strings, they are the same.

She looks otherworldly to him now. The night behind her drapes over her shoulders and she looks like light pressed up against swollen darkness. Resolute, unbroken.

She's not like water at all, he realizes.

"You will take me with you. To Gastown."

She is fire.