They saw an improvement in Max's vision the very next afternoon.

He had ventured out of his room to join them for a late lunch – assured by the Sisters that the usual midday crowds of People and War Boys were already dispersed. He still looked a sight – hair long, beard scruffy, the bandages around his shoulder peaking out from the collar of his new shirt – but at least he'd lost that wild-eyed, hunted look from the night before. Capable sat him down next to Furiosa with a plate of bean paste and potato, and laughed a little when he made an appreciative sound at the taste.

"There's plenty more where that came from," grinned Dag. She still had her sunhat on and her forehead was streaked with brown and green from the gardens, testament to the morning she'd spent tending her crops. Cheedo, tutting at the dirt, received a defiant kiss on the lips for her attempts to clean it away. "If they keep shootin' up like they've been doing we might be serving you tomato in a few days." Dag narrowed her eyes. "If you don't disappear on us again."

Capable sighed, and Cheedo slapped Dag's shoulder, but the white-haired Sister looked unrepentant and watched Max's reaction intently. From the uncomfortable hunch of his shoulders he didn't have a good response. Furiosa had guessed as much.

Toast, always kind in her own brusque way, steered the conversation in another direction. She and the Vuvalini Servo had a running competition over who could field-strip a pistol the quickest. Servo, of course, had decades of experience under her belt, and in previous months left Toast in the dust, cackling at the Sister's frustration. But Toast was young, and stubborn, and spent her evenings dismantling and rebuilding guns until the barest second separated her from Servo.

"Give me another week and we'll see who leaves who in the dust," Toast said, her jaw set wilfully.

Furiosa believed her, and suspected Servo did too – but there would be no fun in admitting it. Instead the old Vuvalini smiled, all teeth, and shrugged her narrow shoulders. "Keep dreamin', love."

The Sisters all laughed at Toast's sour expression, and the discussion turned to Capable's War Pups – just Pups now, really, but names were hard to forget. Furiosa listened absently to the ebb and flow of the conversation, savouring her meal.

"Furiosa."

She looked up sharply at the sound of her name in the Fool's rough voice. It was the first time he'd ever used her name, to the best of her knowledge, and he said it like he wasn't quite sure if he was allowed to. He was staring right back at her – right back at her – brow furrowed in concentration and hesitant relief. Comprehension dawned. He could see her.

"Hey," she smiled.

He almost-smiled back. "Hey."

The rest of the table looked around curiously. Cheedo was the first to figure out what had happened, sucking in an excited breath and scrambling over to Max's side. "Do you mind if I have a look?" When Max nodded his consent she leaned in and carefully probed around his eyes, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder when he twitched.

"The redness has gone down," she murmured, turning to Yarra for confirmation.

The old Vuvalini squinted across the table. Cheedo was more than competent now – she'd had to be – but she still appreciated a second opinion when she could get one. Yarra seemed to agree with her assessment. "Fast healer," she observed approvingly.

Cheedo caught Furiosa's eye and gave a tight little smile – they had both seen 'HEALS FAST' tattooed across Max's back in cruel, clinical letters.

By sunset Max was walking on his own, trailing Furiosa with cautious steps as she led him down to her most frequented workshop. It was quieter this late in the afternoon, only a few Blackthumbs restoring broken engines or Repair Boys cobbling together new lengths of pipe for the water system. Still, it was busy enough to put Max on edge. He stuck to Furiosa like a second shadow, eyeing War Boy and workbench alike with a mixture of suspicion and interest, keeping his back to the wall when they finally reached her usual spot. Furiosa said nothing – she didn't have the words, anyway, to tell the Fool what he already knew (that he was safe with her) – only offered her proximity as a gesture of reassurance, brushing just close enough to bump shoulders as she stepped around him.

She gestured for Max to take a seat on the little stool beside the workbench. "Might be easier if you take off the brace."

"Mm." He sat awkwardly – only half, she suspected, from his wounds – and began unfastening the brace, struggling a little between his poor eyesight and the apparent stiffness of the buckles. As he did so Furiosa quickly assessed the damage – several of the struts would have to be replaced, and the leather straps too. The padded bands around his knee and ankle looked in good knick, so she'd keep those intact if she could. She knew from experience that adjusting to new hardware was an uncomfortable task.

He handed the brace over to Furiosa and made to join her at the workbench, pushing himself up from the stool with a wince. Furiosa nudged him gently with her knee.

"I've got this."

Max frowned at her, paused hallway to his feet. "I can help."

Furiosa raised her eyebrows doubtfully. Max said nothing, still staring like he wanted an explanation. "I just raised my eyebrows," Furiosa sighed.

"Shit." He lowered himself back onto the stool with a grimace. "Vision still got room for improvement."

Furiosa snorted. "Just a bit." She laid the brace out on the table, clucking her tongue absently at its state of ruin. Her brain was already churning out suggestions, possible modifications, ways to make the struts more supportive. It had been too long since she'd buried herself in work like this. "I'll rig up a prototype, let you tweak it at the end, yeah? Then you can complain all you want about my adjustments."

She watched with some amusement as his frown deepened – and then relaxed once he registered her comment as a joke. "Fine," he said grudgingly, and leant back against the wall, his arms crossed in a way that reminded Furiosa distinctly of Capable at her most obstinate. "What do you want me to do?"

Furiosa shrugged. "Just sit."

Max grunted his dissatisfaction, and Furiosa's lips twitched into a smile. Fool. He wouldn't be happy until he had a job. "You could...talk. If you wanted."

That startled her as much as it startled him. He looked at her from beneath his lowered brows like he thought she might be teasing him.

Furiosa shrugged again and turned back to her workbench. "It's nice when you talk, is all." She didn't say that the sound of his voice was inexplicably relaxing, a low, steady rumble like the murmur of an engine, or that his stumbling reports of the wastelands had been like a breath of fresh air after too long stuck inside.

"Oh." She heard him shift uncomfortably. "I, uh…not got much else to say." There was a long silence, broken only by the clink of metal against metal as Furiosa began work on the brace. It was a simple enough job – especially when compared to the task of fashioning a prosthetic arm. She'd chosen suitable replacement components and started dismantling the brace by the time Max spoke again.

"You talk."

There was a challenge in his tone, hidden under all the usual gruffness. His meaning was clear – why am I doing all the work? Furiosa smiled. "Have it your way, then."

The Sisters had already told Max of the Citadel, of the gardens and the walls and the People, and the work they'd done to build a Green Place out of a hell-hole. So Furiosa told him about the girls instead; how they'd filled the space left by Joe and pulled others up to join them.

How Capable had approached Corpus their first week in the Citadel, flanked by her new escort of loyal Pups, and told him – not unkindly, but with steel in her eyes – that an alliance was his only chance of survival. How she saw a bit of Nux in every War Boy, and taught them to think freely and love bravely, and smiled like the sun when a group of young girls asked to join the Blackthumbs. How the People named her Fireflower and the War Boys called her Red, but when she visited the campfires and spun tales of warrior princesses and gentle knights they sometimes called her Teller in reverent, affectionate tones.

How Dag had thrown herself at the gardens with an almost desperate intensity, taking out her pregnant nerves on stubborn weeds and sour earth, tending to her crops with a scatter-brained kind of efficiency. How she'd gathered around her a veritable army of People and ex-Mothers and the occasional War Boy who dedicated themselves to making things grow – making things green – and who quickly became a tight-knit sort of family (albeit given to arguing fiercely over beans). How her labour had been long and difficult, but Angharad was born healthy and whole, a rust-coloured birthmark blooming like a flower across one shoulder and a set of lungs on her that earned her the nickname "Tiny Terror".

(Max grunted his amusement at that, his eyes fixed on something very far away.)

She told him how Cheedo had taken to carrying a knife tucked away inside her boot – "Just in case," she'd said defensively, as if she had anything to be defensive about – and asked Toast to teach her to shoot. How she was the only one willing to venture frequently into the Vault, walking in with her head held high to ferry out treasured books for her sisters or run her hands pensively along Angharad's painted rebellions, always aware of what they'd come from and what they'd left behind. How the People adored Cheedo, one of their own, who healed their wounds and laughed at their stories and listened patiently to their complaints with genuine concern.

How Toast's sharp tongue had more diplomatic uses than corralling unruly War Boys – she'd been invaluable in arranging trade agreements with Gas Town and the Bullet Farm, playing the good cop (blasé but reasonable) to Furiosa's bad one (aggressive and unrelenting). How in between training and organising work rosters she'd come to a grudging partnership with Corpus Colossus, collecting and arranging all the Citadel's literature, becoming as she did so a new kind of History Woman, inking parchment instead of skin. How she remembered Angharad's words as well as her Sisters – no unnecessary killing – but she demanded the skills to defend her home should exceptions present themselves (and how, inevitably, they did).

"What about you?" Max asked, pointing at her for good measure. "What do you do?"

Furiosa hesitated. What did she do? "Bit of everything," she said eventually, because it was true. "Technically I'm the War Commander, I think, but we don't do war much anymore." Her flesh fingers tapped a restless rhythm on the tabletop. "I go where I'm needed."

"So, um…you don't – rule?"

"No." Her voice came out sharper than she'd intended, used to answering the same question from Pups and War Boys and People. She continued in a softer tone. "There's a council. Me, the Sisters, representatives from the Mothers and the War Boys and the different guilds of People. We try to get opinions from every corner of the Citadel."

"And that…works?"

The doubt in his voice was enough to make Furiosa smile tiredly. She'd wondered the same thing when the Sisters had proposed it. "It's messy, but yeah, it works."

Talking was…nice. Furiosa had never been loquacious by anyone's standards – she was a better listener, a better observer – but Max hummed in all the right silences and nodded along agreeably, and the time seemed to pass quicker than it would have in solitude. By the time she ran out of things to say she'd all but finished her work on the brace.

Max took his time inspecting the finished product once she offered it to him. She leant against the workbench while he turned it over in his hands, watching as he manoeuvred the joints experimentally, face impassive. Furiosa had thought she'd done a decent job, but hell, who knew what the Fool would think.

At last he looked up with a solemn expression. "It's better," he said, and nodded slowly. "Better than before."

That was a compliment and a half, she thought. "Try it on before you thank me."

She needn't have worried. The brace fit snug and comfortable, requiring only the slightest of adjustments. Max stood obediently still as she tightened the necessary joints, waiting for him to hum confirmation before she moved to the next correction, occasionally waving for him to take a few trial paces. Eventually he stepped back and cleared his throat. "Thank you."

Furiosa rose from her crouch and dusted off her knees, making a face at the sound of bones creaking. "Least I can do. Should've put a maker's mark on it. Get a name for myself."

She was pleasantly surprised when he huffed a laugh, a low, coarse sound that made her smile in return. "Don't have to worry about that."

"What?"

"Getting a name for yourself."

Furiosa grimaced. "Yeah." She'd overheard the nicknames, the titles assigned to her by the People. Boltcutter wasn't so bad. Lady Liberty was probably her least favourite. She tried to stamp them out wherever she heard them – all in all, they sounded too much like Immortan for her liking. She asked them to call her Furiosa, or commander, if they must. The War Boys called her boss like nothing had really changed.

A quick glance out the nearest window revealed the sun had well and truly set, and that they were, in fact, the last ones in the workshop.

"Hungry?" she asked Max.

He dipped his head, raising his eyebrows just the tiniest bit. Furiosa sighed in mock exasperation. Of course he was hungry. That wasn't a question you asked anyone in the wasteland.

Max walked beside her as she led them back up to the mess hall. He'd fall behind every so often, taking a moment to stare down at his brace and hum approvingly, before ambling to catch up. It wasn't until they were on the final flight of stairs that he spoke. "So…Lady Liberty."

Furiosa froze mid-step, narrowing her eyes at him. He looked very pleased with himself. "Where did you hear that?" He'd been in the Citadel for less than three days, and asleep for most of them as well.

Max shrugged. "The girls. They came to visit. Told me about, mm…" He gestured awkwardly at her.

The thought of the Sisters spending time with Max was a nice one. The thought of them gossiping about her was not. She was used to being talked about, behind her back or otherwise, but it was different with people she actually cared for. Who knew what the girls had told the Fool.

Then, to confirm her worries: "They, uh…said you almost punched the first War Boy who called you Immortan."

She tried to hide her smile in a glare and wasn't completely successful. Those damned blue eyes of his were laughing at her. "Yeah, well. I'll be having strong words with certain people tonight."

She shook her head and started up the stairs again, doing her best not to notice Max's grin.

Sorry for the wait! I started back at uni and the workload is already kicking me in the butt. As always, many many thanks to those who have commented or given kudos! I love and appreciate every single one of you.

On a slightly different note: I'll soon be starting another Mad Max fic (a dumb, self-indulgent domestic AU) so updates for 'A Way Back Home' might take a smidgeon longer than they have been. But! I have by no means forgotten this fic! I have a lot more planned c:

ALSO: I remember seeing the name 'Boltcutter' thrown around in regards to Furiosa, but I can't for the life of me remember WHERE. If it was you, just let me know and I will give you proper credit!