driftfleet | ∞ 007

[He quirks his eyebrow, working on shimmying on his other boot.]

If I needed, or you wanted?

[He knows Peggy well enough. Not a lot, of course, but enough that he can figure up that she's interested in it. Honestly, she does have a point, but he also believes that it really doesn't matter. It's black ink on skin. It's certainly invasive, certainly a grim reminder of his captivity. Of hanging upside down, getting drained of blood until he can hardly focus, and then to be dumped back into your cage weakly to recuperate for the next cancerous War Boy.

Though, he supposes there's nothing there but what the Citadel had guessed. Meaningless information. Maybe a mention of his blood type, maybe a medical examination. He remembers that section just as well. He hardly wants to recollect being stripped, fondled, and then dragged off to be stamped with the burn of Joe's reign. Wasn't pleasant. But regardless, the memories are the worst of it. The memory of the tattoo. The actual words inked there might as well be a shopping list in comparison.

Hm. He considers it.]

They're just words. You can read it. If you want.

[It really isn't anything. Not like a name, which she's used before.]

It could. Be good for me to know.

[Maybe. He doubts they figured out anything he didn't already know.]

Edited 2016-02-19 18:52 (UTC)

[ he has her dead to rights. dead to rights. and as she stands there, toothbrush in hand, she has to marvel at how the mostly monosyllabic man has read her so perfectly. she nearly smiles.

peggy understands his words as a foothold: a point of ingress, and she seizes upon it. ] Whoever did it to you -- why did they write it all upside down?

[ she doesn't ask him to turn so she can read them. doesn't ask him to do anything, really. she will even understand if he refuses to answer. ]

[It will be startlingly easy to answer.

Not because it wasn't traumatic, because it was. It's just... it's just normal. It's the Wasteland. He didn't have to explain these things to Furiosa and the Wives, because they knew. They knew what he had been used for, and they barely batted an eye, because it was all horrible. They were used for their bodies, in a way that is so unrelentingly invasive and grim. And Max, he had taken the war rig and left them behind to that fate again, because for him, at the time? Pain was common. What they were suffering, it was normal, it was being alive.

Everything hurts.

But he's tried to be better. Do better by them. Redemption, a piece at a time. A quiet offering to Angharad, who fell and died because he damaged the leg of Joe's favorite. He never meant for anyone to die. He had simply wanted to be left alone. Get away. He is sorry for that.

He hums, breaking out of that dark line of thought. Turns his body just slightly toward her. He won't turn his back completely to her, but enough. That's worth something.]

Blood rushes to the head. Bloodbags transfuse faster upside down. Mm, um. Leaves the vein much quicker.

[To a person at random, that would sound fragmented, but she can probably whip up a story behind it.

The biggest font O-PLUS HIGH OCTANE UNIVERSAL DONOR on the upside down smatter of words also helps, of course.]

[ the explanation isn't instantaneous. indeed, she appears confused for the first few heartbeats. eyes blinking, and mouth stern. what on earth is he prattling on about? blood. bloodbags. and then she has to flip her own thinking on its head to understand the dark function behind an upside down tattoo. it's barely a tattoo at all; it's a label. like a bit of faint letting slapped onto rations packets.

peggy schools herself. she doesn't allow her horror to show. why should she alienate him any further? bloodbags -- something rises in her throat, and she sets her toothbrush aside. it's abandoned. thoughtless. ]

O-positive. [ a murmur. isolate psychotic. keep muzzled. she raises her palm, but before she gathers enough courage to approach him that same palm falls to her side and forms a fist. ] You were used. Someone used you, didn't they?

[ for blood. for -- something else, perhaps. she can't quite read between every line of this conversation. but she's beginning to understand why he walks around in a fog of shellshock. why he's so eager to protect what little freedom he has. ]

O-negative, actually. 'Plus', unleaded guzzoline for the body. Hi-octane crazy blood.

[Echoed Nux's words, from the room he was hung up in. It's just a mild correction for a bizarre world. She might as well just shrug that off, because the Wasteland is a weird place that is better off not said.]

Supposedly universal.

[He's very calm and casual about it, at least. He's a prime example of what you turn into, in the radioactive deserts he calls home. If she saw the citadel, the disgusting tunnels full of sick and death and kamekrazy War Boys, she might understand. If she knew what the great terrible Immortan did to people like him... like the Wives... she'd know. Everyone has a purpose. A use. Most unwilling.]

Everyone uses people, out there. Blood is a commodity. Health locked up, leeched. Spread thin. The needle goes here. [He calmly taps a finger to his neck, where there are a few shiny patches. Puncture wounds for a large needle.] Blood drains. Rinse, repeat. Use until too weak. Recycle the body.

[He was never sure where the dead, shriveled up bags go.

Maybe fed to the populace. Cannibals were not a shortage. You use a whole dingo, you use a whole horse. You eat a body if you're shriveling up, yourself. From the way he says it, it's as natural as deer hunting, or maybe just visiting a doctor for your shots. Natural order of the Citadel. Horrors that nobody blinks at. The Wives knew of better things. The War Boys grew into that life, ready to die glorious, because that was the best case scenario in their minds. Exploding to bits and rising to Valhalla.

... Max just wishes they wouldn't waste bloodbag blood, bursting into bloody chunks.

Though... he has to hope Furiosa and the girls will change that way of life.]

[ positive. negative. plus. minus. in the end, she suppose it doesn't much matter. blood-type doesn't change the sickening twist of what he now barely tried to explain to her. words that make so much sense to him, but which are hard for a woman of her time and place to understand. the closest she can come to unlocking such behaviour is the dim understanding of what had happened in the nazi death-camps. peggy hadn't been privy to those operations; however, the stories remained both potent and lurid.

instead, she'd been tasked with disassembling hydra bases. werner rienhardt comes to mind. peggy still has nightmares with the same shadows and shapes as the film-reels she'd recovered documenting that man's work -- the bodies left in his wake, and the girl he's kept caged. in the end, there is this trickle of evil that persists within humanity. and when she looks at max, she sees the after-effects of a world where that trickle has turned into a waterfall.

she watches his neck. and then she watches his eyes. ] But you escaped.

[ peggy isn't asking a question. she's making a guess. max is hollowed out, but he isn't drained. he isn't recycled. he isn't weak by most accounts. he survived, somehow. and she wants to focus on that thin sliver of survival instead of wading through the muck of his pain and personal sentiment. ]

[Hmph. He looks unimpressed.]

Mr. Survivalist, right. [Dry humor. His usual brand of poison.] They rigged me to their car. Hmm... Express blood. Chased someone smarter than them, then we crashed in a sandstorm. Their car versus a War Rig.

[He holds up a hand, makes an exploding motion.

Ka-boom, he can hear the old Keeper of Seeds say eagerly.

He somehow survived extremely improbable odds.]

[ express blood. like a front-line ambulance, carting what was needed to the men who most needed it. but never in such a barbaric fashion. peggy doesn't bother to hide the disgust she feels when confronted with such a notion. ]

Bleak, all the same. [ her nose crinkled. ] Damned bloody bleak.

[He's hardly fazed, personally, but he gets it. Not many deal with his type of world.

That's why it's the bad end, right?

He begins the task of bending forward again and pulling his knee brace onto his leg, which bends a bit stiffly for him. Thank god for the new support; the old one he had was such a pain in the ass to strap into. Too old and weathered, with a ton of frustrating buckles. that are worn down.]

That's home.

[It's all many know. He watches the full collapse of humanity from a dystopia to a complete meltdown of all obligations to carry on with humility.]

Y'born there, you're raised to know someday, your life will be ruined. And there is nothing you can do to stop it. [He tugs at the brace straps.] Better to, ahm... go numb, or you'll turn into a psychotic.

Is that how you feel? [ quick. incisive. her question is like a cutting scalpel: straight to the point. ] Numb?

[Max snorts (a cynical, grim laugh?), a smile ghosting his face. It would be a hell of an achievement, for Peggy to pull one -- because it's never easy -- but that may be soured by the topic on his tongue.]

I didn't go numb. I turned.

[Into a crazy. A loon. A criminally insane. He knows the top -- Ah. Bottom. Bottom of the tattoo. It labels him just fine. He's a psychotic, always has been. He doesn't try to find a better, fairer way of labeling it, because he hardly is one to deserve "fairness".]

M'a warning sign.

You're more than that.

[ she won't go so far as to baby him -- to explain that a warning sign is as much a beacon as anything else. because, in the end, those words are hopelessly hopeful. and peggy isn't in the business of peddling false silver linings. ]

I read the words. [ why not admit it? he might as well already know she did. ] Sounds as though you fought back against your situation. Tyrants and bullies always want to make warning signs out of their hardiest, most stubborn captives.

[Oh Peggy. He's still trying to get used to being more than that. He rubs the back of his neck, feeling the Citadel's brand there. It's surprising how much of an imprint that place left on him. How it'll always be a part of him, too literally. A new addition to the random shiny patches of scarring here and there across his body. A reminder of how much violence he's seen. For every cut on him, he had cut them right back.

He licks his lips, smacks them thoughtfully. He's a wordless creature sometimes. Not sure what to say, how to refute things in a way that she'll completely understand. He can't expect her to. She's a warrior, but not the same kind. Similar breed, but still too good for the desert wastelands. If she had wandered into the Buzzard's dwellings, smelled the cooked flesh of human beings, saw the rot radioactivity caused on skin, maybe she'd understand. Maybe if she'd been strung up and shocked into submission, used for her body (for blood, or a sacrifice — he doesn't allow himself to think about the Wives, because then he starts to feel a little guilty, but Angharad's ghost is reminder enough), but these are things he wouldn't wish on anyone. Even he's too nice for his own good in that place, even if he doesn't actually consider that fact.

He gives her an assessing, silent look from where he sits.

Then he rises to his feet and tugs his shirt on over his head.]

Was prone to biting off their ears. And, hm. Fingers.

..........

It's not like you need all of them.

Edited (i'm so picky shh) 2016-02-26 09:44 (UTC)

Good.

[ her answer is mercenary. she takes no delight in her approval, but nor is she horrified by what max admits. he took their ears and he took their fingers -- but they took more: life-blood and liberty and humanity. perhaps two wrongs did not add up to a righteous direction, but peggy's never been above retribution. there are lines to be drawn, but resisting evil has nothing to do with those lines. ]

And I hope it made them think twice before they touched you next. Those words -- the last ones? They're not just a warning. They're a bloody badge.

[Snort. He's not a cop anymore. Doesn't have badges to wear.

He turns his attention down as he buckles his leg back into the brace; he bends the joint back and forth, the slightest of pained lines in his face from forcing it to move. His own brand of physical therapy. If he doesn't bend it enough, it gets stiff, aching. One of the reasons he was in here in the first place was to administer Ino's medicine and to sit in warm water. Not a usual commodity back home, but now it's so much easier to alleviate the sharp aching.

Once again he is surprised at how much easier existence here is.

... And how it makes it so difficult for him, sometimes.]

Just don't collect your own. Not worth it.

Oh, I have them. [ soft -- and (yes) perhaps a little coy. because she's comfortable with max, however uncomfortable he may be with her. ] You just can't see them.

[ there are scars under her prim clothing. no ink, however. and many more of her badges are worn internally. ]

[He considers that for a moment. Understood. He'll remember, even if things get foggy. She has the scars, too; there are levels of experience that make differences to Max. He glances toward her in curiosity, but then the sliver of normal human interaction he has left reminds him it's not exactly normal to look toward a woman's figure, so he's just as quick to glance away with a soft sound through his nose and a slight pull to the corner of his lip, neither up or down, a sort of apologetic wince that goes unspoken.

He had tried not to look at Angharad's body for different reasons entirely. Well, one being he was in a fog of delusional panic; the other being that, once his head cleared and his bones settled in the rig, he didn't want to think of a baby. He didn't want to imagine.

Joke was on him. The baby went under the wheels. He faced it all over again.

A silent, stilted moment passes where Max stares bleakly at the wall.

It's too easy, for him to get lost in his own head.]

[But today is not one of those days to be quiet and careful around him.

He blinks and glances back over, blue-gray eyes open and alert, eyebrows raised, scraping his nails over the back of his head and through his hair, which is getting progressively more untamed just about anywhere on his scalp. He's still working out the perks of trimming it, really.]

Still should avoid them. Guessing you're like Ahsoka.

[He hums, clarifies, wagging his finger as he hobbles.

Suspiciously like a grumpy old man, minus the actual age part.]

Playing hero. Old-fashioned notion, bad for your health. Don't recommend it.

[ oh, no you don't. you curmudgeon beyond your years. peggy nearly grabs hold of him, but instead she slots herself smoothly between max and the doorway. ]

I beg your pardon. I don't play at anything -- least of all hero. [ it's a dirty lie, but no one who could refute it is currently present. ] I served with heroes, but that particular gleam never rubbed off on me. My badges aren't the sort you get to wear on the parade ground.

[ no one lauds the spy. no one thanks the asset. ]

[He stares at her for a moment, unimpressed.]

Hmm. Don't think you see that you do. You would be the hero of the story.

[WOW MAX

But he motions at her, points really, but it's not so much an impolite thing with Max as it is him using his hands with his words, because for some reason when he uses his hands it all comes to him so much easier.]

You don't like bullies, remember?

You wouldn't be able to help yourself.

[He might look a bit humored. Maybe.]

[ she ought to be touched, really. she ought to be damned chuffed that anyone should give her half-as-much credit as all that -- especially after the dearth of recognition she'd received over the last year with the s.s.r.

indeed, max's words twist in her chest like a knife: potent, and stinging. it leads her to speak out of turn, ] Someone ought to tell that to the damned fools I work with.

[ her words give way to an exasperated sigh. and then a clenched fist. she's made an ass of herself. there's colour in her cheeks. chagrined by her own internal monologue, she retreats from his path. ]

[Peggy may be chargrined, but Max just looks befuddled. Really, he has no clue what to do with the reaction, but then, that's usually how things end up for him. People react a way that throws him for a loop - like Furiosa teasing and mocking him with a nickname not long after she had tried with all her might to murder him. Maybe he's a decent reader of character, but it's times like this that he knows he's been too far from casual interaction with people to truly understand how to fit proper. Like a squared peg in a round hole, as they say.

So he just stares at her with eyes slightly wide and confused, eyebrows raised high on his forehead.

uhmmm

hmmmm

ahmmmmhmmmmmmmmm]

[ -- Hey, he's a 'fool', that's rude.

Anyway.]

Drop them in a pitfall?

[I offered advice, I solved this issue.]

[ her laughter is brittle and buried beneath her breath. peggy's chin dips -- and she's almost grateful that he should be so chivalrous in his response. he makes no grand deal out of her discomfort, and that gives her the strength to carry on gracefully. ]

Some days? I wish. [ okay. sorta gracefully. ] Alas, that almost amounts to treason in my line of work.

[ a little more honest. a little more talkative. he deserves to know. ]

[Ehem.]

But only almost treason.

Edited 2016-02-29 20:17 (UTC)

∞ 007

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