driftfleet | OTA | recovering from a pitfall (and being stuck with you-know-who)

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max rockatansky

OTA | recovering from a pitfall (and being stuck with you-know-who)

Who: Max Rockantansky and you!
Broadcast: N/A; action only
Action: Just a quick Starstruck log for Max!
When: April 1st and the few days after that.

Max eventually gets back to the Starstruck after his tumble into the mines -- and Beverly's hesitantly accepted medical assistance. But his brace is broken and he's been put on... temporary bedrest. Sort of. Kind of. Look, he has at least agreed to use the crutch until he could get his brace back in order, okay? And yes, Beverly will probably have follow-ups for his leg. He's not willing at all to do anything invasive with it, but... he's listening. More than he has before. There's a plus, right there, to having spent two days down in a toxic mine shaft with no mask and a gimp leg. He sleeps a little bit, but even after all that's happened, he's restless and quick to get back up on his feet.

He hadn't let anyone treat his other injuries, but they were much more minor. His the forehead gash under a bandage needs to be stitched. He's got bruises the size of fists on his torso from his miserable tumbling. And goddamn, he is tired. He stops by in the bathroom of the Starstruck and slowly pulls off his shirt with a pained grunt, revealing the sad patchwork of scrapes and purple mottled shapes. Ramse had been nice enough to get him heat pads -- he's slowly administering them to his shoulders and ribs. He can't reach the marks on his back, intermingled with black ink, but it's a start.

Once he treats himself (or potentially gets help, because lbr, he's sick as a dog), he's quick to hobble himself into the cargo bay despite said nausea and spreads out a collection of scrap metal, bolts, straps, and welding equipment. He can be found repairing his knee brace there with Rock under his leg, propped up on the dog's shoulder blades as Rock slumbers. He looks tired as hell, but at least he's not going off all over the planet like he had at the ice one.

Apparently he's pretty good with a welding gun; the end result is something a bit like this, mish-mashed between Tadashi's and his own slight modifications. It's functional, will keep the knee steady. Feel free to say hello while he's focused; we all love to interrupt him while he's busy, right? Or maybe you'll find him sitting in a chair, cycling through Rock's many dog talents: sit, lay down, speak, stay. He seems a bit less restless compared to the other times he's been confined here, but then maybe he's just really, really glad to not be stuck in a goddamn tunnel. Or maybe there's a tension eased there thanks to Beverly managing to treat him without anything horrible happening this time. Either way, a sick and limited Max busy with his usual routine is a contented one.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Certainly, it may take him a while. And certainly, it may hurt. Peggy isn't frigid to that understanding -- and her heartstrings are tugged. But in the end, it's better to let him suffer through one chore than to baby him through both. It's a wide leap for the pair of them that she should even stitch his wounds. Why risk one foothold by demanding another?

While he's taking his time, Peggy makes the most of hers. She keeps her work area as sterile as possible. It's a far better workspace than the European front. Less dirt. Less blood to begin with. And when she threads the needle, it's with an old skill she'd feared she'd lost since the war. But basic training floods back to her fingertips with little prompting.

Max returns in, as expected, an extended time -- but he has at least done his damnedest to be fast on his foot despite that. He's broken out into a bit of a cold sweat but he puts the chair down triumphantly (or, well, triumphantly to someone out there watching) between the two of them and plops down in it without any grace whatsoever. It's the way of Max.

He looks up to her as he likely prepares, and there's no tension or suspicion in it, just a quiet expectation that she'll do what she's said she will. It's not the same -- not like the tooth. It's not some strange metal contraption in his mouth, yanking and tearing. It's just a simple head wound, albeit ugly. Might scar a little, but it's just -- stitches. And this is just Peggy. It's not a problem. If he's gotten far enough to let Beverly treat his leg, he's certainly shot past this.

"Sit," she greets him with this single word. But then it feels too reminiscent of the mutt who, having predictably perked up when Max was making his burdensome journey across the ship with one chair in tow, had followed him here and now promptly sits at Peggy's command. Whoops. She clears her throat, " please," she tries again. "Have a seat."

Sitting heavy-limbed in the chair, he raises an eyebrow at her.

Dryly, he replies, "Gonna ask me to roll over next?"

... What, it's funny.

"Depends," she answers in a light-hearted voice, "would you do it?"

Peggy doesn't often touch Max. Apart from what's necessary and a handful of tense moments, they respect each others' personal space. But with a mission in mind, she wastes no time in tucking a bent finger beneath his chin -- something of a lever by which she might move and adjust the angle of his head. All the better to examine his cut, it would seem.

"If I get to sleep mid-roll."

He flinches under her touch, but it's mild, and he looks patient though unwilling to look at her directly while she works. He's always had a hard enough time with eye contact, but... it's even more difficult when it's this close, this intimate. And for someone like Max, her sewing up a wound is a very, very heavy task allowed. Especially on the heels of him hurting someone at this proximity. But it's also important to remember just how long it's been since someone has touched him with the same breed of kindness. Even on the Fury Road, Furiosa and the wives had never laid their hands on him in any way like this. That's not how it worked.

The wound is an ugly mark. He'll be extremely fortunate if it heals clean.

... Then again, Max is an extremely good healer, as the tattoo suggests.

He holds his breath.

"We should only be so lucky," she chirps dryly. Lucky to sleep at all -- but perhaps that's an old and outdated sentiment. After all, Peggy sleeps plenty. There's nothing to disturb her sleep quite like back home -- nothing except dreams, and those are often more bittersweet than disturbing. She does her level best not to show how devastated she still feels in the wake of both Jim and Steve's departures. Peggy smiles more. She snaps less. But the tension never leaves her brow -- not even now, as she dabs gently at Max's wound with a clean and warm and wet cloth.

Max waits patiently with his hands in his lap.

And he wonders why that is, why he's comfortable like this. With someone hovering over him, taller, capable of hurting him faster than he can likely hurt her if the thought crosses her mind -- wonders just when he learned to sit still under anyone's careful hand. But even more... to sit without a nagging concern.

He's eerily comfortable.

Because he trusts her.

The realization is a startling one, but one silently had. He tucks it away to be confused at for much time to come. Because Furiosa had been, he'd thought, the only one he could actually rely on. Peggy was Peggy, and she was handy for plans, for considering potential threats. For understanding that sort of important paranoia that many people -- civilians, to her -- would lack, safe and relatively sound, until something bad happens and they realize they're not prepared at all.

He barely knows her, though. And she barely knows him. And yet they have a pretty good picture of the other's lives nonetheless. She reads him well, and he reads her well. What that means, he's not sure. But one thing he does know is that it bothers him a little. The same way taking ownership of Rock did.

Ah, well. She's got him just as easily as Furiosa did, the day she named him Fool.

It's no good.

He closes his eyes and sighs softly in some semblance of peace, relaxing.

"... Mm, thanks. For the help."

Peggy supposes she could thank him for the mere concession of accepting her help. But perhaps that would underline too thick a score beneath the action, and spook him straight back into himself. So, instead, she offers a mild hum of acknowledgement and exchanges a bloodied rag for her thread and sanitized needle.

"No anesthetic," she comments. It isn't a warning. Peggy rather doubts Max cares either way, so long as the work gets done promptly and without undue fussing. And yet she feels duty-bound to announce its absence all the same, because the procedure will hurt. Perhaps not as badly as the injury of origin, but it'll hurt all the same.

She has to stand nearer, now. Abdomen against his shoulder and elbow canted against the chair's back. Peggy tosses her head to bounce a curl of hair out of her vision. "Ready?"

He gives her a nod.

And when she begins working, he hardly gives any sign of discomfort — a slight twitch of his brow upon the first pass of the needle, but then a calmness settles over the scene. Truth be told, Max's pain tolerance is impressive; he's had his fair share of wounds, his fair share of aches and pains. Even as she works, he's seemed to slip into a distant sort of thought, unperturbed. Up close, there are the usual telltale signs of life in the desert — faint scars in his hairline, the occasional patch of spotty hair where it does terribly growing back in. There's a round, faint scar above an eyebrow, small and pockish. Under his right eye, a crescent-shaped scar. Little signs of fight. On his neck, the raised scars from the needles, or the knife scar on his shoulder. Close-calls. And so on.

His stare shifts to the side, upward, landing on her wrist, then her face. She was probably a baby, when he started acquiring his injuries. It's weird to think of that. He isn't sure exactly how long he's been drifting, but he knows she would have been a little sprog for sure. Maybe just beginning school. She seemed older than the Dag or Toast, but now that he thinks about it... He almost tries to figure out how his son would be, if he lived. How he'd be around their ages. He doesn't want to think about it long, but it's a niggling thought.

Yeah he's staring at you, what of it.

You're too busy working, okay, it's fine.

Each stitch is steady. Neat. Oh, they are no nurse's perfect work. Peggy imagine's Daniel Sousa's soon-to-be fiancee has prettier stitches than hers. And with reason, for she's a nurse and Peggy's only got field training under her belt. But many stitches had been called for during the war. She works now with that same old staid hand. Necessity trumps niceness, although she's as gentle as she can afford to be.

Now and then, her eyes flicker down to his. He has been watching her -- and it hasn't escaped her notice. Peggy isn't a self-conscious creature, but she can't help but stand a little taller and make her shoulder a little more square. Her thumb feels warm on the apex of his cheek. She braces her first finger against the bridge of his nose, holding him still while she needles.

About three-quarters through, she pauses to relieve the tight breathlessness in her chest. Peggy asks: "Penny for your thoughts?"

Max had found pennies, once. In an old tin box someone had kept in their small dwelling, before raiders had stormed through and killed them, took everything but that. Useless little things on their own. He remembers one-cent coins jingling in his pockets before, long time ago, a bunch of queens rattling around together. It was a long, long time ago; he gets into moods where he remembers too much, even though he tries to leave the past in itself.

He glances away quickly enough, though, humming deep in his chest.

Even Max is aware that most of the replies he could give are probably creepy.

'Just reminded I'm an old man.'

'You're really young.'

'You act older than you are.'

'You're so serious at stitching, it's funny to watch.'

Yeah, no, they all sound awful. He'd have been scolded at one point in his life for that. But the alternative - telling her something as terrible as 'Sometimes I wonder who my son would be now', that's far worse. He can feel his inner compulsion to curl into a shell and hide like a sad old fossilized hermit, just remembering. He purses his lips, at a crossroads.

"Ahm..." Also, unhelpful. Unhelpful response. He blinks up at her. Glances sideways at the thumb in the corner of his vision. The finger on his nose. Huh. "Very hands-on."

nailed it

Her laughter hides in the back of her throat. A half-nasal noise, arch and somehow distanced from the conversation. Peggy gives his head a gentle wobble -- like proving the mastery she possesses over its angle, its position, and its stillness. She doesn't mean to rub it into his face that she has power in this moment, but that underpinned understanding can't be avoided. Peggy controls this moment because she needs that control -- need to springboard off it in order to patch him up just so.

"Would you prefer a sloppy stitch? It's bound to scar like the rest of you -- but I'll be damned if it doesn't scar neatly." However strict and steeled her voice sounds, there's a humour lurking in its syllables. Or perhaps it presents itself more in what she doesn't do. Peggy doesn't retreat; she doesn't relinquish what control she's taken, because they both know deep down that (for now) it's for the best.

She starts in on the last few stitches. "Besides," she breathes these words more than she speaks them, "you're lot bloody easier to get a grip on -- I imagine -- with that beard gone. Might as well make hay while the sun shines."

Peggy gives in and smiles -- but stops herself just short of falling back on the old woman's endearing little nickname for him. Now's not a moment for nicknames.

His head wobbles freely under her palm, and he pinches one eye closed, grumbling like an old man complains -- not much real effort behind it, but a sort of huff that's required at this point in his life. And the complaint that follows is just as ridiculous coming from the somewhat youthful, sturdy fella she's got underhand.

"M'too old to worry about scarring now," he says, and boy if it makes him sound like he's in the final stretch of his life; a bit bleak, but also surprisingly funny in tone. Like really, Max, you're only in your forties. And yet, that's so old. It really is, you know. "Nowadays, young lumps running around think scars are as important as fingers. I don't get it."

I don't get the youth these days.

"Young lumps! Christ. What does that make you? Methuselah? I hope you're not calling me a young lump. Do recall who has who's face underhand, old stone."

Young lump, indeed. But Peggy is laughing, so it can't be all that horrible. Indeed, she hasn't laughed this properly since before allies started dropping like flies.

He seems completely undaunted by the fact that she's got him in a precarious position (those nails are scarily sharp, though, he has to admit). Instead he considers her reply with the utmost seriousness.

"... Methuselah is a mouthful."

But since you're the one bringing it up now--

"But you are pretty young. You were probably a baby chick when I started work--" He pauses. Ah. Well. He clears his throat, figuring it doesn't matter. Right? He's told someone before he was a cop. It's not... anything... "When I was a driver. You were probably this tall. I'm betting."

He makes a motion, a shorter height befitting a child.

He started life as a cop early, granted. It was the way of things.

She tugs the last stitch through his skin -- and then busies herself with the work of knotting it before it's cut.

"Depends entirely on your yardstick, I'm afraid. When you started work I was likely long dead. 1947, remember?"

Provided their world is even one and the same -- which she rather hopes it isn't.

He shrugs, and there's a clear smile forming at the edges of his mouth, however thin.

"My yardstick is the fleet."

(You're a baby chick, deal with it, Peggy.)

He's quiet for a long moment as she cleans up, thumbing the tender area around his stitching. His hands are clean, so it shouldn't be a problem. After that pause: "All the days blend together; aren't much different from each other." He talks casually, though, despite the topic. "People tend to count in them, in a lot of places. Days."

He nods over his shoulder.

"They did, anyway. Has a count on the tattoo. Could be the days since he took power."

Nobody knows his age, and he hardly knows it himself.

For a moment, conversation is drowned out by running water. Peggy washes her hands -- small, quick motions. Only a small wellspring of fresh blood had sprung, but she's fastidious in washing it off her fingers. Out from under her fingernails. The faucet, and the end of its water stream, punctuates her reply. The sudden silence creates a vacuum, cleaned and prepped for her words.

"Calendars are obsolete?" Somehow, she isn't surprised. "Suppose it felt a little like that during the war. We counted days since the beginning -- less the actual months."

She offers him an adhesive bandage. This part, he may do for himself.

"Did you ever count the days?"

He accepts the offering and begins to bandage the injury; it's slow and shaky, his body protesting every new motion, but he's forced his way through worse scenarios. As she asks the question the strip's been applied, covering the wound. He shakes his head grimly after, despite the miniature assault it does on his vision.

"No. Not often. If I needed to remember to get from one place to another..."

He snakes his hand through the air, though the motion is heavy with weariness.

"Hours and minutes... often pointless. You have night and day. S'all you need."

"All you need, maybe. Some of us need a great deal more."

Peggy might never admit to counting certain days. Days since losing Steve. Days since her brother's death. Days since that bizarre adventure in Russia.

"Some work requires precision. Forget hours and minutes -- I like to work in seconds."

He gives her a side glance, something mischievous and teasing in the way he looks.

He's having a good day, despite the pain. A good mental day.

"How ever do you do it."

"I would remind myself that should I fail to meet my goals down to the very second -- well, then I risked not only my own neck but also the necks of countless soldiers whose efforts might depend upon the intelligence I was sent to sniff out."

What use is there in hiding her work, now? Least of all with Max. She isn't certain he understood precisely what she did -- although she'd dropped the word 'soldier' often enough, 'spy' is a trickier thing.

"It's all about margins of error. Mine have always been narrow."

"Mm. I was... A cop."

He admits it in a quieted voice, gentle even. It's not something he talks about often. But then again, it wasn't often he talked until these passed few months. He feels like he's been here an eternity, with these walls and this bathroom and this crew. Nothing changes but everything did.

He glances to the side. What an interesting piece of work this wall is, huh? But he wanted to be equal in this exchange. Tit for tat. She offers, he does, however barebones his reply.

"I was supposed to count the seconds, once. There were..." He licks his lips. His stomach churns, but he's not sure if it's the illness or the topic that causes it. He pays it no attention. "... margins of error."

"You? An officer of the law?"

Peggy smiles to herself as she reassembles the aid kit. A place for everything and everything in its place. As she sorts this out, she lets the idea roll around in her head. Perhaps any true rule of law or sense of justice has long since deteriorated in the way Max sees the world, but now that she considers his existence in light of this new information? Yes, she supposes she can see the hollowed out indentations where justice used to be. Even in defense of his heroics, he spoke of fair trades. Of deaths avoided.

With a gentle click, she closes the kit. And when she turns to face him, her expression is nigh inscrutable.

"I suppose I could see that being the case. Provided I squinted while looking at you."

OTA | recovering from a pitfall (and being stuck with you-know-who)

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