Nux (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
gonnadiehistoric) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
ya_assemble2015-06-01 07:30 pm
gonnadiehistoric) wrote in ya_assemble2015-06-01 07:30 pm
Entry tags:
Witness [tons of spoilers]
Nux wasn't sure he believed in Valhalla anymore. After all, Valhalla was supposed to be the place where Warboys walked eternal with Immortan Joe, where they lived with the heroes of old.
But Nux had learned the truth from the Wives - from Capable. He'd realized how wrong he'd been about Immortan Joe. He'd found better heroes in Furiosa - and even the road warrior, nameless and muttering and mad but willing to help them as best as he could - and even in The Vulvalini, who had been outnumbered but fearless, all of them willing to fight to make a better world out of the mire of despair Joe kept them all in. They had wanted to build and protect and stop wasting those that lived in the Wasteland that was their world.
And the man he thought was his god, his redeemer, had died just like that, died like he was any other man. Nux had already mostly believed the wives - and cared enough about them, about Capable, to silence what doubts he had left. He'd mostly understood everything Joe had done was wrong, but for him to die, hearing Cheedo yell it out, cemented it in his mind with a finality that could not be denied.
Immortan Joe was not immortal. Immortan Joe was not his savior, he was mad lunatic that treated people like things - Nux included. Just a thing to be used, just a thing to fight for him, die for him. It had made it so much easier to die for Capable, for the Wives, for the Vulvalini, for the road warrior and Furiosa. And also for the wretches of Citadel, for the milk mothers, and the War pups, and the Warboys sick and at the end of their half life that deserved a better end than dying for nothing at all.
They would make it better. He believed it. The Wives and Furiosa and the surviving Vulvalini - and the road warrior, if he stayed. They were better than Immortan Joe would ever be. They were hope.
He was hope. That was what he could give the last of his life for, a much better death, a much shinier death than any way he could've died for Immortan Joe.
So, when it was clear he wasn't escaping Rictus, when it was clear the only way to block the pass was to crash it all, he had whispered for Capable to witness him and he had seen her hand move, the gesture of mourning for the Vulvalini, like she was taking him forever into her heart - and what better witness could he ask for than Capable? Then he had wrenched the wheel to the side as hard as he could, felt the war rig veer and lurch and then...and then ...
Then he had wound up here, wherever here was. And he felt so...good. Barry and Larry were there but they weren't chewing at his windpipe and he felt like he'd never have another night fever again. He felt good, like a full life.
That was why Nux wondered if Valhalla had ever been real at all. Because he knew he had to be dead and clearly he was somewhere, somewhere where the sickness in his bones had lost its hold. But there were no gates waiting to open for him, like the grills of a pursuit car, shiny and chrome. There were no heroes of old. And he already knew Immortan Joe was a liar. Someone who cared more about the hurting and the owning, not protecting, growing, helping.
This place looked like a place from the before times. Streets all paved and unbroken, buildings intact, lectric lights shiny and bright. There was more green than he'd ever seen in one place, in patches nearby (parks, though he didn't know the word), and green stretching off into the distance (forests) outside the place, the - he had no word for the cluster of buildings and streets. City? Town? He knew there were many old words for places like this and knew a few of them but didn't know enough to tell them apart. The cars were plain and un-salvaged, and sometimes new. Maybe that was what really came after death, a place like the before times, an unbroken, unblemished paradise.
He saw a woman walking down the street, holding her child's hand - a child that was unblemished, without tumors or growths, no deformities, perfect in every way - and called out to her.
"Where am I? What is this place?" he asked plaintively. "Am I arrived in Valhalla?"
But she didn't see him, she didn't hear him, she and her perfect child walked right through him, with the feeling of cold mist, like the cool, moist air in the muddy place with the crows, a place that was pure deadness.
He fell to his knees, and he despaired, oh, he despaired. He was ruin, he was beyond redemption. That was the way of it, wasn't it - he had warred and killed and broken because of Joe's word and maybe he hadn't done enough to find that redemption the road warrior and Furiosa had spoken of. Maybe his death hadn't been enough.
"It was my fault. I know!" he cried out to whatever, whoever, had damned him, cast him to this place. "We should have been dying for the protecting. The Wives asked who was to blame and it was all of us, Joe and us listening to Joe. I know. But I did what I could. That was shine, what I did - isn't that enough?"
There was no answer.
Who broke the world? Men like Joe and the people who helped him did. Maybe the stain was too great for what he did at the pass to wash it away. Even if there was a Valhalla, this wasn't it. This place wasn't warm welcomes by dead brothers, and feasting with heroes, this was an empty place, a place where he was even smaller and less important than back home. It was a place of cold mist and loneliness.
And darkness. Shadows lengthening, turning into monsters, living nightmares, with claws and teeth. Shadows and enemies in the dark that had him breaking a car window, hotwiring a car, and revving away on a merry chase.
Those that came after him to bring him to the Pole at Manny's behest would find themselves in a high speed chase on the highways outside of Burgess that led into the mountains, a trail of police cars full of mystified police officers on his tail - followed by a mass of fearlings the police officers couldn't see.
You had to give the new guy credit: he sure knew how to make an entrance.
But Nux had learned the truth from the Wives - from Capable. He'd realized how wrong he'd been about Immortan Joe. He'd found better heroes in Furiosa - and even the road warrior, nameless and muttering and mad but willing to help them as best as he could - and even in The Vulvalini, who had been outnumbered but fearless, all of them willing to fight to make a better world out of the mire of despair Joe kept them all in. They had wanted to build and protect and stop wasting those that lived in the Wasteland that was their world.
And the man he thought was his god, his redeemer, had died just like that, died like he was any other man. Nux had already mostly believed the wives - and cared enough about them, about Capable, to silence what doubts he had left. He'd mostly understood everything Joe had done was wrong, but for him to die, hearing Cheedo yell it out, cemented it in his mind with a finality that could not be denied.
Immortan Joe was not immortal. Immortan Joe was not his savior, he was mad lunatic that treated people like things - Nux included. Just a thing to be used, just a thing to fight for him, die for him. It had made it so much easier to die for Capable, for the Wives, for the Vulvalini, for the road warrior and Furiosa. And also for the wretches of Citadel, for the milk mothers, and the War pups, and the Warboys sick and at the end of their half life that deserved a better end than dying for nothing at all.
They would make it better. He believed it. The Wives and Furiosa and the surviving Vulvalini - and the road warrior, if he stayed. They were better than Immortan Joe would ever be. They were hope.
He was hope. That was what he could give the last of his life for, a much better death, a much shinier death than any way he could've died for Immortan Joe.
So, when it was clear he wasn't escaping Rictus, when it was clear the only way to block the pass was to crash it all, he had whispered for Capable to witness him and he had seen her hand move, the gesture of mourning for the Vulvalini, like she was taking him forever into her heart - and what better witness could he ask for than Capable? Then he had wrenched the wheel to the side as hard as he could, felt the war rig veer and lurch and then...and then ...
Then he had wound up here, wherever here was. And he felt so...good. Barry and Larry were there but they weren't chewing at his windpipe and he felt like he'd never have another night fever again. He felt good, like a full life.
That was why Nux wondered if Valhalla had ever been real at all. Because he knew he had to be dead and clearly he was somewhere, somewhere where the sickness in his bones had lost its hold. But there were no gates waiting to open for him, like the grills of a pursuit car, shiny and chrome. There were no heroes of old. And he already knew Immortan Joe was a liar. Someone who cared more about the hurting and the owning, not protecting, growing, helping.
This place looked like a place from the before times. Streets all paved and unbroken, buildings intact, lectric lights shiny and bright. There was more green than he'd ever seen in one place, in patches nearby (parks, though he didn't know the word), and green stretching off into the distance (forests) outside the place, the - he had no word for the cluster of buildings and streets. City? Town? He knew there were many old words for places like this and knew a few of them but didn't know enough to tell them apart. The cars were plain and un-salvaged, and sometimes new. Maybe that was what really came after death, a place like the before times, an unbroken, unblemished paradise.
He saw a woman walking down the street, holding her child's hand - a child that was unblemished, without tumors or growths, no deformities, perfect in every way - and called out to her.
"Where am I? What is this place?" he asked plaintively. "Am I arrived in Valhalla?"
But she didn't see him, she didn't hear him, she and her perfect child walked right through him, with the feeling of cold mist, like the cool, moist air in the muddy place with the crows, a place that was pure deadness.
He fell to his knees, and he despaired, oh, he despaired. He was ruin, he was beyond redemption. That was the way of it, wasn't it - he had warred and killed and broken because of Joe's word and maybe he hadn't done enough to find that redemption the road warrior and Furiosa had spoken of. Maybe his death hadn't been enough.
"It was my fault. I know!" he cried out to whatever, whoever, had damned him, cast him to this place. "We should have been dying for the protecting. The Wives asked who was to blame and it was all of us, Joe and us listening to Joe. I know. But I did what I could. That was shine, what I did - isn't that enough?"
There was no answer.
Who broke the world? Men like Joe and the people who helped him did. Maybe the stain was too great for what he did at the pass to wash it away. Even if there was a Valhalla, this wasn't it. This place wasn't warm welcomes by dead brothers, and feasting with heroes, this was an empty place, a place where he was even smaller and less important than back home. It was a place of cold mist and loneliness.
And darkness. Shadows lengthening, turning into monsters, living nightmares, with claws and teeth. Shadows and enemies in the dark that had him breaking a car window, hotwiring a car, and revving away on a merry chase.
Those that came after him to bring him to the Pole at Manny's behest would find themselves in a high speed chase on the highways outside of Burgess that led into the mountains, a trail of police cars full of mystified police officers on his tail - followed by a mass of fearlings the police officers couldn't see.
You had to give the new guy credit: he sure knew how to make an entrance.
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She dodged around a tree and into a gap in the canopy made by the fall of a much larger tree. Way, way closer than she liked!
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A strange vortex of light appeared in front of them and he tensed up as they flew towards it, closing his eyes tight.
Maybe this was the end of the death dream. That light seemed like the kind of thing that heralded an ending.
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Cassie twisted to take the brunt of it as they hit the polished wood floor and rolled off the rest of their momentum, protecting the new guy as best she could with her body.
When they stopped moving and the workshop stopped spinning, Cassie pushed them up into a sitting position and turned the new guy loose as she looked around.
No sign of any fearlings having made it through the portal after them, just shocked and appalled Yeti and elves. Cassie punched the air with both hands.
"YE-E-EAH!" she shouted. "We are AWESOME!"
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Now he was in a warm place, a place of carved wooden columns, and delicate tapestries, and burning torches. A place of tiny lights and food smells better than anything he'd ever smelled. A huge globe rose up before him, a globe of...something, with strange shapes on it, covered in little bright lights, and through the windows of this place he saw...something. White stone? (He'd never seen ice before). It glittered so shiny, reflecting the light of the moon in ways he'd never seen stone do. And in the sky through those windows he saw stars and shimmering waves of colors, colors that didn't exist in his world of blood and sand and rust.
Whirring through the air were little...flying things, made of bright parts. And there were furry things he had no names for and tiny people with bells and... and...
And it was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. Little lights and white stone and waves of color. Little flying wonders whirring through the air.
Maybe he was in Valhalla. Maybe there were fields of danger before the dead got through to the end-place, to where there were feasts and brightness and peace. Perhaps the girl was someone else who'd died long ago, one of the heroes of old, come to carry him home through the fields of danger that tried to stop the dead from getting there.
After all, if life was as harrowing as it was, maybe death was the same. Maybe it was a fight first before you reached the hallowed halls you were meant to revel in for all time.
It was shinier than he ever could have imagined, but so different than he'd imagined. Warmer and softer and less chrome than he'd thought. No hardness to it. But that was alright. It was still the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.
As he looked up at it all, mouth hanging open, he started to weep, tears streaming down his face.
"It's shinier than I imagined," he said to Cassie, breathlessly, kneeling there on the floor. "Is this it? Am I arrived in Valhalla?"
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"No, this isn't Valhalla," she said gently, rising to her knees and resting a hand on his shoulder. "You're still alive. It's a long story, but I promise, you're alive."
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"No, but I am. I crashed the war rig, crashed it all, to block off the pass. So Capable and Furiosa and the others could go back to Citadel without the War Boys shredding 'em before they get there." He sounded excited, eager, even if what he was excited about was something he was never going to see. "They're going to make it better now that Immortan Joe's dead, make it like the Green Place. No more people being treated as things. The War Pups will have a better half life and the War Boys that are dying won't die for no reason just because Joe told them to. And the milk mothers, the wretches - it's all going to be better for everyone with Furiosa and the Wives taking over."
He tapped a hand to his chest.
"I helped them. I died historic. It was a good death. A better death than Barry and Larry choking me off in my sleep," he gestured to the lumps near his throat. "I'm half life at the end of my half life. What better death can I find than that?"
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"This world..." she began, then paused and licked her lips as she tried to figure out how to describe it. "Stories -- our stories, the stories of our lives and the amazing things we do -- they can travel between worlds. They fall between the cracks and people who don't live like we live learn about them and hear them. This world is looking for heroes right now, kids are reaching out and it brings people who make kids feel safe here, because it's dangerous right now and they need people who can make things better. It can grab you right before you die, and it can make you...better. Stronger.
"It sounds like you helped make your world a better place," she continued. "And you did it so amazingly, so historic, that even people here know about it. And someone thought that you could help make them safe too."
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"So I'm not dead."
If he wasn't dead then he was somewhere...else. Somewhere with shadow things that clawed at you from the dark. Somewhere away from Capable and the others. Somewhere where stories traveled - but that made no sense. How did you fall from one world to another and what did children have to do with it?
His world had already shattered once and now he was in another?
"How - how is that even possible? Being in another world? How - how -" He started to breathe faster and faster and it felt like the world was crashing in, crushing him. He didn't need Barry and Larry to choke at his windpipe, the way he felt breathless right now.
Everything he knew had already been shaken up once but now it was happening again, too fast, in too short a span of time. And his first glimpse of this place had been terrifying and impossible, even if so much seemed more whole, like it'd been in the before-times.
After hearing all that, he crept away from the girl, backing against the - the thing. Some kind of sitting-thing, and then he slid down to his side, curled up, arms wrapped around himself, looking up at the flying things like he now feared they'd swoop down and prey on him.
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She sighed, sitting back on her heels. "I'm not very good at explaining how this sort of thing is possible," she said. "We're just aware that other worlds exist where I'm from. It's magic, basically -- you know magic? Even if it's not really a thing where you're from, are you familiar with the idea of magic?"
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That seemed important if she was asking about, maybe something he needed to know about to understand what had happened, to understand this place, but he couldn't even find the words to ask her to explain it.
He couldn't seem to find any words at all.
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"Magic is...It's..."
She scrubbed a hand over her face.
"You were asking about Valhalla earlier," she said. "You got to Valhalla when you die a good death, right? How do you get from dying to Valhalla?"
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There was no concept of Immortan Joe doing it because he was magical or the process of him doing it being magic. There was no process. It was something that just was. They were taught he could do it and therefore he could. They had no concept of there being anything special allowing it and they certainly didn't have a word for that specialness.
"If I'm not in Valhalla, it's not real, and if it's not real, you can't get taken to a place that doesn't exist."
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She'd never met the man, but her lips curled in disgust around his name anyway. A man who treated people like things wasn't a man worth anything.
But back to the topic -- "Okay, let's try this: we flew before, right? I can do that because of magic. It's a thing people can't usually do, but I can do it. And your scrapes from the wreck earlier are healing really fast, right? That's also magic. Magic lets you really, truly do things that should be impossible."
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"I don't want to be magic. I don't understand this magic. My world is the power of the V8 and bullets and guzzoline and blood. What's magic? You can't touch it."
He dragged his hands over his face.
"And how can there be more than one world? The world's big enough, wasteland as far as the eye can see. How can there be more than one?"
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Like the other War Boys, Nux was fed better than the wretches of Citadel and got more water than they did, but that didn't mean he always went to sleep with a full belly or had all he needed to drink. Immortan Joe still kept the best for himself and his sons and plenty of the War Boys might have been better off and less sick to get just a little more than they got. Part of the reason they needed their blood bags so desperately - aside from them replacing their dirty blood due to the sickness deep in their bones - was that they were a shortcut to giving them good food and plenty of water all the time like they needed. A way to top off when the rigors of their lives meant they were running on empty.
That meant that someone that shared food and water was someone that might be trusted.
He didn't feel that hungry or thirsty but he wasn't about to turn away food and water. As long as there was room in his stomach, he'd take it. He wasn't an idiot.
He nodded, finally sitting up against the...the sitting-thing his back was against. It was obviously meant to be a chair but it was long like a bed and soft and cushioned.
Given the way he was shaking, partly from cold, partly from agitation, a blanket wouldn't have been remiss, either.
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In answer to her question, he slowly got up, still shaking. Quieter and less crowded sounded better.
He kept his distance from her, though. Now that he knew that he wasn't dead he was acutely aware of the fact something could make him that way, and she -
She was something strange. She was strong enough to hold onto a roof of an escape vehicle as it swerved around, and she'd had an iron grip on him when she was flying, and she could fly.
Now he was keeping his distance, not entirely sure of what she was but still willing to follow if it meant water and a meal.
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The kitchen was unoccupied when they arrived fortunately. She hooked an ankle around a chair leg to pull it out for him as she headed for the mugs. "Water? Cocoa? There's eggnog too, and we've got coffee and tea as well."
Once he had something to eat and drink, she could take another stab at explaining magic to him, and trying to explain why and how they were there.
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"What's - what are all of those things you said other than water?"
A pause.
"I didn't know there could be so many things for drinking."
Water and mother's milk, that was it where he came from.
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"Cocoa is a sweet tasting drink made from plants," she said. Which really didn't do it justice, but she wasn't sure how to describe it either.
"Eggnog is made with eggs and milk and sweetener. Tea is made from special dried leaves steeped -- soaked in hot water, and coffee is made from dried and ground beans soaked in hot water. Cocoa, tea, and coffee are all served warm, eggnog is served cold. Tea and coffee are more bitter, but can be sweetened."
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"What's leaves? That's like plants, right? The green parts?"
They tended to eat the other bits of the plants. The non-green. The orange parts and red parts and so on. So he knew the name for the vegetables they ate but he was a black thumb. He'd had absolutely no experience with maintaining the green. He only knew the names of the bits that got served up to them.
"I'm a black thumb, not a green thumb. I don't know plants."
So far the water was still sounding the most reasonable but he was...curious.
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Come to think of it, maybe right now wasn't the best time to be offering him caffeine.
"I usually go for cocoa or water, myself," she said. "Depending if I want something warm or cold."
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"The cocoa then. Whatever it is."
If it was made of plants it might be more nourishing than water, like mother's milk, and you always went with whatever fed you the best if you had a choice. If it was that revolting he could always ask for water instead. (And if she didn't let him have it he could try to take it anyway).
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She took out all the ingredients and made the cocoa at the table, so he could watch the entire process. Then, while the cocoa cooled down to a more drinkable temperature, she raided the cookie supply and prepared an assortment plate. It wouldn't have won her any competitions at a charm school, but she figured she should try for as many different types of cookie as possible.
The mugs went on a tray so she could carry them with one hand and she brought everything over to where he was leaning against the wall.
"We never traded names, did we?" she asked as she put both trays down between them, settling herself cross-legged on the floor. "I'm Cassie, Cassie Sandsmark."
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