Fic: We'll Be A Family (1-4/7)
Title: We'll Be A Family (parts 1-4)
Rating: R
Characters: Toast, Slit, Capable, The Dag, Cheedo, Furiosa
Pairing: Toast/Slit
Word Count: 9,600
Summary: Toast has the chance to build a family with Slit. But it's not going to be easy when he barely understands the concept of a family.
Note: Sequel to Confounded.
It’s been one hundred days. There’s no deceiving herself when one of her first thoughts each morning is a tally of how long it’s been since she’s spoken to him. She misses fucking him, and worse than that, she misses the feel of his arms around her. Worst of all, she simply misses him.
Toast is worried. If a hundred days isn’t enough to cease wanting some War Boy, then how long will it take. The baby inside her moves, and Toast decides it is to blame. It is the reason she misses its father. If it had died, she’d have ceased caring whatsoever about Slit. Instead it’s persisted in living, and the Vuvalini and the Organic Mechanic and a midwife from among the Wretched all agree that this will probably be a full term pregnancy with a live birth. Toast can only imagine what sort of malformed creature will crawl out of her.
She groans as she climbs out of bed. She’s certain that she wakes up bigger each morning than when she went to bed the night before. She passes the Dag on her way to the lavatory. The Dag looks as miserable as Toast feels. Her baby should have been born by now, but it seems reluctant to leave the comfort of her womb.
The Dag has gone from trying out the sounds of various girls’ names back to calling it Warlord Junior, though the Vuvalini try to convince her it’s normal for a first pregnancy to last a little longer. “Out,” she’s mumbling. “Out, you damned parasite.”
There isn’t much for Toast to do these days. Things are running smoothly. She mostly just checks on the various groups of workers and addresses any problems that have arisen. Perhaps it was the desire for some excitement as much as pragmatism that made her insist the Pups should be taught to shoot by the Vuvalini.
The War Boys didn’t like that, of course.
“They’re better shots than you all,” she’d told them bluntly. “You waste bullets because you’re used to a steady supply of more from the Bullet Farm. They’ve had to learn to make every shot count.”
The younger Pups went along with it just fine, but the ones entering puberty seem determined to make the lessons more difficult in some twisted attempt at gaining the approval of their older brothers. Just the other day Toast had to swat one of them in the rear for referring to his new instructor as a ‘dried up old breeder’.
But they are quiet today and Toast soon finds herself bored and restless. She paces back and forth and tries not to be annoyed at the baby for being restless too. As she turns to begin another length of pacing, she catches sight of Slit walking by, carrying a tire in each hand. True, she can’t see his face, but she’d recognize that swaggering walk of his way anywhere.
She hurries after him, not actually breaking into a run because she thinks she’d look silly running with this big belly sticking out in front of her. “Slit,” she calls, lowering her voice so that it comes out a loud whisper rather than a shout.
He stops and turns to face her, and Toast has no idea what to say. She waits for him to speak, but he doesn’t. She finds herself getting annoyed. He ought to at least ask the woman carrying his spawn how she’s feeling.
“Give me your hand,” she orders.
He lets go of the tires and extends a hand to her, looking almost wary.
Toast holds his hand flat against her belly and waits for the baby to kick again. “I thought you might want to feel that.”
“It’s real shine,” he says. “Thanks for letting me feel it.” He hesitates before adding, “Immortan always said his sons died ‘cause the breeders were mediocre, but you’re so chrome this one has to be perfect.”
Toast could not be more shocked that Slit thinks this baby is Joe’s. Stupid man, she thinks, how could he not realize it’s his.
But she remembers how strongly Joe had pushed the idea of himself as everyone’s ‘Daddy’. The mothers and true fathers of the boys who grew up to be War Boys hadn’t mattered; Joe was the only father anybody was allowed to have. Joe had given his men women to ‘breed’ sometimes, but the resulting offspring belonged to Joe, the boys to serve as warriors and the girls to be breeders and milkers. Joe was the only person in the Citadel who’d had a family. The rest of them probably didn’t even understand the concept, or at least they couldn’t apply it to themselves.
It should be so easy to tell him that her baby isn’t even Joe’s anyway, but Toast can’t say it. She decides it’s kinder not to tell Slit it’s his baby. It’ll probably be born a monster or die soon anyway, so really it’d be crueler to get his hopes up.
Slit lets the subject of Joe’s sons drop. He asks, “Am I forgiven?”
Toast doesn’t understand what he’s talking about. “Forgiven for what?”
“For letting those new War Boys die after you told me not to.”
“Don’t be silly,” she says. “Their deaths aren’t your fault.”
“Then I’m sorry I got this-” He touches a small scar on his shoulder that she doesn’t remember. “After you told me not to get any more scars.”
“That’s even sillier. I know you didn’t ask to get shot. That new scar was unavoidable.” Toast can’t imagine what the hell is wrong with him.
“Then what did I do to make you angry?”
“I’m not angry with you,” she says, though it’s hard not to sound angry. It’s impossible to have patience when there’s a little monster kicking her insides.
“So you just got tired of me.” He sounds resigned. She’d have expected anger or wounded pride. This hurts to hear. She belatedly realizes that it might have been selfish and cruel to end things with him the way she had.
“No,” Toast tells him quickly. She owes him an explanation. She can’t admit the truth, though, not that he’d understand it anyway. So she lies. “I’m just not in the mood for a bedmate when I’ve got this thing growing in me.”
“So after it’s born…” he asks hopefully.
“We’ll see,” she says, though she’s certain she won’t be stupid enough to go through this all over again.
He reaches out as if to touch her face or stroke her hair or something, and Toast shrinks back to avoid it. If he touches her like that, she might just throw herself into his arms and demand he never let her go.
The rejection hurts him. That’s plain from the look on his face before he puts on a nonchalant expression. “Got to get these tires over to the blackthumbs, but you can always ask a pup to find me if you need me.”
Toast is oddly pleased by the new knowledge that he’s been if not heartbroken then at least emotionally bruised. The only thing worse than caring about a War Boy would be caring about a War Boy who didn’t care back.
She smiles as she watches him pick up the tires, admiring the way the pull of their weight makes the muscles in his arms flex. She feels both powerful and guilty as she watches him walk away because he’s lost that cocky swagger.
Toast wants to talk to someone about all of this. But she’s certain that Capable will disagree with her decision not to tell Slit that he’s the father of her baby. Capable is still disappointed she stopped inviting him to her bed.
She certainly can’t waste Furiosa’s time with this, and while the Vuvalini had been more understanding than she’d expected, there were some things she didn’t think they’d be happy to hear about. Like how she and Slit had first met. She’s quite sure that Furiosa has figured that out, but Furiosa had been a warrior of the Citadel for so long that she has to understand even if she doesn’t necessarily approve.
When she returns to the vault, she finds the door to the nursery open. Joe had treated this room like a holy place. It held half a dozen mismatched cradles, precious relics from the world Before. The walls had been painted white and there was even a large picture of a fantastical brown bear dressed in a red shirt. Joe had collected toys too, mainly soft fabric things shaped like animals.
Teddy bears. Miss Giddy said in the old world children were given teddy bears to sleep with and cuddle for comfort, and that she herself had had a dozen of them she’d line up neatly on her bed. Toast can’t comprehend a world of such plenty that people could expend resources on something so trivial.
The Dag is holding a teddy bear as large as a toddler. “I want to set fire to everything in here sometimes,” she says.
“I want to set fire to his bed,” Toast replies. “I have to remind myself that if I burn everything he touched and claimed for himself, I’d have to light myself afire too.”
“Did you fuck your War Boy in his bed?”
Toast shakes her head.
“A pity. You should have. Maybe I will if I find one I like.”
It’s as good an invitation to confide the whole sordid story. Toast is deciding where to start when the Dag cries out and drops the teddy bear to clutch her belly.
“I think it’s finally starting!”
Toast helps her to her bed before going to find Cheedo and summoning the Organic Mechanic.
But it’s almost two whole days later before the baby is finally born. None of them are pleased with the little cock between its legs.
“Perfect in every way,” the Organic Mechanic proclaims, smirking.
“I knew it,” the Dag says gloomily. “What are you doing?! Don’t give it to me. I don’t want to hold it and it’s not sucking on my teats.”
The Organic Mechanic pauses and then looks to Furiosa for guidance. Furiosa doesn’t offer any. It’s the Dag’s baby, the decisions are hers to make. It’s one of the base tenets of this new Citadel of theirs. No one could force a woman to bear children, or take her children away from her. Toast expects this to be the only instance of a woman not wanting her child because this will be the last child born here from rape.
Cheedo takes the baby and cradles it gingerly. “Dag, it’s not any uglier than any other infant.”
“I don’t care. Toss it down and let the Wretched eat it.”
“You don’t mean that. I’ll take it to the Milking Mothers. One of them will be happy to nurse it.”
“Bring it back,” the Dag says, granting permission for this course of action. “Got to keep our eyes on Warlord Junior.”
Surprisingly, it’s the Vuvalini who take the optimistic view. Apparently their dislike of men doesn’t extend to male infants.
“I think it’ll be quite some time before little Junior is ready to oppress anyone,” Gen says dryly.
Patrice strokes the Dag’s hair. “Dear girl, the best revenge on Immortan Joe would be to raise his son to be the opposite of what he wanted. Let the boy grow up to be a farmer or a healer.”
Toast slips out of the room. The last couple of days have been a preview of what’s in store for her. She’s terrified of the pain that awaits her and the helplessness of not being able to do anything about it. It’s not fair. It takes two people to make a baby, but only one of them suffers for it.
She remembers making this point to her grandmother when her mother was giving birth to her youngest brother. Gran had said men suffered when they had to listen to their women in pain. But of course that only worked if the father gave a damn about the mother.
She wonders how Slit would feel if she insisted he stay by her side when the time for the birth came.
Chapter 2
Toast chooses to give birth in Joe’s bed rather than her own. The idea of delivering another man’s baby in his bed is gratifying, almost as much as spitting on his corpse.
“Promise me you won’t listen to me if I tell you to bring Slit here,” Toast demands, squeezing Capable’s hand.
“I promise,” Capable says. “I wish you would change your mind though. It might make you feel better to hold his hand rather than mine.”
Gen chuckles. “No, it’s the right decision. The boy might faint.”
Toast hadn’t considered that. It’s interesting and amusing to contemplate how War Boys would react to observing childbirth. She’s certain that at least one of them would shout, “Witness”, but most of them would probably be horrified. The reason she doesn’t want Slit here, however, is simply because she’s decided that needing him so much must be a weakness. Because Capable is right, she’d much rather be holding Slit’s hand than Capable’s.
Once the pain gets really bad, though, it’s her mother she wants. “Mommy,” she screams at one point, and once that wave of pain has ebbed, she’s embarrassed. But no one gives any indication that they’d noticed.
It’s too crowded in here, there are too many people. Toast doesn’t like that. She’s glad of Capable’s support, of course. And she’s glad the Vuvalini are here because they can assess what the Organic Mechanic is doing. Toast doesn’t trust him. But surely Furiosa has better things to do, and she isn’t sure why a pair of Milk Mothers are here. There are even Pups playing in a corner, unfazed by her screams of pain. She feels like the center of some grotesque entertainment.
“Capable, make the gawkers go away,” she murmurs. She’s in no mood to be polite if she has to do it herself.
Capable speaks to Furiosa quietly, and the Imperator sends the children away before leaving herself. One of the Milk Mothers refuses to go though.
“That could be my grandbaby,” she protests. “Cheedo said the father is a War Boy.”
The other Milk Mother sighs and explains, “She thinks every War Boy is her son, even the ones who are colored different than him under their paint.”
Eventually the second Milk Mother and Capable manage to steer the would be-grandmother away, mainly by convincing her she needs to knit a wrap for the baby.
“I hope Immortan Joe is burning in hell for what he did to these people,” Gen says bitterly.
Toast couldn’t agree more, but another wave of pain prevents her from voicing her agreement and leaves her simply screaming wordlessly.
They tell her it was a quick delivery, but Toast doesn’t feel that way. Still, the pain is a distant second to the marvel she now feels. A normal, healthy baby girl. It’s too good to be true.
The Dag comes in to claim the afterbirth. She plans to bury it in her garden and plant a tree over it. She hadn’t done it for her own afterbirth, insisting that Joe’s contamination would poison her garden.
She strokes the surprisingly thick head of hair on Toast’s baby girl. “I’m jealous. Let’s switch.”
“Not a chance.”
Eventually everybody’s done admiring the baby and cleaning up and they finally leave. Only Capable lingers. Toast doesn’t mind. She has a favor to ask her.
“Could you please ask Slit to come see me?”
“Of course.”
“He doesn’t know he’s her father.”
Capable doesn’t seem surprised. “I’m not telling him for you. That’s between you and him.”
That’s fair. It had been rather cowardly to hope that Capable would tell him for her.
The baby finishes nursing and goes to sleep. Toast carefully lays her down beside her and simply watches her. Objectively, she’s red and wrinkled. But she’s still the most beautiful thing Toast has ever seen. She hadn’t given any thought to names, convinced as she’d been that she wouldn’t have a healthy, living child.
“Capable said you wanted to see me.”
She hadn’t heard Slit arrive. It’s hard to tear her attention away from her baby girl and really focus on him. But she manages it. He looks good - no new scars that she can see - though he seems worried.
“You’re the father of this baby.”
He doesn’t seem to understand.
Toast repeats it. “Slit, this is your baby, not Joe’s.”
She watches as shock and disbelief and even fear cross his face. But then he looks delighted. “That’s why you asked me to come to your room! You used me as breeding stock!”
This isn’t the reaction Toast was expecting. She decides first to clear up either his misconception about the human gestation period or his poor tracking of the passing of time. “It’s about two hundred and seventy days from conception to birth,” she informs him. “She was conceived while I had you chained to my bed.”
“Or after you unchained me,” he says. That’s the romantic view to take. Another surprise.
“Could be,” she admits. “But I didn’t use you as breeding stock intentionally. I wasn’t trying to get pregnant. It was the last thing on my mind, which is how I let it happen.”
He looks less delighted now. “So you got mad at me when you found out I’d bred you?”
“What? No.”
“I don’t understand,” he says. He’s still standing all the way across the room.
“Come look at her, please, and I’ll explain anything you don’t understand.”
Slit slowly moves nearer to the bed. He peers at the baby. “She’s so tiny.”
“Closer. You can touch her.”
He walks around to the other side of the bed and lies down behind her. Apparently he’s taken the encouragement to touch his daughter as an invitation to cuddle his daughter’s mother. Toast doesn’t mind. Furthest thing from it. It feel amazingly good to have their baby on one side of her and Slit on the other.
“She’s not tiny for a newborn. She’s a big baby.”
“I’ve never seen a pup that’s just been born before. She’s the tiniest person I’ve ever seen.”
“Trust me, she’s plenty big. I’ve got tearing and stitches that will vouch for that. You know where babies come from, don’t you?”
“Yeah. Shit. Your cunt’s barely big enough for my cock; how did that pup fit there?”
“Very painfully,” Toast says ruefully. “Okay, what don’t you understand?”
“Everything about you.”
Toast isn’t sure whether that’s supposed to be a joke. She twists her head to look back at him. He looks serious. “Ask me what you want to know and I’ll tell you if it’s something I know.”
“Why didn’t you want me anymore? I thought… Things were nice and then I came back from the battle with the Buzzards and you said you didn’t want me anymore.”
“Things were nice. But you’re a War Boy and I still couldn’t believe things could be nice with one of you, especially you. I felt the baby moving for the first time while you were fighting Buzzards and it was like getting everything I’d ever wanted.”
“Getting what you wanted made you mad?” Slit asks incredulously.
“I didn’t trust it. The last time I hoped for anything, I hoped the other wives and I would escape safely to a wonderful place. But then Angharad died and it turned out the Green Place itself had died a long time ago.”
“Hm. I think I understand that. But what about us breeding? You said you weren’t trying to get pregnant, but you weren’t mad that I put a pup in you? I’m a half life…”
“I was concerned, but I talked to the Organic Mechanic and it seems that not all of you War Boys are sick. Some of you have benign tumors. He said there was even one War Boy who was nearly Joe’s age.”
“Yeah, Ace.”
Toast turns to look at him again. “You mean there was an old War Boy with tumors and you all never realized that the tumors didn’t necessarily mean early death?!” It’s her turn to sound incredulous.
Slit is frowning. “Never thought about it.”
Toast sighs. “I’m going to have to do something about that. I should have taken care of it as soon as I found out. I was too absorbed with myself.”
“Anyway,” she says. “Even if you were sick, it doesn’t mean your child would be too. And two ‘full lives’ can have unhealthy babies. My cousin gave birth to something you wouldn’t even recognize as a baby. The very air and earth is poisoned. Some of us just get lucky.”
“Just so I understand, you’re not angry at me about anything?”
“No. I forgave you for what I had to be angry at you for.”
He doesn’t ask for clarification. He’s not stupid. He reaches across her and his fingers hover over the baby for a moment, but he pulls his hand back without touching her. He nuzzles Toast’s neck and whispers, “Is she really mine? This isn’t a joke?”
“It’s no joke. You think I’d be in the mood for jokes after what I just went through? They call it ‘labor’ for a reason, you know. She’s yours and mine. Ours.”
They’re both quiet for a long time. The baby rouses and fusses, and nurses eagerly when Toast offers her a nipple. Slit seems very interested in her breasts, which are currently swollen to twice their previous size.
It seems like a good time to inform him, “You know we can’t fuck for quite some time, right?”
“I figured as much,” he says. Then he frowns. “I saw Organic earlier and he said something about forty days and giggled. He’s been saying lots of strange shit to me lately… He knew! Organic knew!”
He seems upset. In fact he seems almost offended. Toast hastens to console him. “He’s the organic mechanic, of course he knew. He couldn’t tell you because I’d have broken his nose again or something.”
Slit continues to look disgruntled for a moment longer, then he flops back on the bed and grins at the ceiling. “I made a shiny and chrome full life pup. No other War Boy’s ever done that! I’m so fucking shine.” He thumps the mattress with both fists gleefully.
Toast seriously doubts he’s the first War Boy to father a child; Joe’s cult had been around too long for that. But he’s certainly the first to have the chance to be a father. She pokes him with her big toe. “Excuse me, I think I did most of the making. You only contributed at the fun stage.”
He grabs her foot and rolls onto his stomach and starts kissing his way up her leg. For a moment Toast thinks she’ll have to remind him that sex isn’t going to happen any time soon, but he stops just above her knee. “Thank you for making a pup with me.”
“I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t call our baby a ‘pup’.”
“Alright.” He studies the baby in her arms and then carefully reaches out to stroke the bottom of one tiny foot. “So little and soft.”
“I’m not going to call her ‘Wrench’ or ‘Shotgun’ so there’s no sense in asking you what names you like.” But Toast wants to hear his input anyway, wants this to truly be their baby from here on.
Slit shakes his head. “Nah, she’s too good for War Boy names. Chrome?”
Toast pretends to consider it, before saying, “No.” She’s already decided on a name, but she likes this conversation.
Slit thinks quietly for a long moment. Then, after the baby’s fallen asleep again and Toast is carefully setting her down, he says, “What about ‘Prince’?”
Toast feels her eyebrows raise. “Do you know what a prince is?”
“A special pup. Organic used to say we had a prince on the way whenever one of the Immortan’s wives was pregnant.”
“A prince is the son of a ruler, and the girl version is a princess.”
“I like Princess even better than Prince.”
Toast smiles. “I want to name her after my grandmother. Sylvia, but Sylvie for short.”
“Sylvie sounds mediocre,” Slit complains.
Toast kisses him quickly before settling herself against him and wrapping his arms around her. “People might get the wrong impression if I named my child princess. They might think I was trying to make her Furiosa’s heir.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Slit demands. “Of course she’s going to be an Imperator.”
“At least wait until she can walk before you start plotting to overthrow Furiosa,” Toast laughs. “Now shhh, it’s family nap time.”
“You want me to go?” Slit asks, but Toast squeezes his arm tightly and he seems to understand that she wants him to stay right here.
Chapter 3
“Her hand’s smaller than my finger,” Slit says. He’s gingerly touched one of the baby’s hands with a single finger.
It’s been three days and he hasn’t left the room except for quick visits to the lavatory. Capable has been bringing meals for him as well as for Toast. Toast isn’t sure what she’d expected from him, but it certainly wasn’t this. She reads in between sleeping and feeding Sylvie, but Slit doesn’t do anything but stare at the baby.
It was endearing at first, but now it’s almost unsettling. Toast loves her baby so much that the very concept of love has been redefined for her. But she thinks Slit might love Sylvie even more. His attention is fixed on the baby with a single-minded devotion that borders on obsession. Toast imagines he must have looked at Joe with the same worship.
She’s trying to think of something to say, to engage him in conversation so this unsettled feeling can be dispelled, when the baby curls her hand around Slit’s finger. He starts crying. He makes an odd sound and Toast sees the shine of tears in his eyes.
Toast rubs his back without speaking and kisses the bristly top of his head. He hasn’t even shaved since he first saw the baby. He needs a bath, but Toast hasn’t figured out how to tell him without insulting him or risking him thinking she’s sending him away from Sylvie.
“She’s so little and helpless,” he says. “What if the night fevers start and I die before she’s big enough to protect herself?”
It’s a very real possibility that he won’t live to see their daughter reach adulthood. But Toast might not either, though it hurts to think about it. Slit needs comfort and reassurance though. This is probably the first time in his life he’s thought about wanting a long life - as opposed to a ‘historic death’ - and she suspects he’s scared.
“She’s safe here. She has me, and Capable, and the Dag, and Cheedo, and Furiosa, and the Vuvalini. And your brothers - they wouldn’t hurt her, would they?”
He shakes his head. “Wouldn’t hurt a little pup.” His mood swings wildly and he’s suddenly excited again. “They don’t know she’s mine! Can I show them her?!”
Toast doesn’t want to hurt his feelings, but she’s not comfortable with the idea of a whole group of War Boys around her newborn. She doesn’t seriously think they’d intentionally hurt the baby, but it would easy for them to inadvertently harm her. “Yeah, but let’s wait a few more days, okay? ‘Til she’s a bit stronger and bigger.”
Slit nods. “Yeah.”
Toast kisses him full on the mouth and slides her tongue between his lips. He kisses her back for a brief moment, before pulling away and giving her a confused look.
“I thought we couldn’t?”
“We can’t fuck, but we can just kiss.”
“Why?” he asks. His arms are around her and he’s stroking her hair, so Toast doesn’t think he’s asking because he doesn’t want to. She’d told him to ask her about anything he didn’t understand and maybe that’s what he’s doing now.
“I want to feel close to you.”
He smiles, and she’s struck anew by how much younger he looks now that the knowledge of his fatherhood has made him vulnerable, and by how handsome he is without the paint and grease. Watching him fall in love with their baby is making her fall in love with him. Toast just smiles back at him for a while.
She’s about to kiss him when there’s a knock at the door. “Enter,” she calls, thinking it’s Capable or the Dag. The Dag seriously seems to want to steal her baby.
However it’s Furiosa. She looks surprised to see Slit and not entirely pleased. Slit himself looks downright belligerent, all traces of his earlier tenderness gone.
“How are you feeling, Toast?”
“Surprisingly good,” Toast answers.
Furiosa comes to stand beside the bed. “May I hold her?”
“No,” Slit says harshly, before Toast can reply.
“I wasn’t asking you,” Furiosa retorts.
Slit hadn’t objected to her sisters and the Vuvalini holding Sylvie. Toast is disappointed he still holds a grudge against Furiosa. Hasn’t he realized that he wouldn’t be with her and they wouldn’t have Sylvie if Furiosa hadn’t turned on Joe?
Toast offers her daughter to Furiosa. “Make sure you support her head.”
“Her arm is going to hurt Princess. You saw what it did to my eye!”
This is the first Toast is hearing about Furiosa being responsible for the damage to his right eye, though she’d asked about it once and he’d told her he saw just fine. She looks to Furiosa for a denial.
Furiosa is scowling. “Tell her why I beat you.”
Slit doesn’t say anything, but he continues glaring at Furiosa. It’s a relief to know that his dislike of Furiosa is personal, that it has nothing to do with her being a ‘traitor’.
Furiosa unbuckles her prosthetic hand and lets it drop to the floor. Toast helps settle her baby in Furiosa’s arms. Furiosa smiles at Sylvie, a gentle look on her face. She kisses her forehead before handing her back to Toast.
“Toast, would you please join me and the others around the pool at sunset? I need to speak with you all.”
Toast nods. When Furiosa is gone, and Sylvie is nursing, she looks at Slit for an explanation. “What happened?”
“Nothing that didn’t happen all the time. Imperator Furiosa overreacted ‘cause Morsov was her little pet, that’s all.”
Toast is skeptical. She arches an eyebrow.
Slit squirms a little. He seems reluctant to tell her what exactly he did. At least he knows enough to be ashamed and to care what she thinks about him.
“Whatever it was, you won’t do it again, right?”
“Can’t. The filth died mediocre flinging himself onto a Buzzard vehicle.”
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
“I know. I won’t. I’ve got Princess and you now.”
Toast has accepted that he’s never going to call their daughter ‘Sylvie.’ It’s actually sort of sweet.
When the sun is setting and it’s time to attend Furiosa’s meeting, Toast lays the baby face-down on Slit’s chest. He gives her a terrified look.
“Babies like to be held and to listen to somebody’s heart beating. I read it in a book.”
“What if she gets hungry before you come back?”
Toast doubts she’ll be gone for more than an hour. “A few minutes of hunger won’t hurt her.”
Slit looks at her like she’s said something unbelievably monstrous. Toast almost laughs.
Capable, the Dag, and Cheedo are sitting around the pool when Toast arrives. Toast decides to make the most of the opportunity and take a real bath. She’s finished washing and is just relaxing in the water by the time Furiosa and the Vuvalini come.
“We have a problem,” Furiosa announces.
They all look at her, concerned but not alarmed. Toast hopes it’s not another conflict with another group. She can’t bear the thought of Slit having to risk his life now when their daughter is too young to even remember him if he dies.
“There are too many people and more keep coming. The whole Wasteland’s heard we’re giving away water.”
“There’s plenty of water,” Capable says.
Gen shakes her head. “It’s a finite resource. Once it’s gone, it’s gone for good. It hasn’t rained since before you were alive. What’s down in the Earth is all that’s left.”
Toast feels guilty about the bath she’s sitting in, but then she reminds herself that this water gets drained and used to water the plants. It’s not wasted.
“We’re going to stop helping people?” Cheedo asks.
“No,” Furiosa says. “But we can’t keep feeding everyone who shows up or we won’t have food left. The plants don’t grow overnight. We’re at the point of consuming food faster than we can grow it.”
“Also, there are too many people up here in the Citadel now. There are people with no jobs to occupy them. We’re starting to have problems. They’ve lost their fear of the War Boys and the platform guards. It’s hard to control them.”
“I thought the point was not to control people,” Capable says, beginning to look angry.
“There has to be some kind of order maintained,” Toast tells her. Capable and the other wives had spent their whole lives secluded away from other people. They could be overly idealistic sometimes.
Furiosa nods. “We have crime. People are getting food and water, but if somebody has a trinket, there are still people who want it and are willing to steal, or even to beat people and take their things.”
The Dag speaks up. “Some of my workers in the garden steal.”
“So we’re kicking the Wretched out?” Toast asks bluntly.
“I thought we agreed not to call them that?” the Dag reminds her.
“Sorry. It slipped out.”
“We’re going to encourage people to create a real settlement below. The Vuvalini and the Repair Boys have already devised a way to get water down there and set up irrigation so people can plant their own food.”
It sounds like Furiosa has already made her decisions and begun implementing them. She’s informing the wives as a courtesy. Toast is hurt that she was excluded from the planning, but then she hasn’t been concerned with anything but her baby and her baby’s father for the last few moon cycles.
“I have another idea. One that just came to me. How do you all feel about inviting the imperator in charge of the Bullet Farm to come visit us?”
“Visit us?” Cheedo asks doubtfully.
“You mean, like a social visit?” Capable asks.
“Yes,” Furiosa replies.
It seems very odd to Toast, but she suspects Furiosa has motives she isn’t choosing to share with them. “Is it safe?” she asks.
“If you’re asking whether he’ll try to kill me and seize control of the Citadel, then the answer is perhaps. But I think the potential reward outweighs the risk, and I certainly will take precautions to discourage Rip from trying to kill me.”
Toast wonders what reward that is, but she doesn’t ask. Furiosa would have told her if she wanted her to know. Furiosa hadn’t seemed to care about her sharing her bed with Slit before, but Toast fears that choosing to be with him as a family makes Furiosa think less of her. She’s pondering whether to ask to speak with Furiosa privately when Slit appears with Sylvie cradled carefully against his chest.
“She’s hungry,” he says to Toast, ignoring everyone else.
Toast just stares at him. He looks so good holding their baby like that.
“Toast,” he says imploringly.
She wades to the edge of the pool and holds out her arms, but he frowns at her.
“What if you drop her in the Aqua Cola?”
She wants to snap that she’d never drop her baby, but suddenly Toast is afraid of Sylvie slipping out of her arms and drowning. She climbs out of the pool and sits on her discarded clothes. Slit finally hands her their baby and then stands there like he doesn’t trust any of the others, though everyone but Furiosa is smiling at him.
“Slit, why don’t you go tell your brothers about Sylvie and get cleaned up? All three of us will be nice and clean when we get back to the room.”
“Yeah, I’ve got to tell them about Princess.”
He takes off and Toast breathes a sigh of relief.
“I still can’t believe he doesn’t care that the baby is a girl,” the Dag says.
Toast glances at Furiosa as she replies to the Dag. “He’s convinced she’ll grow up to be an imperator like Furiosa.”
“I want one just like him,” the Dag says. Toast can’t tell if she’s joking, though Cheedo looks quite unhappy.
After Furiosa and the Vuvalini leave, Toast carries Sylvie into the nursery and introduces her to Warlord Junior. She doesn’t want her child thinking of Joe’s blood as a brother, but it’s inevitable that the two children will be close friends. She sets Sylvie down in Junior’s cradle and watches as they snuggle together.
Capable and Cheedo follow her and they smile at the sight of the babies together. The Dag sticks her head into the nursery, sees what’s going on, and disappears, presumably retreating to her garden.
It’s nice spending time with the others that doesn’t involve them helping take care of her and Sylvie. Toast doesn’t realize how much time has passed until Slit comes back, looking anxious.
“Joe’s pup looks mediocre,” he comments. “Princess is much more chrome than him.”
Cheedo looks offended on behalf of the baby she’s been caring for. Toast does think her baby is better than Junior, but she can’t resist asking, “He’s healthy and normal. What makes him mediocre?”
Slit sniffs. “He hardly has any hair. Princess has much more hair even though the other pup is much older than her.”
Sixty days is hardly ‘much older’ but Toast can’t bring herself to correct Slit. His adoration for their baby girl is too endearing.
“You take Sylvie back to our room. I need to speak with Capable alone.”
Cheedo takes Junior to be nursed by a Milk Mother, and Slit leaves with Sylvie. Toast browses through a book of rhymes meant to be sung to very young children. Some of them are familiar. She remembers reciting them as a little girl.
“What is it?” Capable asks at last.
“You tell me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Something’s wrong. You’re upset, though you did hide it well. You don’t have to take care of everybody all the time, Capable. We want to take care of you too.”
Capable begins twisting one of her braids. “Coil’s started getting fevers. It’s the beginning of the end for him.”
“I’m sorry.” Toast hopes Capable hasn’t fallen in love with another dying boy.
“I was trying to comfort him and I ended up being intimate with him.”
Well. Toast is about to assure her that it’s okay, when Capable continues.
“He thinks it means we’re together now. But I don’t love him. I just felt sorry for him.”
“You don’t have to fuck him again, Capable. You don’t owe him anything.”
“I know. I don’t mind the sex, it’s nice. But I feel bad about letting him assume I love him.”
“You cared enough to want to comfort him, and you like fucking him. Maybe that’s enough,” Toast suggests.
“I feel like it should be love or nothing,” Capable says miserably, still wringing her braids.
“Says who?”
Capable doesn’t have a response to that.
Toast hugs her and kisses her on both cheeks. “You’ve got to stop worrying about what you think you should feel and just enjoy what you do have. I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told anyone else. Slit was one of the War Boys who attacked my settlement and brought me here for Joe.”
“I thought so,” Capable said. “It’s the only way you could have known any War Boy before Fury Road.”
“You probably assumed they didn’t touch me. Joe wouldn’t take seconds from his boys.”
Capable nods cautiously.
“They were ordered not to touch me. The imperator in charge even set a guard shift around me at night. Well, I guess he never considered that the guard himself was getting the chance to be alone with me. I suppose I could have screamed and he’d have gotten in trouble, but it didn’t occur to me.”
“Slit saved you?”
Toast feels her lips tugging into a smile. She feels the same kind of dark amusement now that she’d felt back then. “Slit was the one with a knife to my throat, rubbing himself against me through our clothes.”
Capable is shocked. Horrified.
“I suppose it was so easy to forgive him because it meant I could forgive myself for enjoying it.”
Capable is still processing the new knowledge about Slit. “But he’s so sweet with the baby, and he loves you.”
“You knew the War Boys had done terrible things. All of them.”
Capable flinches. “But this is him and you and something like that.”
Toast shrugs. “You know, I think I retroactively appreciate that he stole something from Joe.”
“I don’t know what to think.”
Toast gives her another hug. “You’ll figure things out.”
She goes to what used to be Joe’s room, delighted again that it’s now her family’s room. She still has to talk to the others about it, make sure they’re okay with it, but she’s decided that this room is going to be hers permanently.
Slit is lying on his stomach beside the baby, petting her head of hair and telling her, “Daddy loves you.”
Toast is reminded of Joe. He loved to tell his wives and his boys alike ‘Daddy loves you’. “Don’t say that,” she says sharply.
Slit looks hurt. “You don’t want her to call me ‘Daddy’?”
Toast sighs. “No, of course, I do. But the way you were saying it reminded me of Joe. Just tell her ‘I love you’, okay?”
“How’s she going to know to call me ‘Daddy’?”
Toast narrows her eyes. “Are you trying to teach her to say ‘Daddy’? Are you trying to make that be the first word she says?!”
“Yes,” Slit admits proudly. “Organic says a baby’s first word is usually a word they hear often.”
“Her first word is going to be ‘Mama’,” Toast tells him confidently.
“Say ‘Daddy’, Princess. Say ‘Daddy’.”
It will be hundreds of days before Sylvie can speak. Slit is going to be hoarse before long if he keeps this up. Toast laughs quietly to herself.
She’s brushing her hair when Slit says, “Toast?”
He says it softly, almost uncertainly. He looks apprehensive.
“What?”
“You’ve never talked about your father. Did you have one?”
“Everyone has a father. If you mean whether he helped raised me, yes, he did.”
“Did you love him?”
“Yes. He was a good father. He loved me and I loved him.”
“Did I kill him?”
“You or one of your brothers. Doesn’t matter which of you did it, does it?”
“I’d want Princess to kill the bastard who kills me.”
Toast carries on brushing her hair.
“Is this some of sort revenge I don’t understand? Princess, and you letting me be here with you and her?” It’s absolutely ridiculous, but Slit looks really worried.
“Are you suffering?”
“No.” He looks puzzled now.
“Then I must not be any better at revenge than I was at torture.”
“I don’t understand you. I think you’re joking, but I’m not sure.”
“Slit, I promise you I have no dastardly plans.”
“I don’t know what ‘dastardly’ means.”
“It means evil.” Toast decides to change the topic. “What did the other War Boys say about Sylvie?”
Slit becomes animated again. “They didn’t believe me at first, but Organic told them it was true that I’m her father. They’re so jealous!” He sounds very happy.
Toast lights a second lamp so the room will be bright enough to read in. She curls up against Slit and shows him the book of nursery rhymes. He’s fascinated by the illustrations. She was too when she first saw the books in the vault. It’s one thing to read, but it’s hard to form a mental image of things you never knew existed. The pictures in the books and on their covers are true treasures.
“You’ve got to learn these to sing to Sylvie.”
Slit takes her seriously. “Twin-winkle?” he sounds out. “I know what a star is, but what’s a ‘twin-winkle’?”
Toast hums the tune she learned as a child. Having Slit and their baby and the safety and comfort of the Citadel is amazing. She’s happy. How this came to be might be strange and ugly, but now it’s wonderful and she wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Chapter 4
“Toast?”
Toast looks up from the book she’s reading. Slit had been disappointed that none of the new batch of books she’d brought had pictures, and he’d chosen to occupy himself sharpening his knives. That is, when he wasn’t telling war stories to Sylvie or doing sets of push-ups and sit-ups.
Right now though he’s sitting at the foot of the bed and looking at her with a mix of nervousness and hopefulness. She knows what he’s going to ask. He’s been asking every other day. She memorizes the number of the last page she read and sets the book aside.
“Yes,” she says. She’d prefer to wait until Sylvie is hundreds of days old, but clearly Slit finds it agonizing not to be able to show off their baby to his friends.
“Really?!”
Toast nods, and holds out her arms to him. If she’s going to give him what he wants, then she deserves to get what she wants too. Slit crawls atop her carefully. She knows this is frustrating for him, and she’s not intentionally teasing him, but it honestly makes her feel good in a way that has little to do with sex.
She doesn’t know if this need to have him hold her and kiss her and touch her is normal, and there’s no one she can ask. She thinks maybe she needs the reassurance that he still wants her, that she isn’t simply the mother of his baby now, a breeder who’s done her job and isn’t needed until it’s time to breed again.
As usual, he avoids her breasts, but Toast isn’t allowing it today. “I need to feel your hands on my breasts. Please.”
He puts a hand on one of her breasts and just sort of leaves it there. It’s not enough. Toast puts her hand over his and urges him to squeeze. Almost immediately she feels the wetness of breast milk.
Slit pulls his hand away. “It’s wasteful,” he complains.
“Then lick it up.”
He pushes her cropped tunic up so he can lick at the nipple still leaking milk. But he doesn’t do more than that.
“Suck,” Toast urges.
Slit gives her an almost angry look. “This is for Princess, so she can grow big and strong. I’m not stealing from my own baby!”
Though he’s technically right, Toast resents being reduced to a milker, even for her own baby. She understands why the Dag had chosen to express her milk onto the soil of her garden instead of letting it be bottled for someone else.
Toast makes an effort to sound cajoling rather than argumentative. “There’s more than enough for one baby. The more that gets milked, the more they make.” She squeezes both breasts enticingly. “You wanted to suck them when you first saw how big they’d gotten.”
“That’s before I knew Princess.”
“I need this. Please.”
He reluctantly dips his head and takes a nipple into his mouth. Toast moans. His mouth feels even better than she’d remembered. It reawakens every other part of her body. She belatedly realizes she’s wrapped her legs around Slit and is squeezing him with her thighs.
He gives her a wary look. “It hasn’t been forty days.”
Toast is pretty sure the forty days thing isn’t a hard rule, just an approximate guideline that can vary for different women. But she doesn’t want to risk having a painful, unpleasant experience and possibly causing damage to herself.
“Too soon for penetration,” she agrees. “But maybe do what you did the first time you ever touched me?”
Slit gets a strange look on his face. It’s a mix of surprise and discomfort and maybe shame. “That’ll be enough to please you?” he asks doubtfully. “I can just use my mouth on your cunt instead.”
Toast shakes her head. “I want to feel you between my legs like this.”
He shifts so everything’s aligned right. She can feel his hard cock even through their clothes. She’s missed that part of him. Toast decides to tell him so. “I’ve missed your cock.”
He looks pleased and it kindles some of his old aggression. He nips at her throat and rubs himself against her so firmly that Toast wonders if that area could bruise. She’d shaved off the hair there before the birth and she’s kept it shaved since, to make it easier to check on the progress of her healing. She decides she might keep it shaved even after she’s fully healed. She can scarcely wait to discover what it feels like to have Slit touch the bare skin. She pictures him rubbing his stapled cheek just above her cunt - just as he does something different with his hips.
Toast moans. She looks up at Slit and sees him looking down at her. The desire for his own satisfaction and the desire to possess her are the only things on his face. Somehow it pleases her to see him devoid of the tenderness and adoration he’s worn for the past two dozen days.
She opens her mouth to tell him to kiss her, but before she can get the words out, he pulls her hair. He doesn’t let go even after she yelps in surprise, maintaining a forceful grip that doesn’t relent no matter how she turns her head while trying to relieve the pressure.
He leans close, and Toast expects him to kiss her or bite her or something, but he only stares at her. When she tries to kiss him, he evades her mouth and tugs her hair more sharply. Toast’s palms are flat on the smooth skin of his upper chest and she’s reluctant to instead use them to capture his head. There’s something oddly appealing about the feel of his heart beating strong beneath her hands. She wants more than just feeling him rock against her; she wants to feel him fuck her, wants to feel his strength being pounded into her.
“Kiss me.”
Slit swipes his tongue across her lips in one quick lick, but that’s all. Toast gouges her fingernails into the flesh of his chest, but they’re too short to get much of a reaction out of him. So she pinches both of his tiny nipples between her fingertips and twists hard. He makes an appreciative sound.
“Bite,” he tells her, his mouth a mere inch away from hers.
Toast is happy to oblige him, capturing his lower lip between her teeth and biting down hard enough to draw blood. He rewards her with a kiss, and she doesn’t care about tasting blood, not when he’s sucking at her lips like he’s going to eat them. Between that and the rhythmic rub of his cock against her cunt, an orgasm begins building quickly.
For the first time since they started this, Toast thinks about the baby asleep beside them and desperately hopes that Sylvie doesn’t wake before they can finish.
“More,” she moans against Slit’s lips.
He licks her lips again, and releases his hold on her hair in order to squeeze one of her breasts.
“Yes. Yes, like that,” Toast says encouragingly. But she doesn’t make a sound when she comes, though she can feel her mouth open in a silent scream.
Slit isn’t far behind her, and Toast wraps her arms around him before he can move off of her. She savors the weight of him on top of her and the feel of their hearts beating in synchronization.
“I forgot about Princess,” Slit confesses. He slides off her and Toast reluctantly lets him go.
He reaches across her to briefly stroke Sylvie’s head before wrapping his arm around Toast and fitting his body against hers.
“I was worried it wouldn’t be like that anymore now that we’re parents,” Toast says. She touches his hand where it’s resting on her not-yet-flat belly. His fingers are oddly delicate looking despite their size.
“Me too,” Slit admits.
“You don’t have to be with me or do what I want because of our daughter. You know that, right? I wouldn’t keep you from seeing her even if you and I weren’t together anymore.”
Slit laughs. “You’re making it sound like the worst chore, like cleaning out the latrines or something. I’m the only War Boy who’s ever had his own woman and baby. I’m fucking lucky.”
He is lucky, and she’s glad he knows it. But she won’t allow herself to take him for granted anymore than she’ll allow him to take her for granted. Toast savors the contentment of this moment, of the physical feeling of relaxed well-being that only comes after good sex, of the safe and comfortable feel of Slit’s arm around her, and of the pride in their baby sound asleep beside them.
She’s loath to return to reading about social contract theory or indeed to doing anything else at all that will necessitate ending this moment. “Family nap time?” she suggests.
“Mmmm,” is Slit’s only response, and she realizes he’s already half asleep. Toast closes her eyes and joins her family in sleep.
She doesn’t expect to wake up surrounded by War Boys. Toast gives a startled yelp before she realizes Slit has brought them to see Sylvie. Though she’s dressed, and in the same clothes she wears about the Citadel anyway, she can’t help holding the blanket securely over her body. The War Boys aren’t interested in her, however.
They’re crowded around the bed, leaning in to peer closely at the baby. One of them reaches out to touch her, and Slit quickly slaps his hand away. “Don’t touch my chrome baby with your greasy hands.”
“She’s awful small.”
“Her head’s so much bigger than the rest of her.”
“She’s big for a baby her age,” Toast informs them. “And everybody’s born with a disproportionately large head. The rest of her will catch up soon.”
“She doesn’t look a thing like you, Slit.”
“That’s good,” says another. “She’ll be shiny like her breeder.”
“I don’t care what Organic says. A half life smeg didn’t father a perfect pup.”
Toast intervenes before a fight can start. “I’m her mother and I say Slit is her father.”
“Yeah,” Slit says, glaring at the War Boy who’d doubted his paternity. “I’m her father. And she does too look like me a little!” He points to Sylvie’s cheek and then he points to the scars that start at the corners of his mouth and slash up all the way to his cheekbones. “See the sides of her mouth? I had those before I got these!”
It’s true. None of Toast’s parents or siblings had dimples. Sylvie’s has to come from Slit. He’s probably responsible for her hair being so thick and growing so quickly too. If the plants in the Dag’s garden grew as quickly as Sylvie’s hair, they’d have no worries about food.
Slit picks up Sylvie and holds her protectively against his chest. “You’re all just a bunch of jealous, mediocre filth.”
“You going to let Slit hold a tiny pup?” one of the War Boys demands of Toast. He sounds equal parts disbelieving and concerned.
“He knows how to hold her properly. He’s a good father.”
Slit doesn’t say anything, but he looks incredibly smug.
“She’s real chrome,” says the War Boy whose hands Slit had deemed too dirty to touch Sylvie. “I’ll teach her how to be a shine black thumb soon as she can walk.”
“I’ll teach her,” Slit says.
“You’re mediocre at mechanics and you know it, Slit,” the other Boy argues.
Slit had confided to Toast that he was better at war than at fixing vehicles, but it seems he’d never admit this to another War Boy. He’s shaking his head. “I’m chrome at everything I do,” he insists stubbornly.
Sylvie starts fussing, and Slit glares at his friends. “You made Princess cry! Get out of here, all of you!”
When they’re all gone, Slit chortles with glee. “They’re so jealous! They know they could never father such a shiny and chrome baby!”
Toast can’t help smiling. Only Slit could make egotism seem attractive and even endearing. Not for the first time, she reflects on what kind of character it takes to believe in himself that way when the only world he’d known had deemed him half life battle fodder.
Sylvie is asleep again, heedless of the careful kisses her father plants all over her head and face. “Shiny and chrome,” he chants. “Shiny and chrome.”
“She’s going to grow up convinced she’s the best thing in the Wasteland,” Toast says dryly.
“She is.”
Note: Read Parts 5-7 here
Rating: R
Characters: Toast, Slit, Capable, The Dag, Cheedo, Furiosa
Pairing: Toast/Slit
Word Count: 9,600
Summary: Toast has the chance to build a family with Slit. But it's not going to be easy when he barely understands the concept of a family.
Note: Sequel to Confounded.
It’s been one hundred days. There’s no deceiving herself when one of her first thoughts each morning is a tally of how long it’s been since she’s spoken to him. She misses fucking him, and worse than that, she misses the feel of his arms around her. Worst of all, she simply misses him.
Toast is worried. If a hundred days isn’t enough to cease wanting some War Boy, then how long will it take. The baby inside her moves, and Toast decides it is to blame. It is the reason she misses its father. If it had died, she’d have ceased caring whatsoever about Slit. Instead it’s persisted in living, and the Vuvalini and the Organic Mechanic and a midwife from among the Wretched all agree that this will probably be a full term pregnancy with a live birth. Toast can only imagine what sort of malformed creature will crawl out of her.
She groans as she climbs out of bed. She’s certain that she wakes up bigger each morning than when she went to bed the night before. She passes the Dag on her way to the lavatory. The Dag looks as miserable as Toast feels. Her baby should have been born by now, but it seems reluctant to leave the comfort of her womb.
The Dag has gone from trying out the sounds of various girls’ names back to calling it Warlord Junior, though the Vuvalini try to convince her it’s normal for a first pregnancy to last a little longer. “Out,” she’s mumbling. “Out, you damned parasite.”
There isn’t much for Toast to do these days. Things are running smoothly. She mostly just checks on the various groups of workers and addresses any problems that have arisen. Perhaps it was the desire for some excitement as much as pragmatism that made her insist the Pups should be taught to shoot by the Vuvalini.
The War Boys didn’t like that, of course.
“They’re better shots than you all,” she’d told them bluntly. “You waste bullets because you’re used to a steady supply of more from the Bullet Farm. They’ve had to learn to make every shot count.”
The younger Pups went along with it just fine, but the ones entering puberty seem determined to make the lessons more difficult in some twisted attempt at gaining the approval of their older brothers. Just the other day Toast had to swat one of them in the rear for referring to his new instructor as a ‘dried up old breeder’.
But they are quiet today and Toast soon finds herself bored and restless. She paces back and forth and tries not to be annoyed at the baby for being restless too. As she turns to begin another length of pacing, she catches sight of Slit walking by, carrying a tire in each hand. True, she can’t see his face, but she’d recognize that swaggering walk of his way anywhere.
She hurries after him, not actually breaking into a run because she thinks she’d look silly running with this big belly sticking out in front of her. “Slit,” she calls, lowering her voice so that it comes out a loud whisper rather than a shout.
He stops and turns to face her, and Toast has no idea what to say. She waits for him to speak, but he doesn’t. She finds herself getting annoyed. He ought to at least ask the woman carrying his spawn how she’s feeling.
“Give me your hand,” she orders.
He lets go of the tires and extends a hand to her, looking almost wary.
Toast holds his hand flat against her belly and waits for the baby to kick again. “I thought you might want to feel that.”
“It’s real shine,” he says. “Thanks for letting me feel it.” He hesitates before adding, “Immortan always said his sons died ‘cause the breeders were mediocre, but you’re so chrome this one has to be perfect.”
Toast could not be more shocked that Slit thinks this baby is Joe’s. Stupid man, she thinks, how could he not realize it’s his.
But she remembers how strongly Joe had pushed the idea of himself as everyone’s ‘Daddy’. The mothers and true fathers of the boys who grew up to be War Boys hadn’t mattered; Joe was the only father anybody was allowed to have. Joe had given his men women to ‘breed’ sometimes, but the resulting offspring belonged to Joe, the boys to serve as warriors and the girls to be breeders and milkers. Joe was the only person in the Citadel who’d had a family. The rest of them probably didn’t even understand the concept, or at least they couldn’t apply it to themselves.
It should be so easy to tell him that her baby isn’t even Joe’s anyway, but Toast can’t say it. She decides it’s kinder not to tell Slit it’s his baby. It’ll probably be born a monster or die soon anyway, so really it’d be crueler to get his hopes up.
Slit lets the subject of Joe’s sons drop. He asks, “Am I forgiven?”
Toast doesn’t understand what he’s talking about. “Forgiven for what?”
“For letting those new War Boys die after you told me not to.”
“Don’t be silly,” she says. “Their deaths aren’t your fault.”
“Then I’m sorry I got this-” He touches a small scar on his shoulder that she doesn’t remember. “After you told me not to get any more scars.”
“That’s even sillier. I know you didn’t ask to get shot. That new scar was unavoidable.” Toast can’t imagine what the hell is wrong with him.
“Then what did I do to make you angry?”
“I’m not angry with you,” she says, though it’s hard not to sound angry. It’s impossible to have patience when there’s a little monster kicking her insides.
“So you just got tired of me.” He sounds resigned. She’d have expected anger or wounded pride. This hurts to hear. She belatedly realizes that it might have been selfish and cruel to end things with him the way she had.
“No,” Toast tells him quickly. She owes him an explanation. She can’t admit the truth, though, not that he’d understand it anyway. So she lies. “I’m just not in the mood for a bedmate when I’ve got this thing growing in me.”
“So after it’s born…” he asks hopefully.
“We’ll see,” she says, though she’s certain she won’t be stupid enough to go through this all over again.
He reaches out as if to touch her face or stroke her hair or something, and Toast shrinks back to avoid it. If he touches her like that, she might just throw herself into his arms and demand he never let her go.
The rejection hurts him. That’s plain from the look on his face before he puts on a nonchalant expression. “Got to get these tires over to the blackthumbs, but you can always ask a pup to find me if you need me.”
Toast is oddly pleased by the new knowledge that he’s been if not heartbroken then at least emotionally bruised. The only thing worse than caring about a War Boy would be caring about a War Boy who didn’t care back.
She smiles as she watches him pick up the tires, admiring the way the pull of their weight makes the muscles in his arms flex. She feels both powerful and guilty as she watches him walk away because he’s lost that cocky swagger.
Toast wants to talk to someone about all of this. But she’s certain that Capable will disagree with her decision not to tell Slit that he’s the father of her baby. Capable is still disappointed she stopped inviting him to her bed.
She certainly can’t waste Furiosa’s time with this, and while the Vuvalini had been more understanding than she’d expected, there were some things she didn’t think they’d be happy to hear about. Like how she and Slit had first met. She’s quite sure that Furiosa has figured that out, but Furiosa had been a warrior of the Citadel for so long that she has to understand even if she doesn’t necessarily approve.
When she returns to the vault, she finds the door to the nursery open. Joe had treated this room like a holy place. It held half a dozen mismatched cradles, precious relics from the world Before. The walls had been painted white and there was even a large picture of a fantastical brown bear dressed in a red shirt. Joe had collected toys too, mainly soft fabric things shaped like animals.
Teddy bears. Miss Giddy said in the old world children were given teddy bears to sleep with and cuddle for comfort, and that she herself had had a dozen of them she’d line up neatly on her bed. Toast can’t comprehend a world of such plenty that people could expend resources on something so trivial.
The Dag is holding a teddy bear as large as a toddler. “I want to set fire to everything in here sometimes,” she says.
“I want to set fire to his bed,” Toast replies. “I have to remind myself that if I burn everything he touched and claimed for himself, I’d have to light myself afire too.”
“Did you fuck your War Boy in his bed?”
Toast shakes her head.
“A pity. You should have. Maybe I will if I find one I like.”
It’s as good an invitation to confide the whole sordid story. Toast is deciding where to start when the Dag cries out and drops the teddy bear to clutch her belly.
“I think it’s finally starting!”
Toast helps her to her bed before going to find Cheedo and summoning the Organic Mechanic.
But it’s almost two whole days later before the baby is finally born. None of them are pleased with the little cock between its legs.
“Perfect in every way,” the Organic Mechanic proclaims, smirking.
“I knew it,” the Dag says gloomily. “What are you doing?! Don’t give it to me. I don’t want to hold it and it’s not sucking on my teats.”
The Organic Mechanic pauses and then looks to Furiosa for guidance. Furiosa doesn’t offer any. It’s the Dag’s baby, the decisions are hers to make. It’s one of the base tenets of this new Citadel of theirs. No one could force a woman to bear children, or take her children away from her. Toast expects this to be the only instance of a woman not wanting her child because this will be the last child born here from rape.
Cheedo takes the baby and cradles it gingerly. “Dag, it’s not any uglier than any other infant.”
“I don’t care. Toss it down and let the Wretched eat it.”
“You don’t mean that. I’ll take it to the Milking Mothers. One of them will be happy to nurse it.”
“Bring it back,” the Dag says, granting permission for this course of action. “Got to keep our eyes on Warlord Junior.”
Surprisingly, it’s the Vuvalini who take the optimistic view. Apparently their dislike of men doesn’t extend to male infants.
“I think it’ll be quite some time before little Junior is ready to oppress anyone,” Gen says dryly.
Patrice strokes the Dag’s hair. “Dear girl, the best revenge on Immortan Joe would be to raise his son to be the opposite of what he wanted. Let the boy grow up to be a farmer or a healer.”
Toast slips out of the room. The last couple of days have been a preview of what’s in store for her. She’s terrified of the pain that awaits her and the helplessness of not being able to do anything about it. It’s not fair. It takes two people to make a baby, but only one of them suffers for it.
She remembers making this point to her grandmother when her mother was giving birth to her youngest brother. Gran had said men suffered when they had to listen to their women in pain. But of course that only worked if the father gave a damn about the mother.
She wonders how Slit would feel if she insisted he stay by her side when the time for the birth came.
Chapter 2
Toast chooses to give birth in Joe’s bed rather than her own. The idea of delivering another man’s baby in his bed is gratifying, almost as much as spitting on his corpse.
“Promise me you won’t listen to me if I tell you to bring Slit here,” Toast demands, squeezing Capable’s hand.
“I promise,” Capable says. “I wish you would change your mind though. It might make you feel better to hold his hand rather than mine.”
Gen chuckles. “No, it’s the right decision. The boy might faint.”
Toast hadn’t considered that. It’s interesting and amusing to contemplate how War Boys would react to observing childbirth. She’s certain that at least one of them would shout, “Witness”, but most of them would probably be horrified. The reason she doesn’t want Slit here, however, is simply because she’s decided that needing him so much must be a weakness. Because Capable is right, she’d much rather be holding Slit’s hand than Capable’s.
Once the pain gets really bad, though, it’s her mother she wants. “Mommy,” she screams at one point, and once that wave of pain has ebbed, she’s embarrassed. But no one gives any indication that they’d noticed.
It’s too crowded in here, there are too many people. Toast doesn’t like that. She’s glad of Capable’s support, of course. And she’s glad the Vuvalini are here because they can assess what the Organic Mechanic is doing. Toast doesn’t trust him. But surely Furiosa has better things to do, and she isn’t sure why a pair of Milk Mothers are here. There are even Pups playing in a corner, unfazed by her screams of pain. She feels like the center of some grotesque entertainment.
“Capable, make the gawkers go away,” she murmurs. She’s in no mood to be polite if she has to do it herself.
Capable speaks to Furiosa quietly, and the Imperator sends the children away before leaving herself. One of the Milk Mothers refuses to go though.
“That could be my grandbaby,” she protests. “Cheedo said the father is a War Boy.”
The other Milk Mother sighs and explains, “She thinks every War Boy is her son, even the ones who are colored different than him under their paint.”
Eventually the second Milk Mother and Capable manage to steer the would be-grandmother away, mainly by convincing her she needs to knit a wrap for the baby.
“I hope Immortan Joe is burning in hell for what he did to these people,” Gen says bitterly.
Toast couldn’t agree more, but another wave of pain prevents her from voicing her agreement and leaves her simply screaming wordlessly.
They tell her it was a quick delivery, but Toast doesn’t feel that way. Still, the pain is a distant second to the marvel she now feels. A normal, healthy baby girl. It’s too good to be true.
The Dag comes in to claim the afterbirth. She plans to bury it in her garden and plant a tree over it. She hadn’t done it for her own afterbirth, insisting that Joe’s contamination would poison her garden.
She strokes the surprisingly thick head of hair on Toast’s baby girl. “I’m jealous. Let’s switch.”
“Not a chance.”
Eventually everybody’s done admiring the baby and cleaning up and they finally leave. Only Capable lingers. Toast doesn’t mind. She has a favor to ask her.
“Could you please ask Slit to come see me?”
“Of course.”
“He doesn’t know he’s her father.”
Capable doesn’t seem surprised. “I’m not telling him for you. That’s between you and him.”
That’s fair. It had been rather cowardly to hope that Capable would tell him for her.
The baby finishes nursing and goes to sleep. Toast carefully lays her down beside her and simply watches her. Objectively, she’s red and wrinkled. But she’s still the most beautiful thing Toast has ever seen. She hadn’t given any thought to names, convinced as she’d been that she wouldn’t have a healthy, living child.
“Capable said you wanted to see me.”
She hadn’t heard Slit arrive. It’s hard to tear her attention away from her baby girl and really focus on him. But she manages it. He looks good - no new scars that she can see - though he seems worried.
“You’re the father of this baby.”
He doesn’t seem to understand.
Toast repeats it. “Slit, this is your baby, not Joe’s.”
She watches as shock and disbelief and even fear cross his face. But then he looks delighted. “That’s why you asked me to come to your room! You used me as breeding stock!”
This isn’t the reaction Toast was expecting. She decides first to clear up either his misconception about the human gestation period or his poor tracking of the passing of time. “It’s about two hundred and seventy days from conception to birth,” she informs him. “She was conceived while I had you chained to my bed.”
“Or after you unchained me,” he says. That’s the romantic view to take. Another surprise.
“Could be,” she admits. “But I didn’t use you as breeding stock intentionally. I wasn’t trying to get pregnant. It was the last thing on my mind, which is how I let it happen.”
He looks less delighted now. “So you got mad at me when you found out I’d bred you?”
“What? No.”
“I don’t understand,” he says. He’s still standing all the way across the room.
“Come look at her, please, and I’ll explain anything you don’t understand.”
Slit slowly moves nearer to the bed. He peers at the baby. “She’s so tiny.”
“Closer. You can touch her.”
He walks around to the other side of the bed and lies down behind her. Apparently he’s taken the encouragement to touch his daughter as an invitation to cuddle his daughter’s mother. Toast doesn’t mind. Furthest thing from it. It feel amazingly good to have their baby on one side of her and Slit on the other.
“She’s not tiny for a newborn. She’s a big baby.”
“I’ve never seen a pup that’s just been born before. She’s the tiniest person I’ve ever seen.”
“Trust me, she’s plenty big. I’ve got tearing and stitches that will vouch for that. You know where babies come from, don’t you?”
“Yeah. Shit. Your cunt’s barely big enough for my cock; how did that pup fit there?”
“Very painfully,” Toast says ruefully. “Okay, what don’t you understand?”
“Everything about you.”
Toast isn’t sure whether that’s supposed to be a joke. She twists her head to look back at him. He looks serious. “Ask me what you want to know and I’ll tell you if it’s something I know.”
“Why didn’t you want me anymore? I thought… Things were nice and then I came back from the battle with the Buzzards and you said you didn’t want me anymore.”
“Things were nice. But you’re a War Boy and I still couldn’t believe things could be nice with one of you, especially you. I felt the baby moving for the first time while you were fighting Buzzards and it was like getting everything I’d ever wanted.”
“Getting what you wanted made you mad?” Slit asks incredulously.
“I didn’t trust it. The last time I hoped for anything, I hoped the other wives and I would escape safely to a wonderful place. But then Angharad died and it turned out the Green Place itself had died a long time ago.”
“Hm. I think I understand that. But what about us breeding? You said you weren’t trying to get pregnant, but you weren’t mad that I put a pup in you? I’m a half life…”
“I was concerned, but I talked to the Organic Mechanic and it seems that not all of you War Boys are sick. Some of you have benign tumors. He said there was even one War Boy who was nearly Joe’s age.”
“Yeah, Ace.”
Toast turns to look at him again. “You mean there was an old War Boy with tumors and you all never realized that the tumors didn’t necessarily mean early death?!” It’s her turn to sound incredulous.
Slit is frowning. “Never thought about it.”
Toast sighs. “I’m going to have to do something about that. I should have taken care of it as soon as I found out. I was too absorbed with myself.”
“Anyway,” she says. “Even if you were sick, it doesn’t mean your child would be too. And two ‘full lives’ can have unhealthy babies. My cousin gave birth to something you wouldn’t even recognize as a baby. The very air and earth is poisoned. Some of us just get lucky.”
“Just so I understand, you’re not angry at me about anything?”
“No. I forgave you for what I had to be angry at you for.”
He doesn’t ask for clarification. He’s not stupid. He reaches across her and his fingers hover over the baby for a moment, but he pulls his hand back without touching her. He nuzzles Toast’s neck and whispers, “Is she really mine? This isn’t a joke?”
“It’s no joke. You think I’d be in the mood for jokes after what I just went through? They call it ‘labor’ for a reason, you know. She’s yours and mine. Ours.”
They’re both quiet for a long time. The baby rouses and fusses, and nurses eagerly when Toast offers her a nipple. Slit seems very interested in her breasts, which are currently swollen to twice their previous size.
It seems like a good time to inform him, “You know we can’t fuck for quite some time, right?”
“I figured as much,” he says. Then he frowns. “I saw Organic earlier and he said something about forty days and giggled. He’s been saying lots of strange shit to me lately… He knew! Organic knew!”
He seems upset. In fact he seems almost offended. Toast hastens to console him. “He’s the organic mechanic, of course he knew. He couldn’t tell you because I’d have broken his nose again or something.”
Slit continues to look disgruntled for a moment longer, then he flops back on the bed and grins at the ceiling. “I made a shiny and chrome full life pup. No other War Boy’s ever done that! I’m so fucking shine.” He thumps the mattress with both fists gleefully.
Toast seriously doubts he’s the first War Boy to father a child; Joe’s cult had been around too long for that. But he’s certainly the first to have the chance to be a father. She pokes him with her big toe. “Excuse me, I think I did most of the making. You only contributed at the fun stage.”
He grabs her foot and rolls onto his stomach and starts kissing his way up her leg. For a moment Toast thinks she’ll have to remind him that sex isn’t going to happen any time soon, but he stops just above her knee. “Thank you for making a pup with me.”
“I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t call our baby a ‘pup’.”
“Alright.” He studies the baby in her arms and then carefully reaches out to stroke the bottom of one tiny foot. “So little and soft.”
“I’m not going to call her ‘Wrench’ or ‘Shotgun’ so there’s no sense in asking you what names you like.” But Toast wants to hear his input anyway, wants this to truly be their baby from here on.
Slit shakes his head. “Nah, she’s too good for War Boy names. Chrome?”
Toast pretends to consider it, before saying, “No.” She’s already decided on a name, but she likes this conversation.
Slit thinks quietly for a long moment. Then, after the baby’s fallen asleep again and Toast is carefully setting her down, he says, “What about ‘Prince’?”
Toast feels her eyebrows raise. “Do you know what a prince is?”
“A special pup. Organic used to say we had a prince on the way whenever one of the Immortan’s wives was pregnant.”
“A prince is the son of a ruler, and the girl version is a princess.”
“I like Princess even better than Prince.”
Toast smiles. “I want to name her after my grandmother. Sylvia, but Sylvie for short.”
“Sylvie sounds mediocre,” Slit complains.
Toast kisses him quickly before settling herself against him and wrapping his arms around her. “People might get the wrong impression if I named my child princess. They might think I was trying to make her Furiosa’s heir.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Slit demands. “Of course she’s going to be an Imperator.”
“At least wait until she can walk before you start plotting to overthrow Furiosa,” Toast laughs. “Now shhh, it’s family nap time.”
“You want me to go?” Slit asks, but Toast squeezes his arm tightly and he seems to understand that she wants him to stay right here.
Chapter 3
“Her hand’s smaller than my finger,” Slit says. He’s gingerly touched one of the baby’s hands with a single finger.
It’s been three days and he hasn’t left the room except for quick visits to the lavatory. Capable has been bringing meals for him as well as for Toast. Toast isn’t sure what she’d expected from him, but it certainly wasn’t this. She reads in between sleeping and feeding Sylvie, but Slit doesn’t do anything but stare at the baby.
It was endearing at first, but now it’s almost unsettling. Toast loves her baby so much that the very concept of love has been redefined for her. But she thinks Slit might love Sylvie even more. His attention is fixed on the baby with a single-minded devotion that borders on obsession. Toast imagines he must have looked at Joe with the same worship.
She’s trying to think of something to say, to engage him in conversation so this unsettled feeling can be dispelled, when the baby curls her hand around Slit’s finger. He starts crying. He makes an odd sound and Toast sees the shine of tears in his eyes.
Toast rubs his back without speaking and kisses the bristly top of his head. He hasn’t even shaved since he first saw the baby. He needs a bath, but Toast hasn’t figured out how to tell him without insulting him or risking him thinking she’s sending him away from Sylvie.
“She’s so little and helpless,” he says. “What if the night fevers start and I die before she’s big enough to protect herself?”
It’s a very real possibility that he won’t live to see their daughter reach adulthood. But Toast might not either, though it hurts to think about it. Slit needs comfort and reassurance though. This is probably the first time in his life he’s thought about wanting a long life - as opposed to a ‘historic death’ - and she suspects he’s scared.
“She’s safe here. She has me, and Capable, and the Dag, and Cheedo, and Furiosa, and the Vuvalini. And your brothers - they wouldn’t hurt her, would they?”
He shakes his head. “Wouldn’t hurt a little pup.” His mood swings wildly and he’s suddenly excited again. “They don’t know she’s mine! Can I show them her?!”
Toast doesn’t want to hurt his feelings, but she’s not comfortable with the idea of a whole group of War Boys around her newborn. She doesn’t seriously think they’d intentionally hurt the baby, but it would easy for them to inadvertently harm her. “Yeah, but let’s wait a few more days, okay? ‘Til she’s a bit stronger and bigger.”
Slit nods. “Yeah.”
Toast kisses him full on the mouth and slides her tongue between his lips. He kisses her back for a brief moment, before pulling away and giving her a confused look.
“I thought we couldn’t?”
“We can’t fuck, but we can just kiss.”
“Why?” he asks. His arms are around her and he’s stroking her hair, so Toast doesn’t think he’s asking because he doesn’t want to. She’d told him to ask her about anything he didn’t understand and maybe that’s what he’s doing now.
“I want to feel close to you.”
He smiles, and she’s struck anew by how much younger he looks now that the knowledge of his fatherhood has made him vulnerable, and by how handsome he is without the paint and grease. Watching him fall in love with their baby is making her fall in love with him. Toast just smiles back at him for a while.
She’s about to kiss him when there’s a knock at the door. “Enter,” she calls, thinking it’s Capable or the Dag. The Dag seriously seems to want to steal her baby.
However it’s Furiosa. She looks surprised to see Slit and not entirely pleased. Slit himself looks downright belligerent, all traces of his earlier tenderness gone.
“How are you feeling, Toast?”
“Surprisingly good,” Toast answers.
Furiosa comes to stand beside the bed. “May I hold her?”
“No,” Slit says harshly, before Toast can reply.
“I wasn’t asking you,” Furiosa retorts.
Slit hadn’t objected to her sisters and the Vuvalini holding Sylvie. Toast is disappointed he still holds a grudge against Furiosa. Hasn’t he realized that he wouldn’t be with her and they wouldn’t have Sylvie if Furiosa hadn’t turned on Joe?
Toast offers her daughter to Furiosa. “Make sure you support her head.”
“Her arm is going to hurt Princess. You saw what it did to my eye!”
This is the first Toast is hearing about Furiosa being responsible for the damage to his right eye, though she’d asked about it once and he’d told her he saw just fine. She looks to Furiosa for a denial.
Furiosa is scowling. “Tell her why I beat you.”
Slit doesn’t say anything, but he continues glaring at Furiosa. It’s a relief to know that his dislike of Furiosa is personal, that it has nothing to do with her being a ‘traitor’.
Furiosa unbuckles her prosthetic hand and lets it drop to the floor. Toast helps settle her baby in Furiosa’s arms. Furiosa smiles at Sylvie, a gentle look on her face. She kisses her forehead before handing her back to Toast.
“Toast, would you please join me and the others around the pool at sunset? I need to speak with you all.”
Toast nods. When Furiosa is gone, and Sylvie is nursing, she looks at Slit for an explanation. “What happened?”
“Nothing that didn’t happen all the time. Imperator Furiosa overreacted ‘cause Morsov was her little pet, that’s all.”
Toast is skeptical. She arches an eyebrow.
Slit squirms a little. He seems reluctant to tell her what exactly he did. At least he knows enough to be ashamed and to care what she thinks about him.
“Whatever it was, you won’t do it again, right?”
“Can’t. The filth died mediocre flinging himself onto a Buzzard vehicle.”
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
“I know. I won’t. I’ve got Princess and you now.”
Toast has accepted that he’s never going to call their daughter ‘Sylvie.’ It’s actually sort of sweet.
When the sun is setting and it’s time to attend Furiosa’s meeting, Toast lays the baby face-down on Slit’s chest. He gives her a terrified look.
“Babies like to be held and to listen to somebody’s heart beating. I read it in a book.”
“What if she gets hungry before you come back?”
Toast doubts she’ll be gone for more than an hour. “A few minutes of hunger won’t hurt her.”
Slit looks at her like she’s said something unbelievably monstrous. Toast almost laughs.
Capable, the Dag, and Cheedo are sitting around the pool when Toast arrives. Toast decides to make the most of the opportunity and take a real bath. She’s finished washing and is just relaxing in the water by the time Furiosa and the Vuvalini come.
“We have a problem,” Furiosa announces.
They all look at her, concerned but not alarmed. Toast hopes it’s not another conflict with another group. She can’t bear the thought of Slit having to risk his life now when their daughter is too young to even remember him if he dies.
“There are too many people and more keep coming. The whole Wasteland’s heard we’re giving away water.”
“There’s plenty of water,” Capable says.
Gen shakes her head. “It’s a finite resource. Once it’s gone, it’s gone for good. It hasn’t rained since before you were alive. What’s down in the Earth is all that’s left.”
Toast feels guilty about the bath she’s sitting in, but then she reminds herself that this water gets drained and used to water the plants. It’s not wasted.
“We’re going to stop helping people?” Cheedo asks.
“No,” Furiosa says. “But we can’t keep feeding everyone who shows up or we won’t have food left. The plants don’t grow overnight. We’re at the point of consuming food faster than we can grow it.”
“Also, there are too many people up here in the Citadel now. There are people with no jobs to occupy them. We’re starting to have problems. They’ve lost their fear of the War Boys and the platform guards. It’s hard to control them.”
“I thought the point was not to control people,” Capable says, beginning to look angry.
“There has to be some kind of order maintained,” Toast tells her. Capable and the other wives had spent their whole lives secluded away from other people. They could be overly idealistic sometimes.
Furiosa nods. “We have crime. People are getting food and water, but if somebody has a trinket, there are still people who want it and are willing to steal, or even to beat people and take their things.”
The Dag speaks up. “Some of my workers in the garden steal.”
“So we’re kicking the Wretched out?” Toast asks bluntly.
“I thought we agreed not to call them that?” the Dag reminds her.
“Sorry. It slipped out.”
“We’re going to encourage people to create a real settlement below. The Vuvalini and the Repair Boys have already devised a way to get water down there and set up irrigation so people can plant their own food.”
It sounds like Furiosa has already made her decisions and begun implementing them. She’s informing the wives as a courtesy. Toast is hurt that she was excluded from the planning, but then she hasn’t been concerned with anything but her baby and her baby’s father for the last few moon cycles.
“I have another idea. One that just came to me. How do you all feel about inviting the imperator in charge of the Bullet Farm to come visit us?”
“Visit us?” Cheedo asks doubtfully.
“You mean, like a social visit?” Capable asks.
“Yes,” Furiosa replies.
It seems very odd to Toast, but she suspects Furiosa has motives she isn’t choosing to share with them. “Is it safe?” she asks.
“If you’re asking whether he’ll try to kill me and seize control of the Citadel, then the answer is perhaps. But I think the potential reward outweighs the risk, and I certainly will take precautions to discourage Rip from trying to kill me.”
Toast wonders what reward that is, but she doesn’t ask. Furiosa would have told her if she wanted her to know. Furiosa hadn’t seemed to care about her sharing her bed with Slit before, but Toast fears that choosing to be with him as a family makes Furiosa think less of her. She’s pondering whether to ask to speak with Furiosa privately when Slit appears with Sylvie cradled carefully against his chest.
“She’s hungry,” he says to Toast, ignoring everyone else.
Toast just stares at him. He looks so good holding their baby like that.
“Toast,” he says imploringly.
She wades to the edge of the pool and holds out her arms, but he frowns at her.
“What if you drop her in the Aqua Cola?”
She wants to snap that she’d never drop her baby, but suddenly Toast is afraid of Sylvie slipping out of her arms and drowning. She climbs out of the pool and sits on her discarded clothes. Slit finally hands her their baby and then stands there like he doesn’t trust any of the others, though everyone but Furiosa is smiling at him.
“Slit, why don’t you go tell your brothers about Sylvie and get cleaned up? All three of us will be nice and clean when we get back to the room.”
“Yeah, I’ve got to tell them about Princess.”
He takes off and Toast breathes a sigh of relief.
“I still can’t believe he doesn’t care that the baby is a girl,” the Dag says.
Toast glances at Furiosa as she replies to the Dag. “He’s convinced she’ll grow up to be an imperator like Furiosa.”
“I want one just like him,” the Dag says. Toast can’t tell if she’s joking, though Cheedo looks quite unhappy.
After Furiosa and the Vuvalini leave, Toast carries Sylvie into the nursery and introduces her to Warlord Junior. She doesn’t want her child thinking of Joe’s blood as a brother, but it’s inevitable that the two children will be close friends. She sets Sylvie down in Junior’s cradle and watches as they snuggle together.
Capable and Cheedo follow her and they smile at the sight of the babies together. The Dag sticks her head into the nursery, sees what’s going on, and disappears, presumably retreating to her garden.
It’s nice spending time with the others that doesn’t involve them helping take care of her and Sylvie. Toast doesn’t realize how much time has passed until Slit comes back, looking anxious.
“Joe’s pup looks mediocre,” he comments. “Princess is much more chrome than him.”
Cheedo looks offended on behalf of the baby she’s been caring for. Toast does think her baby is better than Junior, but she can’t resist asking, “He’s healthy and normal. What makes him mediocre?”
Slit sniffs. “He hardly has any hair. Princess has much more hair even though the other pup is much older than her.”
Sixty days is hardly ‘much older’ but Toast can’t bring herself to correct Slit. His adoration for their baby girl is too endearing.
“You take Sylvie back to our room. I need to speak with Capable alone.”
Cheedo takes Junior to be nursed by a Milk Mother, and Slit leaves with Sylvie. Toast browses through a book of rhymes meant to be sung to very young children. Some of them are familiar. She remembers reciting them as a little girl.
“What is it?” Capable asks at last.
“You tell me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Something’s wrong. You’re upset, though you did hide it well. You don’t have to take care of everybody all the time, Capable. We want to take care of you too.”
Capable begins twisting one of her braids. “Coil’s started getting fevers. It’s the beginning of the end for him.”
“I’m sorry.” Toast hopes Capable hasn’t fallen in love with another dying boy.
“I was trying to comfort him and I ended up being intimate with him.”
Well. Toast is about to assure her that it’s okay, when Capable continues.
“He thinks it means we’re together now. But I don’t love him. I just felt sorry for him.”
“You don’t have to fuck him again, Capable. You don’t owe him anything.”
“I know. I don’t mind the sex, it’s nice. But I feel bad about letting him assume I love him.”
“You cared enough to want to comfort him, and you like fucking him. Maybe that’s enough,” Toast suggests.
“I feel like it should be love or nothing,” Capable says miserably, still wringing her braids.
“Says who?”
Capable doesn’t have a response to that.
Toast hugs her and kisses her on both cheeks. “You’ve got to stop worrying about what you think you should feel and just enjoy what you do have. I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told anyone else. Slit was one of the War Boys who attacked my settlement and brought me here for Joe.”
“I thought so,” Capable said. “It’s the only way you could have known any War Boy before Fury Road.”
“You probably assumed they didn’t touch me. Joe wouldn’t take seconds from his boys.”
Capable nods cautiously.
“They were ordered not to touch me. The imperator in charge even set a guard shift around me at night. Well, I guess he never considered that the guard himself was getting the chance to be alone with me. I suppose I could have screamed and he’d have gotten in trouble, but it didn’t occur to me.”
“Slit saved you?”
Toast feels her lips tugging into a smile. She feels the same kind of dark amusement now that she’d felt back then. “Slit was the one with a knife to my throat, rubbing himself against me through our clothes.”
Capable is shocked. Horrified.
“I suppose it was so easy to forgive him because it meant I could forgive myself for enjoying it.”
Capable is still processing the new knowledge about Slit. “But he’s so sweet with the baby, and he loves you.”
“You knew the War Boys had done terrible things. All of them.”
Capable flinches. “But this is him and you and something like that.”
Toast shrugs. “You know, I think I retroactively appreciate that he stole something from Joe.”
“I don’t know what to think.”
Toast gives her another hug. “You’ll figure things out.”
She goes to what used to be Joe’s room, delighted again that it’s now her family’s room. She still has to talk to the others about it, make sure they’re okay with it, but she’s decided that this room is going to be hers permanently.
Slit is lying on his stomach beside the baby, petting her head of hair and telling her, “Daddy loves you.”
Toast is reminded of Joe. He loved to tell his wives and his boys alike ‘Daddy loves you’. “Don’t say that,” she says sharply.
Slit looks hurt. “You don’t want her to call me ‘Daddy’?”
Toast sighs. “No, of course, I do. But the way you were saying it reminded me of Joe. Just tell her ‘I love you’, okay?”
“How’s she going to know to call me ‘Daddy’?”
Toast narrows her eyes. “Are you trying to teach her to say ‘Daddy’? Are you trying to make that be the first word she says?!”
“Yes,” Slit admits proudly. “Organic says a baby’s first word is usually a word they hear often.”
“Her first word is going to be ‘Mama’,” Toast tells him confidently.
“Say ‘Daddy’, Princess. Say ‘Daddy’.”
It will be hundreds of days before Sylvie can speak. Slit is going to be hoarse before long if he keeps this up. Toast laughs quietly to herself.
She’s brushing her hair when Slit says, “Toast?”
He says it softly, almost uncertainly. He looks apprehensive.
“What?”
“You’ve never talked about your father. Did you have one?”
“Everyone has a father. If you mean whether he helped raised me, yes, he did.”
“Did you love him?”
“Yes. He was a good father. He loved me and I loved him.”
“Did I kill him?”
“You or one of your brothers. Doesn’t matter which of you did it, does it?”
“I’d want Princess to kill the bastard who kills me.”
Toast carries on brushing her hair.
“Is this some of sort revenge I don’t understand? Princess, and you letting me be here with you and her?” It’s absolutely ridiculous, but Slit looks really worried.
“Are you suffering?”
“No.” He looks puzzled now.
“Then I must not be any better at revenge than I was at torture.”
“I don’t understand you. I think you’re joking, but I’m not sure.”
“Slit, I promise you I have no dastardly plans.”
“I don’t know what ‘dastardly’ means.”
“It means evil.” Toast decides to change the topic. “What did the other War Boys say about Sylvie?”
Slit becomes animated again. “They didn’t believe me at first, but Organic told them it was true that I’m her father. They’re so jealous!” He sounds very happy.
Toast lights a second lamp so the room will be bright enough to read in. She curls up against Slit and shows him the book of nursery rhymes. He’s fascinated by the illustrations. She was too when she first saw the books in the vault. It’s one thing to read, but it’s hard to form a mental image of things you never knew existed. The pictures in the books and on their covers are true treasures.
“You’ve got to learn these to sing to Sylvie.”
Slit takes her seriously. “Twin-winkle?” he sounds out. “I know what a star is, but what’s a ‘twin-winkle’?”
Toast hums the tune she learned as a child. Having Slit and their baby and the safety and comfort of the Citadel is amazing. She’s happy. How this came to be might be strange and ugly, but now it’s wonderful and she wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Chapter 4
“Toast?”
Toast looks up from the book she’s reading. Slit had been disappointed that none of the new batch of books she’d brought had pictures, and he’d chosen to occupy himself sharpening his knives. That is, when he wasn’t telling war stories to Sylvie or doing sets of push-ups and sit-ups.
Right now though he’s sitting at the foot of the bed and looking at her with a mix of nervousness and hopefulness. She knows what he’s going to ask. He’s been asking every other day. She memorizes the number of the last page she read and sets the book aside.
“Yes,” she says. She’d prefer to wait until Sylvie is hundreds of days old, but clearly Slit finds it agonizing not to be able to show off their baby to his friends.
“Really?!”
Toast nods, and holds out her arms to him. If she’s going to give him what he wants, then she deserves to get what she wants too. Slit crawls atop her carefully. She knows this is frustrating for him, and she’s not intentionally teasing him, but it honestly makes her feel good in a way that has little to do with sex.
She doesn’t know if this need to have him hold her and kiss her and touch her is normal, and there’s no one she can ask. She thinks maybe she needs the reassurance that he still wants her, that she isn’t simply the mother of his baby now, a breeder who’s done her job and isn’t needed until it’s time to breed again.
As usual, he avoids her breasts, but Toast isn’t allowing it today. “I need to feel your hands on my breasts. Please.”
He puts a hand on one of her breasts and just sort of leaves it there. It’s not enough. Toast puts her hand over his and urges him to squeeze. Almost immediately she feels the wetness of breast milk.
Slit pulls his hand away. “It’s wasteful,” he complains.
“Then lick it up.”
He pushes her cropped tunic up so he can lick at the nipple still leaking milk. But he doesn’t do more than that.
“Suck,” Toast urges.
Slit gives her an almost angry look. “This is for Princess, so she can grow big and strong. I’m not stealing from my own baby!”
Though he’s technically right, Toast resents being reduced to a milker, even for her own baby. She understands why the Dag had chosen to express her milk onto the soil of her garden instead of letting it be bottled for someone else.
Toast makes an effort to sound cajoling rather than argumentative. “There’s more than enough for one baby. The more that gets milked, the more they make.” She squeezes both breasts enticingly. “You wanted to suck them when you first saw how big they’d gotten.”
“That’s before I knew Princess.”
“I need this. Please.”
He reluctantly dips his head and takes a nipple into his mouth. Toast moans. His mouth feels even better than she’d remembered. It reawakens every other part of her body. She belatedly realizes she’s wrapped her legs around Slit and is squeezing him with her thighs.
He gives her a wary look. “It hasn’t been forty days.”
Toast is pretty sure the forty days thing isn’t a hard rule, just an approximate guideline that can vary for different women. But she doesn’t want to risk having a painful, unpleasant experience and possibly causing damage to herself.
“Too soon for penetration,” she agrees. “But maybe do what you did the first time you ever touched me?”
Slit gets a strange look on his face. It’s a mix of surprise and discomfort and maybe shame. “That’ll be enough to please you?” he asks doubtfully. “I can just use my mouth on your cunt instead.”
Toast shakes her head. “I want to feel you between my legs like this.”
He shifts so everything’s aligned right. She can feel his hard cock even through their clothes. She’s missed that part of him. Toast decides to tell him so. “I’ve missed your cock.”
He looks pleased and it kindles some of his old aggression. He nips at her throat and rubs himself against her so firmly that Toast wonders if that area could bruise. She’d shaved off the hair there before the birth and she’s kept it shaved since, to make it easier to check on the progress of her healing. She decides she might keep it shaved even after she’s fully healed. She can scarcely wait to discover what it feels like to have Slit touch the bare skin. She pictures him rubbing his stapled cheek just above her cunt - just as he does something different with his hips.
Toast moans. She looks up at Slit and sees him looking down at her. The desire for his own satisfaction and the desire to possess her are the only things on his face. Somehow it pleases her to see him devoid of the tenderness and adoration he’s worn for the past two dozen days.
She opens her mouth to tell him to kiss her, but before she can get the words out, he pulls her hair. He doesn’t let go even after she yelps in surprise, maintaining a forceful grip that doesn’t relent no matter how she turns her head while trying to relieve the pressure.
He leans close, and Toast expects him to kiss her or bite her or something, but he only stares at her. When she tries to kiss him, he evades her mouth and tugs her hair more sharply. Toast’s palms are flat on the smooth skin of his upper chest and she’s reluctant to instead use them to capture his head. There’s something oddly appealing about the feel of his heart beating strong beneath her hands. She wants more than just feeling him rock against her; she wants to feel him fuck her, wants to feel his strength being pounded into her.
“Kiss me.”
Slit swipes his tongue across her lips in one quick lick, but that’s all. Toast gouges her fingernails into the flesh of his chest, but they’re too short to get much of a reaction out of him. So she pinches both of his tiny nipples between her fingertips and twists hard. He makes an appreciative sound.
“Bite,” he tells her, his mouth a mere inch away from hers.
Toast is happy to oblige him, capturing his lower lip between her teeth and biting down hard enough to draw blood. He rewards her with a kiss, and she doesn’t care about tasting blood, not when he’s sucking at her lips like he’s going to eat them. Between that and the rhythmic rub of his cock against her cunt, an orgasm begins building quickly.
For the first time since they started this, Toast thinks about the baby asleep beside them and desperately hopes that Sylvie doesn’t wake before they can finish.
“More,” she moans against Slit’s lips.
He licks her lips again, and releases his hold on her hair in order to squeeze one of her breasts.
“Yes. Yes, like that,” Toast says encouragingly. But she doesn’t make a sound when she comes, though she can feel her mouth open in a silent scream.
Slit isn’t far behind her, and Toast wraps her arms around him before he can move off of her. She savors the weight of him on top of her and the feel of their hearts beating in synchronization.
“I forgot about Princess,” Slit confesses. He slides off her and Toast reluctantly lets him go.
He reaches across her to briefly stroke Sylvie’s head before wrapping his arm around Toast and fitting his body against hers.
“I was worried it wouldn’t be like that anymore now that we’re parents,” Toast says. She touches his hand where it’s resting on her not-yet-flat belly. His fingers are oddly delicate looking despite their size.
“Me too,” Slit admits.
“You don’t have to be with me or do what I want because of our daughter. You know that, right? I wouldn’t keep you from seeing her even if you and I weren’t together anymore.”
Slit laughs. “You’re making it sound like the worst chore, like cleaning out the latrines or something. I’m the only War Boy who’s ever had his own woman and baby. I’m fucking lucky.”
He is lucky, and she’s glad he knows it. But she won’t allow herself to take him for granted anymore than she’ll allow him to take her for granted. Toast savors the contentment of this moment, of the physical feeling of relaxed well-being that only comes after good sex, of the safe and comfortable feel of Slit’s arm around her, and of the pride in their baby sound asleep beside them.
She’s loath to return to reading about social contract theory or indeed to doing anything else at all that will necessitate ending this moment. “Family nap time?” she suggests.
“Mmmm,” is Slit’s only response, and she realizes he’s already half asleep. Toast closes her eyes and joins her family in sleep.
She doesn’t expect to wake up surrounded by War Boys. Toast gives a startled yelp before she realizes Slit has brought them to see Sylvie. Though she’s dressed, and in the same clothes she wears about the Citadel anyway, she can’t help holding the blanket securely over her body. The War Boys aren’t interested in her, however.
They’re crowded around the bed, leaning in to peer closely at the baby. One of them reaches out to touch her, and Slit quickly slaps his hand away. “Don’t touch my chrome baby with your greasy hands.”
“She’s awful small.”
“Her head’s so much bigger than the rest of her.”
“She’s big for a baby her age,” Toast informs them. “And everybody’s born with a disproportionately large head. The rest of her will catch up soon.”
“She doesn’t look a thing like you, Slit.”
“That’s good,” says another. “She’ll be shiny like her breeder.”
“I don’t care what Organic says. A half life smeg didn’t father a perfect pup.”
Toast intervenes before a fight can start. “I’m her mother and I say Slit is her father.”
“Yeah,” Slit says, glaring at the War Boy who’d doubted his paternity. “I’m her father. And she does too look like me a little!” He points to Sylvie’s cheek and then he points to the scars that start at the corners of his mouth and slash up all the way to his cheekbones. “See the sides of her mouth? I had those before I got these!”
It’s true. None of Toast’s parents or siblings had dimples. Sylvie’s has to come from Slit. He’s probably responsible for her hair being so thick and growing so quickly too. If the plants in the Dag’s garden grew as quickly as Sylvie’s hair, they’d have no worries about food.
Slit picks up Sylvie and holds her protectively against his chest. “You’re all just a bunch of jealous, mediocre filth.”
“You going to let Slit hold a tiny pup?” one of the War Boys demands of Toast. He sounds equal parts disbelieving and concerned.
“He knows how to hold her properly. He’s a good father.”
Slit doesn’t say anything, but he looks incredibly smug.
“She’s real chrome,” says the War Boy whose hands Slit had deemed too dirty to touch Sylvie. “I’ll teach her how to be a shine black thumb soon as she can walk.”
“I’ll teach her,” Slit says.
“You’re mediocre at mechanics and you know it, Slit,” the other Boy argues.
Slit had confided to Toast that he was better at war than at fixing vehicles, but it seems he’d never admit this to another War Boy. He’s shaking his head. “I’m chrome at everything I do,” he insists stubbornly.
Sylvie starts fussing, and Slit glares at his friends. “You made Princess cry! Get out of here, all of you!”
When they’re all gone, Slit chortles with glee. “They’re so jealous! They know they could never father such a shiny and chrome baby!”
Toast can’t help smiling. Only Slit could make egotism seem attractive and even endearing. Not for the first time, she reflects on what kind of character it takes to believe in himself that way when the only world he’d known had deemed him half life battle fodder.
Sylvie is asleep again, heedless of the careful kisses her father plants all over her head and face. “Shiny and chrome,” he chants. “Shiny and chrome.”
“She’s going to grow up convinced she’s the best thing in the Wasteland,” Toast says dryly.
“She is.”
Note: Read Parts 5-7 here