August 4: Many Mothers' Son
Title: Many Mothers’ Son
Series: Many Mothers’
Author: Vashti (tvashti)
Fandom: Mad Max: Fury Road, BtVS
Character(s): Max Rockatansky, Capable, Buffy Summers, Faith Lehane
Rating: PG-13/FR-15
Summary: Now that the battle is won, Max is free to have that brief mental health crisis that’s been stalking him since the wastelands.
Length: ~2,650 words
Disclaimer: Only the words are mine, and that’s probably up for philosophical debate.
Notes: TW/CW for overstimulation, brief mental break. If you’ve seen the movie, it’s nothing worse than that.
Notes2: Follow's yesterday's story And We Say, War Song, and Just Before the Day.
*-*-*
A curtain of red hair filled his vision. Max shielded his eyes. "Abundance..."
He was caught between gently shooing her away and cursing her out. She'd understood before, when she and the other Green Place warriors had discovered him in the midst of battle against wasteland rats...rescued him... She'd understood that he'd needed time to get his head sorted after so long alone.
But he hadn't gotten the time had he? A few days on the road surrounded by loud and excitable young women, some hardly more than girls. And from there straight into battle.
Adrenaline was a lovely drug. So good it used to be his vice of choice, before the world died. Before they all went mad.
The come down could be just plain hell. He didn't have a lot of patience to start with. His walls were tatters on a good day.
The battle was won for today. He and his were alive. Everything was well. As soon as he'd been able, he slipped away from the Mother, whom he'd helped to guide down to the plains below the Green Place's towering plateau. He'd slipped away and found a tall rock. He just needed... He just needed...
"Abundance--" he tried again but was cut off by a strong grip on his forearms.
"Max, look at me. I'm not Aby. I'm not Abundance." Then the hand on his left arm was behind his neck, pulling him close until they were touching forehead to forehead.
"Max," not-Abundance murmured. "Max open your eyes, please? Furiosa sent me to check on you.”
He heard her but the words meant less than her sweat-cooled forehead pressed against his, the hot heavy weight of her hand on his neck, and the strong grip on his forearm. “You’re real,” he muttered to the space between them.
“Yes.”
“Not Abundance.”
“No.”
“Not Furiousa.”
She shook her head, gently grinding their skulls together. “No, not Furiousa. I’m one of the Sisters. Capable. Remember?”
“Capable?”
“Yes.”
Max didn’t say anything. His mind was moving too fast. Everything was too much. But… “With red hair? Like new blood.”
Abundance had red her more like old pennies.
Capable squeezed his neck. “Yes.”
Max opened his eyes. “And blue eyes.”
She smiled. “I know a place where everything is still and quiet. You’ll be safe there. Can I show it to you?”
“Mmm.”
*-*-*
Once upon a time, Old Joe had had a vault where he stored his living treasures: young women he had stolen from their lives and their families to become breeders of a perfect children. Few of those stolen women managed what he wanted. Many died. Others became Milking Mothers. Five went rogue and eventually killed him when the turned back to reclaim what had been stolen.
What had been a treasury became an armory. An armory deep in the rocky plateau, with independent access to light, air and water.
And it was quiet. Blessedly quiet. Max at the edge of a pool with his dirty feet in the cool water.
Around him, Toast and her assistants worked feverishly to catalogue the current state of their weapons cash. They spoke in low urgent tones to each other, but mostly ignored Max. They didn’t ask him any questions. They didn’t touch him. They gave his chosen seat a wide berth, beyond the edges of hyperactive awareness.
And he slept.
*-*-*
Someone had brought him food and set it down near his boots. The two Mothers and the old Vuvalini had brought themselves and settled wherever they wanted.
Max was struck again by how old and yet how physically perfect these women were. And how many there were. They’d lost nearly all the old women in the fight to take back the Citadel, but here they were with six more, not including the two Mothers.
One of them, the one who went by a name, the one with blond in her gray hair instead of black, sat across from him with one leg tucked up close to her chest. “It’s nice in here, isn’t it? Solid walls, bottleneck that’s easy to defend, all the weapons and ammo you might need. It’s a little meh on the back door in case of emergencies, but it’s someplace to start.”
Max stared at her from her prone position before slowly levering himself upright.
“You probably don’t remember my name. I think I said it, but it’s been a long day. I’m Buffy.”
“Max,” he offered.
“I know. Furiosa’s Fool.”
Max grimaced. He was never going to live that down.
“The roasted rock lizard is good. The tomatoes are fresh. There’s not much in the way of grain, but I hear Dag is working on that.”
At her prompting, Max reached back for the metal plate beyond where his feet had been. She watched him eat. He watched her watching.
“Geez B...stop being a creeper!”
“I’m not being a creeper!” she shot back. But she did continue to watch Max.
“What do you call this, then?” the other Mother, *the* Mother asked as she dropped down beside her fellow old woman.
Mother Buffy sighed. “Making up for lost time.”
Max frowned. The Mother bumped Mother Buffy’s shoulder with her own. Max kept eating. The tomatoes were in fact fresh. Fresher than anything he’d had in hundreds, maybe thousands, of days. So fresh he had to lick his fingers to catch all the juice and seeds that ran down as he bit into them. That was an unusual pleasure almost worth everything he’d done that day.
Stomach was full and mind remarkably clear, Max set down his plate and licked his last finger clean. “I’m done. What do you want from me?”
“You. Just you.”
The words should have caused Max to immediately leap to his feet and run headlong for the armory exit. Instead he studied Mother Buffy. There was a wistful tinge, not at all malicious, to her words.
“Why me? Nothing special about me.”
Both Mothers snorted. “You’re ours,” the Mother said.
“That makes you special,” Mother Buffy added.
Max frowned. He turned to the Mother. “Whats your name. Don’t think I heard it.”
“When I’m its not my turn to run the circus, my name is Faith.”
Max kneeled up and extended a hand across the pool between them. “Pleased to meet you.”
Mother Faith snorted, but kneeled up as well. Instead of her hand, a slow sly smirk shifted across her face. “I can see what you’re thinking, even if you’re not thinking it seriously. You can try me if you want, but then you’ll find out how I got this old”
Inhaling sharply, Max recoiled. He had been picturing how he could easily pull her lighter mass across the water and use her as leverage to get out of a room filled with seasoned warrior women. But as she said, he hadn’t been thinking it seriously.
“Don’t worry, kid. I don’t read minds. I’m just old, and after a while you don’t need to read minds. You can read bodies.” She extended her hand across the pool. “Bet you’re pretty good at it.”
Slowly, as if she was the one who had been making the subconscious threat, Max reached across the water and shook her hand. Her grip was strong and firm, though her skin was rough and calloused, leather instead of thin. “ ‘M not bad. At reading people.”
“If you two are done being actually weird,” Mother Buffy cut in. Everyone sat down again. “Furiosa said you gave the warning cry earlier. You must be wondering how you knew it.”
“Figure I heard one of the other women and…”
“Maybe. Or maybe you remembered it. There used to be a story I would tell families when they found out their tiny little daughter, sister, cousin, niece, whatever was suddenly breaking things with the power of ten men and having nightmares of evils to come. It used to start with, ‘The world is older than you know…’”
Max frowned. “I know this world is old. I remember life...before. Before the gas wars and the water wars. Before it all fell apart.”
Heads were shaking all around the room. He’d almost forgotten about the other Vuvalini. A quick glance showed that they had scattered and settled themselves all around the room, including one in a perch that seemed too high and difficult for her old bones to reach.
“The world is older than that. *You* are older than that, Max. Even if you just as old as the world you remember… Those wars happened decades ago, when Old Joe was a young man. Are you saying you were a child during the gas wars?”
“No. No, I...I was a cop. A road warrior. I had…” He took a deep breath. “I had a wife. And a son.”
Tears shimmered and fell from Mother Buffy’s eyes. She opened her mouth and nothing came out.
“Sorry, kid,” Mother Faith said instead. Beside her, Mother Buffy grasped the air the way Max had seen the other Vuvalini do when one of their own had passed. She pressed her clenched fist close to her heart.
Scooting closer to the other Mother, Mother Faith asked what happened.
“We were going on holiday to the countryside. Ran afoul of a gang. When they caught up to us again, I wasn’t...I wasn’t there. Ran down Jessie and the sprog. He died instantly. Jessie...lingered. Died in hospital.”
It had been years since he’d told anyone. Since he had thought of them in the forefront of his mind: the first of many he had failed over the years.
All around them, Vuvalini captured the air twice and held their fists close as if in prayer. Max watched them dispassionately, noting that Mother Faith sat stone-faced with shared grief but unmoving.
“Been on the move ever since?” she asked him.
“Yeah.”
“And that was, what...thirty years ago? Please don’t ask me to translate that into days.”
But Max didn’t even consider it. “Something like that.”
“And you were...in your twenties then? Maybe even thirty?”
“I was...I was...I was in my twenties.”
“Thirty years ago. You were in your twenties. Thirty years ago. I know mirrors ain’t a thing in the desert, ‘cept on the side of a car, but have you seen yourself lately? You don’t look like a fifty-plus year old desert dweller, Max the Fool.”
Max felt himself stop, startled by Mother Faith’s words. After Jessie and the sprog, he had stopped thinking, really. The world had been teetering on the edge of self-destruction already. It hadn’t mattered that he’d fallen over the edge first. Even the revenge had taken on his wife and son’s behalf had meant little to his shattered mind and spirit. They had been his world, and with them gone much of the world ceased to exist.
“Thirty years ago, Max, you were not in your twenties. Thirty years ago, Max, you were already in your fifties.”
He looked up sharply at Mother Faith. “How-”
“You were my little sister’s and my best friend’s only child,” Mother Buffy said. “You were born at a time when life was crazy for us. When were just finding our footing as a group reborn from actual ashes. We were pulling slayers-Vuvalini-out of the woodwork. Crises was our middle name. No one had time for real lives or whatever that was. The world was coming to an end and we knew it, but we didn’t know how.
“At first we were all just so...so in love with you. This tiny little person. The first baby born to a slayer, even though your mom wasn’t a slayer.”
“She-”
Mother Faith cut him off. “That’s an even longer, more complicated story. But you were like the cutest thing that ever happened to any of us. And we all loved you. Your dad used to joke that you had too many mothers. You were a little kid when we had to flee the States. For a few years we were in Tibet with a friend of ours. The people in his village called you ‘The Many Mothers’ Son’ because you were the only child.”
“And then you disappeared,” Mother Buffy said, picking up the story. “Not, like, right away. You grew up first. You grew up in the same fight that we were all stuck in, but for you it wasn’t really a choice, and I guess you resented it. So you left. And that was okay at first because we knew where you were. You weren’t with us, but you were still doing good out there in the wide world. You were okay. That was all that mattered. And you became a cop. And the world went a little crazy. And you got married. And the world went a little crazier. And then you disappeared.”
“Over thirty years ago. We’ve had feelers out for the Many Mothers’ Son since… I can’t even tell you,” Mother Faith said. “But you were a ghost.”
No one spoke.
“There...there were days I didn’t know my own name,” Max said into the stillness. “Days, many of them, when I didn’t want to know my name. I didn’t want to be a good man. Not anymore. Not when it cost everything.”
“But sometimes you couldn’t help it,” from Mother Faith.
Max nodded.
More silence. It was quiet in Max’s head, but he didn’t trust it. He memories before Jessie and the sprog were hazy on good days, but what the Mothers said resonated with him in a way he rarely felt outside the road.
Mother Buffy sniffed loudly, wiping at the tears still coursing down her face. “You know, most slayers-Vuvalini-are like natural borne nomads.”
“Nomads attracted to danger.”
Mother Buffy elbowed the other woman. “I’m sure Furiosa and the Sisters will want you to stay with them. I also know that you are welcome to leave. Basically it’s an open invitation from the girls. But seeing as you are Dawnie’s son, and a part of me is in her, which means a part of me is in you, I bet you can’t even fathom the idea of sitting still longer than a few days at a time.”
“What she’s saying is you’re free to ride with us if you wanna. Get more backstory than you could ever want, and probably do some damage while we’re at it because we’re us and trouble is always trying to see if today is the day it takes a slayer out.”
“I was gonna say that you know.”
“You were taking too long.”
“I want him to know all his options.”
“He would have gone cross-eyed trying untangle all of that.”
“It wasn’t a tangle!”
“You were starting to channel Giles.”
“I can’t--”
“I’ll ride with you.” Max said. “At least for little while.”
Mother Buffy beamed. Mother Faith smirked. The Vuvalini whooped and cheered.
“What *are* those sounds and how do I know them.”
Mother Faith shrugged. “You pick up new people, you get new things. We got war-cries somewhere between Central Africa and Greece. They stuck.”
“Was I there for that?”
The two Mothers shared a look. “Maybe. I think mostly it’s Slayer memory.”
“Slayer what?”
Grinning, Mother Buffy levered herself off the sandy floor. “Add it to the list of things to discuss on the road.”
Fin
Notes2: I’m pretty sure this is it for the series, y’all. Thank you all for coming along for the ride! Any thoughts and critiques are highly appreciated. I have mixed feelings about this one.
Series: Many Mothers’
Author: Vashti (tvashti)
Fandom: Mad Max: Fury Road, BtVS
Character(s): Max Rockatansky, Capable, Buffy Summers, Faith Lehane
Rating: PG-13/FR-15
Summary: Now that the battle is won, Max is free to have that brief mental health crisis that’s been stalking him since the wastelands.
Length: ~2,650 words
Disclaimer: Only the words are mine, and that’s probably up for philosophical debate.
Notes: TW/CW for overstimulation, brief mental break. If you’ve seen the movie, it’s nothing worse than that.
Notes2: Follow's yesterday's story And We Say, War Song, and Just Before the Day.
*-*-*
A curtain of red hair filled his vision. Max shielded his eyes. "Abundance..."
He was caught between gently shooing her away and cursing her out. She'd understood before, when she and the other Green Place warriors had discovered him in the midst of battle against wasteland rats...rescued him... She'd understood that he'd needed time to get his head sorted after so long alone.
But he hadn't gotten the time had he? A few days on the road surrounded by loud and excitable young women, some hardly more than girls. And from there straight into battle.
Adrenaline was a lovely drug. So good it used to be his vice of choice, before the world died. Before they all went mad.
The come down could be just plain hell. He didn't have a lot of patience to start with. His walls were tatters on a good day.
The battle was won for today. He and his were alive. Everything was well. As soon as he'd been able, he slipped away from the Mother, whom he'd helped to guide down to the plains below the Green Place's towering plateau. He'd slipped away and found a tall rock. He just needed... He just needed...
"Abundance--" he tried again but was cut off by a strong grip on his forearms.
"Max, look at me. I'm not Aby. I'm not Abundance." Then the hand on his left arm was behind his neck, pulling him close until they were touching forehead to forehead.
"Max," not-Abundance murmured. "Max open your eyes, please? Furiosa sent me to check on you.”
He heard her but the words meant less than her sweat-cooled forehead pressed against his, the hot heavy weight of her hand on his neck, and the strong grip on his forearm. “You’re real,” he muttered to the space between them.
“Yes.”
“Not Abundance.”
“No.”
“Not Furiousa.”
She shook her head, gently grinding their skulls together. “No, not Furiousa. I’m one of the Sisters. Capable. Remember?”
“Capable?”
“Yes.”
Max didn’t say anything. His mind was moving too fast. Everything was too much. But… “With red hair? Like new blood.”
Abundance had red her more like old pennies.
Capable squeezed his neck. “Yes.”
Max opened his eyes. “And blue eyes.”
She smiled. “I know a place where everything is still and quiet. You’ll be safe there. Can I show it to you?”
“Mmm.”
*-*-*
Once upon a time, Old Joe had had a vault where he stored his living treasures: young women he had stolen from their lives and their families to become breeders of a perfect children. Few of those stolen women managed what he wanted. Many died. Others became Milking Mothers. Five went rogue and eventually killed him when the turned back to reclaim what had been stolen.
What had been a treasury became an armory. An armory deep in the rocky plateau, with independent access to light, air and water.
And it was quiet. Blessedly quiet. Max at the edge of a pool with his dirty feet in the cool water.
Around him, Toast and her assistants worked feverishly to catalogue the current state of their weapons cash. They spoke in low urgent tones to each other, but mostly ignored Max. They didn’t ask him any questions. They didn’t touch him. They gave his chosen seat a wide berth, beyond the edges of hyperactive awareness.
And he slept.
*-*-*
Someone had brought him food and set it down near his boots. The two Mothers and the old Vuvalini had brought themselves and settled wherever they wanted.
Max was struck again by how old and yet how physically perfect these women were. And how many there were. They’d lost nearly all the old women in the fight to take back the Citadel, but here they were with six more, not including the two Mothers.
One of them, the one who went by a name, the one with blond in her gray hair instead of black, sat across from him with one leg tucked up close to her chest. “It’s nice in here, isn’t it? Solid walls, bottleneck that’s easy to defend, all the weapons and ammo you might need. It’s a little meh on the back door in case of emergencies, but it’s someplace to start.”
Max stared at her from her prone position before slowly levering himself upright.
“You probably don’t remember my name. I think I said it, but it’s been a long day. I’m Buffy.”
“Max,” he offered.
“I know. Furiosa’s Fool.”
Max grimaced. He was never going to live that down.
“The roasted rock lizard is good. The tomatoes are fresh. There’s not much in the way of grain, but I hear Dag is working on that.”
At her prompting, Max reached back for the metal plate beyond where his feet had been. She watched him eat. He watched her watching.
“Geez B...stop being a creeper!”
“I’m not being a creeper!” she shot back. But she did continue to watch Max.
“What do you call this, then?” the other Mother, *the* Mother asked as she dropped down beside her fellow old woman.
Mother Buffy sighed. “Making up for lost time.”
Max frowned. The Mother bumped Mother Buffy’s shoulder with her own. Max kept eating. The tomatoes were in fact fresh. Fresher than anything he’d had in hundreds, maybe thousands, of days. So fresh he had to lick his fingers to catch all the juice and seeds that ran down as he bit into them. That was an unusual pleasure almost worth everything he’d done that day.
Stomach was full and mind remarkably clear, Max set down his plate and licked his last finger clean. “I’m done. What do you want from me?”
“You. Just you.”
The words should have caused Max to immediately leap to his feet and run headlong for the armory exit. Instead he studied Mother Buffy. There was a wistful tinge, not at all malicious, to her words.
“Why me? Nothing special about me.”
Both Mothers snorted. “You’re ours,” the Mother said.
“That makes you special,” Mother Buffy added.
Max frowned. He turned to the Mother. “Whats your name. Don’t think I heard it.”
“When I’m its not my turn to run the circus, my name is Faith.”
Max kneeled up and extended a hand across the pool between them. “Pleased to meet you.”
Mother Faith snorted, but kneeled up as well. Instead of her hand, a slow sly smirk shifted across her face. “I can see what you’re thinking, even if you’re not thinking it seriously. You can try me if you want, but then you’ll find out how I got this old”
Inhaling sharply, Max recoiled. He had been picturing how he could easily pull her lighter mass across the water and use her as leverage to get out of a room filled with seasoned warrior women. But as she said, he hadn’t been thinking it seriously.
“Don’t worry, kid. I don’t read minds. I’m just old, and after a while you don’t need to read minds. You can read bodies.” She extended her hand across the pool. “Bet you’re pretty good at it.”
Slowly, as if she was the one who had been making the subconscious threat, Max reached across the water and shook her hand. Her grip was strong and firm, though her skin was rough and calloused, leather instead of thin. “ ‘M not bad. At reading people.”
“If you two are done being actually weird,” Mother Buffy cut in. Everyone sat down again. “Furiosa said you gave the warning cry earlier. You must be wondering how you knew it.”
“Figure I heard one of the other women and…”
“Maybe. Or maybe you remembered it. There used to be a story I would tell families when they found out their tiny little daughter, sister, cousin, niece, whatever was suddenly breaking things with the power of ten men and having nightmares of evils to come. It used to start with, ‘The world is older than you know…’”
Max frowned. “I know this world is old. I remember life...before. Before the gas wars and the water wars. Before it all fell apart.”
Heads were shaking all around the room. He’d almost forgotten about the other Vuvalini. A quick glance showed that they had scattered and settled themselves all around the room, including one in a perch that seemed too high and difficult for her old bones to reach.
“The world is older than that. *You* are older than that, Max. Even if you just as old as the world you remember… Those wars happened decades ago, when Old Joe was a young man. Are you saying you were a child during the gas wars?”
“No. No, I...I was a cop. A road warrior. I had…” He took a deep breath. “I had a wife. And a son.”
Tears shimmered and fell from Mother Buffy’s eyes. She opened her mouth and nothing came out.
“Sorry, kid,” Mother Faith said instead. Beside her, Mother Buffy grasped the air the way Max had seen the other Vuvalini do when one of their own had passed. She pressed her clenched fist close to her heart.
Scooting closer to the other Mother, Mother Faith asked what happened.
“We were going on holiday to the countryside. Ran afoul of a gang. When they caught up to us again, I wasn’t...I wasn’t there. Ran down Jessie and the sprog. He died instantly. Jessie...lingered. Died in hospital.”
It had been years since he’d told anyone. Since he had thought of them in the forefront of his mind: the first of many he had failed over the years.
All around them, Vuvalini captured the air twice and held their fists close as if in prayer. Max watched them dispassionately, noting that Mother Faith sat stone-faced with shared grief but unmoving.
“Been on the move ever since?” she asked him.
“Yeah.”
“And that was, what...thirty years ago? Please don’t ask me to translate that into days.”
But Max didn’t even consider it. “Something like that.”
“And you were...in your twenties then? Maybe even thirty?”
“I was...I was...I was in my twenties.”
“Thirty years ago. You were in your twenties. Thirty years ago. I know mirrors ain’t a thing in the desert, ‘cept on the side of a car, but have you seen yourself lately? You don’t look like a fifty-plus year old desert dweller, Max the Fool.”
Max felt himself stop, startled by Mother Faith’s words. After Jessie and the sprog, he had stopped thinking, really. The world had been teetering on the edge of self-destruction already. It hadn’t mattered that he’d fallen over the edge first. Even the revenge had taken on his wife and son’s behalf had meant little to his shattered mind and spirit. They had been his world, and with them gone much of the world ceased to exist.
“Thirty years ago, Max, you were not in your twenties. Thirty years ago, Max, you were already in your fifties.”
He looked up sharply at Mother Faith. “How-”
“You were my little sister’s and my best friend’s only child,” Mother Buffy said. “You were born at a time when life was crazy for us. When were just finding our footing as a group reborn from actual ashes. We were pulling slayers-Vuvalini-out of the woodwork. Crises was our middle name. No one had time for real lives or whatever that was. The world was coming to an end and we knew it, but we didn’t know how.
“At first we were all just so...so in love with you. This tiny little person. The first baby born to a slayer, even though your mom wasn’t a slayer.”
“She-”
Mother Faith cut him off. “That’s an even longer, more complicated story. But you were like the cutest thing that ever happened to any of us. And we all loved you. Your dad used to joke that you had too many mothers. You were a little kid when we had to flee the States. For a few years we were in Tibet with a friend of ours. The people in his village called you ‘The Many Mothers’ Son’ because you were the only child.”
“And then you disappeared,” Mother Buffy said, picking up the story. “Not, like, right away. You grew up first. You grew up in the same fight that we were all stuck in, but for you it wasn’t really a choice, and I guess you resented it. So you left. And that was okay at first because we knew where you were. You weren’t with us, but you were still doing good out there in the wide world. You were okay. That was all that mattered. And you became a cop. And the world went a little crazy. And you got married. And the world went a little crazier. And then you disappeared.”
“Over thirty years ago. We’ve had feelers out for the Many Mothers’ Son since… I can’t even tell you,” Mother Faith said. “But you were a ghost.”
No one spoke.
“There...there were days I didn’t know my own name,” Max said into the stillness. “Days, many of them, when I didn’t want to know my name. I didn’t want to be a good man. Not anymore. Not when it cost everything.”
“But sometimes you couldn’t help it,” from Mother Faith.
Max nodded.
More silence. It was quiet in Max’s head, but he didn’t trust it. He memories before Jessie and the sprog were hazy on good days, but what the Mothers said resonated with him in a way he rarely felt outside the road.
Mother Buffy sniffed loudly, wiping at the tears still coursing down her face. “You know, most slayers-Vuvalini-are like natural borne nomads.”
“Nomads attracted to danger.”
Mother Buffy elbowed the other woman. “I’m sure Furiosa and the Sisters will want you to stay with them. I also know that you are welcome to leave. Basically it’s an open invitation from the girls. But seeing as you are Dawnie’s son, and a part of me is in her, which means a part of me is in you, I bet you can’t even fathom the idea of sitting still longer than a few days at a time.”
“What she’s saying is you’re free to ride with us if you wanna. Get more backstory than you could ever want, and probably do some damage while we’re at it because we’re us and trouble is always trying to see if today is the day it takes a slayer out.”
“I was gonna say that you know.”
“You were taking too long.”
“I want him to know all his options.”
“He would have gone cross-eyed trying untangle all of that.”
“It wasn’t a tangle!”
“You were starting to channel Giles.”
“I can’t--”
“I’ll ride with you.” Max said. “At least for little while.”
Mother Buffy beamed. Mother Faith smirked. The Vuvalini whooped and cheered.
“What *are* those sounds and how do I know them.”
Mother Faith shrugged. “You pick up new people, you get new things. We got war-cries somewhere between Central Africa and Greece. They stuck.”
“Was I there for that?”
The two Mothers shared a look. “Maybe. I think mostly it’s Slayer memory.”
“Slayer what?”
Grinning, Mother Buffy levered herself off the sandy floor. “Add it to the list of things to discuss on the road.”
Fin
Notes2: I’m pretty sure this is it for the series, y’all. Thank you all for coming along for the ride! Any thoughts and critiques are highly appreciated. I have mixed feelings about this one.