Chapter Text
They have a weak spot,” Toast offers. “Leverage, I mean.”
Furiosa looks up. Toast sits in on every war council, all of the sisters do, but Toast has especial precedence at this one because this is her tribe they are dealing with. The one she was taken from. Immortan Joe stole the Caliber clan's women, stole all they had, but the survivors rebuilt, and after all this time, they've made a name and a life for themselves again.
Now they've shown up at the Citadel.
Toast's been talking with the cloaked scouts and the ambassadors, and the supply masters who camp in the shade of the Citadel's gates but don't quite dare come inside, despite the open invitation. They like Toast. It's hard not to. She eats up their stories and their jokes and comes back soon starving for more. Furiosa can hear her laughter ringing up the height of the stone walls during the long morning negotiations. She's asked Toast if she wants to go live with them, and Toast is silent a moment, gnaws her lips before saying, “No. No.”
Toast brings down precious rations for them in the evenings. Shares with them around a campfire, and comes back with the desert stars reflected in her eyes.
She loves them. She knows them now, has relearned their history and their faces. The Citadel needs that knowledge, but there's only so far Furiosa is willing to exploit it.
It is understood that the Citadel troops will not intimidate them or fight them. Only trade. No more warmongering. There are no clan members left alive who remember Toast as a happy Caliber toddler, but they acknowledge her as theirs. That has made things easier.
Not easy enough.
This is still the Citadel of Immortan Joe. Under new leadership, but still, in some way, the same people who plundered them and spilled their blood.
They want to trade. But nothing is settled, and they grow more wary with each day they spend staring up at the skull carved into the cliff face.
What to say, Furiosa wonders. What to say to Toast offering up the tender belly of her clan. It is a monumental act of trust, and one Furiosa wishes were unnecessary, but there's too many people living in the Citadel now, and when Toast came back with stories of Caliber clan's hydroponics towers...
This was always going to be difficult.
Capable seems to sense Furiosa's discomfort. She smoothes her knuckles along Toast's arm in that easy way she has of touching people, and says, “You don't have to tell us. It's okay. We can find another way.”
Can they? Furiosa wonders. She hates this, feels the bare, stone walls of the council room choking her. Sees the last of the Many Mothers, Jessa and Tamsin, casting significant looks at her over the cracked plastic table. They know Furiosa would never give over sensitive information on her tribe. She can't ask Toast to.
Furiosa clears her throat, “Toast …,” she begins.
“It's okay. I'm … ,” Toast sighs, “Don't worry. It's not that kind of information. Not defenses or supply shortages or anything sensitive.”
And she surprises them all by smiling. It's a warm smile, touched with humor. Like she's thinking of one of the jokes the Caliber scouts whisper to her at night.
“Just something that might, uh,” she pauses, “sweeten the deal.”
The room quiets. Capable's knuckles still on Toast's shoulder, draw back.
Capable asks, “Is it funny? I mean, you seem --”
“Yeah, it's … it's pretty funny. I gotta admit.”
“Out with it, girl!” Jessa demands, flapping both hands at her with a shooing motion.
“Okay. It's. Well. I've told you about General Octavia, remember?”
Caliber clan's leader since the great pillage. The women around the table nod.
“So,” Toast continues, “Jamie and the other scouts told me she's got a thing for. Uh. Pretty men. Ambassador Serena confirms,” she adds, in the face of her companion's ringing silence, “Confirms emphatically. Always puts her in a good mood, apparently. Nothing weird, she just likes talking to them, getting them to butter her up....”
Toast sinks back into silence, her smile going stale. She watches as every eye in the room focuses on the same spot, a place around the council table that's empty more often than not. But today there's a man sitting there, just visible under a canvas cloak and leather jacket. His beard has grown long enough to cover the lower half of his face, but his eyes are still clear, staring back. The other council members are waiting for him to say something. They're going to be waiting a long time, Furiosa thinks.
“I mean,” Toast says, “That's who I was thinking, anyway.”
When Jessa and Tamsin start chuckling, then snorting, and finally work their way up to shrieks of shrill, old lady laughter, complete with stomping and fists slammed on the table, Toast nudges Capable. Shrugs.
“I told you it was funny.”