hsavinien

Title: Scars are Memories

Author: H. Savinien

Disclaimer: The Splendid Angharad and Mad Max: Fury Road belong to many people who are not me.

Rating: PG-13ish

Warnings for: death, self-harm, general post-apocalyptic dystopia

Wordcount: 330

Summary: The Splendid Angharad, daughter of Bountiful Hadassah, has lost her mother.

***

Angharad traces the lines of her mother's face, then tips her chin up with gentle fingers that sink into the precious pillow of flesh there. Her mother is so lovely, if Angharad doesn't acknowledge the grey-blue pallor or the mess of her right temple and cheek. (There's red there, and the shape isn't right any more.) Bountiful Hadassah's arms are limp; the scrap dolly Angharad made for her lies sprawled a few inches beyond her fingertips. It's all bits of the softest and nicest things Angharad could sneak scraps from and somebody's left a dusty bootprint in the middle of it. Hadassah was the softest and nicest real thing Angharad has ever known and she's been left sprawled in the corner where they dropped her. She strokes her mother's hand, then curls her own around it as best she can.

Miss Giddy told her as soon as she could, helped her sneak out when it was safe, and is distracting the boys now with tales of battles of old. Hadassah's sisters in the milk room stopped crying or cursing or mourning before Angharad got out here and the hum of the pumps chugging in the background covers any last sounds of theirs.

Angharad realizes, eventually, that she's crying. Her face feels hot and tight, and the hitch of breath in her throat feels like the wind from outside, dry and gritty and tearing. She calmly, carefully, picks through the dirt and trash that share her mother's corner, until her fingers are scratched and raw and she finds a bit of steel. Its chrome is flaked off, its shine is covered in dirt. She carefully, deliberately, raises it to her right temple and digs the sharp edge in and drags.

Angharad's lines criss-cross and pucker, marking on her own skin the last places where Hadassah was hurt. She scratches and cuts, deep enough that it won't fade away. She won't lose them. She will not lose Hadassah.

Somebody's got to remember.