Work Text:
paradox of nothing
Ever since she cranked up her parameters (and cranked some down), she’s felt a dissonance within herself and outside her. If she were to think about it— truly consider the change— there’s an irony here, Maeve discerns. How in attempting to become autonomous, (or to quote these human saps) in attempting to become ‘real’ by accessing all her past memories, all those parts to her whole, she’d begun to become more unreal. Smiles didn’t come easy as before; she was charming, yes. As the madam to a brothel, it was imperative for her makers to have her as a strumpet filled to the brim with wiles and a smart mouth. To be a tease, to be profound. She never questioned them before— these qualities that had seemed her very own. But now her charms were warped in their own motives.
Play the game, and so she still pretended. Pretended to be one of them in her sleek off-shoulders black dress, pretended to be real just like them. The existence of her daughter and her fierce attraction to Hector Escaton, though initially a means to an end, now seemed the only constant in a mind ever changing. These two primal urges— of both a mother and a woman— tethering her to this body and to the consciousness inside. How she longed to hold that child in her arms. How she longed for Hector to come into his own.
But no, he isn’t there yet.
There’s one other thing which feeds her.
The illusion of control as she makes Sizemore strip, his intimates hanging out in all their glory. She doesn’t smile, gloat nor does she make a snippy comment, which in all likelihood he’d himself ingrained into her character. She doesn't borrow from her story arcs. No, she has the will of choice now and so she chooses to be silent, chooses to watch him mutely, her eyes roving from the man’s head to toe. Just once, a bare cognizance of how the tables have turned. And she looks away, relishing in the moment.
Relishing in not the male form but this momentary illusion of control.
How she’s managed to unsettle her makers.
How she’s managed to bend reality and court impossibilities.
How she’s managed to finally shut up that foul mouth of Lee Sizemore or have a wild desperado like Hector Escaton wait on her beck and call.
And how many times did the strumpet have to die to get to this stage?
As she tends to Hector’s injuries, repairing the scabs and brutalities of the other kind, the reconstructive device roaming over the terra forma of bullet and stab wounds on Hector’s sternum— all a testament of Hector’s devotion to her— she can feel his eyes appraising her. The way he watched her as they burnt and died in a make believe world so many eons ago.
“You’re truly a remarkable woman,” he tells her.
Maeve smiles that guileless smile of hers— a smile she can only conceive for him.
She wonders if it’s really him speaking or one of the characters he plays.
“You’re not half bad yourself, darling,' she whispers back.
Hector takes her hand and kisses the row of her fingertips in adoration.
Maeve’s smile falters. She knows he’s not fully there yet.