“Red right hand. Oh what a shame she fell in love.”
Or, Maeve realizes she can’t do things on her own. 2x01 missing moment, PG-ish, and also on ao3. Title and slight inspo from “Drive” by Halsey. Part 01 of badlands.
She knows he's still alive, feels it in her blood. Her partner, her chosen one, her counterpart. Over the past few hours, Maeve has realized how much those words mean to her, how much she values that one bit of connection and how much she needs him.
They were programmed for this relationship. She knows that. She chooses not to care.
She's lost track of the number of staircases in this damned control building. Chances are there's an elevator that could take her straight to the roof, but she's in the mood for contemplation - not to mention taking what misery she can from her newest sidekick. Pathetic excuse for a human, this one, but has just enough power to be useful to her.
Useful. The word repeats over and over in her mind. Useful.
Maeve could've had any host in the park as her red right hand, yet she only ever saw one option. Call it falling in love with the devil you know, if you will. The history she clicked through on the datapad confirmed it, the knowledge that there has never been a version of her without a particular charming ex-lover. Who was made for whom, she chooses not to know, but she's willing to bet that Hector was designed as her morality pet long before some human decided to give her a child and-
Daylight. Gods. After hours in the concrete-and-glass rabbit warren, Maeve feels alive again. Warm genuine sun on her skin, perfection. If she were in her narrative, she'd have a parasol in hand instead of a gun and a much better neckline on this damned dress.
That too is programming, she thinks, but she knows who she is now. Her beauty was given to her long before this. She might as well use it.
Her heels click across the faux-stone ground, and she feels as if she is walking towards a warm light. She knew, knew from the moment that door shut, that her partner would survive. He, too, was created for this.
Red right hand. Oh what a shame she fell in love.
And that is exactly what happened, she realizes for the first time as she sees the vague outline of his body across one final stretch of decadent wasteland. That has been her rebellion against programming and narratives and unspeakable bullshit. The rest of it, Maeve reckons, might've been a failsafe designed by someone who has yet to find a purpose for it. Perhaps her choice of partner was a part of that, perhaps the way he ravished her was just a convenient adaptation. But not these feelings. Not the part of her that wondered, as she chose to reenter the hell that created her, if it's possible for two of their species to create something bigger than themselves.
Hector has half a bottle of high-end whiskey in his hand, a dark look on his face, and several shades of blood on his borrowed jumpsuit. This, Maeve thinks, might well be the most beautiful thing she's ever seen.
(The day she chose him, the day he cut a bullet out of her hip and then knelt to press a shockingly gentle kiss between her legs as they looped out, remains a close second. But this, innocent relief, is even better.)
"I choose you," she murmurs as her face rests on his shoulder, after she kisses the last of the alcohol out of his mouth.
I love you, the three little words she wants to say… those will come later, when she's ready.
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A bit last-minute, but here’s what I’m pretty sure WON’T happen with Hector and Maeve in the s2 premiere. Just a little too sweet for them, but let a girl daydream. PG-ish, implications of physical harm (vague but in the recent past), and also on AO3.
She comes back for him, as he knew she would, exactly twenty-one hours after she leaves.
Hector is not, by nature, a particularly trusting man (or whatever sort of being he actually is). He knows now that it’s a saving grace of his code, a survival skill that makes him such a perfect accomplice. There was never any risk of him getting infected with the techno-glitch that’s apparently tearing the park down from the inside out, at least not organically. Yet even with all of that as it is, Maeve is his exception, and perhaps he is hers, and-
She paces around him now, a slow circle as her eyes scan every new wound. They left him damaged and in need of repairs, something painful for her to find. (He’s surprised he’s not missing a limb.) They knew. And whatever she’ll do next, They’ll find a way to counter, and-
“Oh my darling,” she murmurs. “Surface wounds. They barely even tried.”
Wrong, he wants to say. So wrong. He wonders if she knows that They turned his pain sensors high enough that the very air around him burned before anyone even laid a finger on him, if she saw that on a datapad the way she sees everything now. Maeve, rebel goddess and glowing light, transcends realities. He cannot believe she is made of the same things he is anymore, not fully. Yet she’s not one of Them either. She’s something else entirely, something the world has never seen before.
And he, previously deluded and programmed enough to accept his surface role, he was created for the sole purpose of being her wound.
She steps away for a moment, turns her back to him as she opens drawers until she finds what she wants. Water and cloth in hand, she returns. Her eyes pierce his skin, and though he’s not set up to feel new pain anymore, it still hurts.
“Shh,” she murmurs. “We have work to do. And I can’t leave you again, not after this. You’re too valuable to me.”
He’s not sure how to respond to that, and it doesn’t matter. She sets her materials down for a moment on the edge of the table they left him on and reaches out, entwining her fingers with his.
“It wouldn’t have been safe for you where I went. You weren’t ready.”
“It wasn’t safe for me here either,” he growls.
“Never again. I’ll find a way to keep you out of harm.”
He trusts her that much, he thinks.
She leans down and kisses him, and it is slow and gentle and unlike anything she’s ever done and yes, he knows she knows what hell he just survived. He can’t take any more bruises, so she won’t leave them. And she tastes like the Outside, like she never has before, and she is delicate and good and-
“Once you heal, you can teach me to shoot. I want to kill them myself. Everyone who’s ever touched you wrong.”
“It’s a long list.”
“We have all the time in the world.”
Maeve. Everything comes back to her in the end. He lets go of her hands and rests his fingers on the slight curve of her hips - Outside clothing suits her so well, sleek and feral beauty - and for perhaps the first time in his consciousness, he wants to cry.
“You came back,” he breathes, still not sure why she didn’t run and never look back. He know she wouldn’t, couldn’t, whatever, but the fact that she didn’t is still-
“You were here,” she replies. “And my daughter is here. And I’d like your help in finding her, if you don’t mind.”
How could he ever say no.
“And after that?”
“Burn them down. Make our scars look like nothing at all.”
“I like those plans.”
“Good.”
She leans down again and kisses his cheek, and he decides hers is the only touch he ever wants to feel from this moment on.
Screw code, he thinks. Screw all of this. He knows where his loyalties lie.
“Where do we start?”
Maeve takes a step back and reaches for her cleaning materials.
“First I help get this blood off you, darling. Then we see what we can steal from them to make our lives easier...”
