Work Text:
Maggie had a lot of gnashing teeth.
That was pretty normal to Xiomara. She even had the sharper canines typically seen on predator animals that most other people didn’t have. Loba had them too, but flashed them off in a decidedly less aggressive manner. Still dangerous, like a snake, but not quite as ruthless as Maggie.
She gnashed hers a lot. Bared them as a warning. Others seemed afraid of them, but Xiomara was unfazed. In fact, she found it weird that other Legends didn’t show their teeth when cornered like animals, but then again, she didn’t do that either. They were probably more like her than they were like animals.
She didn’t really feel that way about them, though. She felt more kinship with Maggie. It probably helped that Maggie didn’t bare her teeth at her, and actually seemed to like her. Like that one baby snow leopard whose mother she’d killed, and it had followed her around for a little while, purring next to her one moment and leaping at rabbits the next. Kind of like that. Except Maggie wasn’t a baby. And she hadn’t killed anyone Maggie knows, probably. And Maggie didn’t follow her around.
Maybe that was a bad comparison.
Xiomara couldn’t help but think of the baby leopard as she watched Maggie hiss at Gibraltar though, hackles raised, canines glinting. One of her teeth was gold, and served to remind her that Maggie was actually a human person and not a predator—or cornered prey—lashing out.
She got the feeling that Maggie didn’t like the Legends all that much, for reasons she wasn’t entirely sure of and didn’t care to learn more about. Politics didn’t matter to her, Mom did. But Maggie played along with them well enough, probably because she knew that she would die otherwise, so that was smart of her. But every now and then someone would be too nice to her, and she’d snap.
Gibraltar had done that just now. Xiomara hadn’t really been paying attention, to be honest, but all of a sudden Maggie was barking at him, intimidating despite the noticeable size difference. Shouting something along the lines of ‘back off, ya muppet’ before she recoiled, like she hated to be too close to someone else despite being the one who initiated.
“If I need your damn help, you’ll know, ‘bro’,” Maggie hissed. She’d called Xiomara ‘bro’ before, but the way she said it to Gibraltar was a lot different. Almost mocking.
Gibraltar took it well, apologizing with a smile. Xiomara had heard the others call him a ‘gentle giant’. That didn’t really seem accurate. Gibraltar was powerful—she could feel it when he helped her to her feet, muscles rippling under his gear, grasp firm and steady and unrelenting. Gibraltar was a powerful person with very controlled movements. Like a lion.
He didn’t show teeth, though. Maggie was still the only one who did that.
“You really shouldn’t be comparin’ folks to animals,” Fuse interrupted her. “Bit dehumanizing.”
Xiomara’s gaze shifted from Horizon, whom she’d been staring at the whole time she’d been talking, to the older man sitting diagonally to her. They all had metal trays of food and, like her, his had a large steak on it that he was sawing into with a knife.
“Is that why you don’t like Maggie calling you a dog?” she asked. The three of them were seated at a lunch table; qualifiers were being held today, so the Legends and a few others were packed into a cafeteria.
Fuse’s mustache bristled at her words. “Among other reasons.”
“Then why do you call everyone ‘pup’?”
He stabbed his knife into a piece of steak like a skewer. “That’s different.”
Xiomara had heard people say that Fuse was a really nice guy. He seemed to always be annoyed by her, though. Or maybe by her presence. It was hard to tell the difference.
Horizon spoke up in defense of her: “Oh, Wally, she’s been around animals her whole life. I’m personally not offended if she compares me to a beastie.”
Horizon flashed her a small, encouraging smile. On the tray in front of her was something called ‘spaghetti’ that Xiomara had never had before, and a side of leafy greens. Xiomara didn’t know a single beast who would eat either of those things.
Fuse seemed to give up, waving his knife-skewered piece of steak around and grunting something before going back to eating. Xiomara didn’t know why Maggie called him a dog, to be honest. He was more like...a boar. Powerful, like Gibraltar, but a lot less controlled. Thundering through the underbrush, always on the hunt for more. And maybe sometimes on the run from its natural predators.
Like snow leopards.
“Though Mara dear, I do have to ask—” Horizon tapped her fingers against the rim of her cup. “Why are you telling us all this?”
She felt movement in her hood, and knew Echo was stirring from his nap. Digging into her coat, she pulled out a small piece of jerky as she said,
“Oh, I’m getting to that part.”
“Chur bro,” Maggie said gratefully as Xiomara tossed her a round of shotgun ammo. “Read my mind.”
“I keep track of every shot fired,” Xiomara informed her brightly, looking up from the spoils of their kills. “But I guess I don’t need to do that anymore.”
“What, ammo in limited supply on Págos?” Maggie asked as she loaded shells into her Peacekeeper. Xiomara nodded. Ahead of them, Echo was circling something. He probably saw a grasshopper and wanted it. Silly Echo.
Not for the first time, she wondered if Echo would eat her face when she died. She wouldn't blame him.
An elbow nudged hers, and she looked at Maggie again as the older woman cocked her shotgun. “Good news: all the ammo you need for all the killin’ you'll do in these damn Games.”
Maggie smiled at her as she said that. There were those teeth again, but not threatening. That was one of the key differences between humans and animals; humans showing their teeth wasn’t always an act of aggression.
Their third was dead. Some guy neither of them knew, but Maggie was still pretty hostile to him. She didn’t even pretend to be nice like she did with the Legends. It was like she knew the guy was worthless, wouldn’t keep her alive, and she’d been proven right. Xiomara had known that, too. He seemed really weak. He couldn’t even hold a gun right, so she hadn't gone to pick him up. There were no second chances in nature.
Xiomara also didn’t mind their pack being smaller than most everyone else’s. Maggie relaxed around her. There was still a tenseness in her shoulders, her hands gripping her Peacekeeper tightly, and her eyes alert—but she wasn’t gnashing her teeth anymore. Her words were genuinely kind instead of merely an attempt at being amicable until the match was over.
She wasn’t trying to survive so hard. Well, she still had to survive. They were in a bloodsport, after all. But she didn’t need to survive her teammates too.
Xiomara liked being on a squad with Maggie. She fought up-close and personal, pouncing on prey and chasing them down, fast on her feet even with a fully-loaded shotgun. She kept everyone at a distance from Xiomara, so she could safely peer down her scope and eliminate the smarter prey who’d had the great idea of hiding from Maggie’s rage. Too bad they weren’t as smart as her, though.
Their synergy was good that day. So good that they even won.
Maggie hated winning. She apparently didn’t get to keep any of the money, and it got split between her teammates. This made most people want to be on her squad despite her attitude, and Xiomara could tell that she hated it.
Except when it was for her.
“It’s alright if it’s going to you,” Maggie told Xiomara as her hands were forced behind her back, being put into handcuffs by some Syndicate people. “Get ya mum out of that cage, girl.”
“Pup, I need you to focus when you tell a story. You're all over the place,” Fuse said.
"It's not like I have any practice!"
"Well, what's the point of all this?" he asked. “And you’re not the only person she likes. She and Che get on alright.”
“She doesn’t like Lifeline,” Xiomara said in a serious tone as she explained the difference to him. “She doesn’t dislike her, either. She’s like...she’s like my mom. Except my mom loves me. But she acts like my mom does to Lifeline. Like she’s a teacher.”
Fuse raised a skeptical eyebrow. Xiomara lifted her chin, and Echo took this opportunity to nestle into her collar.
“Are you jealous?” she asked bluntly.
“‘Course not,” he snapped. “I’m glad Mags is makin’ friends. She’s a complicated person.”
“Is that why you gave up on her?”
Horizon let out a small noise, but tried to cover it up by taking a sip from her tea.
“I did not give up on her,” Fuse said sternly. Xiomara got the feeling that he treated her differently from the other Legends. Was it because she was so young? “Why d’you keep sayin’ that?”
Xiomara shrugged. “I’m just observing things. I have been told I am a very observant person.”
“You are,” Horizon said lightly, placatingly. “But just because you’ve noticed something doesn’t always mean you should mention it, dear. You ken?”
Horizon had a funny accent. So did Fuse. Actually, everyone had funny accents. Except for Octane and Loba, whose voices were kind of familiar, but only kind of. She liked Horizon's accent, though.
“Don’t mention things that everyone knows already. Got it,” Xiomara said with a nod. Horizon exchanged glances with Fuse, who relaxed a little and said in an airy sort of voice,
“Right, so you’re the only person Mags can stand. Why are you telling us all this?”
“Oh no, I’m not the only person Maggie likes,” she said earnestly. She pointed at Horizon, her sudden movement disturbing Echo, who crawled back out of her collar. “She likes you, too.”
“...Pardon?” The other woman looked taken aback. Echo chirped next to Xiomara’s ear, and she finally began to cut up her own steak as she kept talking.
Horizon was like a bird. She walked around on the tips of her toes, like she was always ready to take flight. And she could kind of do that, but Valkyrie, who technically looked more birdlike with her wings and could like, actually fly, stomped around confidently.
Horizon was light on her toes like she didn’t belong on the ground. Maybe she didn’t even belong in the sky, either. At least, not the sky here. She belonged somewhere far, far away. In multiple senses, or so Xiomara had heard. Something about...time? She didn’t really pay attention to all that stuff.
Aside from the walking, she seemed about as fragile as a bird too. Hollow bones, light and airy. Thin. And like birds, really smart. Actually, the term ‘birdbrain’ was pretty weird. Fun fact that Xiomara had read in a book: crows have the intelligence of a seven-year-old. Which was like, really really smart for animals.
At first, this was the reason Xiomara suspected that Maggie liked Horizon. She wasn’t dangerous, and was smart enough to know not to bother her. But Maggie really hated Wattson, who was also not very dangerous at all. She was clumsy and young, like a doe, but smart like them too, and resourceful. Yet Maggie gnashed at her with a particularly ferocity that she reserved only for Fuse. Maybe it was because Wattson was responsible for the Ring?
Even taking personal responsibility for the Games out of the equation, Maggie didn’t like other generally harmless people either. Octane was flighty and small and quick like the rabbits he was so fond of. Seer was beautiful like a peacock, strutting with pride. He could become aggressive like them too if pushed into it—but he wasn't dangerous. Not like Loba, or Caustic, or Wraith.
Maggie hated them all regardless.
So Xiomara watched them intently whenever the two were on her team, trying to discern what made Horizon so different. Studying their body language. Their behavior. Watching for the gnashing of teeth.
Maggie didn’t relax around Horizon, not like she did with Xiomara. She wasn’t friendly but she also wasn’t only barely amicable for the sake of surviving a match like she was with everyone else. Her responses to Horizon’s call-outs were curt, but polite. A lot less name-calling.
No teeth were ever shown. Not even friendly teeth, either. Maggie didn’t smile like she did with Xiomara.
Interesting.
“Why do you like Horizon better than everyone else but not as much as you like me?” Xiomara asked her bluntly one day. Maggie didn’t look surprised or angry by her observation, like most everyone else. She just clicked her tongue against her teeth, and said,
“‘Cuz I respect my elders...should they be deservin’ of it.”
“Horizon is younger than you,” Xiomara pointed out. Maggie clapped a hand onto her shoulder.
“It’s tough,” was all she said, before letting her hand drop and then throwing her ball at the ground.
That answer had felt weird and unsatisfying. There had to be something more to it, and maybe this is where all the politics that Xiomara didn’t care much for came into play. Was Horizon from one of the Fringe Worlds? A quick look at her files showed that no, she wasn’t, she was from Psamathe, and also definitely younger than Maggie but her birthday was listed, like, over a hundred years ago. Maybe that was where the time thing came in.
She observed them some more, trying to figure out where on the scale between Xiomara and Fuse that Horizon laid in Maggie’s eyes. Maggie let Horizon do nice things for her without snarling. Maggie answered Horizon’s questions about Salvo without the seething rage lying under the surface that Xiomara had come to expect from similar questions that the others had.
Maybe it was related to all that.
So Xiomara tried again: “I think you like Horizon better than everyone else for some reason and that reason is related to Salvo.”
They’d just finished picking off two squads who were fighting in Lava City. Maggie pressed her thumb to the side of her nose, blocking off one of her nostrils and blowing out a stream of blood from the other. Airways cleared, she leaned her head back and stared into the smoke-filled sky.
“Smart kid, aren’t ya,” she said, but it wasn’t really a question. “Want the boring answer?”
“I love answers,” Xiomara said.
“She wasn’t around for the Treaty and I ain’t had enough time to see if she’s complacent or not. Being a revolutionary is hard, cuz. Hate to admit it, but you need a little bit of help from the outside if you want your cause to stand a fightin’ chance.”
“Didn’t you blow up Kings Canyon?” she asked.
Maggie grinned, blood staining her upper lip. “Maybe not my proudest moment. Got myself heard though, eh?”
Xiomara didn’t know, actually, because she wasn’t there to witness it, but blowing up Kings Canyon probably got the attention of a lot of people. She could understand that. She needed that kind of attention too. For Mom.
That answer was a lot better than the former, but Xiomara couldn’t help but feel that there was a piece missing. So she kept watching, and studied Maggie’s interactions with others a little harder. And she watched the others when she wasn’t on a squad with Maggie too, and that was actually really helpful, because Loba tipped her off.
She was actually a lot like Maggie in some ways, even if they were also both completely different. Loba had the intelligent, cunning eyes of a wolf, with teeth to match often hidden behind a saccharine grin. Xiomara could tell that Loba really did like a lot of the people she talked to, but there was something else there, too. Like Loba could recognize everyone’s inherent worth, their value to her, and she probably knew exactly how to use them. Kinda like Maggie, except Maggie using other people was a lot more necessary ‘cuz she could, like, die in here.
Loba looked at Valkyrie a little differently, which made sense because they were in a romantic relationship. The thing is, Loba also looked at Bangalore differently, but in the same way she looked at Valkyrie. But a lot sadder.
Loba looked at Bangalore from the corners of her eyes. There was often a glint in them, the tell-tale sign of want, but her restraint showed that that want couldn’t actually be had. Maggie was a lot less dangerously sugary sweet than Loba, but she looked at Horizon out of the corners of her eyes, too. Surveying her. Not like prey, but like...
Oh. Okay, yeah, that made sense.
“I don’t reckon I follow,” Horizon said, sounding a bit put-off.
“She doesn’t really like you as much as she likes me,” Xiomara tried to explain, dipping her fried potatoes into a red sauce she’d heard Mirage call ‘catch-up’. “But she also doesn’t hate you as much as she hates everyone else."
Echo nipped at her cheek for some more jerky, but she ignored him as she struggled to articulate what she meant. “It’s like...you’re in between her feelings about different kinds of people. In the middle, somehow. You’re mid!”
She was pretty sure she was using that phrase she’d heard Valk say correctly. She was even more sure when, at the table behind Horizon, Octane started choking on his drink and had to be thumped harshly on his back by Bangalore.
“Ah,” Horizon said, blue eyes flickering over to Fuse. She had the feeling that she wasn’t being taken seriously. “Fascinating.”
“Listen, Fuse said that Maggie is complicated. Well, she also seems to feel really complicated things about you,” Xiomara said. "She likes you but not a lot, but she also may like you romantically, which I don’t get. I thought you were only supposed to be romantically interested in people you like a lot?”
“Mags—” Fuse cleared his throat and corrected himself. “People are complicated like that."
“Why are you telling me this, Mara?” Horizon asked, tone gentle, but firm. “It’s none of my business.”
Xiomara paused, frowning down at her food, which had grown cold. She thought about Mom stuck in prison, surrounded by people, but none of them friends. Actually, many were probably enemies. That had to be lonely.
She and Mom were used to that loneliness. They’d been surrounded by wildlife, hundreds of different animals, warm and alive but not people that they could actually talk to. Prison was probably a lot like that, and she didn’t think Maggie was as used to it as they were. It sounded like a lot of people on Salvo depended on Maggie, and Maggie wanted to help them. She liked people, just...not any of the people here. Except for maybe a couple.
So she said,
“Because Maggie is probably really alone in there. Maybe you guys could become friends. It doesn’t even have to be a romantic friendship. Maybe like, a normal friendship.”
Horizon studied her carefully. Her eyes reminded Xiomara of her mother’s, in a way, and for the first time she actually felt like maybe she hadn’t been entirely aware of how dangerous someone was.
That moment passed, and Horizon’s eyes were soft at the corners again.
“Maybe she likes tea. I might bring her a cuppa,” she said, and Xiomara beamed. Fuse sighed, mustache bristling again, before saying,
“Just don’t stick your fingers between the bars, Mary.”
He then stood up, taking his tray with him. Xiomara watched him go, wondering why he’d said he was glad that Maggie was making friends but then acted so strange at the idea of that actually happening. And also why he didn't like people being compared to animals, but referred to Maggie like a dog in a cage.
“He’s really weird,” Xiomara said bluntly. Echo nuzzled against her cheek in aggrement.
Horizon let out a light chuckle, genuine rather than condescending like she’d come to expect from some others.
“I think you’re startin’ to catch onto the fact that human beings can have a lot of very complicated emotions, dear.”