Work Text:
Feng was broken. It happened, now and then. When the fog crept across the cracked ground and plunged the survivors into yet another trial, yet another fight for their life, sometimes they couldn’t cope. Legion didn’t know what drove her today, or rather what didn’t, but as they darted after Kate in her sharp blue jacket, they caught sight. Feng, in teal and pink, her arms hugged to her chest, tears streaming down her face.
She didn’t move, didn’t flinch, even as Legion closed the distance between them and raised a knife.
And passed them by.
Kate hit the ground with a grunt, surprised that Legion had bypassed an easy kill to continue pursuit. As they seized her by the back of the coat and threw her over one shoulder, there was the cry of one of the Entity’s crows as it fluttered over Feng’s head.
The trial went on, and when Legion circled back around the broken fencing and withered brush, the crow and Feng had gone. They didn’t see her again until a hook took one of the other survivors up into the fog, ripped from the trial by dark tendrils. Her fingers clenched and her hands shook and there was a stifled cry as the generator popped and burst in front of her.
Legion didn’t need their blade - they simply reached out and grabbed Feng by the back of the neck, hauling her up, finding little joy in the frightened thing at their fingertips. A flashlight clicked on and off as one of the others made a vague attempt at a save but the entire encounter felt off .
They weren’t trying. Even after someone pulled Feng back down to earth, she hadn’t moved, and any generator she reached for popped and cracked with the lack of effort. So the others avoided her entirely, and Legion lost track of her as they ran doggedly after the remaining two. Now and then a crow cried, or Feng’s sobbing hit the walls just right and echoed to where they stood.
When the Entity took Kate for its own, Legion faltered only a moment before engaging the chase again. They lept pallets, through windows, hot on the heels of another they hadn’t been assed to get the name of. She was newer, and miserable at staying hidden in her white coat that now showed every spilled drop of blood. The stuffing leaked out of it as Legion caught her across the back with the blade, pausing only to wipe the knife clean across the bottom of the mask. The copper smell permeated everything, and there was a thrill. A pause.
“Take her!”
Legion came to a dead stop, fingers tight on the knife handle. The woman held her oozing gut with one hand, the other stretched out, a single finger pointing at a distant figure standing below a hook. The crows screeched and fluttered, pecking at Feng’s shoulders and face, but she had scarcely moved.
“Take her,” the woman repeated, gesturing desperately at the other frozen in fear survivor. “She’s not helping, take her and let me go.”
They took a few slow steps closer to Feng, watching her eyes fill with tears, her body shrink together as the crows flitted up and away, content in their task. The Entity allowed no one to idle unpunished.
But.
Legion spun on their heel and caught the woman in the chest, the knife plunging deep, blood spattering the ground and leaving a slick blanket as the woman stumbled. Fell. She swore and screamed, curled fists beating into Legion’s shoulder. Unmoved, they hefted her up onto the hook dangling by Feng’s still form and watched the Entity pull her into the dark.
Feng inhaled, exhaled, face pale and eyes watery.
Legion spun the knife in hand, watching Feng idly, the fog beginning to thicken and creep in.
“Come on, then.” And Legion scooped her up and over their shoulder, feeling her hand limp against them, making no effort to escape as others had. There was no guilt. Sympathy, perhaps, but not guilt . They all knew the game, their purpose.
The hook left a gaping hole in the muscle of her shoulder, and she screamed, a sound that left Legion’s ears ringing, but then she simply went limp. There was a tiny gasp, and the Entity descended to claim her in a mass of sharp barbs and fog tendrils.
Legion walked, soaked in the blood of the temporary dead, mask painted anew. On the edge of the arena, three shapes lingered, waiting to meet them. Frank slipped the mask up enough to show his grin, wiping the back of his bloodied hand on his lips. His Legion knew. Perhaps they were as close to human as any of these creatures, but they were still Legion.
They had a job to do.