Title: Not Easy Prey
Fandom: Westworld
Rating: Teen
Length: ~1500
Author notes: Written for the prompt Shadow. Canon appropriate swearing and allusions to mature themes.
Summary: Maeve knew there were ghosts out there, some more human than others.



The farmhands left and it was just the two of them again. Flora seemed to be happier this way. She ran through the prairie grass, her giggles drifting across the plains like the clearest sound of bells. Maeve smiled to herself when she hears it, the exuberance of her daughter echoed in her own joy at their quiet life returning. It felt strange like she woke up the morning and the world was right again – just as if harvest time had never happened at all, a dream, a story, that was just the prelude to the return of their real life.

“Stupid thought,” she whispered to herself and knew that despite the lightheartedness of the moment, the worries would return someday.

Their little world in their little quiet place close to town wasn’t without dangers.

After all, she was a woman and there was no man in the house, and the prairie dogs filling the night with their howling songs, weren’t only predators out there hoping for easy prey.

Maeve knew there were ghosts out there, some more human than others.

She had seen one of the ghost tribe men, covered all in black, white, and red paint, sitting on his horse watching her hanging up her laundry to dry. Her heart had missed a beat and she’d frantically prayed that whatever happened next, Flora would be spared. But he had only watched, blank-faced, then had nodded at her, turned his horse around, and left. Had that happened? Was it a memory or a remnant of a nightmare?

It didn’t matter which, she realized.

It was what it was, as this world was what it had always been.

She did not fear what lurked in the shadows.

“Mom,” Flora called and appeared from the high grass at a sprint. “Someone is coming.”

Flora pointed up the way.

A man was walking slowly with a dog. He wasn’t wearing a jacket, only a dark vest over a white linen shirt, no hat either – and he was too far out to have come all this way without a horse. That was odd.

When he came closer, she could see his white hair, his slow walk. The dog was running back and forth in circles around him as if it was always aware exactly how far it was supposed to go and what would get it into trouble.

“Maeve,” the man said and smiled, a mild smile that you would reserve for an old friend or family. “It’s good to see you again. How have you been doing?”

She smiled, uncomprehending, Flora by her side, throwing her arms around her body to cling to her. Then the sudden discomfort vanished, like a cloud passing by, briefly blocking the sun and she only remembered the stranger asking how they were doing?

“We are well, thank you. But you must have gotten lost? Where’s your jacket and…”

“Never mind,” he interrupted her with the same cautiously friendly smile, “can I bother you for something to drink? It’s hot and I am parched. Come here boy!” he called out to the dog and the dog came to sit by his side, looked up at Flora whose eyes widened.

Flora loved dogs.

Maybe they should get a puppy that would grow into a guard dog.

Couldn’t hurt.

Drifters weren’t all weird old men.

They gave him water and he sat on their porch to catch his breath.

“Have we met before?” she asked, having the strange feeling she should know the answer to that question.

“Of course,” he said, “but you don’t remember and you won’t remember.”

“That must be it,” she said happily, understanding suddenly as information came together to form a picture. “You’re from town.”

“Of course,” he said and smiled, patted the dog's head. “I’ll be on my way now. I need to bring little Robert his dog. I just wanted to see you. I never knew how Arnold could become so sentimental and now look at me...”

“Your horse?”

“Oh, don’t worry. It’s down there.” He pointed along the way towards the horizon as if there was an obvious place there to leave a horse.

He started down the road, turned to look at them over his shoulder, and added: “And Maeve?”

She knew instinctively from the way he said it, that she needed to pay attention. “Forget you ever saw me.”

And she did.

---

She woke up – the day after the farmhands had left. Flora was playing, laughing, hiding in the high prairie grass.

Maeve smiled to herself, joy feeling her heart. She knew danger was lurking in the shadows, but love and happiness were shining brightly.

When she looked up, there was the silhouette of a ride on a dark horse visible in the distance. Her heart missed a beat when the rider spurred his horse into a trot.

It was a man, handsome, wearing black leather; a scar marred his face.

Passing closely by the farm he stared at her and she stared back, sure she had never seen him before.

He tipped his head and was on his way.

She never saw him again.

---

The next man clad in black leather who came to their home did not come alone or tip his hat or asking for water. He was the hunter looking for prey – and destroying them was a game to him, a sport.

---

She woke in Sweetwater. Life was what it had always been since she’d arrived in the New World – a game that only the strong survived long enough to even try and play it. Costumers, newcomers, bandits – the town with the lovely name drew all of them in and Maeve knew just how to bat her eyelashes and purse her lips to squeeze money out of their pockets.

Life had always been this way.

Strangers came and went.

Sometimes she wondered – when a poster of Hector Escaton is nailed against the wall of the sheriff's office, when a woman, leading her daughter by the hand passed her by in the streets turning up her nose at the “madame” of the saloon. Maeve laughed in her face, aware that what made her wonder were shadows of lives she could have lived under different circumstances, and yet she was freer and tougher because of the path she had chosen and she wouldn’t trade it for the world.

“Just a glass of water,” an older gentleman said at the bar.

She leaned in beside him, making sure to give him the perfect view of her bosom and neckline.

“No, thank you. None of that with me, Maeve,” the man said and laughed.

“We’re old friends?” she asked, letting a sultry note sound with the last syllable.

“In a way something more. How do you like this life?” he asked, unfazed by her aggressive flirtation.

A nasty comeback rested on the tip of her tongue, just waiting to be thrown into the nice man’s face, but their eyes met and she felt compelled to answer: “Don’t get me wrong, darling. This is not a place a good man wants to send his daughters to. We all end up here because we need the cash. But what can I say? I get fucked, I get paid, I keep my girls safe. It’s a living.”

He nodded, took a sip of his water.

She thought she heard his voice later, over the noise of the bar fight that broke out over poker, harmoniously accompanied by loud piano music, saying: “He destroyed you, but I set you on this path. One day, you get to choose your own, Maeve.”

When she looked up, he stood by the window in the shadows, waved at her, vanished like a ghost.

She shook her head. A second later she had forgotten all about him. But not about life, not about choosing her own path.

“You’re paying for this,” she told the tough guy who had broken a window, not afraid of his glare or the gun at his hip, “or I swear you’ll never lie with any of my girls ever again.”

Nothing could scare her, not ghosts, not shadows, not newcomers or ruffians. After all, she was a woman, and she knew that you survived by showing the predators and would-be strong men that you weren’t easy prey.

This was her life and she had been born for the part.

The only life she’d ever known.