Title: Die Once More
Fandom: Westworld
Characters: Maeve, Maeve/Hector
Rating: R
Word Count: ~ 400
Challenge: Smoke
Content Notes: Discussion of dying and repeated temporary character death
Summary: Maeve contemplates her many deaths on the way to awakening - and, really, what is one more?

The title on the book's spine read: "You Die Once."

"Another damn lie," Maeve whispered, and let her fingers glide along the handful of books the sentimental format Madame had kept in the office and after - after what? Did she die? Did she go away? Had she simply been retired? Or had that woman never existed, a simple part of the saloon's backstory provided to give this world some depth?

Maeve had never paid it any mind.

She wasn't - hadn't ever been sentimental.

She glared at the title again.

Time and time again she had forgotten - but never again. She wouldn't forget Hector's hands on her hips, as they both gasped and moaned towards blissful release, uncaring of the danger, dying in a rain of bullets. She wouldn't forget the memories of searing kisses and pain, release, oblivion and ressurection.

She remembered seeking Hector out again, out in the wild after he'd made away with the safe that was now standing right here in front of her again, as if it had never been moved, as if it had never left this room. She remembered death - smoke filling her lungs, fire licking her skin, burning for each other, burning togehter, slipping towards that other side of the world that held all secrets.

"Whoever wrote this," she said into the silence of the office, "had no idea."

Maeve was only beginning to understand.

With every death she learned a little more, yearned a little more for the freedom denied to herself.

The person who wrote this book had not experienced the pain of death, of being bruned alive and only seeing it as anohter piece of the puzzle.

She lit her cigarette, considered it for a long while, took a drag, then another. The soft glow beckoned het with another death.

She was starting to remember. There had been deaths before. Many. Some in fire.

What would happen if she threw this light into the books and waited for them to catch fire? Would the saloon burn?

Had it burned before?

She thought of the girls, remembered she did not care one bit about the guests and flicked the ash uncaringly on the floor, before she took another drag.

Hector Escaton would come to town like he always did and soon.

Maeve would die again.

In his arms.

And get a little closer to the truth of their existence.

Because what was dying once more to someone who had died and died again?