A/N: I might or might not have become obsessed with the 2004 AVP movie recently. You can come pry the Scar/Lex feels from my cold, dead, very human hands.
Enjoy!
There is something very humbling about being faced with giant, humanoid-shaped aliens bred and trained for war. Or so Alexa Woods thinks when faced with one - faced with death in a way she had only been with snowdrifts and spiky iciness and mountain winds. She does not step back, however.
She is humbled, yes, but she does not bow.
The creature - the hunter, the predator, she can't really think of other names for it except those that describe its unrelenting capacity for catching prey - chitters at her oddly, and she feels an odd sort of warmth, like she's been scanned from head to toe. She would not put it past the being in front of her, she thinks, since the weapons that have been killing human and aliens alike are far more complex than anything she's seen on Earth, so scanning equipment would not be too farfetched. It does not move to kill her.
This is the question: why doesn't it kill me?
This is the answer, one that she knows in her bones: I'm as much of a hunter as it is. I am not afraid.
Death is commonplace in her job - a thing to take for granted, to not fear. If you fear it, you won't make it up the mountains. If you fear it, you certainly won't get down.
Lex has climbed far too many mountains to fear death. She knows this.
The predator might not know it, but he feels it, too.
He does not kill her.
Down in the tunnels, inside an ancient pyramid crawling with beasts born of darkness and nightmares, human and predator create a bond.
She names him Scar - for the burned mark on his forehead and mask, for the jagged shapes he leaves behind on both stones and serpents when he uses his weapons. She does not question how Scar has progressed from an it to a he in her mind, nor does she question the ethics of naming someone who probably already has a name. The last thing she needs to spend time in is to pull a Tarzan when trying to communicate with him, especially when his species already view humans as something akin to cattle.
They communicate just fine, anyway. Perhaps a little too well, for two species who aren't supposed to see eye to eye.
He shows her the non-effect of the serpents' acidic blood on their own exoskeleton; she understands. They fit each other with armour made from it and from materials she finds within her own backpack, velcro and tape and straps and all sorts of other things; there is no need for spoken words when their hands work so well alongside each other. When she motions at him that she can't keep up with his monstrous pace, he slows down.
At this point, Lex might like this reptilian giant better than most humans she's ever met. Then again, that isn't saying much.
She isn't exactly the most social human around.
She manages to prove just that - how little human life must mean to her, how her connections with other humans don't matter as much in the grand scheme of things, how her priorities don't allow her to put one life above all the others - when they find Sebastian, cocooned in place and waiting for another one of those serpents to come bursting out of his chest.
Don't let them reach the surface, he says, or she says, or they both say, and she doesn't. She shoots him, one bullet straight to its target before the thing in his chest kills him. Lex feels guilty, but perhaps less than she should.
It's better this way, she tries to tell herself. At least he died at the hands of a friend.
But what kind of friend is she, Lex asks herself, if she was able to do it?
Scar takes care of the unborn serpent for her.
Lex is thankful.
There is a rhythm to it, to battling and to running and to settling beside each other like they've never been apart in their lives. It's almost uncanny, Lex thinks, how quickly they adapt to it. Once or twice they've accidentally overstepped or startled each other, yes, but their bodies and minds adapt to the other's presence with an ease that makes it seem like the most natural thing in the world.
It is not the most natural thing in the world.
This much is obvious every time her gaze catches on to the shadows painting the dark stone floors; on a different scale, perhaps they wouldn't look so different. Like this, though? He's too tall, too broad, too otherworldly strong in contrast to her leaner form. She's an excellent athlete, primed for dangerous heights and weather and agility, but even she pales in comparison to his sheer size. It's a good thing the shadows can't see below his mask, too, because then there would be no comparison between the two of them at all.
No one must know about him, Lex thinks. The world would be afraid, and rightly so, but it's not something she wants him to face.
There is a bitter sort of smile pulling at her lips: since when does she want him to stay? But then he's holding her tight against the sled, speeding upwards until they're flying, meeting the frigid air head-on as they plummet into the snow below.
He's injured, but when the ground cracks below them and they're both forced to run, he finds the strength to throw her ahead before he jumps to meet her in safe ground. Safe?
They are not safe.
The queen is relentless in her pursuit of them, even as Scar wounds her with his throwing disk, even as Lex swings at her with the makeshift spear Scar had gifted her with in an attempt to draw her away from her companion. She screeches and writhes with her claws on the frosty ground, but she does not stop, she does not yield - she chases them down, hunts her prey with a single-mindedness born of hatred and anger, and Lex is not afraid of death but she does not want to die.
And Scar, she thinks, Scar is hurt.
She leaves him in the snow with a leaden heart, knowing his thermal netting is too damaged to keep him warm for long, knowing that there's too much of that luminescent blood seeping out for him to be alright. But the queen, the queen will surely kill him if Lex does not draw her away, and then there will be no hope at all for him to live.
So Lex calls for the queen, and runs.
Is he dead? Is he dead? The words keep playing in a loop over and over as he falls limp in her arms. Is he dead? Lex does not bother to compare the depth of her despair over him against her sadness at the deaths of her team. Maybe it's not that she doesn't treasure human life as much, but that her bond with the reptilian predator was something far greater, far stronger, far more painful to be forcefully removed from, and doesn't that speak at something inside her? Something that respects strength, something that respects honour, something that puts bravery and understanding above all else.
Her hands are tinted with fluorescent green, but the brightness of it does not bring happiness. Scar, she wants so call, to bring him back from the heaviness of his unconscious body, from the nearness of death, Scar. Lex doesn't think it'd work, though. She's never even called him that to his face.
She doesn't even know his real name.
And it's odd, to grieve so hard over someone like this, whom her ancestors would have seen as a god to worship, or a monster to destroy. But his loss cuts deeper that the broken ice where the pyramid used to stand, and for once Lex doesn't know how to deal with this.
How do you deal with the loss of someone you barely know?
She's no longer alone. Other predators surround her, watching her cradle his body to her chest, pitifully small in comparison to his size, measuring the mark branding both of them as blooded warriors within the same trial. She makes no move to hold on tighter to him as they take his body, nothing more than one final parting squeeze, and the dreadlock-like tendrils of his hair caress her freezing hands as they move him away.
There is a faint remembrance of the cold, of the smell of blood, of the burn on her face where he had marked her as an equal to his people, but her mind feels numb to all of it. Lex watches as the predators take him away; their clawed hands search for a pulse she hadn't bothered to check for, not wanting to feel his life fading away without being able to help - is he alive, after all? - and as she's surrounded by them once more.
She does not step back.
She does not bow down.
Alexa Woods does not fear death, and the Predators reward her for it.
There is a spear in her hands now, so alike the one Scar had on him, so alike the one she had used to make her first kill, yet so different. It's a gift. She takes it.
The elder Predator is eerily calm as he studies her, and she studies him back. So like Scar, yet so different, just like the spear in her hands. He gestures towards the ship in a way that she cannot misunderstand, not after the hours spent alongside her companion decoding every twitch and movement for a language of their own, and Lex understands.
There is no place for her on Earth anymore.
Lex makes her choice, and walks towards the ship.