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Kotallo is dead.
Aloy collapses before the carcass of the slaughterspine. She is convinced of it. The machine’s tail had ripped through his stomach as it thrashed through the air. Aloy had screamed her throat dry, dragging the slaughterspine from its kill as she caught the sight of Kotallo falling to his knees between its legs.
She had died with him.
All the rage from her trapped spirit had purged on the beast, spearing it with arrows and slashing it with spikes even after it had drawled its last, guttural breath.
Now her soul has withered, her limbs folding like paper as she claws her fingers into the sand near where he fell. The remains of the machine that killed him now crushes his body. Aloy cannot even see him for jagged shards of metal and jutting wires. She wants to tear it apart, rip the whole earth to its core until she finds him.
But the energy from her body escaped her in a single breath.
A drop of rain drips onto her cheek, slithering down like a scar, and she wonders how the world can still function. It should have crumbled along with her.
She curses the wind for weaving through her hair when his fingers no longer can, the waves for dribbling up her shins when they’ll never feel his touch again. The trees rustle when he can no longer laugh, the sun blinks when he can no longer see. Birds flutter into the sky as though he has not just lost the beat of his heart that used to match their wings.
Aloy wants to scream. Her jaw slackens, her face falling into the earth and catching sand on her dry lips, but nothing comes out. Her throat is raw. It tears her from the inside.
Why had she let him come?
Their fingers had played with each other as they had threaded through the forest undergrowth, passing meaningful glances through branches, catching laughs in kisses.
The exhilaration from the hunt had been what they craved, the heat from it coursing through their blood, the scorching kisses and wandering hands that followed.
If only they’d stayed. If only they had stopped chasing the high, had kicked their hearts racing between themselves instead of finding it through a machine.
Dark clouds blow like breaths through the sky. Aloy knocks her head back and curses at them, her cracking voice like bullets.
The world wasn’t meant to end with the Old Ones. Nor when Hades tried to destroy it. Or at the hands of the Zeniths. Not even NEMESIS.
No. This. This is when it should collapse. Collapse, corrode, combust.
Because what is there left if Kotallo is gone? The world should be crying out with her.
Her tears join the rain on her cheeks. Her shoulders shudder, her lip trembles, her pulse thrashing through her skin. “I love you,” she breathes against the grit on her lips. She will never love another.
There’s a rustle in the grass that threads into the sand. Aloy glances up, her fingers slack around her bow. She has no energy, no will to kill another machine. She may as well let it kill her.
But when she looks up, it isn’t a machine she sees but a man. He stumbles towards her through the haze. Rain and smoke obscure him, licking over his wounds.
And at first she believes he’s a mirage. Not quite there, bleary around the edges.
Then his face folds through the fog and she sees the smirk straining on his lips, his hand clutching his stomach, as a haggard but alive Kotallo staggers towards her.
Aloy trips over herself to reach him, kicking sand underneath her, her breaths clutching at air in disbelief.
“You’re alive!” It’s a question, it’s an exclamation. She tumbles into him, flinging her arms around his very real, very warm shoulders. His skin is sticky with sweat. He grunts as she makes contact with his stomach and she whimpers an apology but doesn’t let go.
A laugh vibrates against her neck. No rustle of leaves could ever match it.
“I’m not going down that easily,” Kotallo says, finally wrapping his arm around her waist. Her legs buckle, the relief rushing through her, and his arm tightens to stop her from falling.
“I thought-,” she stumbles over her words, managing to inch back and catch his face in her hands. His eyes are ablaze, capturing hers in his longing and steadying breaths. “I thought you were dead.”
And before he can retort, she presses her lips against his. A breath escapes from his mouth before he joins her in the kiss. His lips burn against hers like sandpaper, then his tongue relieves them like river water. His skin is chalky and damp where her fingers clamber, his arm hot and steady against the back of her waist.
He grunts as she pulls back before he dives for her neck, grazing his teeth against her skin. She lets out soft moans that whisper into the wind and tangles her fingers into his braids.
As they exist there, enfolded around each other, she feels the breeze in her hair and the rain on her skin and she gives permission to the world to keep on living.