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There is an ache in her bones, today.
It’s not even the physical kind; the physical kind, she can handle, having experienced her share of sprains and broken ribs. They all mend in time, as long as she allows herself time for them to heal.
Time cannot mend the kind of ache she feels today, though.
If anything else, time only seems to make it worse. It pulls from somewhere deep inside of her, from a place she can’t identify, tearing it all apart, a little deeper each time.
Hope is hard to hold on to when she feels like this. It’s so much easier to give in to helplessness, to this feeling of inevitability, of her fate rushing towards her, faster even than NEMESIS itself.
Still, Aloy tries, because that is what Aloy does. One does not simply take a day off from trying to save the world.
Sweat clings to her skin as she moves yet another crate around in order to reach a ledge, wishing the air wasn’t so humid, as it only makes that heavy feeling worse. She’s quite irritated by the relentlessness of Kotallo’s gaze, too.
Not that she’s unused to it. If there is one thing that man knows how to do, it’s stare at her. Although it’s familiar, something she even enjoys at times, it annoys her today.
It annoys her because she knows he knows she’s having an off day. He’s not even commented on it, but the way he watches her is telling enough. She struggles to hide herself around him, so much more than with anyone else, and it truly pisses her off.
Having finally found and fixed the source of the problem, she huffs audibly as she drops from one of the elevated platforms in the room. Like most ruins in their world, this one is falling apart, its electrical system particularly dodgy.
“I suggest a break,” Kotallo says as soon as Aloy is back on the ground, his voice leveled.
Aloy ignores him, beelining for the door that until now had refused to open for them. “I suggest we keep going,” she says instead, bluntly.
“You’re winded.”
She nothing short of slams her hand upon the flickering circle of light on the door, illuminated by her Focus. “I’ve been doing acrobatics for the last twenty minutes, of course I’m winded.”
He doesn’t reply anything to that, merely stares, and stares. Against her better judgment, she looks his way, immediately caught in his gaze. He might not be saying anything, he definitely knows she’s like these exposed wires she’s just fixed, sparking and raw.
The door reacts to her touch at last, stuttering open, and Aloy doesn’t hesitate, slipping in as soon as the opening is big enough for her to get through.
The temperature drop is a shock to her system, suddenly engulfed in cold, dry air, drawing heat from her clammy skin. As her sweat cools within seconds, she begins to shiver, even as she draws in a breath. Not for the first time since she started visiting ruins, she forces herself not to think about how she’s the first person to breathe this air in a thousand years, how more often than not, she’s also breathing in people who are long dead, their particles mixed with nitrogen, oxygen and other gases.
She presses on her Focus, refusing to let these thoughts prevail, even if there is not much she can do about her heart and the way it’s sped up in her chest. Funny how she can jump around for half an hour and keep a steady pulse, yet the moment she gets deeper into one of these tombs on a particularly bad day, it’s like she’s been sprinting for her life.
The door closes shut moments after her companion follows her inside, the room entirely devoid of light if not for the beam coming from her Focus. Although she’s aware of his movements and presence through her senses alone, she keeps on ignoring Kotallo, whose only fault today is to care about her wellbeing.
The main computer looks promising, but unfortunately, like everything else in this building, it’s unusable for now. Having already tweaked quite a few terminals in the area, Aloy knows what to look for, eager to get whatever data is still salvageable in here so she can get back outside.
Any other day, and she might have been more careful. Today’s not a good day, unfortunately, causing her to take shortcuts she doesn’t usually take. In an attempt to expediate the rest of this mission, she fails to take into account some intricate variables.
When she uses her spear on a console to jumpstart the system, things get…complicated.
There is a surge of energy alright, but it doesn’t stay contained. It builds up at once, filling the room with crackling energy, before releasing in a sudden shockwave of electricity that sends her to the ground.
She’s truly winded for a couple of seconds, struggling to breathe properly, although she’s lucky not to have properly electrocuted herself in the process. She’s still trying to fill up her lungs when she realizes what the blast means.
She’s not only fried what was left of the electrical system, she’s fried her Focus, which had been her only source of light.
“Shit,” she mutters through gritted teeth as she gets back on her feet.
There is an assenting hum further in the room, reminding her that she’s not exactly alone.
Although he’s obviously just agreeing that they are in a rather unfortunate situation, Aloy’s temper doesn’t interpret it that way. There is definitely no slowing her heart down, now.
The opaque quality of the darkness is getting to her.
“Something you wanna say?” she asks, or rather barks, in a kind of tone that is definitely unusual for her, especially with him.
Having no way of seeing, her other senses are heightened, somehow still aware of his moving form across the room, even if she can’t pinpoint his position.
“Are you hurt?” Kotallo chooses to ask in response to her question. He sounds much closer than she anticipated.
She instinctively moves away from his voice, too raw to let herself be approached right now. In her hurry, she hits a desk, hard enough to know it will leave a bruise, managing to swallow back her next swear word.
She feels utterly useless, trapped in the dark without her Focus. Without the device, it’s like she’s lost most of her abilities, not even able to move around without crashing into inanimate objects.
Her breathing is much too shallow.
She somehow manages to get back to the door, the sound of her hands slamming upon its surface indicating the void on the other side of it; unattainable. It doesn’t budge of course, even when her fingers find the crease in metal where the panels had slid open, trying to pull them apart with her bare hands.
“Shit shit shit…” she breathes out when she fails, her heart racing madly in her chest, thumping against her ears.
“Aloy.”
Kotallo’s voice comes from behind her, but she barely hears him, sinking deeper in this live rendition of one of her worst nightmares.
Nothing.
There’s just…nothing.
There is no escaping the darkness now; it envelops her, surrounds her, until she’s shrouded in it, until that darkness outside mirrors the darkness within, the one she’s been fighting against all day, causing rationality to leave her completely.
It’s one of her deepest fears, one she never shared with anyone.
How she’s nothing.
How she sometimes wonders if she only amounts to the value in her genetic code. How she’s a hollow clone who does not matter, does not exist, whose good deeds are meaningless, as they are mere attempts to prove herself that yes, she is here.
She is alive. She matters.
Lies, the dark whispers to her whenever she can’t sleep. You know what you are. A motherless, artificial being. A tool whose purpose will soon be obsolete.
She doesn’t want to believe that voice, yet the words sink in her chest and wrap themselves around her heart and lungs like vines until she can barely breathe.
Just like now.
There is no escaping the dark, no escaping the truth, no escaping her fate.
“Aloy.”
The voice is different from the one in her head. It is real, and it rings with concern.
Kotallo.
I’m fine, she wants to say, but she’s not.
She cannot speak, her forehead pressed to the door, only now becoming aware of the loud sounds piercing through the darkness, all coming from her as she pants in an attempt to keep her brain oxygenated.
Except that it isn’t just oxygen. She’s filling up her lungs with dead people every time she gulps in more air.
She needs to get out of here, even as she knows she can’t, and there’s just nothing, no end to the darkness.
If she hadn’t dropped her spear when she was blasted from the console, she might have instinctively plunged it into his flesh the moment he puts his hand on her.
Luckily for him, she’s bare-handed.
All she can do is flinch at his touch, almost managing to evade him, but he refuses to let go of her arm. He’s saying something, but her heart beats too loudly against her ears, too fast. In her attempts to get him to release her, she makes contact with his body, and she’s startled by the feel of his skin, finding herself latching onto this proof that there is more than nothingness.
Her instinctive attempts to get away stop at once, one of her hands clinging to his arm, the other clenching a fistful of his armor over his chest. She becomes aware of the rushes of warm air upon her face, again and again, eventually realizing that it’s his breath.
Out there in the wild, out there in the light, she would never have allowed this kind of proximity, shying away from all form of physical closeness, especially with him. When it comes to Kotallo, she’s always sensed a weakness in herself she’s been too scared to explore.
But she’s trapped in the dark, and all she can do now is focus on him, letting the feel of his body and his breath tether her back to this reality, even if it’s devoid of light. His arm is strong and sturdy in her grip, briefly wondering if her nails will leave marks upon his skin or in the muscles beneath. She clings as strongly to his armor, pieces of metal digging into her flesh.
Every time she breathes in, a little deeper each time, she thinks less and less about the things that permeate the air, overtaken by his scent instead, strong and heady.
Even when he eventually releases her arm, he never breaks contact, his fingertips trailing her skin as he reaches up, until his hand is sinking into her damp hair, slowly closing his fingers into a fist. Shivers shoot through her entire body, another sensation that anchors her to him.
As panic leaves her at last, it is quickly replaced by shame.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers in a constricted exhale, still overwhelmed by the pounding of her heart and the feel of his hand in her hair.
“What for?”
His voice is low, and ridiculously gentle, just as steady as the rest of him.
She shakes her head a little. He can’t see it, but he must feel it well enough, still holding on to her.
“I just…don’t like the dark.”
Shame pulses deeper in her gut at her own admission, but Kotallo only tightens his grip.
“It is only human, to be frightened of the dark,” he tells her quietly, and without judgment.
Tears spring to her eyes, simply at being called human.
Not a clone. Not a thing.
She squeezes her eyes shut, forbidding herself to give in to yet another weakness. It changes nothing, whether they are open or close, the darkness just as thick and oppressing. She focuses on him, on his breath on her skin, on the sturdiness of his body, so close to hers.
Taking it a step further, seeking reassurance, she reaches for his face, pressing her fingers to his skin, focusing on the texture of it. It feels almost…sticky, a mix of cooling perspiration and paint. His breathing briefly halts at her touch, before stuttering out of his lungs in a rush of air that makes her ridiculously aware of her own body.
When there was nothing a minute ago, there is now heat, and prickly nerve endings.
There is also light behind her closed eyelids. Dim, and flashing blue.
She reopens her eyes.
It would appear that the blast hasn’t completely fried their Focuses, after all, the blinking light indicating a rebooting sequence as they recover from the surplus of energy.
Aloy cares very little about the return of her trusted device, as the return of this light no matter how small also means the return of his stare, his hand still in her hair, her fingers pressed to his skin, with his breath on her face.
Embracing the darkness, Aloy closes her eyes again, and pushes herself forward.