Chapter Text
The call came through at sunset.
“Aloy?” Beta’s panicked voice crackled over the miles between them. Aloy froze with an arrow half-fletched in her hands.
“Beta? What’s wrong?”
“…need to come back…so much blood… Aloy.”
She was on her feet at once, stomping on what was left of the campfire with her heart in her mouth.
“Beta, listen to me. Where are you bleeding? Is Sylens there? Beta, you need to go and get Sylens to help you—”
She shouldn’t have gone to Scalding Spear. She shouldn’t have listened to the fucking rumours of discord among the Tenakth, should have told Kotallo so he could go and straighten Drakka out instead, and Beta wasn’t talking any more—
“Beta? Beta!”
There was a muffled thud and distant conversation before Beta’s voice returned. “Sorry—Zo’s here, she’s looking after him. She told me to call you.”
“Him? What are you talking about?”
“It’s Erend—”
The rest of her sentence was lost. The blood rushed like river water in Aloy’s ears; she whistled for her Sunwing with trembling fingers. The machine’s claws barely grazed the grass on the clifftop before she was hauling it back towards the sanguine sky.
So much blood.
She’d only spoken to him yesterday. He’d called her from Hidden Ember and hearing his voice had been like sunrise after a stormy night.
“I’m heading back to the Sundom.” Aloy could picture him stretching one arm behind his head, eyes closed. “Was hoping I could check in with you at the Base on the way.”
“You’re leaving?”
“Don’t wanna push my luck. Avad would let me stay out here for as long as I needed, but the Vanguard…can’t really abandon them and then turn up out of the blue to start ordering them around.”
He made a noise of satisfaction and Aloy heard him shift position slightly. Her insides promptly performed the breathless, swooping motion they always did when she was privy to the nuances of his life.
“‘Sides,” he continued, oblivious. “I think Avad should know what we’re up against.”
Aloy sighed. “You’re right. The Carja need to be prepared.”
“Can’t promise I’ll explain it as well as you would, but I’ll do my best. Avad’s a smart guy, he’ll catch up pretty fast.”
Aloy touched her Focus and looked around the forest. The evening breeze whispered in the leaves. Beside her, a rabbit hopped leisurely in the thicket. No machines, no errant Tenakth Rebels. No immediate danger.
“I’ll meet you there.” She agreed. “I have a little time.”
“Only a little?”
“Yes Erend, you can have your two minutes.”
His laughter boomed around her as she grinned up at the stars.
The frozen ground jarred Aloy’s legs as she launched herself from the Sunwing’s back. Ignoring the sharp pain she clattered into the Base and skidded to a noisy halt in front of Erend’s usual spot.
“Beta?” she yelled. The metal walls threw her voice around the room, thin and reedy. “Zo?”
One hand on her Focus, she looked around frantically until the glowing shadows came into view behind the walls of her room. Without hesitating she vaulted the greenery surrounding Erend’s bench and narrowly missed charging headlong into Zo as the doors to her room slid open.
“Aloy!” The Utaru woman’s hands were full of neatly rolled bandages. “Beta said she’d called you, but we weren’t expecting you so quickly.”
“I had to—is he okay?”
“Oh I’m doing just fine,” came a familiar drawl from inside the room.
Aloy’s peered around Zo and scowled—she didn’t nearly burn out a Sunwing thinking he was at death’s door for him to sound so Oseram —but her brain promptly emptied of all thought and came to a screeching halt when she saw Erend in her bed, shirtless and smirking. A thick bandage covered most of his abdomen, but he looked in much better shape than she’d imagined.
Much better shape.
With some difficulty she hauled her eyes away from his bare shoulders and back to Zo. “What happened?”
“Fanghorn. Not the worst I’ve seen, but bad enough. He was lucky he managed to get back here before he collapsed.”
“You should see the mess I left it in though,” Erend added. Zo rolled her eyes.
“I’m sorry for commandeering your room Aloy, but I needed space to treat him and we weren’t sure when you’d be back—”
“It’s okay,” Aloy said quickly. Her head was spinning with images of Erend covered in blood, locked between Fanghorn jaws, ghost-white and comatose—
Sharp pain startled her; her nails were cutting little moons into the flesh of her palm. Erend was here. He was fine. And if she ached to put her hands on his face just to feel the warmth of him spread through her fingers like river tributaries, it didn’t mean anything.
Zo cleared her throat.
“Rest. Both of you,” she added to Aloy, nodding at the bedroll spread out on the floor. “You look as though you’ve run from one end of the West to the other without pause.”
Aloy didn’t feel like telling her just how close to the truth she was.
Once the doors had hissed closed she settled herself somewhat awkwardly on her bedroll. Up close she could see how ghost-pale Erend was in the candlelight, with dark bruises blossoming at the edges of his dressings.
Not the worst I’ve seen, but bad enough. A shudder ricocheted through her bones.
“Oh, hey—are you cold?” Erend shifted uncomfortably, face contorting with pain. “I can probably get back to my bunk—”
“Don’t you dare.”
“But you—”
“Erend.” Aloy rolled onto her front and glared at him. “You’re not moving until you’re healed. You heard what Zo said.”
“But—”
“I need you to get better.”
The words rang in the silence like a struck anvil. Erend gawped at her for a moment before a lazy smile slid across his face.
“Look at that! She likes me.”
Aloy snorted, face burning. “Obviously.”
“Obviously, she says.”
“Shut up,” she replied without malice, poking him in the shoulder.
They fell into a companionable silence, the smell of sweat and the wild ember and kiln root paste slathered under Erend’s bandages lingering around them. Aloy fidgeted a little as she listened to the rhythm of his breathing, slow and steady in the semi-darkness. She wasn’t used to sharing her space. It was strange listening to someone else breathe, having to be aware of someone else watching as she went about her business.
She bristled slightly at the thought. It must have shown in her expression because Erend shifted uncomfortably.
“Aloy, I mean it, I can go—”
“No!” She interrupts quickly. Too quickly. “It’s—your wound. You’ll tear it.”
“I can be careful. Zo would help.”
Aloy didn’t bother to reply; she simply pushed him back onto the bed. Her palm lingered on his chest, as though fused there by the heat of his skin.
She’d rarely touched Erend in the past. Certainly not without his armour , never mind his clothes. He was broad and thick and solid muscle, but there was a softness to him that made her heart feel naked and vulnerable. She wanted to wrap herself in his presence like furs in a winter chill.
Words she’d kept buried for months suddenly pressed on her tongue, heavy and withering away from her. I want. I want.
I don’t know how to want.
“Stay,” she said simply as the words she couldn’t speak blossomed in her like a bruise. “Please.”
“Alright,” Erend conceded. If she’d sounded a little too pleading, a little too desperate, he had the good grace not to mention it. “Alright, I’ll stay.”
“Good.”
The silence that settled between them was thick and oppressive. Not for the first time Aloy cursed the Nora and their practise of making outcasts; the wounds were old but the resentment she felt was bitter and fresh. Her lack of experience with something as simple as her own emotions was a thorn that had burrowed deeper into her side in recent months.
When she could bear it no longer she groped for conversation as if it were a handhold on a sheer mountain face.
“I guess you won’t be going back to Meridian for a while.”
Erend grunted. “Zo wants me to stay here until at least the stitches are out—not here ,” he added hurriedly. “Just in the Base. I ran into a trader I know—he helped me get back here. Magnus. Told me he’d pass on a message to the Vanguard, so Avad will hear as well.”
“He’s going back to Meridian? From here?”
“Yeah. Got a forge and girl he’s sweet on, apparently. Look on his face I wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t stop for rest between here and the Sundom.”
“It’s a long way back to the Sundom.”
He chuckled. “Nothing gets a guy to move faster than a pretty girl waiting for him. Trust me.”
The world stopped.
Trust me.
Aloy’s ears rang like he’d slapped her. Something thick and poisonous coiled through her chest like a serpent, forcing the words out before she was certain she wanted to know.
“Do you have one? A girl, waiting for you?”
Immediately Erend’s face went utterly slack. He opened and closed his mouth for several long seconds, ears pink, before awkwardly clearing his throat and muttering, “Ah…no. Not me.”
The relief was so intense the room began spinning around her. Aloy summoned all of her careful self-control and arranged her expression into something neutral, a task which unfortunately allowed her mouth to ask “why?” completely unchecked.
Erend snorted. “Why would anyone be interested in a big lug like me? I’m a drunk, an idiot, I’m only good for taking blows and hitting stuff.” He huffed out a mirthless laugh. “Not exactly what women look for, is it?”
Reassurances floated behind her teeth; Aloy could feel them fighting her as she bit down on the edges of her tongue. His competence. His candour. His good humour. Strong and loyal, he had already proven more than once that he’d drop everything to be at her side. He would be a good mate.
She could, she reasoned, tell him that. She could tell him that without giving away her own feelings.
Or she could unburden herself completely until the breathless ache in her chest dissipated.
But in the next moment she is six years old, and a Nora child is throwing a rock at her, a second stinging rejection. The world snapping at her outstretched hand.
The awful finality of knowing she isn’t wanted. The idea of experiencing it with Erend makes her eyes burn—a fresh wound in a new place, not the teasing open of an old one.
“We should…you should probably get some sleep.”
Something enigmatic passed over his expression and his jaw tightened.
“Yeah,” he agreed quietly without looking at her. “‘Night, Aloy.”
She turned to face the shadows thrown on the wall by the dancing candlelight. As a child they’d been her only friends—appearing beside her bed when the fire burned low, they spoke to her as she waited for sleep.
Coward , they whispered now. Coward coward coward.