Archive of Our Own ^beta

It’s been a long long time coming / Feel it in my heart I’m coming home

-Paper Bird, "Blood & Bones")

 

At last, the ill-fated Quen expedition is ready to unite. The shore at Fleet’s End is busy with the last of the preparations of the Southern half, and full of more energy than the island has seen in the whole of the past year—for the first time in a very long time, there’s hope among these people. As they move, ready their stores and their boats for the trip, they chatter excitedly about the friends and family with whom they will be reunited, speculating about how they might be doing and what they might have found in the ancient home of their Ancestors.

Among them, a young woman stands high on a plank atop a crumbling building, markedly out of place for her red hair and animal skins, rocking forward on the balls of her feet and then back on her heels as she scans the group gathered around the meager fleet, squinting and holding her hand up against the lowering sun.

When the marine sees her, she forgets what she was saying.

She’s a vision in the setting sun, bathed and haloed in the golden light. It’s been at least two months since she last laid eyes on her, and she’d almost forgotten how the sight of her makes her heart skip.

“Seyka?” her admiral asks.

“Sorry, admiral, I—” she turns back to him, clearing her throat. “I—the Northern half of the fleet. Diviner Alva— I’m sorry, could you excuse me a moment?” The redhead has spotted her, too, climbing down the ruin and dropping into the sand. Seyka doesn’t really wait for a response.

She meets her in the middle, and they crash into a hug.

“Aloy,” she says. “You came.” As if she’d ever really doubted it.

“Seyka.” Aloy laughs, a little breathless. “Of course I did.” She leans back to look Seyka in the eye and beams. Her eyes are the kind of green that Quen poets write about in reverence to the Earth. “Of course I did.”

They stand there, holding one another’s forearms for one charged moment before Seyka remembers the conversation she abandoned and pulls away. Immediately, she misses the contact, and she can tell by the way that Aloy’s hands linger in hers that she doesn’t want to let go either.

Admiral Gerrit approaches, his eyes flicking between them knowingly. The mirth in them doesn’t go unnoticed. Seyka tries to compose herself and pretend that every inch of her isn’t suddenly electrified by Aloy’s physical presence.

“Welcome back, Aloy,” he says. “We’re fortunate to have you accompany us on the voyage.”

“I’m just… happy to help any way I can.” She glances at Seyka. “You’re going to need as many hands on that deck as you can get. I wasn’t able to get as much navigational information as I had hoped for because—” she skips the explanation—Seyka herself barely understands how GAIA and the Focus work, and she’s had months—gesturing at her Focus instead. “Doesn’t matter. I was able to scout ahead from the sky, though, and lay out something of a map for you.” She unties a roll of paper from her belt and hands it to him. “I just don’t know what’s under the water, and that’s the part I’m worried about.”

The admiral nods. “Ancestors know we are no strangers to the perils of the unknown waters.” He holds up the map. “Thank you. I am glad to have your knowledge and your spear. And yours, Seyka. We couldn’t have done any of this without you.”

At least someone in this Ancestors-forsaken place knows it. She bows her head in response.

“I’ll let you girls catch up. I have…” Gerrit gives a long-suffering sigh. “Other things to attend to. We leave tomorrow morning.”

And at last, she has Aloy all to herself.

“Hi,” she says.

Aloy makes a little nervous sound in her throat. “Hi.” She’s grinning like an idiot. They’re both grinning like idiots. “Miss me?”

“I—uh.” Seyka’s cheeks are hot. She coughs. “We should— definitely— catch up,” Seyka says, as if they haven’t spoken every day by Focus since Aloy’s departure from the Burning Shores. She takes Aloy by the wrist; she can feel her pulse. “Somewhere quieter, maybe.”

Seyka leads her away, to the southern end of the bare bones of Fleet’s End, where an old stone wall emerges from the ground and the sand fades gently, nearly unperturbed, into the sea. It’s been one of Seyka’s favorite spots in the recent weeks, one of the few places she can get any semblance of peace. She’s taken most of her calls with Aloy around here, sometimes picking her way absently over the bits of ruins scattered over the shore and in the shallows, letting the water lap at her feet. She’d be lying if she said the last couple of months have been in any way easy for her, between the preparations and… everything else. Her footing in her own life is shaky.

But having Aloy here, real and here, that feels right.

Two sets of tightly coupled footsteps trail behind them as they find an exposed piece of rock on which to settle, shoulder-to-shoulder.

Aloy puts her hands on her thighs. Then she moves them to her knees. Then she clasps them together in her lap. Seyka reaches out and settles her own hands on top of them, hoping to soothe Aloy’s nerves with her touch, as if she could say with the gentleness of her touch how much she would give for Aloy to be safe. Aloy looks up at her and smiles.

“So, are you ready for this?” Seyka nudges Aloy with her knee.

Aloy breathes out a laugh. “No.”

“Ah, don’t worry, I’ll make a sailor out of you yet.”

“Good luck with that.” She’s still smiling, but she looks a little queasy just thinking about the day’s journey they’re about to make.

“How can someone so strong have such a weak stomach?”

“I think I heard a compliment in there.”

“Nah,” Seyka says. “Never.” She grins. By the Ancestors, but that she is so fond of this woman, whose tongue is sharp with wit, whose heart is full of unbelievable courage, who looks at their joined hands in soft wonder, who gets seasick on her skiff.

“Are you ready?”

“Pffft. Please. Sailing? Dangerous waters? Deadly machines? I was born ready.”

Aloy rolls her eyes good-naturedly. “What about reuniting with the rest of the fleet?

Seyka’s stomach drops. She’s spoken at length with Alva about what might happen when they arrive, and they’ve agreed that they just can’t know for sure. Even with Compliance Officer Rheng mostly dealt with and out of the way, even with the year they’ve had and Admiral Gerrit mostly on her side, there are plenty of Quen, just in the southern half of the fleet, who still would like to see her—at best—demoted. At worst—she doesn’t like to think about it.

“Well, things have definitely changed since we last saw them.” Understatement. She gestures at her stolen focus. “But Diviner Alva has assured me I have her protection, and as the highest-ranking person left in Landfall, that means something. Even if the others aren’t happy about it.” She just hopes it’s enough.

“I’m sorry,” Aloy says. “I wish…” she shakes her head. “I may have grown up an outcast, but I never knew anything else. I can’t even imagine what this must be like for you.”

Seyka raises one hand and pushes Aloy’s hair back over her shoulder. “There’s nothing you could possibly do better than you’re doing right now. Just… stay with me.”

Aloy swallows hard and runs her thumb over the back of Seyka’s hand. “Of course.” She takes a deep breath and searches Seyka’s face for a moment, hesitating. “I missed you,” she says.

“I missed you too. I mean, talking to you by focus is nice, but—”

“It’s not the same.”

Their thighs, where they touch, are pressed together now, and it’s just them—not a holy warrior and a marine with the wrath of an empire in her shadow, but two girls on a rock on the beach, warm, ensconced in each other’s gravity.

“I’d really like to kiss you again, if that’s okay,” her heart thumping wholly in her chest. She’s been thinking about Aloy’s lips on hers for a while. Months.

“I’d—I’d like that too,” Aloy says, hesitating not as if it isn’t true, but as if she isn’t sure if she’s allowed to say it.

Seyka traces her finger over Aloy’s jawline to her chin and tips her head up. Aloy closes the gap.

Their first kiss was light, uncertain, but with every passing second this becomes more, backed by the conviction of months of talking and teasing and companionable silences, wishing, waiting, wanting. More confident now, Aloy presses her hands into Seyka’s knees and pushes forward, deepening the kiss. Seyka reacts in kind, her hand moving down to the crook of Aloy’s neck, holding them there, together, in that moment.

And in that moment, the world is quiet.

And I’ve done everything and been everywhere you know / I’ve been fed gold by sweet fools in Abu Dhabi / And I’ve danced real slow with Rockettes on dodgy Molly / But I’ve had no love like your love
-Hozier, “Nobody”

Then

Let the spear become an extension of you. You are the weapon, Rost used to say.

And so she let herself become one, sharp as the point of an arrow, tough as a Thunderjaw, quick as the snapping of her bowstring—a projectile, hurtling into battle, bruised and scarred from every fall from a mountain, every hit from the blunt force of a fist, every slice of metal razor teeth through her skin.

Sometimes she thinks maybe she is pain, a skeleton of hurt, bound together with bandages pulled tight, armored with muscle and flesh and metal, flinging itself out into the world in reciprocation for every blow. Sometimes she thinks she wouldn’t feel anything less than that which could break her bones.

But she wouldn’t know, would she? Not until now.

Seyka’s kiss is the softest touch she’s ever known.

And yeah, she feels it. Seyka cups her cheek and she thinks she might die right there in the sand.

“Wow,” is all she can think to say as they pull apart (too soon, far too soon). She kind of giggles, light, full of air, and it feels… different. It feels good. She feels…

“Yeah,” Seyka says, still clutching her arms.

“Let me come with you. To reunite the expedition.” The words tumble out of her before she really has a change to think about them, hasty and earnest. “The way is dangerous,” she says, thinking of the Slaughterspine that roams the west-most coast of the Isle of Spires and the Tideripper that lies in the waters farther north. Who knows what else lies between here and there. “You could use all the help you can get.”

“I can’t ask you to do that,” Seyka says.

“You’re not. I’m offering. I can scout ahead on the Waterwing, or help you fight machines, or— you know. Whatever you need.”

“Don’t you have more important things to do? Saving the world and all that?”

“This is important. Your people are important. You— you are important.”

Seyka searches her face. “You’re sure?”

“Yeah. Promise.”

“Okay.” A smile cracks across Seyka’s face. “Yeah. Good.” She takes a deep breath. Glancing out over the sparkling water, the sun just skewed west, she considers. “We’ll need time to get the fleet back in working order. Two months at least, maybe more. The storm— I mean, we’ve been working on repairs, but after the year we’ve had, progress hasn’t been exactly fast.”

Aloy bites the inside of her cheek. “Okay.” Her chest constricts. “I should… go, then. Chase down any leads from Londra’s implant data that I can in the meantime. And when you’re ready, I’ll come back.”

Seyka nods slowly.

“The Focus. We can use them long distance?”

“Yeah. I—I don’t know where this data is going to lead me, but if you need anything, call me.”

“What if I just want to talk to you?”

Aloy’s breath catches, her stomach flips. “You can do that too.”

“Alright, then. This won’t be too bad. Come here.” Seyka pulls her back in for a hug.

“Seyka, I…” she doesn’t know what she’s trying to say, exactly. Something is welling up inside of her, something she can’t place. It’s not goodbye.

“I’ll see you soon.”

It’s not goodbye. “Yeah. See you.”

She forces herself to step away and whistles for her Waterwing. And then, sparing one last look back at Seyka, she takes to the sky.

 

Sylens is in her room when she returns from the Burning Shores, having exhausted what was left of Tilda’s files and also, apparently, having missed invading Aloy’s privacy.

She almost doesn’t mind, and it’s not what gets her, sparks that flicker of indignation. It’s how he talks down about the Quen. Maybe it’s because there are Quen she cares about, or maybe it’s because it reminds her of the way the Carja called her a savage when she first arrived in Meridian. Maybe it reminds her of the way that she wanted to think about the Nora for a long time. Maybe it’s some combination of the three.

She recognizes the hypocrisy in her words as she spits them out, that this is why he would always be alone—the way he holds his secrets close to his chest and plays them like cards, treating life like a game of Strike he needs to win. It’s not like she doesn’t know what it’s like to want to want to hold back what she knows. It’s not like she hasn’t tried to take it all on alone.

But.

“I am thankful for your… extraordinary contributions,” he says, as if maybe he can learn the same lessons she has.

It’s a lot for one person, saving the world.

She goes looking for Beta next, and finds her in the control room, still working on helping GAIA reboot and concoct a plan to re-integrate Hephaestus. She swipes away reams of glowing text and graphs as Aloy enters and blinks a few times as if she might have been looking at them for just a bit too long.

“Greetings, Aloy,” GAIA says warmly.

“Hey GAIA. Beta.” Aloy says, letting Beta bring her in for a quick hug. “How’s it coming?”

“Slower than I’d like, but… it’s coming.”

“We would likely make more significant progress with access to the APOLLO database,” GAIA says. “As it stands, APOLLO remains stranded on the Odyssey.”

“Sylens says he’s working on a way to get up there,” Beta says, “but he hasn’t told me anything about it.”

“Of course not.”

“He will, when the time is right,” GAIA says.

And if she knows anything about Sylens, well, it’s that he’ll find a way if he really wants to. She can’t deny him that.

“Alright, well.” Aloy slings one arm around Beta’s shoulder. “Has she eaten?”

Beta throws up her hand. “I’m right here. You could ask me.”

“Food would benefit Beta at this time.”

Beta huffs.

“Okay. GAIA, let’s talk later,” Aloy says, continuing to ignore her sister, who she and GAIA have agreed is not a good judge of when she’s eaten enough. “I have some things I want to go over with you.”

GAIA gives a short nod. “When you are ready, I look forward to discussing your excursion with you.”

Aloy pushes Beta along with her as she heads into the base’s common area. She’s struck, suddenly, as they enter, by how quiet it is, without Zo and Erend’s banter, Kotallo’s mutterings about strategy, Alva’s excited ramblings about some data or other she’s discovered. It’s too quiet, too empty, even for her.

She has to wonder how Beta is taking it. Is she buried in her work every waking hour? Is she sleeping? Is she speaking to anyone? Is she getting any sun or fresh air? She glances at Beta’s Zenith tunic and pants and wonders if she has laundered them. If she’d like a change.

She releases Beta and busies herself behind the counter, which at this point has functionally become a kitchen space. They’ve filled the shelves and drawers with dishware and foods from every tribe between the Nora and the Quen, and discovered that one of the cabinets is actually artificially cold (something GAIA calls a “refrigerator”), so they can store fruit and vegetables for extended periods of time. Aloy cuts them some slices of Kotallo’s favored bread and slathers them in soft cheese, something she’s come to see as a comfort when she’s here. Beta brushes past her to pull out some liquids and spices Aloy doesn’t recognize and mixes them together in two of Erend’s heavy Oseram mugs.

“What’s this?”

“Zo called it ‘spiced apple press.’”

“You saw Zo?” Aloy raises a mug to her lips and takes a tentative sip. “Oh that’s good.” Tart and fruity, sweet and just a little spicy.

Beta nods. “She came by a couple of times to check on me. I’m not really the best at, well,—” she exhales, “existing, outside of Zenith training modules.” She catches sight of Aloy’s face and holds up a hand. “Don’t feel guilty about leaving me here. I’m fine,” she says. “Anyway, I think… I think she’s a little lonely too, to be honest, you know? I think she needs to visit just as much as I need her to. It’s nice to have her here.”

“That doesn’t make me feel any better.”

“Tough. So, the Burning Shores. Los Angeles,” Beta says, a touch of wonder in her voice, eager. “What’s it like?”

Aloy takes a slice of the bread and pushes the plate over to her, nudging her to eat. “Dangerous.” The heavy steps of a Slaughterspine, shaking the ground. A Horus, sweeping its long arms over the land. “Hot.” Metal on fire, sweat sticking her armor to her skin. “…Beautiful.” Cool waters and sea-salt winds, cliffs glowing with burning lava, vast skies alive with birds and shining Sunwings, a defiant Quen marine with mother-of-pearl beads in her dark hair.

Beta nods. She’s seen the pictures. “I wish I could have been there. Actually—” she shudders, “no I don’t. I can’t believe you guys took down a Horus. An actual Horus.”

“Well, I had help.”

“Yeah, Seyka, right? I do wish I could have met her.”

“Maybe you will. She’s, uh.” By the sun, the forge, and the Ancestors, she really can’t think about Seyka without that ridiculous feeling in her stomach, like she’s swallowed fireflies and they’re glowing inside of her. “Really special.”

Beta gives her the same kind of look she gives reams of code, reading between the lines.

“Oh my god.” The old world expression slips out and her jaw drops. “You like her.” She claps a hand over her mouth.

“Of course I like her.”

“No, I mean— you like her,” she stresses that word in a way that makes it clear to Aloy that what she thinks about Seyka—just how much she likes her—is written all over her face.

“I mean, we—we got close.”

Beta inhales dramatically. “Oh my god, this is better than a holo. Wow. Okay. I need you to tell me everything.”

“Beta—”

“Now.”

Aloy ducks her head bashfully, suddenly shy. This feels like a part of herself she isn’t supposed to share, the soft inner core of her that lives behind the steel bars of her ribcage.

“I mean—” Beta takes a breath and lets her voice come back down to normal. “If you don’t want to tell me, you don’t have to. I just—would really like to hear about it. About her.”

“I do want to. Of course—of course I want to talk about her.” She wants to talk about her for ages; there’s no shortage of things she could say. She could talk about the way she fights like a hurricane, the way she loves selflessly—she could spend an hour on the scar between her eyebrows or the color of her eyes.

“But?”

“I don’t know. It’s weird. I don’t know what to do with this…” she gestures vaguely, “feeling in my chest. I never—I never thought this would happen to me.”

“Why not?”

“Are you kidding me?” Aloy scoffs. “It was illegal for anyone but Rost to even acknowledge my existence for the first eighteen years of my life. I never had a real friend until—” it hits her like a brick “—until Varl.” She swallows. “That kind of thing makes you feel…” she looks deep into her mug and takes a swig.

“What?”

Aloy’s mouth twists. “Unlovable.”

“Yeah.” And she knows Beta understands, more than anyone else ever could, what it feels like to be a prisoner, a curse, and a tool all wrapped up in one girl, what it’s like to live in their skins, despite the light-years between their births. Neither of them needs to say anything else.

So she starts from the beginning, and she tells Beta about Seyka.

The opposite, the opposite of love is fear / I'm still trying to get used to how the former feels / 'Cause it feels so new / You think you know me, wait 'til I open up to you
-Hayley Williams, “Pure Love"

Now

Things start to go wrong pretty quickly, because Ancestors forbid she get one moment of peace.

They head back to the fleet far earlier than either of them would like to, because as much as they want to simply enjoy each other’s company, there is another pressing reason why Aloy’s here, and they both decide it would be best to check in with the Admiral again.

That’s not to say that they don’t take their time, walking the long way around the shore with their arms linked until the lamps become more populous and they start to smell something cooking.

Fleet’s End is quieter now that the evening has faded into dusty semi-darkness, but people still mill about, eating and talking in flickering firelight. It’s almost nice. Seyka’s stomach grumbles as she passes and Aloy looks longingly and completely unsubtly at the food, craning her neck a bit to see what’s giving off that smell.

“We can eat in a minute, yeah?” Seyka says into her ear.

Aloy nods, and Seyka puts her hand on the small of her back to guide her toward the biggest ship in the flotilla, where Admiral Gerrit’s has reestablished his center of command in his captain’s quarters under the patched-up flags of the Quen.

They’re stopped at the door by someone else’s exit—not Gerrit, but another marine, who slams his shoulder into Seyka’s as he attempts to pass. It seems to take him a moment to recognize her, and when he does, he steps back into her path. She can feel Aloy’s hackles raising behind her.

“You,” he snarls. “The Ancestors will curse us for harboring you and your outlander.”

“Eiko, did you go bother the Admiral with this again?” She glances back at Aloy.

“When I found out he wants to bring a barbarian with us—”

“This ‘barbarian’ saved your sorry ass,” she says. “Both of us did. And if you say we raised that Horus one more time, Eiko, by the Ancestors, I will put you on latrine duty for as long as I’m still your superior.”

“I’d like to see you try,” he sneers. “Won’t be much longer now.”

“Get out of my way, Eiko.”

He leans in well past the point of discomfort and presses a finger into her chest. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Aloy’s hand twitch toward her spear.

“You’re a danger to us all.”

“I’m a blessing. How many battles have we fought together? You should know by now. Now, I said get out of my way.” In one quick motion, she pushes his hand off and sends him careening off-balance with one precise blow, and shoulders her way through the door into Gerrit’s office, pulling Aloy behind her and shutting the door before Eiko has time to react.

Gerrit sits behind his desk, surrounded by inked scrolls and other odds and ends, looking startled at the sound of the door slamming.

“Can you brig him too?” Seyka asks, marching in and putting her hands on the desk.

“Eiko?” The Admiral grimaces. “Unfortunately, no.”

“What’s his problem?” Aloy asks, tipping her head toward the door. She puts her hands on her hips and her brows knit together.

“His problem is he’s an ass,” Seyka says.

“I… got that.”

“Well, then, that about sums it up.”

Aloy rolls her eyes.

Seyka steps back from Gerrit’s desk, suddenly antsy and needing to pace the short length of the room. “He’s trying to get me stripped of rank. Cast out. You know, the works.”

“Again?”

“More like picking up where Rheng left off. He’s been imprisoned, but that doesn’t mean he can’t talk. He’s…” Seyka fiddles with one of the tassels over her chest. “He’s saying we raised the Horus.”

“Why the hell would he— and people believe him?”

Seyka shrugs, her fingers still on the tassel. “It’s our word against his. And there are plenty of Londra’s devotees who really didn’t see… anything, who still want to believe in him.”

Aloy flings her arms out to her side. “So that’s his angle? Turn a bunch of Londra cultists against you? Why? And Eiko—he wasn’t one of them.”

“No, he wasn’t. It’s not just them.”

Aloy looks like she wants to say something else, but she closes her mouth and shakes her head instead.

“It might help to understand,” Gerrit says, “that coming back to the mainland a criminal—especially being responsible for the death of a diviner—doesn’t bode well for Rheng. The Empire isn’t known for being forgiving. He thinks it would serve him to make himself a hero, or, at the very least, discredit me and anyone who supports me.”

“And would it? Would that work?”

Gerrit sighs. “I don’t know.”

But he and Seyka both know—it doesn’t matter. Gerrit has put himself within firing range of the law just by protecting her, by letting her keep her rank, even if that rank slips between her fingers like sand with every Quen who refuses to recognize it, who fears what the Empire might do to them for their affiliations.

She doesn’t really understand why; Gerrit was one of the most decorated among the Quen military of his time, one of the reasons why he was chosen for this expedition in the first place. He’s not a rebel. But there’s a genuine sympathy in him, a kind of reason she’s not used to seeing from her higher-ups.

She doesn’t like to think about what he’s risking, or what will happen to him when he goes home.

Seyka takes a deep breath. This isn’t what they came here for anyway. “Is there anything we can do for you, sir?”

Gerrit waves a hand. “Get some rest. I’ll need you tomorrow, early.”

“Yes, sir.” Seyka bows her head, then opens the door and motions for Aloy to step through.

“Eiko’s been harassing you like that since I left?” Aloy asks, once they’re back out in the open air. She follows Seyka to the fire where the cooks have set up shop, and they stand behind a couple of other people waiting for food. Seyka gets up on her toes to look at what they’ve got—bowls of dumplings, it looks like, a familiar dish altered just slightly for what they could find out here. Good. She hopes Aloy finds it as comforting as she does.

“Not since you left,” she says. “Just the last couple of weeks or so.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Seyka looks away from the food to search Aloy’s face, the guilt dropping in her gut. But Aloy doesn’t look angry, just concerned.

“I didn’t want you to worry about me.”

“I don’t think I can help it, Seyka.”

“Aloy—” Seyka touches her elbow. She’s not sure what she wants to say. That’s about as far as she can think. Aloy.

“Hey,” one of the cooks raps his hand on the table. “You gonna take this or not?” She hadn’t even realized it was their turn. Muttering an apology, not entirely aware of the words coming out of her mouth, she accepts a bowl. Aloy takes one too, eyeing it like it’s her next kill, as if she didn’t just drop that.

They move away, towards one of the logs half-buried in the sand around the fire, and sit, balancing their bowls on their knees.

“You worry about everything and everyone already,” Seyka says. “I don’t want you to have to worry about me, too.”

“Well… maybe I want to.”

And what the hell is she supposed to do with that? It’s almost too much that this burning meteorite of a woman ever landed in her life at all, even gives her the time of day. Her breath catches.

Aloy’s cheeks redden and she takes a huge bite, as if to keep herself from saying anything else.

“So who is this Eiko guy then?” she asks, after she’s chewed and swallowed and given herself time to form the question. Some dark red sauce dribbles down her chin, and she swipes at it with the back of her hand, which only serves to smear it. “The way he talked to you, it seemed… I don’t know. Personal.” She frowns and looks at her hand.

Seyka smirks and stabs a dumpling with a chopstick. A little of the filling spills out.

“We went to school together,” she says. “We enlisted about the same time. I was sixteen, he was seventeen. We always got the same postings.” She would even have considered them close, for a time. “When I was eighteen, they passed him up for a promotion and gave it to me.”

“When you were eighteen?” Aloy stops wiping sticky sauce off her hand onto her skirt to look up at her, wide-eyed.

“I seem to remember you telling me that at eighteen, you stopped a war,” Seyka says. Aloy bobs her head to one side. “But, yeah, I’m a good marine.” It was only a few years ago, but she does look back at herself and marvel that she managed it so young. She’d had to—rising to petty officer was the only way she was going to keep herself and Kina afloat before Kina became a navigator.

“And I’m guessing Eiko held it against you?”

“Yeah. He’s been pretty much like this for years.” Sometimes it stings. “Now he’s just got… more reasons to hate me. Valid ones, in the eyes of the Empire. It doesn’t bother me.” It bothers her a little bit.

Aloy side-eyes her, as if she can tell.

“Aloy…”

“Yeah?”

“There’s sauce all over your face.”

Aloy touches her fingers to her chin. “Damn. I thought I got it.”

A laugh bubbles out of Seyka. She unwraps the scarf from around her neck and folds it over her hand.

“What are you doing?” Aloy dodges Seyka’s try for her face.

“Cleaning you up, dumbass, come here.”

Aloy laughs as she ducks out of the way twice more, putting her decade or so of combat training to good use, before Seyka manages to get the cloth to her chin, catching her with her other hand at the back of her neck to hold her in place.

“Didn’t Rost ever teach you any manners?”

“Oh, he tried.”

“By the Ancestors,” Seyka mutters.

Aloy flashes her a shit-eating grin. Unfortunately, it’s endearing.

“I was a difficult child.”

“You’re a difficult adult— sit still.” Seyka dabs the last of the sauce off her cheek. “There.”

For one moment, two, they’re suspended together with Seyka’s hand still on the back of her neck—until two explosions and a flash of light push time back into motion.

And Aloy goes with it, whirling to a standing position, drawing her spear from behind her back.

A cheer rises from around them, and then, with another bang, an arc of verdant green lances across the dark sky, followed by a sunburst of pure, luminous red.

Seyka takes her hand and tugs her back down.

“What is this?”

“Fireworks.” It’s an old-world technique. She hasn’t seen them since… probably before she became a marine. “We shoot them off to mark special occasions.”

Aloy squeezes her hand. “They look like the holograms at Pangea Park. But they’re… bombs?”

“Basically.”

Aloy turns back to the lights as they bloom again, but Seyka can’t seem to get her attention off the sparks in her eyes and the way her lips part slightly in wonder as she relaxes. Seyka’s seen fireworks before. She finds she’d much rather watch them in the reflections in Aloy’s irises.

The sound of drumbeats and the strumming of strings fills in the quiet after the fireworks fade and they finish off their dumplings, accompanied by off-key voices and clinking cups. Aloy’s entranced by the music even more than the fireworks, swaying into Seyka’s side without letting go of her hand. Someone’s passing around drinks, pushing one into each of their hands before they have a chance to object.

“This reminds me of the night of the Proving in Mother’s Heart,” Aloy says. Seyka looks back at her, surprised. She doesn’t talk about the Nora much, and never with this tone, almost soft. “Music and… lights. We released lanterns into the sky. I don’t know.” She laughs a little into her ceramic cup, then regrets putting her face that close to its contents and wrinkles her nose. “I don’t have much to compare to, but it was like this. Nice. Even with… everything else going on. I think about it sometimes, if…” She trails off. “Wow, this smells really bad.”

Seyka snickers. “Yeah, you don’t want to drink that. It’s worse than bilge blaze.”

“I’ve never even had bilge blaze, and somehow I can’t imagine anything worse.”

“Believe it.”

Aloy sets the cup down inside her empty bowl, which she’s placed on the sand at her feet, and then lifts her head, shaking out her hair as the breeze comes in form the ocean. She closes her eyes for a second. Just feeling, in that way she does.

“What do you think about?”

“Hm?”

“You said you think about ‘if’ something.”

“Oh.” She tilts her head to one side, then the other. “I wonder if this is what it’s like to be part of a tribe.”

“There they are!” someone exclaims from the other direction, interrupting Seyka’s thoughts before she can untangle them.

“Otosu,” Aloy says, and smiles. Three other former Londra devotees follow him as a he makes his way toward them. “How are you all doing?”

“We reunite with the other half of the fleet tomorrow,” he says. “We haven’t been this good since before we left the homeland.” Otosu clasps Seyka’s shoulder. “I want you to know you have my support. Some of us you saved… we know how much we owe you, and we stand with you.”

“I appreciate that,” she says, but something else stirs unpleasantly in the pit of her stomach.

It’s a scene from her childhood, this, the fireworks and the music and the smell of smoke and her favorite meals. Once, she danced with Kina and their friends, barefoot, under these same lights—reveling, free. This is what she misses when she misses home.

And she feels sick.

So many of these people, her people, people for whom she would lay down her life, would see her punished for the crime of their defense. 

Does she even know what it means to be part of a tribe? Is this what it is, after all? The illusion of her youth?

She focuses on Aloy’s presence, her weight shifting slowly into Seyka’s side. She’s solid, warm. Close. She promised to stay with her, and Seyka believes it, maybe more than she believes anything else right now.

“You look tired,” she says. Hesitantly, giving Aloy time to reject the touch, she curls her arm around Aloy’s waist. Aloy leans in a little more. “You had a long trip, didn’t you?”

“Just a few hours.”

“A few?”

“Um. Seven,” Aloy says. “Eight.”

“Aloy.”

“I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.”

“No, I— let’s get out of here. I want to get out of here. And you’re no good to anyone dead on your feet tomorrow, my Sunwing.” It’s not the first time the term of endearment has flashed through her mind, but it is the first time it slips from her tongue.

Aloy turns her head, her eyelids fluttering as she registers it.

She grins, slowly, softly. “Sunwing?”

“Shut up.”

“I like it.” Her breath tickles Seyka’s nose.

Seyka swallows thickly. “You need sleep. Go get your bedroll, and I’ll show you my tent.”

Aloy blushes deeply. “Your tent?”

“If you’d like. You’re not—you don’t have to be an outsider here too.” And after their time apart, she can’t bear to be separated one more night.

 

“Lead the way,” Aloy says, emerging from the ruins with her bedroll tucked under her arm.

Seyka takes her hand and leads her back to where her tent still stands, her workbench removed and her meager belongings in a small bag tossed into a back corner, leaving just the reed mat and her own bedroll in place in the middle of the floor.

“Where does Kina sleep?” Aloy asks. “Where is she? I haven’t seen her at all.”

Seyka hasn’t seen much more of her than Aloy has, to be honest. She knows Kina is grateful to both of them, but a chasm has opened between her and Seyka nonetheless, as Kina struggles with something dark she doesn’t know how to begin to understand. They can’t seem to find the words to build the bridge across.

“She has her own tent.”

Aloy gives her a long look, pinching the corner of her lips together. She does know what this distance feels like. The understanding passes between them, wordlessly.

Then they just keep standing there, on opposite sides of Seyka’s bed.

“Aloy, you can put that down.”

“Here?”

“Yes, here, if you want to.”

“Do you want me to?”

Seyka steps over her bedroll and takes Aloy’s from her hands. She unrolls it on the floor and slides it into place next to hers on the mat.

“I’ll… take that as a yes.” Aloy laughs nervously.

“Aloy.”

“Yeah?”

“You okay?”

“…Yeah.”

Seyka takes Aloy’s hands again. “What’s on your mind?”

“I’m just—I—I’m not sure I know how to do this.”

“How to do what?”

“Be… with someone.”

Seyka draws closer, lacing their fingers together between their hearts.

“I’ve never done this before,” Aloy says. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“Well, then, I’ve got a secret for you.”

“What’s that?”

“None of us know what we’re doing. Ever.”

Aloy lets out a puff of air through her nose. “I’ll try to remember that.” She gnaws at her bottom lip. “I don’t know that I can give you everything you want.”

“I don’t expect anything from you. You don’t owe me anything.” She is struck, not for the first time, with the feeling that she would move mountains for this girl. She would shift tectonic plates. “All I want is you, with me, as long as you’ll stay.”

Aloy nods. “Okay.”

Seyka untangles one of her hands from Aloy’s to push the strands that have come loose from her braids away from her face, and presses a light kiss to her forehead. Aloy closes her eyes. They rest their foreheads together.

“What do you want?”

Aloy rises to the tips of her toes and reaches up, around, her fingers landing on the nape of Seyka’s neck, the rough callouses of her hard life finding a soft home on her skin. And she kisses her, with meaning, taking Seyka down with her as she falls back onto her heels. Seyka chases her lips, kisses her back, long and slow and sweet as warm honey, and they take in each other’s breaths, twine their lives together.

Aloy pulls back just enough to speak, their noses still touching, her arms still slung over Seyka’s shoulders.

“Yeah, that,” she says, breathless. “Perfect.” She reaches down and Seyka watches her slim fingers on the ties on her bracers. “But you’re right. We should probably sleep.”

“Let me,” Seyka says. It’s easier with both hands.

Aloy bares her forearms. Seyka, with her sailor’s training, makes quick work of the knots and clasps that secure the bracers, and drops them off to the side. She raises Aloy’s arm and kisses the untanned skin just below her wrist. Aloy shivers.

She tugs at Seyka’s bracers and Seyka lets her fumble with the more complicated knots, a crease appearing between her brows and her tongue poking out of the corner of her mouth.

“You just have to—”

“Shh. I got it.” Aloy bats Seyka’s hand away, and in another moment her bracers are on the ground with Aloy’s. Aloy looks up at her, pleased with herself. “See? Not bad, right?” she asks, raising her eyebrows.

Seyka snorts.

Aloy removes Seyka’s shoulder plates and cape next, folding the cape and placing it gently by the bed, then they remove their various pouches and skirt pieces and chest-plates, shin-guards and shoes, until Seyka is left just in her woven white tunic and soft pants and Aloy in the brown skins she wears under her layers.

Aloy’s looking, really looking, and Seyka knows she is too, her attention caught by the slope of Aloy’s shoulders. Aloy’s cheeks darken from pink to red.

“Do you sleep in that?” Aloy gestures at Seyka’s high ponytail.

Seyka reaches up instinctively and touches the headpiece that keeps her hair in place. “No,” she says, and pulls it off, along with the clips that secure her twisted top bun. Her hair falls. She slips the beads out and turns away from Aloy to put them all together in a small pouch at the top of her bag.

She hasn’t cut her hair in years, and it reaches her waist now. It’s not easy to take care of as a marine, but it’s the one thing she hasn’t let the Empire touch; it feels sacred now to keep it long, to take it down every night when she’s alone, put it up when she’s not, perform the rituals of upkeep in the morning as she wakes.

In some way, it feels like baring her very soul to Aloy to let her see it down like this.

When she turns back, Aloy’s practically gaping at her, and she steps forward, raising her hand.

“Can I touch it?”

Seyka nods. She moves closer again, drawn to her helplessly like a moth to a flame, and settles her hands in the curves of Aloy’s waist. Aloy runs her fingers through her hair, over her scalp, and smiles.

“It’s soft.”

“It’s—um. I put this butter in it.”

“You put butter in your hair?”

“Not butter butter, like you eat. That’s just what they call it because of the texture.”

“Hm.” Aloy pushes her fingers through Seyka’s hair again. “It’s nice.”

Seyka takes her hand as it reaches her ear and kisses her knuckles. “I try. What about you? Do you sleep in those braids?”

“Ah.” Aloy pats the back of her head. “Yeah. I take it all out every couple of days to re-do it. Easier that way.”

“Oh. Shame. I would’ve liked to see it down.”

Aloy flushes. Seyka runs her thumb across the rosacea on her cheekbones, smoothes over her eyebrow.

“Seyka…”

“Yeah?”

“You’re beautiful.”

That’s not what people usually have to say about her. She’s headstrong, a fighter. Once, they said she was a good soldier.

And this, coming from Aloy.

She shakes her head, the bottom falling out of her stomach.

“Says you,” is what eventually comes out of her mouth.

Aloy giggles. She giggles, just— light, and Seyka thinks she might be the luckiest person alive to have drawn that sound from her, to have heard it, to have seen her smile with her eyes. She couldn’t care less about what the Ancestors wanted for her, these days, but she thanks them anyway for having lead her here, by matter of circumstance, to this woman.

She kisses the underside of Aloy’s jaw and guides her to the bedrolls, lying her down gently on the thin mattress. Once she’s settled, she takes her spot next to Aloy. She pulls Seyka close, and Seyka tucks her head against her chest, and Aloy responds as easily as if they had been sleeping side-by-side for years, curling around her and nuzzling her nose into Seyka’s hair. They fit together like puzzle pieces—like they were made for this.

She falls asleep to the beating of Aloy’s heart.

I don't wanna hear you tell yourself that these feelings are in the past / You know it doesn't mean they're off the shelf / Because pain's built to last / Everybody sails alone, but we can travel side by side / Even if you fail, you know that no one really minds
-KT Tunstall, “Heal Over”

Then

The Land-God So emerges from the mountain on the day of the first cold snap of autumn. Aloy and Beta watch from above on a Sunwing as she appears, armor clean and shining in the late afternoon sun, and slowly begins the trek back to Plainsong.

They stay low and follow her out into the fields. Utaru farmers gather around her, lifting their voices in song as they walk alongside her.

It’s the first successful pilgrimage of a Land-God since the reboot.

It seems fitting that it should happen just as the world begins to turn gold, that she should arrive in Plainsong bathed in the harmony of a tribe just rediscovering its strength, a reminder of the promise of a bright future as they all prepare for the winter ahead.

It was Beta’s idea to come, four days ago as they watched So enter the repair bay. Zo had filled her head with stories of harvest festivals past, and she practically begged Aloy to fly her to Plainsong to see it. Aloy, remembering the fondness in Zo’s voice as she recalled such festivals, and already itching to get out of the base, was more than happy to oblige.

They touch down in a grassy patch behind the satellites. It’s almost too cold to fly, but it’s warmer on the ground, and Aloy can feel the tingle of the sun’s rays on her skin even in the crisp breeze. She helps Beta dismount, pulling the worn Nora cape tighter around her sister’s shoulders. Beta’s teeth are chattering.

Zo greets them warmly, taking Beta in for a hug first, then Aloy. Though Aloy’s been back from the Burning Shores for weeks, they haven’t seen each other in well over two months now, each busy with their own tasks in preparation for Nemesis’s arrival.

There’s a relief in seeing her again that she’s not used to feeling—when she’s spent time away from her, or Beta, or any of them, she misses them. It’s… strange. And how lucky she is to be able to come home again and again.

The rest of the Utaru are welcoming if not outright deferential, joyful in the presence of their Land-god and not unaware of Zo and Aloy’s deeds. Plainsong has always been somewhere she’s felt most comfortable, where she’s never been “savior,” or “champion,” or “motherless,” only a bit of an insurgent, but now she feels that familiar prickle of discomfort at recognition, and brushes it aside wearily.

She accepts a yellow flower from a small child who runs up to her in flee, says something she doesn’t quite understand about her hair, and returns to her mother’s arms just as quickly. She tucks the flower behind Beta’s ear.

Beta glows. Without the looming threat of the Zeniths, without the ever-present possibility, however distant, that they may take her again, a weight seems to have been lifted off her shoulders. She carries her head higher these days. The angles of her bones have become less prominent. Color has started to come into her cheeks, her skin losing some of its ghostly translucence. Her hair curls around her jaw, the ragged ends level with her chin, and a single sun-bleached stripe runs from the cowlick at her forehead to the new sunburn at the tip of her nose. And in the time since their victory—though she still has more hard days than not—Aloy has started to see moments of real happiness in her.

She looks out upon the fields, and the forests, and the hills, and the sky, with such reverence, such awe, and listens to the people and the Earth, and she can’t get enough of it. Her eyes are wide as she takes in the rippling fields, alive not just with sustenance but with people, everywhere, probably more than Beta has ever seen in one place. Generations of them, enjoying the abundances of life together.

And as the music washes over her, and she brushes the flower petals with her fingertips, she smiles a real smile. 

“Zo…” Beta says, as they make their way around to the woven arches that mark the entrance to the heart of Plainsong. “It’s beautiful. Even more than I imagined.” The satellite dishes, the homes and the common spaces of the Utaru of Plainsong, teeming with life, green and artfully constructed, makes Beta’s jaw drop as they enter the space. She traces every line with her hand and says, to herself, “masterful,” and Aloy feels a rush of affection for the girl.

“The Chorus asked me to bring you to them,” Zo says, leading them upward.

Aloy can hear them, above. “What for?”

“I know you don’t like these kinds of things, but they insisted they wanted to thank you.”

Aloy grimaces. “I’ll live. As long as I don’t have to sing.”

Zo chuckles softly. “You still don’t have to sing.”

As they ascend to the Chorus’s gathering place, Zo begins to hum, catching and following a middle harmony. And then, as the Chorus comes into view, their voices fall away, as if they all share one mind somehow, connected by music, unified in a way Aloy thinks she will probably never understand.

“Welcome, Aloy,” Fane says as he steps down to meet them. “You must be Beta.” He nods at her. “Zo has told us of you. We extend to you our warmest welcome.” He turns back to Aloy. “We have much to tend to ourselves, so I’ll make this brief.”

Aloy would sigh in relief, but she thinks they’d probably consider that rude.

“Zo has informed us not only of the great service you have performed for the Utaru, but what you have done for all the tribes—both of you—” his eyes flick back to Beta, “and… of the task that lies ahead. I can’t say that I—that any of us—fully understand it, but the Chorus would like to formally offer you our support in the coming fight, in whatever way we can.”

Aloy bows her head. “Thank you, Fane.”

Another Chorister, a younger woman who must be a new inductee, comes forward.

“As a token of our gratitude, we’d like to offer you this, as well,” she says. Aloy takes the small object from her outstretched hand.

It’s a miniature Land-God idol, painted with So’s ceremonial markings.

Aloy can’t help herself; she laughs. “Wow. This is perfect. Thanks.” It might be the cutest thing she’s ever seen—well-crafted and beautiful, but adorable all the same.

“May it serve as a reminder that you always have friends among the Utaru to call upon in your times of need.”

Aloy feels a swell of something that might be pride, an optimism she knows she has in her but that she rarely glimpses these days, that the people of her world can find the strength it takes to confront the terrors that lie in the dark unknowable future.

Beta (and Aloy, though she won’t admit it) finds herself overwhelmed by the business of Plainsong rather quickly, so they find a spot to sit in the fields, close enough to hear the singing but far enough away that Beta doesn’t feel so much like her senses are being assaulted, out on the fringes of the festival where other small groups and couples have scattered here and there.

“So… things are going pretty well with the Chorus,” Aloy observes, aptly, genius that she is, stretching out in the grass.

Zo nods, unwrapping a cloth filled with small celebratory Utaru snacks—dried fruit and sweet breads, and something green Aloy wouldn’t know how to describe.

“Very well,” she says. “They’re listening. The people’s support for our cause grows by the day, and they cannot deny us any longer.”

“How did you—I mean, that’s a lot to explain to—”

“Good deeds beget good deeds,” Zo says, “and a willing ear. The Utaru are not a distrustful people.”

“She’s being modest,” Beta says, chewing thoughtfully on a piece of dried fruit. “She’s done nothing but save them, over and over. They owe her everything. They wanted to make her a member of the Chorus.”

Aloy gasps. “They did?” she practically shouts. Zo shushes her with a finger to her lips. “Sorry.” Aloy drops her voice to something of a dramatic whisper. “They did? And, what, you took them up on that, right?”

“No.” Zo looks out at the plains. “That’s… not my path. Not yet, at least.”

“Why not? They could use someone like you. Really.” She’s a leader if Aloy ever saw one, the kind of leader she wishes she encountered more often—compassionate, fair, utterly fearless.

“I told you, Aloy, I have to go East, to the Sacred Lands. Becoming a member of the Chorus would involve taking on a responsibility that I couldn’t simply abandon.”

“Right.” Aloy presses her lips together.

“When are you leaving?” Beta asks.

“I had planned to depart once I had smoothed things over with the Chorus, but I… went over a map with GAIA, and I think it may be best to wait, until after the baby arrives.” Her hand moves unconsciously to her stomach. Now about halfway through her pregnancy, she’s just starting to show through the thick material of her tunic.

But they may not have that kind of time, and they both know it. If they want Nora allies—if they want there to be any Nora left by the time she gets there—they need to start working for them now.

“I can fly you,” Aloy says. “It would only take us a couple of days. We could stop in Meridian. I—I think I’d like to visit the Sacred Lands, too. I mean—I should—”

Zo puts a hand on her shoulder. “Let me think about it?”

“Of course.”

“And you, Aloy? How were the Burning Shores?”

“Oh, well, um—” Aloy looks down. “I, uh, I fought a Zenith. Inside a Horus.” She pulls up a blade of grass and twists it between her thumb and middle finger. “I’m sure Beta told you.”

“She did. She said it would be best if you gave me the details, though.”

“Well, it feels bigger when it’s awake. I mean, it’s really—it’s really big, Zo. But it was… kind of awesome. We were able to take it down by targeting the heat sinks in its legs and then—”

“Oh for God’s sake, Aloy, not those details,” Beta interjects.

Aloy blushes. “Oh.”

“Aloy met a girl,” Beta says, when Aloy fails to elaborate.

Zo raises her eyebrows.

Beta keeps going. “She’s Quen. A marine. Aloy said she’s so pretty and has—”

“Her name is Seyka,” Aloy says, before Beta gets a chance to say anything really embarrassing, her ears warm. “Londra had her sister. I helped Seyka find her, and then she… helped me take him down. Him and the Horus. I couldn’t have done it without her.”

“They had a super romantic kiss on the beach.”

“Beta!”

“Sorry,” Beta says, completely facetiously, “did you tell me that in confidence?”

Beta smirks. Aloy glares at her. Zo watches in amusement.

“Tell me about her, then,” Zo says. “What’s she like? She must be something special.”

“I–uh—yeah. She is. She’s, um—I mean, she’s—” Aloy buries her head in her hands and groans.

Beta shoves her shoulder. Aloy pulls her hands away from her face and shoves her back, giving to the grin that’s pushed up from her chest and tugs at her cheeks. 

“She’s amazing,” she says. “She’s brave, and strong—unstoppable, really. When she believes in something, when she cares about someone, she doesn’t give up fighting.” Aloy’s hands curl up to her chest. “And she cares so much. About her sister, and her tribe, and—I don’t know. Everything. And she’s… wild, and fun to be around. She gets—she gets me, Zo.”

“She sounds wonderful.” Zo squeezes her arm, smiling. “Your face lights up when you speak her name. That tells me a lot.” Zo releases her arm and touches, lightly, the hand that Aloy still holds over her heart. “I’m happy for you.”

“I don’t know how much time…” it starts to feel like a silly thing to say to Zo, of all people, as she begins to say it. “I don’t know how much time we have together,” she says, quietly.

“What do you mean?”

“The Quen. I don’t know if she’ll sail back to the Great Delta with them.”

“Wait, what?” Beta asks, bewildered. “You didn’t tell me this. I thought she was going to reunite with the other half of the expedition and then—I don’t know, come up to base. Help us with Nemesis.”

Aloy tears up another clump of grass, fixing her gaze back on the ground.

“I don’t know. Maybe she will.”

“Does she know you want her to stay?” Zo asks Aloy.

It’s not even a question of if Aloy wants her to stay. Her throat tightens. Does Seyka know? Would it make a difference if she did?

“I don’t get to want,” she says, nauseous all at once. She gets lucky, sometimes, to get the good things that fill out a life. “And I can’t ask her to be away from her people, her sister— I can’t—” she releases the air from her lungs. “Not now.” She stands, shaking her hands out at her sides. “At least, if we fail, she can spend her last days with her family.”

Beta rises to her feet, suddenly, and smacks Aloy upside the head. It doesn’t hurt, not even remotely, between the lightness of the blow and the cushion of her thick hair, but she still yelps.

“Hey! What the fuck?” Her hand instinctively moves to the back of her head. Is this the first time she’s ever seen Beta use force?

“Haven’t you learned anything? Of course you get to want, you doofus.”

Aloy isn’t familiar with that word, but she decides she doesn’t like being called it. She glowers at Beta.

“Um. Sorry,” Beta says, and briefly looks at her hands like she doesn’t recognize them. Then she points at Aloy sternly, her finger just inches from Aloy’s nose. “And we’re not going to fail. Where did you get that idea? You’re the one who always tells me that.”

Aloy doesn’t have an answer, just a sour churning in her gut.

“Why don’t you ask, then, what Seyka wants?” Zo says. She stands too, reaching both her hands out to her. Aloy takes them. “Love is not a river, flowing one way from you to her. It flows back and forth, and to open that doorway between, you need to trust that she can make her own decisions. Informed decisions. Tell her what you want, and let her choose what her path will be.”

“And what if—?” What if she says no? Worse—what if she says yes?

What if something happens, and Aloy can’t save her?

“Aloy. Varl would not want you to live in fear of loss. Cherish whatever time you have with her, and do not leave yourself room for regrets.”

Aloy swallows the lump in her throat.

“I will. I promise.”

 

 

Beta steals away indoors immediately upon their return to base, seeking shelter from the mountain chill, but Aloy hangs back. The sun is down, and without it the cold really sets in, especially at this height, but she’s not ready to part with the open air just yet.

And it’s serene all the way up here, and she finds it pleasant, even, to settle on an outcropping of rock, dangling her legs over the cliff, and look out to Plainsong. She sits back, stretching out her arms behind her to brace herself on the heels of her palms, and tips back her head until she can see where the snowy mountain peak brushes the stars.

Even as her lungs burn cold, she’s flooded with warmth when Seyka’s voice finally crackles over the line into her right ear. She’s close, so close, like this, as if  Aloy could just—tilt her head, ever so slightly, and feel Seyka’s hot breath on her lips.

But there’s nothing but thin mountain air, rapidly losing heat in the absence of the sun.

Aloy shivers, and draws her knee up to her chest.

“Aloy,” Seyka says, hundreds of miles away.

“Hi.”

“I missed you,” Seyka says, the same as she does every night. She sounds exhausted. Her nights have been late, these past weeks, and her mornings early, her days full with preparations to rejoin the other half of the fleet.

Nights like this are all they get, most days.

“I missed you too,” Aloy says. Home isn’t home without you. Hold my hand and stay with me. “We visited Plainsong, for the harvest festival. You would have loved it.”

“Yeah?”

“I think so. The weather was great, and there was good food, and… singing.”

“I didn’t know you sang.”

“I don’t,” Aloy says. “The Utaru were singing.”

“And you didn’t sing with them?”

“I don’t sing.”

“Right. We’ll see about that.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’m just going to have to teach you some songs, is all.”

Aloy groans. “No, you really don’t have to. It’s fine.”

Seyka snickers over the line. “Okay,” she says, with a smile in her voice. “You said you were going to try and get the Chorus on your side, right? How’s that going?”

She knows Seyka’s still reeling from the deluge of information Aloy’s passed on to her in the past couple of weeks, but she’s taking it all pretty well, all things considered, and she’s absorbed quite a bit not just about the truths that are hard to swallow, but the details, too—she’s retained a fair amount about the individual tribes, their locations, and their leaders. She takes Seyka’s asking questions, even with that hint of uncertainty buried in it, as a good sign.

“Not me. Zo. It’s going great, actually. We’ve had a hard time getting them to listen to us in the past, but… apparently healing the blight and stopping Tenakth rebels from attacking their villages does the trick.”

“Uh-huh.”

“What?”

“Nothing. It’s just— do you ever stop?”

“Um.” Aloy rubs the spot over her eyebrow with two fingers. “No?”

“So you are actually as much of a maniac as you look.”

“I—” Aloy’s face burns. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Sure you don’t, girl-who-jumped-into-a-live-Horus-off-the-back-of-a-Sunwing.” Her voice softens, quieting to an intimate low, like what she’s about to say next is a secret. “Don’t worry, it’s one of the things I like most about you,” she says.

“Oh. Well, uh. Well—” Aloy clears her throat. “Okay, uh.” She tries again. “Tell me about your day, then.”

She hears some rustling of fabric from Seyka’s end. “Not much to tell that isn’t extremely boring, trust me,” Seyka says, after a moment. “Admiral Gerrit decided he wanted me to help him with some of the administrative stuff today, instead of looking at repairs.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” she says, unconvincingly. Aloy decides not to push. “What I do know,” Seyka continues, “is that after all this, I’m taking at least three days off. I don’t care what anyone else has to say about it. When we get to Landfall, I’m sleeping in, and swimming in the ocean, and—” she cuts herself short suddenly. “Well, I’m taking a break from all this shit.”

“That sounds nice.”

“You’re welcome to join me.”

She starts talking before her brain can catch up. “I— I mean, there’s—I have to—” Traitorous, traitorous instincts.

“It’s… an open invitation. You don’t have to—I mean, there’s no pressure. But, you know, you could use a break, too. And… I’d like to have you there. At least for a few days.”

For a moment, Aloy can’t find it in herself to speak.

I’d like to have you there.

“Right. That would be—that would be—” She swallows. “That would be great.” Her heart flutters in her chest.

She wants.

“Okay then,” Seyka says. “Good.” There’s some more rustling, and then: “Ancestors, I miss swimming. Did I ever tell you I was a champion swimmer, back in the Great Delta?”

Aloy laughs. “What? No.”

“You’re not the only champion around here.”

“So I’ve got competition then.”

“You bet. They used to call me the champion of the seas.”

“No they didn’t.”

“No. But they did give me a medal, one time.”

Aloy lets Seyka tell her some wild story about competitive swimming, wrapping Seyka’s words around herself like a blanket against the cold. It’s so easy to slip back into that same lighthearted banter that weaves through their conversations when they’re together, and they just talk until Aloy’s face hurts from smiling and Seyka starts to yawn so hard she can’t even really speak, pushing back onto them the awareness of time and the fact that they do need to sleep.

“The Admiral will want me up at sunup again tomorrow,” Seyka says.

“Seyka!” She can’t have more than a few hours left. “Go. We can talk again tomorrow.”

Seyka yawns, hard. “Yep. Okay. Goodnight, ‘Loy.”

“Goodnight, Seyka.”

The call closes, leaving Aloy in silence, her heart glowing with the stars. She stands, shakes out the stiffness in her knees, and at last re-enters the base, finds her room in the dark, and crawls under the blankets in the bedroll next to Beta’s.

 

 

She stands in front of a large, rounded window, looking out into what appears to be a garden, a circular enclosure filled with trees and flowers under an open blue sky.

She’s waiting for something. What is she waiting for?

Someone gasps. Aloy turns. There is Alva, to her left, her mouth open and eyes wide with horror.

“What is that?” she asks, and points.

Belatedly, Aloy looks back at the window.

There is nothing but ash in the garden.

The ground shakes, sending vibrations up her bones, her spine, setting her skin crawling. The world goes dark around the edges like paper in a fire. A voice rattles in her skull.

Initiating biomass conversion process.

And then it all starts to disintegrate, ripped apart atom-by-atom and rising into the air like so much black smoke, and the ground tears open into a gaping, howling void—the window shatters—the chasm widens, swallows the glass, chases her feet as she stumbles backwards.

She turns back, already reaching for Alva, to pull her toward the exit. Alva stretches out her hand—

And her fingers blacken and fall away, and she crumbles to dust.

“Aloy!”

She whips around. Seyka. Beta. Her chest heaves as the smoke fills her lungs, and she tries to call back, but she just chokes. The void takes them too.

She turns tail and runs.

Failsafe exceeded. Test cannot be aborted.

And then, the voice again, scraping at her brain with iron claws.

Earth—and you—doomed. I have won.

She falls into the darkness.

How long, baby, have I been away? / Oh, it feels like ages, though you say it's only days / There ain't language for the things I've seen, yeah / And the truth is stranger than my own worst dreams / Oh, the darkness got a hold on me
-Lord Huron, “Meet Me In the Woods”

Now

She wakes up in a cold sweat, gasping for air.

She feels a warm body, a hand on her chest, a familiar voice—Seyka pulls her out of the darkness by the heartstrings and tethers her back to the living Earth.

“Aloy? Hey.”

Aloy sits up, peeling the sheets away from her clammy skin and pushing them down past her feet.

Cool air passes over her. Watery light filters through the walls of the tent and slips through the gap between the curtains. Slowly, dazedly, she shakes off the shadows encroaching on her vision from the murkiest corners of her mind.

Seyka pushes herself up on one arm to stay level with her, her other hand still on Aloy’s bare bicep, keeping Aloy in her body.

Aloy reaches up and grasps Seyka’s forearm as she steadies her breathing, and Seyka waits for her patiently, a crease of concern forming between her brows.

When Aloy finally looks at her, she finds herself arrested by Seyka’s appearance, still swathed in the softness of sleep, through the haze. That one sliver of light casts Seyka’s eyes in warm gold, and her dark hair falls unruly down and around her shoulders; Aloy takes comfort in the gentle shape of her silhouette in the morning, the humanity of the way she wakes. It still catches her off-guard, this feeling that comes just with the sight of her.

“Sorry,” she says, still a little breathless, her heart still hammering.

“Are you okay?” Seyka asks, with a little more kindness than Aloy was prepared for. She adjusts herself, letting the sheets fall away, so she can face Aloy better. She runs her hand soothingly over Aloy’s upper arm.

“I’m—uh,” she starts. She swallows hard. Her mouth tastes like troubled sleep. She passes a hand over her face. “Yeah. Just—nightmare.”

“Does that happen a lot?”

Aloy rubs the back of her neck and exhales slowly. “A lot more, lately.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I…” Aloy smiles wryly, “didn’t want to worry you.”

Seyka leans forward, close enough that Aloy can feel her breath, smell the morning on it. Her heart skips a beat— and Seyka sets her forehead against hers.

Seyka hums. “That sounds familiar.”

Aloy breaths out a laugh. “Yeah.”

“Maybe we should just tell each other things.”

Aloy drops her head to Seyka’s shoulder unashamedly breathing her in. She smells like sea salt and sand, the shore where Aloy can, like this, believe she’s meant to land. The pounding in her chest begins to slow as she exhales through her mouth.

“Maybe,” she says into the collar of Seyka’s shirt.

She feels a soft pressure on her upper back. She jumps, and bumps her head into Seyka’s jaw. Seyka yelps.

“Sorry—”

“Aloy, for the love of the Ancestors—”

“What are you—”

Seyka pulls Aloy back into her. “Just— tides— relax. I’m going to put my hand on your back.”

“Okay.” She lets her.

Seyka runs her fingers down the length of Aloy’s spine and reminds her that touch can be gentle, too. Aloy relaxes into her embrace until she feels the pressure start to release from her chest.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Seyka asks, eventually.

Aloy sighs, hesitating. She lets the moment stretch just a bit longer in silence.

“Did I ever tell you how I met Alva?”

“A little bit,” Seyka says. “Is this… relevant?”

“It is.” She lets out another long breath and then pulls away, just enough to speak clearly. “I told you about the Greenhouse?”

“Yeah, the Faro research facility. Where you found DEMETER.”

“Right. They worked on agriculture, mostly. Genetically modified crops, better growing methods, that kind of thing. They helped feed the world.” She runs her top row of teeth over her bottom lip. “But they did other things, too. They developed the biomass conversion system that Faro’s machines used.”

Seyka frowns.

Aloy looks up at her. “We saw it, Seyka. We saw how the world ended.”

“Oh.”

“And when we went out, it was— it was quiet like you’ve never heard. It was dead like you’ve never seen. It was more than dead.” She recalls the silent stillness of the testing ground. The way the color had just been sapped from the Earth and its children. It was HADES’ dying dream, the one it had showed her just before she ended it for good.  “And I watch— I watch the people I care about get eaten by this thing, and the whole world is just— it’s all just swallowed up into this hole. And I hear HADES, telling me that we’ve already lost.” Her voice breaks.

Seyka reaches up and cups her jaw, stroking along Aloy’s cheekbone with her thumb.

“But we haven’t,” she says. “We haven’t lost.”

Aloy traces a finger along Seyka’s knucklebones and tries not to imagine them disintegrating under her touch. “I know that. But, in the darkest moments— in the very darkest moments— I can’t help but wonder if history isn’t destined to repeat itself. If Nemesis isn’t just going to finish what Faro’s machine army started.”

“Well, Nemesis faces one major obstacle that they never did.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

Seyka smirks and wiggles her shoulders. “Me.”

Aloy snorts. “That’s true.”

Seyka turns serious again. “And you.”

“Now that,” Aloy says, “is not true.”

“No, it is. The Old Ones had Elisabet, but that’s not you.”

Aloy glances away. Seyka leans to get back into her eye-line.

“I’m serious,” Seyka says. “Look, I know my people are wrong about a lot of things. But I do believe that we carry our Ancestors’ strength with us. You carry Elisabet’s strength, and her Legacy. But we’re not our Ancestors, and you’re not her.”

“I…” Aloy grapples with that for a moment.

“Elisabet and the Ancestors gave their last moments to fighting for us. We won’t let their sacrifices be in vain.”

It’s impossible not to believe her. Not when she’s looking at Aloy like that.

Aloy stumbles around some more for words, and what comes out is, “I’m scared.” It isn’t what she thought she was going to say. It isn’t something she thought she was ever going to say to anyone. But Seyka’s very presence pulls honesty right out of her.

“Of course you are. We’re all scared. You’re still just a person.”

“Sometimes it feels like you’re the only one who sees me that way.”

“Well, maybe you should too.” Seyka presses a kiss to her forehead. “You’re not going to let it stop you though, are you? It never has before.”

Aloy takes a deep breath. “No, I’m not.”

“Good. Neither am I.”

“Thank you,” Aloy says.

“What for?”

“Everything.”

“My pleasure,” Seyka says. By the Goddess Under the Fucking Mountain— her eyes are so warm.

And Aloy—who knows what it is like to be revered as a legend, for whom a statue stands in Meridian, to whom the Matriarchs bowed—could not have imagined that someone could look at her like this, as if to truly see her, as if to care. It’s still nearly unfathomable that Seyka does.

She presses her gratitude to Seyka’s lips.

Seyka releases a small, muffled sound of surprise before responding in kind, winding her arms easily around Aloy’s waist, leaning into her as if to say you’re welcome, maybe, or perhaps something else, beyond words, something Aloy wants to take and hold close to her chest until she dies at peace.

Somewhere along the way Seyka’s fingers find the bottom hem of Aloy’s shirt, and, slowly, giving her time to reject the touch, she pushes it up just enough for skin to brush against skin and send a shiver up Aloy’s spine, and her hands end up in Seyka’s exquisitely silk-soft hair.

And a horn cuts through the moment, the quiet of the morning, and Seyka says, ghosting over Aloy’s lips: “Hold that thought.”

Aloy rolls her head back. “I take it that’s our cue.”

“Yeah,” Seyka says. “The Admiral’s going to want to see me.”

Aloy looks back down at her. Seyka holds her gaze. She wants to say something. She’s not sure what it is.

It takes them a few moments and another call of the horn to finally break apart and rise from the blankets and bedrolls. Seyka tosses Aloy her outerwear and bits of armor from the floor.

“Get dressed. We’ve got some sailing to do.” She flashes Aloy a grin. Aloy grimaces.

It’s not long before they start hearing voices, as the rest of Fleet’s End rises with the sun, and they step out of the tent some time later into a morning so blessedly cloudless it’s as if the world, too, has prepared for the voyage. Aloy helps Seyka pack up the last of her things and take down her tent, and then, with bedrolls and tent fabric rolled up under their arms, they make their way down to the shore.

The brief peace afforded to Aloy by Seyka’s reassurances evaporates as they approach the flotilla, as though they were approaching the heat of a boiling pot, lifting the remnants of Seyka’s touch from her skin. The apprehension begins to sharpen her senses, readying her for a fight.

But there’s no fight.

It’s quiet. Too damn quiet.

Admiral Gerrit beckons them over as they approach the largest boat. Aloy admires the workmanship as they draw near enough to see details. The newly repaired vessels are a sight to behold. Twin swooping mastheads in the likenesses of mythical creatures gape at her, tendrils of sea-foam green trailing from their open mouths, sharp teeth gleaming with fresh white paint. She snaps a photo with her Focus to send to Beta, but she knows her sister would have marveled to see it in person—something about the fine details in the wood, the way the creatures seem to approach the onlooker as if they were riding the crest of an oncoming wave, doesn’t quite come across in a picture from an ancient Focus.

Gerrit motions at someone to come and take both of their bundles before Aloy ever gets a chance to express her attachment to her bedroll.

“Admiral,” Seyka says, by way of greeting.

“Seyka. You’re late,” he says, without any bite at all. He cocks his head in the direction of the ship. “Get to it.”

Cheeks slightly pink, Seyka nods. Aloy turns to follow her as she heads for the vessel, but Gerrit stops her with one hand.

“A word, Aloy?”

Seyka and Aloy exchange a glance before Aloy nods at him. Seyka touches Aloy’s shoulder lightly, briefly, and says, “I’ll find you later,” and walks away.

The Admiral leads her a little ways away from the flotilla and its crew, casting a quick, almost nervous look around them.

“Aloy,” he says, his voice low. “You are about to spend approximately twelve hours at sea, in close proximity to some people who are not particularly… keen on your presence. If I could have it any other way, I would, but sailing demands a crew, and—”

Aloy waves a hand. “It’s fine. Really.”

Gerrit purses his lips and nods. “Yes, well— I have a secondary assignment for you. Officially, you are assisting navigation. Unofficially, you’re to look out for Seyka. She’s capable—more capable than most, no doubt—but she does not have eyes in the back of her head.”

Aloy swallows. “I would have done it anyway, Admiral. I would have done it even if you’d forbidden me from it.”

“And who would I have been to stop you?” He smiles wanly. “Think of it as my blessing. I know you care for her.”

Aloy ducks her head and coughs.

“There are those among us who would frown upon such relations between our own and an outlander, but I can’t begrudge you or Seyka for it. I’m glad she finally found someone who can keep up with her. I’m glad you found each other. I hope someday the both of you may find peace as well.”

“Thank you,” she says. She can’t keep her voice from cracking, struck through with what rises in her at the genuine kindness of someone she hardly knows. She clears her throat. “May I ask you a question, Admiral?”

“Of course.”

“Why do you… I mean,” she shifts, trying to find the best way to phrase the question she hadn’t properly thought through. “You’re not like the other Quen officials I’ve met. You’re…”

“Reasonable?”

“Well. You’re the one who said it, not me.”

He chuckles good-naturedly, but his mirth is short-lived. His expression quickly darkens as he considers his words.

“I’m too old and have seen too much to believe the law is to be held above what’s right,” he says, after a moment. He shakes his head. “I have no children, Aloy. This is my legacy. This is my last chance to do it right. And the Empire has nothing left to take.”

“What about you?”

“I’m an admiral, and nothing more. They took what was left of me a long time ago.”

Aloy isn’t sure what to say to that.

“Do me a favor, Aloy, in your journey ahead.”

“Of course.”

“Don’t forget who you are.”

 

A brief circle around the area on her Sunwing offers a brief reprieve from the flurry of activity that picks up from there. She feels steadier, ironically, with her feet off the ground. Her Sunwing has nothing to say about seafaring or politics. Upon the back of the machine is the world she understands.

Finding no new perils have arisen from the deep in the night, she floats herself to the top deck of the double-hulled boat to give Gerrit, Kina, and the ship’s captain the all-clear.

They take off with a great collective shout and a lurch and the rapid crescendo of a motor roaring to life beneath them. Aloy tips forward and white-knuckles the balustrade for support.

Seyka whoops into her right ear. “It works! The motor fucking works! We’re moving!”

Aloy taps her Focus. “You didn’t test it?”

“I tested it on my skiff, but that was a small prototype.”

“You boated me around on a prototype?”

“Hey, you’re still here.” A distressing clank sounds over the line, which she does not address.

Aloy holds two fingers again to her Focus and scans under her feet until she finds the distinct purple outlines of machine parts.

“Tideripper fin,” she says. “Nice.”

“Bigger boat, bigger machine parts,” Seyka says, with no lack of self-satisfaction. “Hold on, I’m coming up.”

Aloy looks out to sea. A watchman stands at the front of each hull, each one shouting periodically back toward the captain, who keeps them from the jutting rocks and ruins in the water with immense pulls at the wheel. Her stomach starts to turn with the waves.

She’s just considering going back up into the air when she feels Seyka’s hand on her shoulder.

“You’re turning green,” Seyka says.

Aloy clenches her jaw.

“Wow. I can’t believe it. A live Horus is fine, but some water is what gets you?”

The ground literally sways under her feet. Aloy turns, slumps against the balustrade, and slides all the way down. Seyka grins and crouches, somehow perfectly balanced on the balls of her feet.

“Shut up,” Aloy says.

“Don’t worry. I’ll protect you.”

Aloy groans as the ship moves again. Seyka holds out one hand, and Aloy reaches up and grips her forearm, embarrassed but not above it.

“Seyka.”

Aloy and Seyka look up to see that Kina stands over her. Aloy starts; Kina looks like she could have aged five years in the months since they first met. The tension between her and Seyka could have been severed with her spear.

Seyka’s hold tightens where her hand has settled on Aloy’s elbow.

“Kina, I—”

“Good work,” Kina says. Her light voice holds a sharp edge Aloy hasn’t heard before. Seyka snaps her mouth shut so hard her teeth click.

When Kina’s gaze flicks to Aloy, she softens ever so slightly.

“Good to see you again,” Aloy says. She offers a small wave with her free hand.

Kina swallows. Some unsaid words go down with it. She nods curtly.

“You too.”

“Kina—” Seyka starts, but she’s already gone.

“So it’s really bad, huh?” Aloy asks.

Seyka grimaces as she helps Aloy to her feet. “Look out at the water,” she says. She leans up against the balustrade, resting her weight on her forearms. Aloy mirrors her, their shoulders pressed together. Seyka points out past the front of the boat, between the two hulls. “Directly forward. Focus on the horizon.”

Aloy sets her eyes to the broken line where the sky meets the sea, behind the rocks and the rubble.

“Deep, steady breaths,” Seyka says. “In through your nose, out through your mouth.”

Aloy takes two deep breaths. 

“Good.” Seyka settles one hand on her back, between her shoulder blades. She starts to feel just the slightest bit more steady.

“Thanks,” Aloy says. “I thought you guys would have worked it out by now.”

Seyka scoffs. “That would require us to talk. We’re not doing a whole lot of that these days.” She runs her thumbnail through the wood grain on the balustrade. “But it doesn’t matter,” she says, bitterly. “We’ve got bigger things to worry about right now.”