Chapter Text
The day breaks like any other. Weak dawn sunlight filters in through the slatted windows, briefly illuminating motes of dust which float leisurely in the air. Young nestlings cry for their breakfasts, their song harmonising with the rustle of wind through the trees and the dripping sound of snow as it melts on the roof and falls to the sodden earth below.
Aloy squints against the feeble flickering light, her eyes sandy and dry, her body aching and bruised. She shivers, and draws the bedfurs tighter around herself in an effort to stave off the cold. Lethargy and listlessness sinks deep into her bones, and as had been the case for the past several weeks, she has no urge to pull herself free from the embrace of her warm bed.
The house outside her room is eerily quiet, its only other long-time occupant absent. Aloy squeezes her eyes shut against the wave of grief that rises within her. Before the Proving, she hadn't believed for a moment that Rost would truly walk away from everything that seemed to be so dear to him; the home he had built with his own hands, within the sacred gaze of the All-Mother, and the tribe that had rejected him for reasons she still didn't know.
Yet, after the ceremony was over, he was nowhere to be found.
Rost's trail had been easy to follow - almost a little too easy, but she would have been able to tell if it was a decoy - right until it brought her to the distant edge of the Sacred Lands. The eyes of the sentries stationed at Mother's Crown had seared into the back of her head while she stood there, squinting into the horizon with her hand shielding her eyes from the sun. He had walked right through the valley without hesitation, far enough past their borders that he would never be allowed to return. Aloy had seen the evidence for herself, and still the notion ricocheted obsessively around in her head.
As the days pass, and then the weeks, the recognition that he must be truly gone begins to settle like a lead weight in her stomach.
Rost's departure isn't the only thing weighing her down. Ever since childhood Aloy had trained night and day so that she might be victorious in her coming-of-age Proving, and earn a reward granted by the Nora High Matriarchs. The Nora had cast her out since birth for the crime of being motherless - except, there wasn’t any way that Aloy could have even been born otherwise. She was convinced, even as a six year old, that the High Matriarchs must have known more than they had deigned to explain to Rost when they unceremoniously dumped her on his doorstep. Aloy aimed to win her Proving and get her answers directly.
Those answers, the ones she had focused on single-mindedly for over a decade, had come so close - close enough that she could feel them. Yet, all Teersa will share with her is nonsense. According to Teersa; she had been found as a newborn abandoned in a chamber which, according to the strictest tribal law, only High Matriarchs are allowed to venture within.
That law, apparently, is one that Teersa is not willing to bend. Not even for a moment. All of her work, all of her training, even being “born of All-Mother herself”, and Aloy still doesn't even have permission to see her 'birthplace' with her own eyes.
It burns to know that answers are so close, yet she is still denied them. If the Nora have their way, she will have to be a great-grandmother herself before she gets half a chance of learning the truth.
To this day her questions remain unanswered, she has no further idea of where to turn next, and her only family in this harsh world has abandoned her the very first moment that she was no longer his sole responsibility. In a day, everything had changed, and it had been for nothing.
Her hand closes into a fist around her bed covers.
No.
It will not all be for nothing. Not while she still has breath in her lungs.
If there is a way into that mountain, she will find it. All she needs to do is not get herself exiled in the meantime.
Thunder booms outside, rattling the very bed she sleeps in. The light in her room sucks away, her dream falling into pitch dark obscurity, the birdsong outside morphing into hammering rain and roaring winds. Aloy wakes fully and suddenly, disorientated, her heart racing. She casts her eyes around while attempting to regain control of her rapid, panicked breathing.
The high walls around her spark no recognition, the aged and weathered bricks of the old ruin are distorted and wavering by weak firelight. Whatever roof is suspended overhead does its job at keeping the rain away, but gives no reprieve from the cold, damp winds which cut through her mattress of thick grasses.
Automatically she reaches up to her temple, and her blood runs like ice when her fingertips meet skin. Her Focus is missing, and judging by her prone position, so are all of her weapons.
Aloy remains buried to the nose in the borrowed, unfamiliar furs, fruitlessly attempting to piece things together around the gaping hole in her memory. She can’t remember how she got to be inside a ruin of the metal world, of all places, and she isn’t so disorientated that she has forgotten what it means if the Nora catch her there; they'll cast her back out before she can even begin to defend herself.
A figure moves at the edge of her vision and she freezes, holding her breath.
The awful realisation that her own people wouldn’t be the ones to catch her in a ruin of the metal world grabs her, twists its claws into her gut.
Turning slowly and carefully into her bed, Aloy shifts ever so slightly to better see around its edges, ignoring the sharp pain lancing its way up her side and the echoed memory of the hard impact it invokes. She can examine her wounds later, when she’s certain she’s safe. Right now, she needs to make sure she isn’t in danger.
A man tends to the struggling fire, broad-backed and clad in dark leather and metal that clinks like a pouch of metal shards when he moves. Even from behind and silhouetted in the weak light, he doesn’t look like any Nora Aloy has ever seen, nor does he look anything like the Carja as her tribemates describe them. The man is built as tall as All-Mother mountain, and his very presence here - not only in the Sacred Lands, but at such proximity to Aloy - can only mean danger.
Carefully sitting up in the makeshift bed, Aloy takes in what she can of her surroundings. It looks like the stranger has situated himself between her and the only way out of whatever ruin they’re in, so there’s no way she can just sneak past him without being seen. He's as equally weaponless as she is, as far as she can tell, but she doesn't think her chances of overpowering him are high given his sheer size. Knocking him out with a swift blow to the head could work, but if she doesn't manage it she'll be in close range without any way of defending herself. There is one advantage; his armour will be solid but heavy, and it'll likely slow him down. She should be able to outrun him if it comes to it.
Quickly, Aloy glances upwards. The tarp suspended above them does a decent job of keeping away the rain, and when it shifts with the wind she thinks she sees a number of large holes in the ancient walls, although it's hard to see in the dark without her Focus. It might be possible for her to slip away without any confrontation; he hasn't noticed her yet.
“Hey, she’s finally awake!”
Shit. Never mind.
Aloy’s gaze whips back down to land on the stranger. Deep shadows cling to everything and make it difficult to see, but his silhouette is laughably easy to pick out. For a split-second, it seems like he’s going to approach and, heart in her throat, she acts.
“Stay back,” Aloy snaps in warning, baring her teeth. Amazingly, the brute stays where he is and raises his open, empty hands.
“Woah, easy. You took a hard fall, some of your bolts might be rattling loose,” he says. She hasn’t a clue what he means, or why he’s even humouring her by not advancing. Surely he knows she has nothing to defend herself with; why would he obey her when he looks like he could overpower her without breaking a sweat? “I’m not gonna hurt you, alright?”
Aloy keeps her glare trained on the stranger, her every sense on high alert. It’s still odd to be spoken to directly and openly, and part of her tenses and goes to check that Rost isn’t nearby, waiting to reprimand her for it. The stranger doesn’t seem to have any reservations about talking to her either, which further solidifies her assessment of him as an outlander. She would be stupid to trust him.
The stranger waits, his palms up, for Aloy to respond. As the moment stretches out in silence, he visibly relaxes, and when he lowers his hands she spots a glint of reflected firelight behind him.
Metal.
Weapons.
He turns his head, following her line of sight, and Aloy takes her chance. She springs up from her crouch into a sprint, throwing the furs off as she rises.
“Don’t-!”
The man’s shout is drowned by her own strangled shriek as her ankle twists under her and flares a searing pain all the way up her leg. She falls hard and jolts existing wounds, the air rushing out of her lungs from the impact. Aloy gasps for breath and tries to see through her spinning vision. Her leg and her ribs and her shoulder throb and the man’s shadow falls across her; she’s well and truly dead now. He speaks again, but the words slip through her fingers like water. She closes her eyes tightly to stop them rolling, and groans through gritted teeth, tries to push herself up on the soggy earth beneath her but finds that she hasn’t got the strength to even lift herself an inch. Her head drops forward, and her sense of awareness drags.
“Shit. Hey, hey-“
Rain continues to hammer the canvas ceiling, and the stranger is crouched beside her feet. With the fire behind her she can finally make out some of his features, though his face is mostly hidden behind the strangest beard she has ever seen. In the back of her mind, while she continues to study him, she wonders once more why she isn’t dead yet.
“Now I’m no medic, but passing out again probably isn’t a good sign,” the man comments casually, drawing her out of her thoughts. “Unless you’re on some kind of bender, right? Had one too many Scrappersaps?”
“Does anything you say make sense?” Aloy retorts, her already biting tone made sharper by pain. A Nora wouldn’t have merrily allowed her to be so belligerent, but this man takes it in stride. Another shock of pain radiates from her ankle, causing her to flinch.
“Keep still, alright, I’m nearly done.”
“Done with what?” she demands. Lifting her head in an effort to see with more clarity, she finds him tightly wrapping her injured ankle. Any smart comeback she would have had dies on her tongue.
He’s… helping her.
What in the name of the All-Mother is this man thinking?
Outlanders don’t just show up in the middle of the Sacred Lands, protect themselves by hiding out in the most taboo of places, and help injured Nora. Outlanders are dealt with strictly, in one way and one way only, and by all rights, she should have recovered her spear and turned him into worm food by now.
Except she won’t make it to her spear faster than he can if she tries, and with her adrenaline wearing off, she’s starting to feel all of her bruises and scrapes in earnest. Her ankle undoubtedly needed treating at the very least, and as far as she can tell, he’s doing it properly. The idea of harming someone whose first instinct was to help her isn’t something that sits right, especially not when he shares the mantle with so few others.
It’s unclear whether tribal laws extend into the old world ruins, anyway, if the ruins are so forbidden.
“Ow,” she says pointedly, as he ties one of the bandages a bit too tight. “You’re right; you’re definitely not a medic.”
“Yeah, well, any idiot can bind an ankle,” he says jovially. “Luckily for you.”
Lying there, caked in mud and feeling like she’s been trampled by a herd of Striders, Aloy snorts. “Yeah, I’m really lucky.”
“I gotta ask…” he begins, sitting back now that her ankle is sufficiently bound. “What were you doing?”
Aloy frowns. “I was going for my spear,” she says, slowly, because surely it’s obvious that she wants her weapons back. Even if this man, for whatever reason, truly isn’t out to kill her, it doesn’t mean that she’s any happier to be defenceless around him.
“What? No, earlier today,” he replies, befuddled. “Up that tower.”
Frowning, Aloy begins to sit up. Something metallic dislodges from the furs and clinks to the ground beside her - her Focus, she realises with surprise. Seeing it, and closing her fingers around its cool, smooth edges, fills her with relief. Its absence had been like a missing limb, and when she fixes it back into its spot upon her temple, she remembers with striking clarity what had happened.
“I thought I saw something, near the top of the tower,” she says quietly. There had been a datapoint up a towering ruin, higher than the highest trees in the Embrace. The structure held steady but was drenched from the rainstorm, and even though she had chosen a rare break in the weather to make her ascent, she’d never before had to account for how slick metal could become when wet.
Rost would have had a lot to say about her making such a careless mistake, and none of it kind. Perhaps winning the Proving has started to make her arrogant, and complacent - two things no hunter can afford to be if they want to survive in the wilds.
The fact that she doesn’t live in the wilds anymore deepens her dissatisfied frown.
“It was some fall, for sure.” The stranger whistles. There’s a look on his face she can’t quite decipher in the weak firelight, even with her Focus. It’s not an expression that has ever been directed at her before, not as far as she can remember. He almost looks… concerned. Why would a stranger be concerned for her sake, much less an outlander who could have been risking his life just by helping her?
Almost nothing about this man makes any sense. It frustrates her that his behaviour doesn’t fit into any of the patterns she has seen in the Nora, and while it doesn’t ease her suspicions it almost makes her want to trust him all the more.
Trust an outlander? This might be the most danger Aloy has ever been in.
“Wasn’t sure what I was seeing at first,” he continues, pensive. “I’ve never seen anyone climb that high before, not even in the Cut.” He grins at her and adds appreciatively: “You Nora are something else.”
Suddenly, her ears feel hot. “You were watching me climb?” she repeats in disbelief, the weight in her gut caught somewhere between disgust and pride. The cocky grin drops right off of his face.
“Y-yeah but not, not like that, or anything, alright?” the man splutters. He regroups. “And you oughta be thanking your Goddess I was watching or you’d be Glinthawk scrap by now, girl.”
Aloy bristles further. “I can take care of myself just fine,” she asserts, and when he scoffs, she barely resists throwing the nearest rock at his stupid face. “You shouldn’t even be here- these are Nora lands.”
“From the way I hear it, your laws say you shouldn’t be here either,” he fires back. For a quick moment Aloy freezes and meets his eyes. It’s like being caught in the red spotlight of a Watcher’s eyestalk, except instead of springing into action, she reels; how does an outlander know anything about what Nora should and shouldn’t do? How does he have such an advantage over her?
Whatever the answer to either question, he barrels ahead without pause. “So what if neither of us are supposed to be here? Fact is, you’d be dead now if I hadn’t come along, ‘cause you sure as spit wouldn’t get any help from your people.”
Aloy grinds her teeth while they stare each other down. He’s right, in more ways than he can reasonably know, and it stings. He may as well have called her ‘outcast’ and spit in her face.
She’s the first to look away. The tiny little campfire still burns in the centre of the ancient room, and she watches it eat through twigs and new leaves. The rain has slowed to a drizzle since she first woke up, and she doesn't have to check her Focus to know that the hour is growing late.
If she loses the cover of the rain completely, sneaking back into occupied Nora land without being spotted will be difficult at best. It will be especially difficult if she can’t rely on one of her legs for climbing and sprinting, and she still has the issue of getting past the stranger.
Despite the stranger’s spluttered protests, Aloy climbs laboriously to her feet. He’s done a decent job of wrapping her injured ankle, and even though it still won’t support her full weight, she can at least take hobbling steps with it.
That is, at least, until the stranger stops her. He stands in her way, blocking her from retrieving her weapons and hurrying back to her people.
Aloy bares her teeth again. “Move.”
“No way,” he argues. “Look at you, you can’t even walk!”
“I can walk well enough. There aren’t even any machines out there.”
“I know; I cleared ‘em all-”
“Then why keep me here?!” exclaims Aloy, frustrated enough that her raised voice echoes in the small space.
The man hesitates, and seems to choose not to even respond. Starting to grow increasingly tired and wanting nothing more than to put this waste of a day behind her, Aloy snaps at him again to move. This time he steps aside without argument, allowing her to pass without so much as a sound.
With her weapons recovered, Aloy lingers for a moment in the crumbling archway that forms the entrance to the little shelter. She doesn’t have to turn or use her Focus to know that the man still watches her. For a beat she hesitates, a quiet ‘thank you’ simmering on her tongue. She doesn’t owe him it though. Doesn’t owe him anything.
Without uttering a word, Aloy disappears into the night.