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phthalology · 8 years ago

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[Horizon: Zero Dawn] Aftermath

In the aftermath of the battle at Meridian, Aloy has to find a new way to think about the Nora. A missing scene. Aloy/Varl, 1.5k.

The city had been choked by the battle, but as soon as Aloy reached the southern gate Vanasha was there with wet cloths to put over their mouths.

“I knew you’d make it,” she crowed, and hugged Aloy and Varl in quick succession with a fierce assurance. Aloy had needed this, after standing at the Spire and overseeing the world. She had needed a person instead of a hologram. Vanasha lead them up the hill, past the wreckage of ravagers and the oil spilled from bellowbacks. Aloy looked downstream to find the deathbringer she had kneecapped with an Oseram gun. Already it looked old, even ancient, like an island with the water frothing around it.

“Tea for our heroes! That’s what you said you wanted, right? Anything goes.” Carja guards were forming organized lines to pass fresh rubble to the sides of the streets. Cries from the docks told Aloy that there were still people there, under the wreckage. She moved to go to them, and Vanasha hooked one arm around her shoulders.

Aloy startled under her touch.

“After that thunderjaw, I didn’t doubt you,” Vanasha said. Aloy recognized the look she gave under her armored helm, though; Vanasha was worried. Maybe Aloy had been drifting a bit, her eyes unfocused. The exhilaration of the battle was draining away like the river water, leaving her to count what she needed to do next. Find Elizabet’s home. Catch up with people she’d spoken to throughout the Sundom, to trade favors or make sure their families were safe. Look at the place the Nora called the Sacred Lands again and found out what it meant to her now.

Vanasha steered her to a supply tent. Erend disappeared into the bustle of a cleanup crew and came back with the fruity tea made by the Carja.

“A thunderjaw?” Varl sounded awed, despite the fact that he had just held off several bellowbacks and corrupters alongside the other Nora.

Vanasha propped her hip against the table and folded her arms. “She did. On the way to rescue the young king and his mother from Sunfall, she happened to deal with a big machine in the process.”

“They were just rumor in the Sacred Lands.” Varl shook his head. Aloy watched him from the other side of the table, wondering whether he felt more in place in Meridian now that he had been covered in the dirt of it.

Varl had a cut across the bridge of his nose, but it was difficult to tell how deep because of the river mud clotted on it. She had missed his eyes, Aloy decided. She had missed this expression, the clear-eyed kindness of it. She never had asked him what the blue mark on his brown skin meant.

“Avad mentioned that you declined to have an audience with him,” Aloy said.

“Sona and I talked about it,” Varl said. “It didn’t feel right, somehow. Presumptuous, but also … we came to help them, not to be celebrated.”

Shouts from the riverbank, and Erend marched off with a worried expression.

“I’m sure Avad understands that,” Aloy said.

“And you’re kin with the Sun-King now?” Varl’s mouth quirked.

Aloy knew her laugh was awkward. “Not exactly. I think he’ll make a good leader as he grows. He showed that today.”

“But still. A king. And I’m still struggling not to call you … never mind.”

Aloy smiled. By the Sun, by any oath or none - Varl was trying. Wooden beams snapped near the riverbank, something that might have been large as a house. Aloy tensed, wanting to run. There were repairs to be done, corruption to be cleared, and she had hands that could do it. Vanasha didn’t seem inclined to let her help here, though.

“Listen, we should go scouting,” Aloy said. “See what cleanup we can do in the south. It’s fertile land; there’ll be hunting.”

Relief made his nod exaggerated, but Aloy felt it too. “Yeah. It’ll be good to go somewhere … wild.” To the Sacred Lands, he didn’t say.

She heard it, though. Would she want to go back there? He wouldn’t ask her to - not now that she had gone into the mountain and come back out. How to explain that little shift in perspective?

“Vanasha?” Aloy said.

“Drink your tea.”

Aloy took a sip. It was lukewarm and swirling with dregs, but the flowery taste soothed her. “Can you tell Avad that I’ll talk to him soon?”

“Sure. Going to confer with the Nora?” Vanasha nudged Varl with her hip. “With a particular Nora?”

“Yes,” Aloy laughed, and Varl looked honored. When she stood, though, and saw the bustle of the lines there was a sudden uncertainty. She did not want to walk down the blasted path with the same certain urgency she had walked the verdant one. She did not want Varl to look to her for the blind leadership of the bunker.

Instead, he walked ahead of her, his shoulders hunched and his steps sure. That was good enough.

The land under the Spire was not untouched; corrupted machines had marched in the city’s shadow. Furrows were dug into the dirt. Animals had scattered, and so any pretense of hunting would take them farther away than Aloy would have liked. Smoke drifted in low patches.

Eventually they found themselves scanning less and just walking, bows and arrows held in loose fingers. Aloy remembered finding a herd of striders here, of clearing the lake of snapmaws so that a girl could mourn her friend. Maybe more snapmaws would clamber into that lake one day not long from now, peacefully, and clean the water. How ever did they do it? Maybe she would find more out about Gaia’s science, about both of her mothers’ sciences.

She lead Varl to the covered pagoda at the edge of the lake. Rested her elbows, saw the ancient armor spark with its awareness of the barrier. Varl leaned on the railing next to her.

“I know there’s been … a lot to learn,” Aloy started.

“That’s for sure. But maybe now … we’ll actually have time to talk about it.”

“Yeah, for sure.” Aloy pulled her gaze up from the murky water. “The goddess isn’t … some invisible force,” she said. Varl obliged her while she stammered, and they both knew it. “Well, it sort of is. I can see parts of it through my Focus. But it’s also a … system, an incentive, meant to heal the Earth. We’re here, the machines are here, because we lost so much of the previous civilization. Gaia - the goddess - wants to make sure that doesn’t happen again.”

“And Hades was going to stop her?”

“Yes. Was going to eat up all the life in the world. I imagined what it would look like to see Mother's Heart stripped and I … hardly can.”

“I think your failure of imagination saved the world,” Varl said lightly.

Aloy shook her head. “We’re walking on the bodies of those Faro robots. I could do with a bit less imagination."

“And now when we look at the mountain, we’ll be reminded of that too.”

Aloy laughed. “That’s true.”

Varl nodded, looked out toward the still surface of the lake. Aloy watched him for a while.

“Do you remember when we first met?” she murmured. “You were outside the gate to the rest of the world. I saw you take down a machine, and I thought, I thought of course this person is Vala’s brother and Sona’s son. You have their ferocity. You have their beauty. And I was very impressed.”

“Oh, I …” He hesitated.

“Now that I’ve seen the rest of the world, those gates seem different. But I still remember you like that.”

He turned, pressed his back against the railing. “I remember you riding a strider over the bridge like an entire war party had your back.”

“They’re meant to clean the earth, did you know?” Aloy said. “The machines help things grow. Hopefully the snapmaws will come back here.

“I’d like to go back,” she said. “Not to forget what I’ve seen out here, but to know the Sacred Land differently. And I want you to go with me.” She moved closer and rested her head on his shoulder. Suddenly the prospect of putting her arms around him was unaccountably awkward; instead she leaned on the fence. Varl tucked himself against her with one arm across her back.

“But I have to finish other things first. I have to talk to Avad, I have to find … ” My mother, she did not say. There would be time to explain that later. What luxury, to have so much time.

“I know,” Varl said.

Strider lights bobbed between the trees on the other side of the lake. Evening fell, and with it a green fog that brought out the moss on the trees, the vines in the branches.

“You know I’ll be ready to meet you whenever our paths meet,” he said.

“Not as the Anointed?”

“I knew you when you were a Seeker, I knew when you were Anointed … But I keep waiting for Aloy.”

Now it was easier for her to embrace him, to lay her head against the furs at his collar. “You can stop waiting.”

The striders picked their way through the trees, blue lights in green evening. The fog grew cold and clear, and in time they walked back to the city.

#Horizon Zero Dawn #writings #Aloy #Varl #Vanasha #Aloy/Varl

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