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It’s been a scorcher of a day. The sun has been unforgiving since dawn, beads of sweat clinging to Nil’s skin and causing his armour to rub against him. The children have already refilled their water barrel from the flooded ruins on the western outskirts, and while Nil knows the value of moderation, he has already indulged more than he usually would.
All that can truly be done today, Nil decides as he leans his head against the wall of a ruin and adjusts his mask comfortably, is to find what shade one can, and lay there until the sun relents. He’s maintained his winning streak after last night’s run, his call to action sated, identity concealed from inquisitive youth for now. Perhaps he’ll hunt later for their dinner and make himself useful, but he doubts any critter will be running about today.
He closes his eyes, letting the sounds of the desert wash over him. Wikkoh is fixing the machines, speaking to them gently while he adjusts their wires. Elottak is tending to Josekk’s latest racing injury while he promises Attah it doesn’t hurt and he’ll get her next time.
Sounds of peace, even if they argue among themselves. Sounds of family found. Sounds of comfort.
Until it isn’t.
It’s Haxx first who breaks the tranquillity, sometime approaching twilight. His voice booms above the calm murmurs of the others, a shout of, “Aloy!” lifting Nil from his half-doze. His eyes open immediately and Nil sits up, fixing his mask so that he can find her. It takes a moment and swivel of his head, but he sees her approach on the horizon: She’s coming from the west on the back of an overridden Acid Bristleback, her machine at a slow ramble rather than brisk trot.
Nil frowns. It isn’t like her to take her sweet time.
“Aloy?” Haxx asks, and even he seems confused.
Nil pushes himself up from the sand and brushes off his thighs as he approaches her. The sun is in the west and descending behind the mountains, casting the front of Aloy in shadow, but her image becomes clear as she draws closer.
And Nil’s heart nearly stops in his chest.
He can see immediately that she’s hurt. Aloy is slumped on her machine as though she cannot sit up at all, her grip loose on the wire reins. One hand is pressed against her side. Her armour – looking like something crafted by Oseram specifically for her – is cracked in places with some pieces broken off entirely. Her face is far paler than Nil has ever seen her, her lips stained with blood.
She reaches their camp, her Bristleback coming to a halt, and she stares down at Nil while he tries to take in the extent of the damage. For the first time, Nil’s throat has closed, choking off any words he could say if he could think of them. Even the children are silent, not a word uttered, breath held, until Aloy opens her mouth.
“I didn’t know where else to go.”
Her voice is broken, weak, as if she is fighting just to be heard, and that is when he notices the purple swelling of her throat. He steps forward, his own quickened breath echoing in his mask.
Aloy’s eyes roll back and her body slumps. She topples to the side of her Bristleback and Nil lunges with his arms outstretched. Around him, the teens shout unintelligibly, but he ignores them as he goes down into the sand. His arms envelop Aloy and they fall together, but she is safe. On his back in the sand, gripping her to his chest, Nil exhales slowly to calm his racing heart, and then dares to look down at her.
Nil has never been quick to anger. It isn’t something he often feels, either, even if he could argue that he has good reason to rage, and to have had it fester since childhood. A cold father who all but hid his existence from his older brothers, yet expected him to unquestioningly follow orders all the same; a mother whose depths of love he’d cling to in his darkest days but was stolen from him too soon; a lifetime of servitude to a cause in which he did not believe, but changed him nonetheless, giving his urges an almost unquenchable need for battle… Yes, Nil’s anger would certainly be justifiable.
But his temper has always been… even. His emotions boil to the surface and are unleashed in other ways, but he never feels as though he’s bottling them, keeping them contained. Righteous anger, fury – the last time he felt those, and truly had them cut down to bone, had been during the Red Raids, upon seeing his fellow soldiers torture a captured young Tenakth, passing the soldier between them like children with a shared toy, and Nil could not quell the loathing in his belly.
No one could prove it was Nil who killed those soldiers during the battle of the Daunt; had anyone bothered to ask, he would have readily admitted it. Official records claimed their death was caused by Tenakth, even if the blade slices into their organs lacked the serrated edges famous on Tenakth swords. His captain had given him looks, but never confronted, and Nil had stared back hard, but never explained. Instead, he was reassigned, sent from the Forbidden West to serve in Nora lands, where he bore witness to other atrocities, the memories of which rip him from sleep even now.
(Later, when he decided he’d had enough, he’d admit to these and other war crimes. Later, he’d be shown undeserved mercy, then left in a dark cell with nothing but his memories. Later, the Carja would fear him, maybe even more than anyone, even if he stopped being a threat.)
But with Aloy unconscious on his chest, and with the mounting realisation that the battle wounds on her body are not from a machine, anger begins to burn at his concern like a flame on cloth, and Nil greets it like an old friend.
From this angle, he can see the blood matting her hair. It starts at the back of her skull and runs down her braids in a thin trail. Her armour is damp on the front, but not with blood – he would have seen that, he’s sure. But until he can get a good look at her, he can’t tell much else. Grunting, he adjusts his grip on her and sits up, pulling her across his lap rather than directly on top. As Aloy’s head falls back over his arm, Nil sees the indents of fingers on her throat.
The rage in his belly crests and swells.
A waterskin is thrust under his nose and he takes it from Wikkoh’s hand, tilting it gently to Aloy’s lips. Her eyelids flutter and open and she takes a sip, pauses, nods, and Nil sits her up so she can drink deeper. He looks up and meets Attah’s gaze; he jerks his head, and she gives him a nod and ushers the teens away.
It takes Nil a moment to find his feet, but he manages to stand with Aloy in his arms. She lets out a small cry as he rises, her voice cracking and hoarse, and he holds her closer to his chest in apology.
“I’ve got you,” he promises her, and she grits her teeth and grips the metal on his chest.
He brings her to his shelter, shouldering the canvas of his makeshift door to find his way inside. His pallet rests on a woven rug, and as he enters, Aloy taps his shoulder and shifts. Trusting her, he lowers his arm until her feet touch the ground, but keeps the other around her shoulders and leads her to his bed. He guides her down and she sits, her face grimacing with each inhale.
While she lifts the waterskin and takes another sip, Nil removes his mask and kneels before her. He reaches to the side and lights his Sparker-powered lantern, Aloy wincing and turning away from the light as her bruises become clear.
The flesh around her right cheek is already beginning to swell. Her lips are cut, and a deep gash above her brow is caked with dried blood. Time has passed between whatever happened to now, and Nil can only imagine how hard she’s worked to hold on to get to his camp.
His hands reach up to cup her face, moving as slowly and delicately as possible. Still Aloy flinches, but she doesn’t stop him, and leans her unbruised cheek into his palm after she grows accustomed to it. His thumb brushes under her eye.
His anger remains at a rolling boil, his breaths short, his pulse throbbing.
“Who did this to you?”
Her lashes flutter and she waves a hand in dismissal. She doesn’t want to talk about it. Why?
He inhales deeply through his nose. If Aloy isn’t ready to talk now, or perhaps never will be, he’ll have to accept that. He’ll have to take the fact that there are ways in which he can help which do not involve justice and do something with it rather than… any alternative.
Nil leans back on his heels and stands, pulling his hands away as Aloy takes another drink. He steps to the back of his shelter where an overturned machine leg is now crafted into a makeshift table, on top of which rests a clay basin of clear water. He grabs a clean rag and soaks it, then wrings it out and returns to Aloy, the basin in hand as well, setting it on the rug next to him. Nil sits beside her and dabs at her hair, taking care to be gentle even as she winces.
There are a thousand questions on his tongue, but the exhaustion in Aloy’s body is palpable. He holds them back and focuses instead on cleaning her wounds.
He’s seen her battered and bruised before. Their first camp in the east, deep in Nora lands and before she learned to trust him, one of the brutes had clubbed her with the butt end of his weapon. This only seemed to ignite a fire inside of Aloy and she fought back with such ferocity that Nil had to pause his own battle to watch. After, she had stubbornly stitched her own cut and rubbed a Nora paste on the forming purple; she was healed of those wounds when Nil next saw her, and covered with others.
Neither of them are strangers to injury. They’re expected, when one deals with hostile machines and hostile people. But these wounds…
He stares at the fingers wrapped around her throat as he cleans the blood from her scalp. They’re small, he notes, probably no bigger than Attah’s, and for a delirious moment, Nil wonders if it was a youth who attempted to choke her.
He brushes the thought aside. It can’t have been.
“Aloy—”
She touches her weapons as if to remove them, and Nil helps, lifting them over her head to set them aside.
That is when he notices the hole in the leather of her vest, right at her shoulder, and Nil gently grips the edge and pulls down. She winces as he does, but doesn’t stop him, and Nil exposes a bandaged shoulder drenched with blood. He can’t stop the hiss of an inhale through clenched teeth and looks at her face, alarmed, and she only averts her gaze in shame.
“I need to clean this.”
She nods. Being as gentle as he can, Nil peels back the blood-soaked bandages to expose the broken shaft of an arrow going straight through her shoulder. He checks her back, and there is the metal head, just poking through her skin and no longer covered by armour or weapons.
He has a matching set of scars himself from an arrow shot straight through, on the same side as her own, but his are just above his hips.
“Aloy…”
“I couldn’t get it,” she mutters, her fingertips stroking her throat. Her voice is still weak, but she seems determined to fight it. “I pushed it through, but couldn’t get it out.”
He recognises the arrowhead almost instantly. Long, narrow, and heavy, without barbs like most, this one is designed to break through layers of armour. He saw far too many to count during the Red Raids, especially at Cinnabar Sands. This arrow is from a Tenakth bow.
Carefully, Nil wraps clean cloth around the arrowhead. Then he finds a scrap of leather left from when he constructed himself a new quiver and holds it up to Aloy. “Open,” he requests, and after a moment of questioning looks, Aloy understands. She opens her mouth and Nil places the leather between her teeth, and Aloy bites down. “On three.” He grips the exposed shaft behind her shoulder with one hand, bracing against her with the other. “One—”
He yanks, pressing into her shoulder with his bracing hand to keep her still. Aloy cries out around the leather between her teeth; her fingers find Nil’s knee and dig in, and her body shudders uncontrollably in agony, but the arrow is out.
“Apologies for the deception,” he murmurs, retrieving supplies to clean the wounds.
“I would have done the same thing,” she sighs.
He makes sure her wounds are clear and clean before he reaches for his suture kit. He watches Aloy turn her head and press a finger to the triangular relic on her temple. Lights surround it and her eyes roam over images he cannot see, but then she nods her head and indicates for him to continue. The leather strap goes between her teeth again and she clenches down hard as he sews the holes in her flesh.
The anger he felt earlier is dormant while he tends to Aloy’s wounds, but Nil is very aware of its presence, and wonders if it will awaken again.
He finishes with the sutures and gives them a final cleaning. They’ll have to keep an eye on them to ensure they don’t get infected or fester. He looks down at the basin of water, then toward his door, and calls for Attah.
She appears in a few moments, freezing at the sight of them (and Nil unmasked before her, he supposes, though he doesn’t care about that right now), before she says, “What do you need?”
“Water.” He indicates the basin, where the once-clear water is now stained with blood.
“I’m on it.” She comes forward and kneels, grabbing the basin while sneaking a curious look at Nil’s face. He ignores her stare and focuses again on Aloy, who is touching her throat and wincing. Attah takes the bowl and rushes out, excited murmurs picking up outside Nil’s shelter.
“Your clothes are wet.” He fingers the leather vest, wondering why. “Do you have anything dry in your pack?”
Aloy nods and grabs her pack, dragging it around her back to thrust at Nil. Taking the hint, he opens it up and finds Nora clothes inside, rolled into a tight bundle for travel space. He takes them out and unrolls them, a wave of nostalgia threatening to close in. He hasn’t seen her in Nora garb since the Alight; before then, not since the Sacred Lands. Aloy was born in Nora lands, but she has never let them claim her.
(Nil didn’t argue when she called him a “Carja” – for all intents and purposes, he is one, even if he’s left all Carja behind in the Sundom, save for the ink below his eyes. Truthfully, he isn’t quite sure what to call himself anymore. He is far from Tenakth, who would never accept him anyway, and the Carja would likely prefer he wasn’t darkening their sky. Much like his moniker, he is nothing, belongs to nothing, belongs to… almost no one.)
Aloy can’t move. That much is obvious. Between her shoulder, and ribs she keeps hissing to touch on her other side, redressing isn’t feasible for her to do alone. She seems to realise this on her own and gives Nil a look, her eyes large, her cheeks beginning to redden, and her tongue swipes over her lips.
“You don’t have to, but…” she starts.
“I can do it.”
“Thanks.”
She sags in relief as Nil carefully unbuckles the straps of her outfit, and pulls on strings to undo knots, and peels away the leather and metal until she’s sitting in her smalls. Now, near bare, Nil can see even more damage, more bruises and cuts; he can see part of her trousers are singed, a hole even eaten away in the fabric in one spot, and he has to take a few deep breaths to stay calm.
It isn’t the first time she’s unclothed before him, though the circumstances are decidedly less fun.
Devil’s Thirst, right near the water, which was lucky. When Aloy made to disable the camp alarm, Nil guarding her back, a bandit spotted them and fired, bursting the blaze sac instead. Both of them were doused in the blaze from within, which, admittedly, gave Nil an additional thrill, knowing that any contact with flame would light him up in seconds and increasing the danger. After the camp, they made their way to the water; Aloy had first approached the lake fully clothed, but then stopped when she noticed Nil peeling off his own armour down to his smalls without a trace of bashfulness.
He never asked her to undress, nor did he expect it, but she did it anyway. She came back to shore and rid herself of her blaze-covered clothing and armour, then went back into the water’s edge and dove in. Nil followed, only going as deep as he was comfortable with his feet touching bottom, and washed himself of traces of blaze while she did the same. After, he allowed the sun to dry him while he washed his clothes, while Aloy wrapped herself in furs as she cleaned her own.
He’s thought of undressing her before, but never in this context. He’s thought of uncovering her body of clothing only to replace what he removed with his lips, with his hands, and he’s thought of baring themselves to each other in a perfect manner of intimacy.
This is nothing like his imaginings, nor is it anything like the camp, and no part of him attempts to twist reality. Nil is focused on ensuring his movements are slow and gentle, not hurting Aloy in any way, and he manages to get her dressed in Nora skins without terrible struggle.
Yet even in warm, dry clothes, Aloy begins to tremble. Nil keeps an eye on her while he grabs ridgewood and linen to make a sling for her shoulder, and he can tell she’s trying to quell her body’s movements. But she continues to shiver, her teeth chattering as he guides her arm into the sling he’s made, and he places a hand against her face and looks into her eyes.
“You need rest,” he says, his voice gentle but firm. “And you need warmth.”
She nods.
Nil helps guide her down until she lays on his bedroll, then he moves to climb over her and be on her other side. She shifts to allow him space as he spreads out next to her, then pulls up his blankets to their chins before wrapping an arm around her, pulling her tighter to him, wishing he could will his own body heat to warm her faster. Below his hand, he can feel how hard her heart is still racing.
“You should try to sleep, Aloy,” he whispers to her, his breath blowing the hair by her ear. “It will help your body heal.”
In time, her shivers cease. In time, her breaths become even and as deep as her bruised chest will allow.
And Nil stares down at the forming bruise around her throat, wondering who dared to put their hands on her, and hoping – for their sake – that they are already dead.
He has never seen Aloy afraid; he has never seen her vulnerable. Even now he isn’t sure if she feels fear, or indignation. Part of Nil wants to tell her there is no shame in terror, but he knows she isn’t ready to hear that. Not when it’s a new feeling, not when she came to him, of all people.
And why did she come to him? It’s probable that he was close to her location, but Hidden Ember would surely be more stocked on medical supplies than him, and he’s fairly certain he saw a companion of hers chatting up the showmen. Yet she told him she didn’t know where else to go as if his camp was the only safe place for her to be.
A chill races down his spine as a thought occurs to Nil that he wishes hadn’t: If she came to him because part of her wants vengeance, and she has seen the violence he’s capable of.
(Even if she doesn’t know the half of it.)
But he is also capable of care and kindness, and that is what Nil pours his energy into now. Her needs, as always, are greater than his urges.
Attah returns with fresh water and sets it next to Nil. Then she leaves, and Nil stays, and guards Aloy diligently while she sleeps.
*
For two nights, Aloy barely moves. She comes out of unconsciousness to take care of her needs, then descends into sleep again. The children are worried, constantly hovering outside of Nil’s shelter, waiting for any kind of news of her well-being. Nil obliges and tells them what he can – which isn’t much, but keeps them from excess concern and obsession.
He’s cleaned her arrow wound well enough that there are no signs of infection. He’s applied medicinal paste to her cuts and bruises, and they seem to be healing as well. The children have cleaned and fixed the Oseram armour she wore to camp, and Pekka noted that there was green paint on a piece of metal. Green paint, she said, like what they once wore as rebels.
Regalla is dead. To Nil’s knowledge, Aloy did not kill her at the Grove, but she is dead nonetheless. Any rebels who followed her should have disbanded, but it seemed like she still had some loyal to her cause, and itching for revenge.
And they would, of course, blame Aloy for her death. Revenge is a powerful motivator; the desire for revenge against people like him is why Regalla’s rebels exist in the first place. It’s a motivator that Nil refuses to let consume him.
Responsibility, on the other hand…
While he would gladly tend to Aloy’s wounds had they been inflicted by any other means, Nil would be lying to himself if he said that part of him didn’t hold some accountability for them. It was, and is always, a vicious circle: Nil slaughtered Tenakth in the Red Raids. Regalla sought vengeance for actions such as his. Aloy became collateral in the crossfire.
Now Nil’s even temper is shaken, and he hears the call, more tempting than it’s been in months. His heart is battling his mind for control, and neither option is more right or more wrong.
When Aloy awakes in the late afternoon of the third day, there’s a brightness to her eyes that Nil hasn’t yet seen since she arrived, and she’s able to sit up on her own while he rests in his shelter across from her, sewing up a hole he found in one of her pouches.
“Nil?”
He sets down the pouch and rises from his stool, taking a few steps toward her before dropping to his knees. There’s colour to her cheeks, and she seems far more aware of her surroundings than she has been the last few times she’s opened her eyes. Her voice, though thick from misuse, seems stronger as well, no longer plagued by swelling of her throat.
“Do you know where you are?” he asks, resisting the urge to cup her face in his palms.
She takes a moment, then nods. “Your camp in the desert. How long have I been here?”
“Two nights now. Aloy, do you remember what happened to you?”
“Two nights,” she moans, her eyes fluttering closed. She presses a palm to her forehead and shakes her head. “Did anyone try to…” She gestures to the relic on her temple, which Nil has left untouched. He shakes his head with a small shrug; he wouldn’t know what to do even if the glowing shard had made a noise. “Ugh… okay.”
He lets her sit and absorb her surroundings for a moment before he tries again: “Do you remember what happened to you?”
She nods and lifts her head, then looks away. Her stare becomes hard, her jaw setting, and Nil can see her entire body clench and tense. When she speaks, there’s a coolness to her tone that Nil doesn’t expect, and he feels his own spine stiffen.
“Oh, I remember.”
Her hands curl into tight fists on her knees. She takes a deep breath through her nose and flicks her gaze to Nil. He can’t say if her rage is feeding his, or if it’s the other way around, but it licks at him like the rolling tide.
The past few months, Nil is happier than he’s ever felt before in his life. He’s been accepted by wayward teens who look to him for guidance; he’s unlocked a skill from deep inside that has given him drive and purpose all his own. He’s moved on from aspects of himself that always held him back from the person he was meant to be. He has Aloy’s respect as a man, not as a soldier.
And part of him is willing to throw it all away as Aloy’s gaze turns to steel and she says, “You up for a hunt?”
It isn’t a question so much as an expectation. Where once Nil would have let his grin spread unchecked, allowed his elation rise swiftly in his belly, now… now he feels a twist inside instead. Instead of immediately leaping at the chance, he takes a moment to think. He thinks of Aloy, of her relief that he chose to race instead of kill. He thinks of the scars on his fingertips, finally healing over. He thinks of the children, and the way they all promise to defeat him someday, before they ask him if he’s making that crunchy roasted bird for supper that they love so much.
And under it all, he can hear the ringing start in his ears, distant, beckoning, tempting him to follow, and Nil tastes the metal of blood on his tongue.
Aloy takes his hand. Whatever resolve Nil once had vanishes with the squeeze of her fingers around his.
“Here I thought you’d never ask.”
“I need my armour.”
He finds where it has been neatly folded and hands the pile to her. She thanks him for it, then beckons for him to turn around so she can change. He does so, closing his eyes at the same time, and simply waits and listens while she changes out of her Nora furs into solid Oseram gear. She huffs a few times, grunts, even growls as she manoeuvres the straps over her injured shoulder, but she doesn’t ask for help. Nil doesn’t offer. When Aloy needed it, she asked for it.
And in the stillness, he begins to wonder if—
“We’ll go west,” she says behind him. He opens his eyes. “That’s where it happened. They probably won’t be there still, but we can pick up a trail. They could have gone pretty far, actually, since they had their own Bristlebacks.”
“I was about to ask who we were hunting, but it would appear to be rebels.”
He feels her hand on his shoulder and he turns around. She’s dressed in the Oseram armour again, looking a sight better than her arrival days ago. Bruises are healing. Cuts are sealed. Strength is returning to her little by little.
“One of the children also found green paint on your armour,” he adds.
“Do you have a problem with hunting rebels?”
The children were rebels once.
“No. The Tenakth I faced when I first re-entered No Man’s Land bore the same green and white as what we found on your armour. A part of my attire, in fact, came from a rebel camp I happened across. Hanging on a line,” he adds at the slight twist of her features. “I promise, nothing I wear was taken from a corpse.”
“Right. You hate trophies.”
For a moment, Nil is taken aback. He didn’t expect her to remember such a small, passing remark from so long ago. “On the killing field, yes.”
He looks at her for a moment before he glances at the exit. “You should eat first. A journey such as ours will require sustenance and optimal strength.”
“Yeah,” she agrees with a sigh. She moves for the exit, a grimace of pain crossing her face only once. She stifles it and keeps going.
Nil dons his mask and exits his shelter. They eat a quick meal in relative silence, the children at the settlement, likely daring each other to try the Oseram’s flying orb. Or steal it, Haxx had jokingly suggested once – at least, Nil hopes he was joking. It’s better this way, that they’re gone, Nil tells himself. They can’t distract them from their purpose.
Aloy finds her overridden Bristleback not far from the camp; it has delighted Wikkoh for the past two days with its ability to snuff out treasures among the sand, and he’s started a collection of sorts. Nil mounts up on his Charger and nods at Aloy to signal his readiness.
He follows her west, toward the mountains that mark the border between Desert and Lowland Clan territory. When they reach the cliffs, signs of a battle become clear, and Nil tries to piece the puzzle together in his mind.
Fallen rock, the tracks on the mountainside looking fresh. Scorch marks burning the stone and ground and grass around them, exploded blaze barrels nearby. A tipped trough that once contained water. Nil leaves his Charger behind at the edge of the clearing and examines the other scars of the fight while Aloy presses a finger to her device and looks around for a trail.
“They ambushed you with explosives,” he concludes. Aloy stops and looks at him, but is silent. “You fought them here… but they overwhelmed you.”
“They went this way. Trail’s a few days old.”
In the heat of battle, Nil has seen Aloy take on numerous foes before. He’s seen her dodge the blows and arrows of multiple bandits, her moves like a dance as they tried and failed to bring her down. He’s watched her tear down machine after machine at the Alight. Numbers are not a problem for Aloy; something else must have happened to open up a weakness, a vulnerability. Whatever it was, it has wounded her pride as well as her body.
They continue their hunt, crossing the border into Lowland territory. The sticky humidity of the jungle causes Nil to break into a sweat below the thick black paint across his eyes, enough that he takes a rag to wipe the traces from his face. It’s a risk: if they’re spotted, he’ll surely be outed as being from the Carja.
The sun is setting behind the forest, and Nil can see Aloy’s body sagging. She’s still weakened, recovering, and needs rest for what lies ahead.
“I suggest we stop for the night and set up camp. The Tenakth have conveniently left a shelter upon that rise, and we’re losing daylight. I’m well-acquainted with your second sight,” he adds, seeing her open her mouth to argue while gesturing to her temple, “but our purpose requires a fresh start, with sound body and mind. Starting anew will make the hunt all the greater.”
He can see the debate behind her eyes, the struggle between her wants and her needs. She relents with a sigh and flutter of lashes, her hands on her hips before she looks around again. Aloy freezes in place, then slowly pulls her hunter bow and draws one arrow, staring at something in bushes several yards away. She exhales, looses the arrow, and Nil hears it strike true. Aloy saunters over to the little thicket and plucks a rabbit from the ground, pulls her arrow from it, and tosses the carcass to Nil.
“You can make dinner,” she tells him, and he smiles gently and nods. At least she was able to use that second sight of hers for something tonight.
They make their way up to the shelter, Aloy hiding her struggle, and she gets the fire going while Nil skins the rabbit and pulls seasonings from his pouch. A lifestyle of travel means that he cannot carry a great capacity of his favourites, especially as he’s no longer in Carja land and can’t resupply some of his favourite spices, but he makes do with what he has. They share the cooked rabbit, Aloy scavenging some nearby peppers and spikestalk to roast as well, and Nil watches her teeth tear at the meat of her rabbit with some amusement. He’d almost forgotten how she eats, as it’s the exact opposite of the Carja noble ladies he grew up knowing, who were all about making it appear as if they swallowed only air to be as delicate as possible.
“That was pretty good,” she says after she’s finished, sucking traces of spice off her fingers. “You could probably teach some Oseram a thing or two. The cook in Chainscrape has a dish I like, but a friend of mine…” She trails off, stops herself. He wonders if she thinks she was over sharing, but then her face pulls in a grimace and she shifts her position, relieving pressure off her side.
For a moment, Nil considers changing his mind and continuing the hunt. For a moment, he thinks about waiting until she’s asleep, then going after the rebels on his own. For a moment, he casts his mind back to the Red Raids, to the day when he saw Carja soldiers chose to burn Nora alive in metal canisters to watch them slowly roast to death in the most painful way imaginable, and he wonders if he’s capable of such an act himself.
No, he decides after a moment of contemplation. No, he’s not. There is no honour in torture.
The rebels who harmed Aloy have no honour. Nil is not a good man, but he won’t stoop to depravity. Not even for her.
“I don’t miss much about the east,” he says, tossing a small log onto the fire, “but I’ve yet to find certain spices in settlements here. That was the last of my rosemary.”
“Rosemary?”
“Mm. Marjoram pairs well with rabbit, but I haven’t seen that since I resupplied before the Daunt.”
“Oh, well, I knew it was missing marjoram,” she says drily, and Nil returns her smirk with one of his own.
There is only a single bedroll within the shelter, but Nil doesn’t think twice in scooting back on it and angling his body, opening his arm to allow Aloy to nestle in next to him. Though they’ve shared his personal bed for several nights now, Nil doing his best to keep her warm and guarded, Aloy… hesitates. Her gaze is contemplative, her lips drawn tight, brows furrowed, and she glances around as if she expects they’re being watched.
Ah.
He makes to rise wordlessly, not wanting to argue, but Aloy reaches him before he can. She lays down with her back to his chest, resting her head on Nil’s outstretched arm, and he smiles and pulls the weathered blanket over their bodies.
*
A mercifully peaceful sleep, a quick breakfast, and the hunt is back on.
In truth, it doesn’t take them long to find the guilty party. Their path leads them toward a rebel outpost on the edge of the jungle, rock on one side and forest on the other. Aloy huffs under her breath, something about having cleared it once already, and they leave their machines behind to sneak forward into long grass and spy. Nil peers in between the postings, catching sight of bodies moving between lookouts and shelters.
“That one was bait.”
He glances at Aloy, who is staring hard at one of the rebels as she picks a skewer of meat from above the cookfire.
“She wasn’t dressed like that, just regular Desert Clan armour. She pretended she was caught under a boulder. I went to help. Then, like you said… boom.” She mimics an explosion with one hand, then touches her relic and scans the area. “That one held my head in the trough, that was… refreshing, I guess. Then, him there, he’s the one who did this” – she motions to the healing handprint across her throat that she’s been covering with a scarf, for which Nil is grateful; every sight of it ignites new and terrifying rage inside of him – “before I managed to crush his hand with a rock.” As she speaks, Nil feels his breath catch, his ribs tightening around his lungs as his eyes widen. But Aloy doesn’t stop, and frowns, adjusting her position. “I count seven. One… mm, one’s lying down, I think that’s the one I hit in the head.”
He looks back at the rebels, frowning. Something is… off, something he can’t quite put his finger on. Not about Aloy’s story, but about the situation unfolding before them.
“Aloy—”
“We can flank them, or we can see about taking them out quietly, like old times.”
Old times. The words tug at Nil’s gut, and he feels the familiar heat pump through his blood. He holds a breath and views the scene before them again. One of the rebels tosses a small coconut into the air and catches it, then grabs two more and attempts – poorly – to juggle them while the others laugh.
Then he realises what exactly is bothering him.
“They’re no older than the riders.”
In fact, one of them looks even younger than Pekka. Nil can’t help but blink, his spine straightening as his muscles relax.
“What?”
He points, and Aloy squints as she looks. After a few moments, she sits back and slumps, a sound from deep inside escaping her chest.
Rebels, Nil can hunt.
Misguided youth, who are barely old enough to remember the actual Raids but no doubt lost family, perhaps even their parents, to blades like the one Nil tossed into the green lake at the southernmost border of No Man’s Land… He cannot hunt them. Not in good conscience.
“Shit,” Aloy mutters, and there is a part of Nil relieved that she, too, can’t bring herself to cause them harm. “We can’t… Are they really just…” She lets out a huff, her fingers clenching into fists as they rest on her thighs. “Are you telling me I was jumped by a bunch of kids?”
“Children full of vitriol and vengeance,” he attempts to soothe. He thinks of the thick tension when he first met his riders, and how he makes sure never to underestimate their own capabilities on and off the track. Like him, they’ve been trained since childhood, and have seen more battles in their young years than most. “You might be surprised at the capacity of youthful violence.”
“Oh, would I really?”
She turns on her heel with a scoff and a growl, carefully making her way out of the outpost’s sight. Nil allows himself a moment of self-reprimand before he follows; he never meant to undermine her frustration and lack of justice. They reach their machines and Aloy has her hands pressed into her Bristleback’s side as it snuffles the dirt. Nil extends his arm, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder.
“I didn’t intend—”
“Seventeen.”
“Seventeen?”
“I’ve cleared seventeen rebel outposts and six camps.” She takes a shuddering breath and leans back into his palm. Nil gives her shoulder a squeeze. “I didn’t kill… everyone , not at every camp, but some, I had to. How many do you think…”
“When you’re in the midst of a firestorm, when it’s your blood or theirs, you don’t stop to think about that. I know.”
She looks at him with questions in her eyes, and Nil answers them with a nod. He was barely more than a child himself in the Red Raids, but he was far from the youngest on the battlefield.
Aloy takes a moment to consider before she raises a hand to cover his. “You did what was acceptable at the time, right?”
He inhales through his nose and tilts his head to the side. “Did I?”
It’s the hardest lesson he’s avoided the longest, and it finds him in the most unlikely place, as is the way.
“We both did.”
He squeezes her shoulder again. She, in turn, tightens her grip on his hand. “That’s what we tell ourselves.”
“Nil…”
She releases his hand. Closes her eyes, turns her head away. As she moves to mount up, Nil pulls his hand back and approaches his own Charger, swinging onto her back with ease and settling in. He eyes her carefully, her face scrunched as she swallows her hurt and anger, before it clears and she picks up her wire reins.
“Maybe this is for the best,” he tries. She looks away. “By sparing those children the fate they may even deserve for what they did to you, you’ve broken the wheel.”
“What wheel?”
“The one of violence. Ever turning, always moving forward. Now, halted.”
“Or I leave them alive to kill someone else.”
He hums quietly. It’s true, they could hurt more people, but… Nil chooses to hope that they won’t. “Either path is a calculated risk. They could very well be killed by the Marshals tomorrow, or by a Thunderjaw, or by the Oseram. All of those elements are out of your hands, but the choice to show mercy is yours. And for another day, our demons don’t get the best of us.”
For several long moments, Aloy is quiet. She looks down at her hands, then toward the outpost, then off in the distance. Nil waits for her signal, letting her come to terms with the outcome.
But when she finally speaks, Nil goes cold.
“I’ll see you around, Nil,” she says, and she turns her Bristleback west.
He can’t stop the jerk of his shoulders or downward tug of his lips. She’s left before, many times, but for her to run away now, after this?
Nil has always understood her need for space, her unreadiness, her desire to keep herself to herself and be separate from him until the opportune moment. He knows that a piece of him will be infinitely patient with her, no matter how far her path strays or who she meets along the way. His heart is hers for the taking when she wants it, and he’s accepted that he may be waiting a long time.
He knows all of that.
But this hurts.
Aloy leaving after all of this hurts.
“Aloy—”
“Don’t.” She takes a breath and holds it, looking like she’s about to say more, but struggles for the words. He waits and wills her to find them, to give him one good reason, but she sighs with defeat and shakes her head instead. She meets his gaze under heavy lashes and offers the smallest of smiles. “This helped, Nil. I promise. Are you okay with… not… hunting them?”
Can he live without the blood of these children on his hands? Nil stares at her hard for a few moments, saying nothing, and lets Aloy realise for herself what exactly she asked him. He sees in her eyes the moment she catches on and she clenches her jaw, gripping her reins.
“Sorry.”
“Mm. You know where to find us.” Nil pauses, feeling a tug in his gut. “You know where I am if you need me, Aloy,” he corrects himself.
“Yeah. Thanks for patching me up.”
“The pleasure was all mine.”
The laugh is forced, her eye roll exaggerated, but Nil appreciates it all the same. It means she longs for normalcy between them as much as he does.
This parting is more bitter than sweet, but Nil takes meaning from it all the same. He and Aloy both learned how easy they succumbed to the whispers of their demons, no matter how long they spent passing them by. Nil can still taste metal in the back of his throat from the anticipation of battle; as he rides away, he realises that the sweat covering his entire body is not from the humidity, but from his own eagerness for battle. As much control as he keeps over himself, there are some elements he cannot stop.
Like the boiling fury he felt over Aloy’s injuries.
Like the lift in his belly at the prospect of fighting by her side again, despite how far he’s come.
Like the shame he feels in being disappointed there was no bloodshed.
Like the ringing in his ears that grows louder in her absence.
He rides alone back to the desert, donning his mask as he crosses the clan territories. The riders watch his arrival with wondering eyes, but they leave him be. It’s clear that Nil doesn’t want to talk, and no one dares to push him as he strides them by and enters his shelter.
Inside his chest, Nil can feel his heart hammering. His pulse races in his throat, and an image of Aloy’s appears in his mind, the handprint clear on her fair skin, and he wonders how close her own pulse came to being stopped by the rebel teenagers. They lured her in, taking advantage of her generosity, and it nearly got her killed.
Aloy was nearly killed.
(And, he remembers, she didn’t know where else to go.)
What he needs is a race, but he can’t focus. He needs to unleash his demons on the track, he needs to fight, he needs to emerge as the victor, but he can’t think. The ringing in his ears is so loud he even tries to shake his head, knowing it won’t help. Nil paces his shelter, creating a path in the sand, hands gripping the sides of his mask and wishing he could tighten it around his skull to stop the noise—
“Nil.”
Aloy.
He stops in his tracks and turns his head. She’s inside his shelter, the canvas door closing behind her. Not even daring to breathe should she disappear, Nil slowly angles the rest of his body toward her, taking in her visage in the dark, dim light of his abode.
“I was thinking about what you said. The wheel of violence, and not… letting demons win.”
She takes a step, her fingers wringing together in front of her.
“I don’t know what I would have done if you weren’t there. You’re the one who noticed they were kids. You… talked me down, even if part of me still…” A shuddering breath, a lick of her lips. “You did more for me than you know.”
Even as Aloy closes the gap between them, her steps almost painfully slow, Nil remains rooted. Only his eyes follow as she stops at his chest, watching her as she scans his face and mask. He waits as Aloy reaches up with both hands and hooks her thumbs under the jaw of his mask and pushes up, inching it up his face.
It doesn’t come all the way off. Aloy stops once his nose is clear, and Nil is blind, but he feels her breath against his jaw the moment before their lips meet.
And all of the love Nil has inside of him bursts to the surface.
He wraps his arms around her back and grips her to him, kissing her back fervently while she tosses the mask to the sand. In the next moment she’s on his hips with her legs locked around him, and he carries her to his pallet to lay her down on his bedroll. Aloy’s fingers bury themselves in his hair, never breaking their kiss except for a gasp of breath, or to release a moan long held inside.
The ringing in his ears is drowned out by the roaring thunder of his heart in his chest, threatening to burst through his very ribs.
He remembers to be gentle, minding her still-healing bruises as his hands explore. Nil’s lips pepper her face with kisses before he plants one gently below her ear, then pauses and pulls back to look at her. She gives him a nod, and he goes back in, pressing his lips to her neck and making sure she feels love, not fury, not hate, not fear.
Her Oseram armour provides a path for his lips to follow south on her chest, the metal cool against the heat in his face. Lower still, and he pauses over her middle to look up at her. Aloy props herself on her elbows, then strokes a hand through his hair, her nails raking over his scalp and sending wave upon wave of pleasure through his nerves.
For the first time in days, Nil smiles, and Aloy returns it.
He takes the string that draws her armour together between his teeth and tugs. The knot comes loose and the armour falls to the sides, exposing the red breast band underneath. Nil places a kiss on her stomach, just below the band, and grins as her skin quivers in response.
This time, Nil doesn’t have to imagine undressing her. Every removed item of clothing is real and happening, his shelter growing more and more heated as they bare themselves to each other. She is hardly passive, making sure his armour is removed at the same speed as hers, kissing him with fervour and fire every chance she gets.
They surrender to the dark, to their passion, to each other. Nil gives everything of himself to Aloy: his body, his mind, his desires, his heart. He wants her to have it all, to have everything, to wield this power over him rather than her control over his darkness. Through it all, he wants – needs – her to let go and find her own release in pleasure. Every caress of skin is to make her feel safe. Every kiss he plants is to make her feel good. Every soft praise he whispers in her ear is to make her feel loved.
And in the desperate way she clings to him when everything that has built up inside of her bursts, in the way she shudders and cries out into his shoulder before she bites down, and in the way she releases every held and tensed muscle after, Nil knows she feels everything.
What Nil will think of later, when Aloy has continued on her path and is forced to leave him behind again, is not their lovemaking. No, what Nil will remember most is the way they hold each other after, and memorise each other, and find comfort in the silence and connection of their hearts and minds.
They’re slipping closer toward sleep before Aloy shifts in his arms and whispers his name. Nil opens his eyes and looks at her, and she answers the question he’s had since she arrived but he never voiced.
“I came to you because I knew I’d be safe,” she whispers into the dark of his shelter. “Because you’d understand. And I came to you because…”
They’re pressed together so closely he can feel her breath hitch against his own body. Nil holds her tighter to him, embracing her, silently letting her know she can tell him everything.
“Because I know you love me,” she finishes. Nil looks down into her eyes, so round and vulnerable, and he gives her a soft, warm smile and a nod. She doesn’t need his confirmation, not after everything else.
Instead, Nil kisses her forehead and smiles against her skin. Yes, she’s safe. Yes, he understands.
Yes, he loves her, and he’ll be here when she is ready to fully love him.
He sees Aloy smile before each of them close their eyes. She shifts closer and holds him tighter, and before Nil loses himself to sleep, the last thing he feels is Aloy pressing her face deep into his chest and over his heart.