In Another Life: Chapter 3
Summary: (AU) Aloy grows up among the Sky Clan instead of the Nora and is raised alongside a boy whose life will be inextricably bound with hers.
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Chapter 3: What is Unseen
Read it on AO3
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“Where is Aloy?”
It’s a question that often falls on Kotallo’s shoulders. One he could readily answer, until recently. Since his earliest memories, Aloy would always be near - just around the corner, or right beneath the eave of a shelter, or somewhere under his feet beneath the bluffs.
It seems like all he would have to do is think about the color of her hair, and she would appear as if summoned. She has always been a part of him, like the patterns of ink on his skin. Now, she’s prone to wandering off and says nothing about where she’s going.
She never used to keep secrets from him.
It’s aggravating. How often she disappears. How often she asks about the world beyond Tenakth territories. How often she asks about other tribes, and whether Chief Hekkaro would ever open their borders one day. But the blood shed from the Red Raids seems to seep further and further into the West. And Kotallo spends every spare moment reminding Aloy of this danger. There have been no reports of Tenakth soldiers falling to Carja blades, but the scouts say they can hear screams across the plains of No Man’s Land.
If Aloy fell into their hands…
No. It is unthinkable.
“I’ll look for her,” he says.
“Be back before sundown,” says his squad captain. “But before you go, Tekkoteh would like a word with you.”
“Tekkoteh?”
“It could only be good news, boy.” His squad captain smiles. “Now hurry on to our commander. Then you can find the little menace.”
-
There’s a loud ringing in her head.
Once, on a hunt, she was caught unaware by a longleg that screeched into her ears before alerting the other machines. Fortunately, her squad had been there to dispatch the larger predators so that she could get away. But it took nearly the whole spring before she could start hearing properly again. Kotallo had fussed and hovered over her for weeks.
Kotallo…
Aloy doesn’t want to think of him right now. Or how loudly he would reprimand her for being so careless. He's always scolding her for one reason or another these days. Even though she’s fifteen and isn’t any more or less reckless than he’d been at her age.
All right, maybe a tiny bit more reckless. Just a smidge.
It takes effort to turn her head toward the sunlight.
A light that is so very, very far above her. Had she fallen?
Her muscles groan as she sits up.
Oh, yep. Definitely a big fall.
She shakes out her limbs. Nothing broken. Thank the Ten.
Blinking, she takes in her surroundings. Everything is damp and smells of mold and rusted metal…a ruin? Yes, a ruin.
A current of excitement runs through her like electricity. She’s heard of such places, buried deep underground all over the West. The Old Ones would take shelter in them, or use them as facilities for training and military operations.
For what kind of threat, the Chaplains don't exactly know. Aloy can only imagine. It must have been awful given how fortified their defenses were: such thick walls in such dark, lifeless places.
It makes her think of Tekkoteh and his speeches about how the Bulwark is impenetrable. “It’s been here since the birth of our clan. It will never fall and neither will we.” It unnerves her,how much of their clan took him at his word. Everything falls, one way or another. Even the Ancient World, for all the wonders it created.
Well. Nothing left to do but find a way back up.
She stretches out her limbs and checks her armor - everything’s intact. More than likely, her armor bore the brunt of the damage. Kotallo had been right to upgrade it a few weeks ago. She remembers how he came home with most of the parts she needed: shards, large machine core, hardplate, and even more impressive, a sunwing shield caster.
“I could get these myself, you know.”
“Consider it a gift,” he told her, in that soft way that warms her inside.
Those moments are becoming fewer and further between, though. Almost every other day, there’s a new quarrel to be had. Things used to be so easy between them, and now they grate against each other, like unoiled parts. Like the space that held them suddenly became too small, the friction unbearable.
“People as close as you two will know exactly how to get under each other’s skin,” Gerrah once advised. Aloy guesses it’s true. They’ve seen each other at their best and at their worst. She doubts that anyone else knows them as deeply as they do.
Aloy winds from one corridor to another, observing the dull lights and exposed beams. Eventually she comes to the end of a stairwell which leads to an empty shaft, wind rustling in the shadows above. She glances up, noting the panels she can use as handholds.
She takes a breath. Cracks her knuckles. Then climbs.
Like the snowmelt from the ceiling, her memories from that morning come back to her in drips. She just finished off a special weave in her armor, and went to go see Kotallo before his patrol. And she did find him…with someone.
Torreh, she remembers. One of the scouts from Stonecrest. He may have been a year or two older than Kotallo. And clearly an admirer, if that kiss had anything to say about it. Kotallo seemed surprised, but didn’t find the kiss unwelcoming.
Aloy had shrunk back, cheeks red.
It’s silly, she thinks. Kotallo is one of the clan’s most sought after sons. Torreh isn’t the first one to seek out his affection, and he wouldn’t be the last. Kotallo had begun to draw the eyes of men and women alike since he matured. He would never be short of partners to choose from.
Somehow that only makes her feel more alone.
As though she is, once again, the little Nora babe left upon the steps of a mountain.
Aloy has felt jealous before. But the jealousy that erupted inside her that morning felt different, somehow. It struck her, not unlike an arrowhead, lodging somewhere beneath her ribcage, unable to budge.
It’s the kind of jealousy that edges toward possession, and it makes her feel shameful and ugly inside. As if she’s swallowed acid. Kotallo may be one of the most important people in her life, but he isn’t hers any more than she is his. Neither of them could be owned.
Maybe that’s why they fight so much about Tekkoteh. Their commander appraises people the way Strike players appraise their pieces on board, as something to be used. But Kotallo insists that he’s only protecting them.
“He’s not protecting us,” Aloy once told him, out of frustration. “He’s isolating us.”
Kotallo did not speak to her for the rest of that night. And when the next day began, they never spoke of it again. Until the next time it came up and they'd sidle around each other as though avoiding blast traps.
They set each other off too easily.
Aloy takes another breath, twisting her body so that she could spring to the opposite wall.
If a relationship with Kotallo is this hard, she can only imagine what it would be like to share herself with other people. The way he so effortlessly does.
“You need more people to depend on than just me,” he once told her. “It can’t only be me.”
Even though, for a time, it’s always been just the two of them.
Maybe he’s right. Maybe she’s relied on him too much for too many things. One person couldn’t possibly fulfill her every single need. It wouldn’t be fair.
She just wants Kotallo to be happy.
That should be enough.
Finally, she makes it to the top of the landing. At the end of another long corridor, down another dimly lit staircase, she sees it: two double doors. She squeezes through the sliver of space and lets her eyes adjust.
There are…more panels along the walls. Stations with blank screens and more blinking lights. At the center is a communal space, filled with long seats and tables. All around the space are different doors that look like they lead to private rooms, with two cots or four, bolted on top of one another. Desks and shelving too.
And then the corpses, resting soundly beneath the rotting covers.
Aloy doesn’t recoil. Instead, she’s pinned down by a wave of sadness.
There is one room with a smaller cot in the others. A stuffed toy - almost perfectly preserved - sits forlornly on the bedside table. She doesn’t know what kind of animal it’s meant to be, but if she squints just right, there’s a vague shape of a frostclaw.
She turns and her eyes are drawn to the little form tucked beneath the covers. This Old One couldn’t have been more than a child.
Hmm. What’s that…glowing near the child’s ear?
She picks up the tiny device and on instinct places it above her own temple.
A voice appears.
Then a Vision…
An Old One, made alive again.
“Hi Daddy,” the Vision says. “It’s me, Isaac…”
-
In the end, Kotallo finds Aloy not far from home.
Their paths cross where the river bends, near a large field across a bridge. The field is known to harbor a particularly vicious herd of fanghorns, known to gore more than their fair share of seasoned hunters. But Aloy, naturally, doesn’t appear to be deterred by the danger. Instead, she crouches low in the grass, her hands waving in front of her face in strange gestures.
“Looks like that component is…weak to chillwater.”
“What are you doing?” he asks.
Aloy doesn’t look at him. Not right away. Instead, she taps a strange device above her ear. “Nothing. Just exploring.”
“Exploring?”
She nods, unwilling to tell him more.
Kotallo’s lips purse into a thin line. “Fine. Keep it yourself then. And what is that?”
Aloy brushes her temple. “Just a relic” she says, finally. “I found it while…exploring.”
She wears a strange expression on her face. As though she wants to explain herself, but is choosing not to. It's worrisome, how her trust in him is more carefully parceled, more cautious. Then again, she’s like that with many in their clan. He supposes what bothers him is thinking he was somehow different, as special to her as she is to him.
Speaking of which…
“C’mon,” he says. “We’ve already missed the first dinner bell. If we idle any longer, we’ll miss the second.”
“Right.”
Silence yawns between them as they make their way back. Aloy is more distracted than usual, her eyes fixed on an object he cannot see.
“I spoke with Tekkoteh this evening.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, he…he’s asked me to become part of his personal guard.”
She stops. “Oh.”
He isn’t sure what he’s been expecting. Aloy, he knows, is not as fond of their commander as he is. A fact that’s always been a point of contention between them. She's always viewed Tekkoteh’s regard for him with suspicion, but Kotallo could never understand why. With Tekkoteh leading them, the Sky Clan has seen far fewer losses in recent years and far fewer tragic orphans like him as a result.
“That’s because he keeps us apart from the tribe,” Aloy had argued. “If no one leaves, then no one gets hurt. But living like that is no better than a prison.”
“This is our home,” he told her, a warning edge to his tone. “How can you call it a prison?”
“No. This is your home,” Aloy had said. “I belong nowhere, remember?”
How many times had they parried like that? Too many to count, Kotallo thinks. And neither of them ever emerged as the victor. They are both too stubborn and resolute for that. Even so, he hoped Aloy would have said something encouraging.
“Is this what you still want?” she asks, green eyes shuttering. As though she could sense as well as he does, that a vital part between them is about to change, and it would never be the same again. “As long as it’s still what you want.”
“Yes,” he says and Aloy nods.
When had she grown so tall? She always used to crane her neck to look up at him. Had she been changing before his very eyes and he simply didn’t wish to see it?
“Good,” she says. “You’ll be great.”
And though she says it with a smile, the fading twilight catching in her hair, they both feel the weight of the things that lay unspoken between them.
—
That night, Aloy taps the device again. It’s a Focus, she learns. A series of glyphs appear, line after line, a never ending scroll…ancient mysteries to be unlocked. Her mind spins and whirs, awake in a way that it’s never been before.
Kotallo has always been meant for great things, she thinks.
Just what is she meant for?
Maybe this relic would show her the way.
-
Thanks for reading <3
Up next: A Marshal arrives at the Bulwark.
Other Kotaloy fics:
Captivated
This Tenderness
In Another Life: Chapter 1, 2
