Chapter Text
“What happened?” the healer asks gently, her eyes on the ugly black-and-purple bruise that mottles Aloy’s skin from hip to breast, spreading across almost the entire width of her torso.
What happened? If Aloy closes her eyes, she sees Helis’ blood on her spear, can taste the ash of the village fires, hears the machine growl of Hades—but that’s not what the healer is asking.
“Rocks,” she says. “Got caught under a collapse.” It feels ridiculous to be here, surrounded by the dead and dying while she plainly isn’t. This healer could be treating those in more dire need—should be, in fact.
“A collapse?”
But Avad had insisted she be seen with utmost haste.
“The western gate,” Aloy admits.
“Ah. I've seen the rubble. Nasty business. So you were crushed by a landmark of Carja masonry and still came to me on your own two feet.” The healer straightens up and looks at Aloy with an expression Aloy can’t quite parse. “The Sun shines on you, little Nora.”
Technically true, if “own two feet” includes Erend practically holding her up all the way to the door to Meridian’s houses of healing. Talanah had supervised, since she couldn’t lift one of her arms.
Making their way down from the Alight had been a battle in itself, with so much of the steps collapsed. Varl had retreated with the Nora to their healing tents once they were back on solid ground. After the adrenaline of fighting the corrupted deathbringer and purging Hades had worn off, Aloy had nearly crumpled. It had been a fight to get Erend to not carry her to the elevators. And even then she only won the fight by pointing out that being carried might injure her more. He’d folded like a stuck boar after that.
“It hurts,” Aloy complains. “Just breathing. Just lying here.” She sounds more pitiful than she means to. “If this is its favor, the Sun could stand to help out a little more.”
The healer lets out a low laugh. “Such blasphemy. Don’t let the red hoods catch you saying such things. Now, forgive me, but I must do at least a cursory examination. Do you need something to bite down on? This will hurt.”
It takes almost all the strength she has left, but somehow Aloy doesn’t scream as the woman tenderly probes her torso. The leather strap between her teeth helps. In the end, the healer—Ardebili, as she asks Aloy to call her—discovers that Aloy has at least four broken ribs. She prescribes rest and light activity only. She isn’t bedridden, but the restriction is firm and clear: no hunting.
“No hunting?” Aloy pants, more than a little dismayed. She’s sweaty and out of breath from holding in her pain.
Ardebili narrows her eyes. “You want to, in your condition? I can’t imagine drawing a bow feels too good right now.” She turns to the room’s medicine cabinet and begins hunting through the small clay pots lined neatly on its shelves.
Aloy gets her arms underneath her and sits up on the cot. She trembles and exhales at the bite of pain that shoots through her. Her tunic falls back down to cover her bruises.
“It doesn’t feel good right now,” she says slowly, “but hunting’s what I am. I know I shouldn’t be out there, but it’s all I know to do.” There’s a strange desperation in her voice as she says it. So much rests on her. She thinks of GAIA, sitting and waiting for her. Of the lives in the balance. Of the freedom she feels, fighting her way through the wilds. Freedom she can’t have in Meridian, practically bedridden.
Ardebili sets two clay jars in a small satchel and places the satchel in Aloy’s lap. The soft expression on her face makes Aloy want to cry.
“I know, huntress. But I also know that to be a hunter, you must have patience and know when the right time is to strike. Think of this as lying in wait.”
“How long?”
“Two moon-cycles. If you rest.”
It hits like a stampede of grazers. “Two? ”
“Come visit me in one and we’ll see how you’re recovering. In the meantime, enjoy yourself! You live in the greatest city in the world.” She pauses. “Or will be . We must rebuild, but life goes on as we do. Go see a play, or toss a shard to a street musician. Let the fire-breather dazzle you. Buy some ice if you can afford it—wrapped in cloth and gently pressed against your bruises, the cold will soothe your wounds.”
Aloy briefly considers the irony of buying ice after spending nearly 20 years trying to protect herself from it. “Chillwater a good substitute?” she says, thinking of the canisters upon canisters she has neatly stacked in Olin’s old apartment.
“Have some of the stuff, do you? Not directly on the skin, as I said. That goes twice for chillwater. I don’t want you in here with frostbite on top of everything else. But chillwater will suffice.” She taps the cloth covering of one of the jars. “Brew this and drink it for the pain.” She moves her finger to the other. “Spread this on your cuts to prevent corruption.”
“And there’s no way to make my healing quicker?
Ardebili stands and lays a hand on her shoulder. “I’ve done all I can. The body is a remarkable machine, but it takes time, and care, and good food to do its repair work. Enjoy yourself while it does, as best you can.”
Aloy watches her leave, feeling, for the first time in a long time, lost.
Erend and Talanah are waiting for her just inside the entrance to the healing houses, Talanah’s right arm now wrapped in a sling, Erend in clean, non-blood-soaked trousers. Death and blood surrounds them all, and Aloy can smell the still-burning fires where the lower village once stood. Even as she’s leaving, two of the Vanguard jog up, holding a cot between them, a groaning man atop it.
Things are by no means good, but at least the fighting’s stopped. Attention and resources can be paid towards healing and rebuilding. There’s a slight glow around Erend and Talanah, a buoyancy emanating from them that Aloy also feels, knowing they saved the city. It helps that they both have had some of the dirt and blood cleaned off them.
“Snapped clavicle,” Talanah says, pointing with her free hand when Aloy reaches them. “They’re telling me to take it easy until at least the moon’s turn. Captain here finally got himself out of his soiled drawers.”
Erend snorts with mock indignation. “If you’re insinuating I shit myself when we saw that deathbringer, well—” he gives Aloy an impish look and a wink. “It was a near miss.”
Talanah guffaws and Aloy wheezes, immediately regrets it, and chokes out, “Dammit, don’t make me laugh.” Her hand goes to her ribs, which should help, but really, really doesn’t. Her companions give her twin looks of concern and she grits out, “Broken ribs. At least four, maybe more. I’m laid up for the next two cycles.”
Talanah makes a sympathetic noise. “Laid up? Should we get you a palanquin to get you home?”
“Well, I’m not exactly bedridden. I’m just supposed to take it easy.”
She sees it the moment Erend understands; his eyebrows raise. “The warmaid’s been banned from war. I’m sorry about that, Aloy.”
“Oh, I’m right there with you,” Talanah says. “It’s disappointing, but we can drink at the lodge to cope. Erend for sure will be up for that.”
Erend shakes his head. “Certified brain-rattled,” he says, pointing at his skull. “The gash in my leg looks worse, but the head’s more serious, healer says. Can’t sleep until the sun sets tomorrow, and no ale in me for the next few weeks.”
“Ah,” Talanah says. “Seen my share of head cases like that. Then you’re officially banned, Captain.”
She and Aloy make plans to meet up the next day, then Talanah sets off back to the lodge, the mantle of Sunhawk demanding she check in on the hunters and the state of the place.
Aloy is surprised when Erend doesn’t immediately take off in another direction as well. “How’s the Vanguard?”
Erend looks sheepish. “Right,” he says, ducking his head. “I forget I'm captain, now, sometimes. Last time Meridian was in anywhere near these shambles was after the Liberation—and then I just drank and went wherever Ersa told me.”
“Hope the Vanguard aren’t drinking now.”
“They know where they’re needed, at least for a bit. I have a high-priority charge for right now.”
“What are you talking about?”
Erend cranes his head, making a show of looking about. “There’s this pretty girl. She warned us of an invasion, then almost single-handedly took down a deathbringer and reversed a death-call from the Spire. Seen her?”
“I told you, stop making me laugh,” she says, grinning even as she’s suffering.
“No, I mean it, have you seen her? I gotta make sure she’s okay.”
He gets like this sometimes, distancing himself in a way she doesn’t quite get. Still, she plays along. “I saw her. She’s a little banged up, but she’ll pull through.”
“Physically, yeah. Bones will mend. But what about here?” He taps her forehead gently with one finger.
“You’re the one with the head injury, Erend.”
Abruptly, the game ends. “Fire and spit, I’m bunging this all up. I mean to say—how are you? Saving the Spire, avenging your dad. How does it feel?”
“Oh.” The question catches her entirely off guard. The look on his face is so earnest that she can't even avoid the question.
She feels—relief, certainly, that Helis and Hades weren’t able to take the Spire entirely, and the Eclipse were mostly scattered. But for everything else? “I’m tired,” she tells him, because it’s genuinely the only thing she can identify right now in herself.
It occurs to Aloy that she can’t remember the last time someone asked how she was, instead of just dumping all their troubles in her lap.
“Need an arm?” Erend says, offering his as support. “Don’t know how much it’ll help, with your ribs and all.”
“Doing everything hurts,” she complains, but takes his arm anyway. He smells better, no stink of blood and death around him in his clean clothes, and the warmth and strength of him is a comfort. “It’d be best if you could just spirit me directly to my bed, no walking or carrying. Think you can manage that?”
He gives her a quick look, then faces forward again, keeping an eye out so neither of them stumble.
His eyes still look a little dazed. An improvement from how glassy and unfocused they’d looked before seeing the healers, but still—it’s a concern. Aloy remembers how the corruptor, sheared of its launchers, had reared in frustration and lashed out with a tentacle, sweeping Erend out of its path. When Aloy had reached him, he’d been unconscious—always a bad sign. Now, on the streets of Meridian, he’s alive and walking with her, but that horrible sick fear wells in her again. She squeezes his bicep to get his attention. He bends towards her immediately, a small smile on his face. “You’ll do what the healers say, won’t you?” she says. “You’ll take care of yourself?”
“Aw, she’s making me blush. Keep talking like that, and I’ll start thinking you care about me.”
“Erend,” she says flatly, in no mood for his brush-off.
The joking smile slides off his face, and his eyes go back to watching their feet. There’s a long moment of silence.
“I made a promise,” he says, low. “I’ll grow up, I’ll take responsibility. I meant it. I’ll do it for her.”
“And for you,” Aloy says.
He laughs sardonically. “Yeah, and I guess for my own worthless hide.”
She frowns, but can’t find the words to push back against his self-effacing mood. When he drops her off at the door to her rooms, all she can manage to say is, “If you feel like you’re slipping, come see me. I can be a distraction.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt that,” he says. “But I’ll be a mess. Cranky from missed sleep and miserable from missed ale. You don’t want to see me like that.”
“What about your two minutes?" she asks archly.
Erend grins, his mood shifting once more. “Now, for that? I'll come by, for sure I will."
Aloy smiles. "Looking forward to it."
"Gimme a few days. Lots to take care of, with me all grown up, and the city in the state it's in. But I will."
"I'll hold you to that," she says, as he waves and strides off, his head held high.