Chapter Text
“You don't take your braids out and do 'em back up out in the wilds,” Erend observed as Aloy settled in beside him, their backs against the tree trunk. There wasn't much room on the small platform built around it, high above any animals, machines, or bandits that might happen by. It was the closest thing to privacy either of them had overnight since they passed through Meridian, and he was keenly aware of how little space there was to share between the two of them.
“Not if I can help it,” she confirmed.
“Why not?”
Aloy laughed. “It's not as easy as I make it look.”
“Not much is,” Erend said, laughing right along with her. Their mingled voices made a pleasant music, overlaid with cricket-song welling beneath them and the chorus of frogs in the distance.
“Braids are very important to the Nora,” Aloy said. “Special braids can represent specific things, but there's one thing that every braid means.”
He couldn't see her face, sitting side by side as they were, each looking out into the dimming wood beneath the first stars winking in the cold night air. She sounded strange though, her voice a little tight, like what she was trying to tell him was too important to get wrong.
“Yeah?” he prompted gently. “What's that?”
“Strength. A particular kind of strength.”
“Like a machine hunter with a ropecaster?”
Aloy bumped his shoulder with hers.
“A kind I don't know how to make look easy.”
“Humble too,” Erend joked.
“The last time I came through here, I… There wasn't anybody, Erend. Nobody I wanted to come back here for. Nobody out in the world waiting for me. Rost taught me how to be strong like machine cord, to hold a lot on my own, but he couldn't show me how to braid with anybody else's strengths. He tried to tell me, but I didn't want to hear it. We were outcasts; I never saw anybody make each other stronger by depending on each other more. ”
Erend breathed in deep and let the night air clean his lungs before he answered, making sure she had finished saying everything she wanted to. It wasn't quite enough to make sense of, and he'd grown careful not to let his mind run off with any half-forged idea based on one little thing or other Aloy said to him. It was safer not to try to guess where she was going with all this.
“I had the other problem, I think,” Erend confessed to her instead. “So used to being the hammer to Ersa's tongs, I more'n half believed I wasn't worth a softwelded bolt without somebody with me to steer me straight. Somebody strong like she was. Somebody smart who knows their own mind.”
“Somebody who makes it look easy?”
The platform creaked as Erend leaned forward, rubbing a gloved hand over his face. The sound of it startled him, reminding him the edge and the long drop below were both much too close for him to make any thoughtless moves.
“That was a long time ago,” he said. “A Battle of the Alight ago. A Tenakth rebellion and a First Forge ago. A Zenith threat ago. We've been through a lot, you and me. We've got a whole team of friends and allies around us. You're not trying to do it all on your own anymore, and I... We're not the kids we were last time we each passed through these woods.”
Aloy was quiet for a long time. Another creak of the Brave blind told him she was shifting too. He'd said something wrong, something that made her uncomfortable, but douse his forge if he had any idea what or how to make it right.
“You don't slow me down,” she said, to his surprise and equal confusion. Was she talking about that conversation weeks ago, all the way back at the Base?
“I do,” he argued, thinking back even further to the Stand of the Sentinels.
“Well, I don't need – Speed's not the only thing that matters.”
“Hey, you let me come with you this time. I appreciate that.”
Aloy huffed, a vent of serious frustration Erend couldn't help but find endearing.
“Erend, I'm not doing you a favor. You're helping me, not the other way around.”
“Last I checked, I live in this world too. So, tell you what: you save the world again? I'll call it even.”
“You said I know how you feel.”
Now that one sounded like an accusation.
“I don't want you to feel like I'm doing you a favor,” she went on. “I've got my strengths, and you've got yours.”
Erend nodded. “Right, exactly. I can stand on my own two feet. You don't hafta worry about me.”
“But how am I supposed to know how you feel if we're both different people now?”
Erend felt as much as heard her move this time. Next thing he knew, her eyes were piercing into him as keen as the sky-piercing stars glinting in their forest depths.
“Do you still need me to steer you straight?” she asked, her jaw so tight with the effort it took to say the words that they came out halfway to a snarl.
“Whoa there,” Erend cried in surprise, holding up a hand in the darkness to ward her off and meeting hers in the air between them entirely by accident. His fingers tightened over her fingertips and held them, a defensive reflex turning to something even more alarming.
He should turn her loose. Seemed like he was always telling himself that. This time, though, Aloy was holding on right back.
“Plenty of folks out there who'd be happy to be steered by you,” he said.
“But not you,” she rushed ahead for him, shifting her weight to back away till her hand tugged against his.
“Now, hold on –”
“You're holding on enough for both of us.”
“I have been,” he admitted, “And maybe I shouldn't have, but steel my soul, I've been doing my best to put what I should do in front of what I wanna do.”
He could swear he felt her pulse course faster through her hand as he held it tight. Or maybe that was his.
“Just tell me what you want, Erend,” she growled, about as tender and inviting as a Snapmaw.
She was… embarrased. She wasn't used to being so vulnerable, and by the Forge, the Savior of Meridian, Annointed of the Nora, and Champion of the Tenakth didn't know what to do with herself!
Erend loosed his grip, and Aloy's slipped away, their fingers untwining and slipping over one another's palms. The emptiness each of them held felt cold now.
“I want to figure out how to make my way without getting in yours. I want to help you save the world – again – and see you let yourself have a life on the other side of that,” Erend said, the leather of his glove creaking as he flexed his hand. “And right now I really, really wanna know what you want.”
“I've been trying to tell you,” Aloy grumbled.
Erend chuckled. “We both know I'm no scholar. If you've been saying it, you’re gonna hafta say it plainer. Now, does it come as a disappointment that I think I might be past needing steering?”
“Do you really think I want more responsibility on my shoulders?”
“Aloy,” Erend said, the steadiness of his own voice surprising him as his heart hammered like a stampede of Striders. “Tell me what you do want.”
“Beta says —”
“Beta's smart, but she's not you. I wanna know how you feel.”
“Like an idiot,” Aloy grumbled.
Erend barked a laugh so loud it spooked a nesting bird from the upper canopy above them.
“You wanna teach me to braid like the Nora?” he asked, watching her cheeks darken in the cold, colorless light of stars and moon. “Your strengths and mine?”
“I told you, I never learned how to do that.”
“Good thing you don't hafta do it alone.”
Her hand found his in the dark again, and this time there was no mistaking it. She wove her fingers between his and held on like he was her lifeline.
Her fingers looked so much more slender entwined with his, but they were strong enough to hold him.