Chapter Text
When Seyka offers something beyond friendship, Aloy says no.
It’s the right decision. The strategic one.
Though she likes Seyka, she doesn’t know how to date and this is the exact wrong time for the distraction of learning. Nemesis is coming. She needs to be focused on that - can’t afford a heart that flutters with strange, soft feelings every time she thinks of Seyka’s smile.
Besides, there’s so much she’d need to explain. Even with zero relationship experience, she’s pretty sure you're not supposed to hide important things when you start one. Like, for example, the fact that you’re a clone of the woman who saved humanity a thousand years ago, birthed at the direction of a sentient AI for the express purpose of saving it again.
Aloy likes Seyka in part because she doesn't know all that; she treats Aloy as a person instead of a god or a savior or a science experiment wrapped in human skin. That attitude might not survive Aloy's origin story, and if a voice at the back of her mind whispers that that’s just an excuse – that she’s scared of how good things could be if she really let Seyka in – all the more reason to stay away.
She has to do what’s right for the world. That will be harder if she’s promised to one person above everyone else.
So Aloy says no, climbs aboard her waterwing, and determinedly does not look back as Seyka disappears into the distance.
;;
Base offers the comfort of familiarity.
Returning to it, Aloy feels herself reset. This is her place, where she’s fashioned belonging on her own terms, and if there’s a twinge of regret in wondering whether her place could’ve become Seyka’s, too…
Well. Maybe in another life.
In this one, there are things to do.
Thanks to the data from Londra’s Focus, they have a list of places to look for tech that might help in the fight against Nemesis. It’s their first real lead, and though it’s a long shot that’s infinitely better than no hope at all. Aloy throws herself into it with the same desperate enthusiasm as her search for the GAIA backup, only this time Beta and Sylens are working at her side. (Beta literally, sifting through data at the next desk, and Sylens metaphorically – his signature portentous brooding needs a room to itself).
It’s nice to share an impossible task, but it’s also grinding, repetitive work. After the first week Aloy is itching for machines to kill, and by the end of the second she catches herself thinking that it might be fun if another Zenith runaway showed up to give her a concrete enemy to battle. Which she immediately scolds herself for – Londra came with great human cost, and she doesn’t wish more of that on anyone.
But she is tired of standing in place staring at clues that might lead nowhere, and despite her best efforts, her mind starts to wander. Or, more accurately, her mind starts pointing insistently in a single, unhelpful direction.
Seyka.
That last conversation.
All the things she could’ve said other than no.
She tries to focus on the work she should be doing, but after one slip it’s like a wall blown open with firegleam: there’s nothing to stop her from revisiting Seyka. Again and again, at the slightest opportunity. Researching a Metallurgic weapons facility turns into remembering how it feels to fight alongside Seyka, the pure kinetic exhilaration of working with someone who’s a collaborative hunter in addition to a good one. Seyka is refreshingly uninterested in personal glory – she’ll tie up machines so that Aloy gets the perfect killing blow, or taunt her way through being a distraction with complete enthusiasm.
Anything for the cause. That’s Seyka in a sentence.
And there Aloy goes thinking about her in the present tense, like she’s not finished business.
This is a new problem for Aloy – thinking too much about someone. She’s spent years fighting on behalf of humanity in the abstract, on the zoomed-out scale where individual hopes and desires become too small to see, which means interpersonal interactions haven’t been her priority. They used to feel like an extravagance she didn’t have time for, and if she’s trying to do better now, to carve out space for kindness and care even when there’s a world to save, it’s a definite work in progress.
That’s why Seyka comes as such a surprise. With her, the care is effortless. Instinctual. Persistent, too, growing stronger even as Aloy wills it away.
“Aloy?” Beta says, with a tone that suggests she’s called out a few times already. Aloy blinks, snapping back into the moment, and offers a sheepish smile.
“Yes?”
“Are you…ok? You were staring off into space for a while.”
“It’s nothing. I’m just” – daydreaming about a girl – “hungry, I think.”
Though the deflection is weak, Beta accepts it. There are upsides to keeping company with the undersocialized.
“It is lunchtime. I wonder what we have left.”
“Mostly ration packs.” Beta pulls a face, and yeah. Food from the 2060s is nutritious enough, but it's not exactly an enjoyable experience. “I could hunt something?”
“Yes! Please. That would be great.”
Aloy nods, grabbing her bow and strapping it to her back, the movement fluid with habit. She’s halfway to the door when she glances over at Beta, who’s already absorbed back into the search.
Beta has been working so hard. When was the last time she went outside?
Aloy almost leaves without saying anything, but her thoughts return to Seyka and for once the detour is useful. She encounters siblings mostly as tragic backstories - she knows Erend loved Ersa, for instance, but his struggle is figuring out how to exist in a world without her. Which isn't that instructive in terms of how to act when another genetic copy of Elisabet Sobeck drops from the sky, familiar in some ways but unspeakably foreign and frustrating in others. Seyka and Kina, though. There's an analogy there. Seyka doesn't get so much about Kina, including her entire experience with Londra, but it's still clear how much they mean to each other. The strains in their relationship don't cancel out the love. That Aloy can understand, and thinking about it makes her reflect on the kind of sister she wants to be.
So she turns to ask: “Do you want to come hunt?”
Beta startles.
“Me? Hunt?”
“Only if you want to. I could teach you? Or you could watch. I don’t know, you’ve just been stuck at that desk and I thought it might be nice to move a little. See some of the world. But again, no pressure.”
By the end of her ramble, Beta is smiling.
“That sounds nice. Let me put on” - Beta pauses - "actually, I don't know that I have any clothes suited for hunting."
"Come look at my stuff. We'll find you something."
;;
Hunting is a good distraction, but night finds Aloy lying in bed and once again thinking of Seyka.
This time the memory of flying holds her captive, the wind in her hair and Seyka’s hands light on her waist. That lightness was striking even in the moment: Seyka was terrified being so far from the ground, but she managed to touch with careful moderation, like drawing too much attention to the point of contact would be a fate worse than death.
For someone who knows her way around an argument, Seyka was so, so gentle with touch. It was sweet, and almost disappointing. Aloy wanted Seyka to cling to her – may have added some unnecessary swoops and whorls to their flight path in order to make that happen. Still, Seyka restrained herself, and Aloy can only imagine what it would feel like for Seyka to hold her with strength instead of caution.
She calls up the moment in her Focus recording, projecting sea and sky onto the walls of her room. Then she puts a hand on her hip, and lets her eyes slip closed, and she can almost believe she’s back in the air with Seyka, the whole world unfolding beneath them.
“Aloy,” comes GAIA’s voice. Aloy jerks so hard she falls out of bed. “You have been viewing this Focus capture for forty-seven minutes, which is ten times your average in data analysis. Can I be of assistance? I detect no relevant information at the timestamp you are viewing, but perhaps there are subtleties that escape my programming. I would like to improve in this capacity.”
“You’re not missing anything,” Aloy says, from an undignified heap on the floor. “I’m not…it’s not about research.”
GAIA is silent for a beat, giving Aloy the chance to explain further. She has no idea how to do that, so she just clambers back into bed feeling small and exposed, wishing there were a way to hide from an AI that has access to everything you do and see.
“Can I ask you a personal question?”
Absolutely not, Aloy wants to say. But GAIA is Elisabet’s legacy. She built GAIA to be curious, to care about the world beyond reason and efficiency, and it would feel wrong to deny GAIA expression of that, however awkward the outcome.
Besides, not talking about Seyka isn’t helping. Might as well try something else.
“Ok.”
“Is there a reason you have not contacted Seyka since your return? She seemed a useful ally, and a friend you appreciated. And although she is not fully incorporated into our network, you have her contact saved.”
“I’m not sure she’d want to talk to me.”
There’s more to it, but even admitting that much aloud feels like a charger horn to the gut.
Aloy has plenty of experience wanting things she can’t have. She spent her childhood desperately hoping to find a mother that doesn't exist, and after Rost died she wanted nothing more than to have him back. Now she has to miss Varl, too - her first real friend, who never got to hear how much that meant to her. She even misses Talanah, who’s out there in the world but isn’t here, with only a flower to occupy the space at base that could have been hers.
So, yes. Aloy knows longing.
But there’s a unique devastation to longing for something you could’ve had. She can't blame the world for taking Seyka from her: Seyka offered and she said no, and yet she can't stop wanting anyway. She still thinks she made the logical choice, but she’s less and less sure it was the right one.
“Human behavior can be unpredictable,” GAIA says. “But based on my calculations, there is an 84.3% chance that Seyka would like to talk to you.”
Aloy’s immediate thought: that leaves 15.7%. If they talk and it goes badly, she’ll lose even imagination.
“Thanks, GAIA. I’ll think about it.”
;;
Aloy doesn’t talk to Seyka.
She also doesn’t stop thinking about Seyka, but as time progresses she gets used to it. Seyka is just there, in a corner of her mind, constant as the maintenance subroutines GAIA always has running. Aloy gives up trying to fight it – somehow this is the one battle she can't win – and instead works on balance. She thinks about Seyka and she thinks around Seyka, to all the other things she needs to accomplish.
It works, more or less. That’s good enough – people live with inconvenient feelings all the time, and Aloy resigns herself to being part of the crowd. She probably deserves it, after all the times someone expressed interest and she didn't care enough to reject them gently.
Then Alva calls to say she’s bringing Seyka to base.
“What?” Aloy says, like disbelief can save her from the news.
“We’re done here – the fleet is reunited and they’ll set sail tomorrow, and after that I’m bringing Seyka to celebrate. I know you’ll want to see her, and I want her to take a look at…”
Alva keeps talking, but the static in Aloy's ears is too loud to hear the rest.
Alva is bringing Seyka to base.
Alva is bringing Seyka to base.
“Isn’t that great?” Alva finishes, with the easy cheer of someone who has no idea she’s just sealed Aloy’s doom.
“Yeah,” Aloy forces herself to say. “Great.”
;;
As Seyka’s arrival approaches, Aloy loses the ability to function.
It happens in degrees. The night before, she can’t sleep, jerking awake every hour from restless dreams. The day of, she paces from room to room, heading into one space with a goal in mind only for it to fragment by the time she gets there. She makes the mistake of stumbling into Sylens’ domain in this state, and his scoff is pure disdain.
“Aloy, if you insist on wasting your own time and potential, at least have the courtesy to respect mine.”
He glares her back into the common area and locks the door behind her. Beta winces in sympathy, then retreats to the server room – maybe to hide from the impending new person, maybe to make her own escape from Aloy’s distraction.
That means Aloy waits out the afternoon alone, growing increasingly twitchy as time ticks toward sunset. Alva mentioned wanting to avoid traveling at night. She and Seyka should be here soon; they could be here any minute.
Finally, the proximity alert sounds. Aloy’s entire body reacts to it, breath going shallow and heart starting to pound, and suddenly she can’t remember how to arrange herself in space. What is the appropriate protocol for a welcome? Should she be standing by a desk? Sitting on a bench? She tries both but neither feels right, and when the door whooshes open she’s caught awkward and stranded in the middle of the room.
When the door whooshes open, Seyka is there.
She looks the same as Aloy remembers, which is a surprise. It shouldn't be, probably, but Aloy has spent so much thought on her in the time they've been apart that she expects some outward manifestation of it. How can Seyka remain unchanged, when Aloy has had to reorder her entire understanding of what happened between them? Besides, she knows Seyka as a creature of open water: she’s made for salt drying on her skin and sun glinting in her hair, and it feels impossible for her to be here, deep inside a snow-capped mountain with artificial light tinting her blue.
Seyka seems unfazed by her own out-of-placeness. She looks around, her gaze assessing, with a soldier’s instinct to map terrain and threats.
After an eternity, their eyes meet.
“Aloy,” Seyka says, with a quick nod in her direction. It’s the kind of gesture that could mean anything, and Aloy scours it for intention. Is Seyka happy to see her? Indifferent? Counting down the seconds until she can leave? It shouldn’t matter, but Aloy finds herself helpless before the need to understand what Seyka is thinking, to do anything in her power to make sure Seyka is ok. She'd held out a (distant) hope that seeing Seyka again might make her feelings more manageable - maybe the reality of Seyka would pale in comparison to memory. But between the sweat on her palms and the skittery nervousness of her thoughts it’s clear Seyka's effect has, if anything, grown.
“We made it!” Alva exclaims and, right. She’s there, too. She at least is transparent in her enthusiasm, tossing Aloy a greeting as she tugs Seyka across the threshold, her hand familiar on Seyka’s wrist. “There’s so much I want to show you. This place is amazing – the technology, the knowledge! It’s like living as an Ancestor! Or, well, like a good Ancestor. Not a creepy one who start cults. Sorry. Is it too soon to say that?”
Seyka snorts, eyes rounding with amusement. Alva’s monologue transitions into a welcome tour and Seyka lets herself be led around, paying dutiful attention to each thing Alva shows her. It’s strange watching them together, and not just because Aloy is having trouble believing Seyka is here.
They seem close. Quite close, so much so that Aloy feels like an outsider in her own secret hideout. She wonders what transpired between them, beyond the mechanics of reuniting a tribe.
“Anyway,” Alva says, after more than an hour of excited narration. “I’m going to check on a few things. Make yourself at home!”
She disappears into the stairs, and Aloy looks up from the work she’s been pretending to do to find Seyka watching her.
It's a wary kind of watching, heavy with unfamiliar distance. The last time they were together, Seyka was open and hopeful, holding her heart on outstretched hand. It makes sense that things between them would change, but this version of her is so different that Aloy isn't sure she can claim to know Seyka at all. She has no idea what's happening in Seyka's head. If only her Focus could decode expressions as easily as machine weak points.
“So,” Aloy says, when the silence becomes unbearable. “You’ve seen the base now.”
She wants to kick herself as soon as the words come out. She’s spent months stuck on Seyka, yet apparently that’s her best opening line.
“I have. Alva’s introduction was…thorough.”
Aloy tries to say something encouraging: I’m happy you’re here or it’s nice to see you or even I’ve been thinking about you a lot, as terrifying as it would be to admit that. What happens instead:
“You two must have gotten close.”
“Sorry?”
“She was Diviner Alva last time we talked. No titles this time. It's a noticeable change.”
Aloy can hear the accusation in her own voice, and Seyka’s face does a thing – her jaw goes hard and anger gathers in the space between her eyebrows. Well, at least she's not so inscrutable anymore. Aloy braces for an explosion, except when Seyka opens her mouth she sighs instead of yelling.
“You and I haven’t talked in a while, Aloy.”
The words are a statement of fact, not a challenge, and somehow that’s worse than all the times Seyka got angry at her. Anger suggests passion - you have to care to think someone is worth fighting with. This, though, is just hollow. No emotion, no investment, like Aloy matters no more than a random person glimpsed on the street.
“Right.” Aloy casts around for a way to keep Seyka talking. Though their reunion isn't going well, Seyka is still standing in front of her, flesh and blood and voice, and that's too much of an opportunity to give up. She has the sense that this is a pivotal moment; the fate of the world turns on whether she can convince Seyka she's worth a real conversation. But, she realizes with rising panic, she’s so used to running from people that she has no real strategies for engaging them. “Do you, uh. Do you have a place to sleep yet? There are some bunks no one uses, and most of the rooms are empty right now. I’m sure the others wouldn’t mind-”
“Alva offered me space in her room.”
“Oh. That's nice of her."
"I think I'll get some rest now. It was a long trip."
"Well, if you need anything else, I’ll be here.”
"Thanks," Seyka says, eyes on the floor, already walking away.
;;
That night, instead of sleeping, Aloy stares at the wall leading to Alva’s room.
Seyka is on the other side of it, just a handful of steps away. It would take less than a minute to go to her, and Aloy wants to desperately.
She wants to but not long ago, Seyka offered and she said no. Her conviction has weathered into regret, but you can't change your answer once the question is gone.