Out of Cryo | A Horizon: Zero Dawn Fanfiction

Chapter 9: Confidante

Aloy and I didn't speak to each other for the remainder of that night...or the next night for that matter. In fact, for the remainder of our trip to Meridian I kept to myself, not even talking to HEPHAESTUS and only speaking to the redhead in awkward, monosyllabic responses to questions like "Are you hungry" and "Do you want to stop to rest?". As for Aloy, after I had gone to bed that night, she had grabbed the spear she had gifted to me and set it next to me without a word. She proceeded to maintain a noticeable distance from me, but I had been around her long enough to see through the wall she put up to hide her emotions.

I could tell she was hurt. That I had hurt her.

The warm days crossing the desert dragged as we made our way to the Sun Carja capital. Normally I would have entertained myself by talking to Aloy or our new AI companion, who seemed perfectly content waddling alongside us on the barren road to Meridian. But after what happened that fateful night by the pond, I couldn't bring myself to say much of anything, let alone hold a conversation.

She kissed me. Like, really kissed me.

And I had kissed her back.

I didn't know what to think honestly. Having absolutely no experience with any of this shit, I didn't know if she was my type or not (obviously I didn't fucking have a type) but I knew I was attracted to her.

Who wouldn't be? The memory of my conversation with Erend just a day after I had met Aloy surfaced. He had admitted that she wasn't interested in him romantically but even to my inexperienced eyes I could tell that at one point he had probably developed a small crush on her.

She's smart, brave, funny, can jump off cliffs without dying, has amazing eyes-

Clearly I had, too.

I shook myself from my thoughts. No. Whatever it was I felt for Aloy, the fact remained that I wasn't ready to jump into anything with anyone yet...if I ever did. As bleak as that sounded, it was a reality I would rather accept than risking the friendship of the only person I had in this world.

She hadn't tried to talk to me about it. I think she knew that I was still mourning well, everything. I was frustrated at myself. Things had been getting more bearable. I had been able to hold conversations without tearing up or choking on my words every time I referenced home when around Aloy. I had grown comfortable around her, trusted her – even with my life at times.

It had been like something from a movie – the fireflies, the music, the glow from the campfire – and the kiss had been no less than fucking magical. But the pain of knowing what I might have missed with Jenna had cut through my heart and it was all too much to handle. I was a thousand years from everyone I loved and I wasn't ready to let them go.

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"Aloy! Becks! You're her-ack, move aside, you idiots!" I grinned as we stood at the gates of the great city of Meridian and watched Erend push through the crowd of people to get to us.

The City of the Sun was fucking ridiculous in how beautiful it was. It stood on the top of a mesa, overlooking what appeared to be a jungle to the south and the farmlands in the villages beneath it, accessible by the elevators that had been constructed on the sides of the mesa. The people there had built upwards – multi story buildings were everywhere and the city was designed so intricately that it was almost like it had been planned from the start, something that I thought I had seen the last of in my time. That the people of this world could construct something so amazing (and use so much fucking bronze) made me feel not so shitty about our generation (well, Ted Faro) destroying all knowledge of our civilization leaving these people to start over. From our position, we could see the towering spire – MINERVA, the signal tower that broadcasted the instructions to shut down the Faro robots and later, stop HADES.