Work Text:
Demons come in many forms. Tonight, it’s the little Utaru girl, no older than four, staring at Nil through flames.
When he first sees her at Cinnabar Sands, she wails from the red grass, screams piercing the night as fire blazes around them. The white paint on her face runs with tears and blood. He stares at her as she continues to cry, rooted to the earth, immobile.
When he sees her these days, she makes no sound when she finally opens her mouth, but Nil hears it as a ringing in his ears all the same.
These days, the little girl has taken to staring at him first for uncomfortable lengths of time. She bores up at him from under long, dark lashes, her round eyes holding more horrors than most men would see in a lifetime.
Looking into the glassiness of her gaze, Nil sees those horrors too. He sees himself carving a path through Tenakth in front of her. He sees the young Utaru mother, her harvest scattered, dead in the sand. Her blood sinks into the already-red earth, hit by a Carja arrow as she tried to bring her child to safety.
A Carja arrow Nil is never sure is – or isn’t – his.
(After, he begins to adorn his arrows with red feathers, so he is never uncertain again.)
In his memory, Nil recalls his general finding him staring at the child, blade at his side, not knowing what to do with her. He remembers other soldiers fleeing for their lives as the Tenakth pushed forward and paying no mind to the child they nearly trample, or the Utaru bodies slaughtered as collateral, their harvest interrupted by a battle that was never theirs.
But his general does: He finds him, sees the girl, and orders Nil to get her to safety, get her to Plainsong.
The attempt to follow this order ultimately saves Nil’s life. But they never do make it to Plainsong. Halfway, they run into Utaru farmers hiding in a thicket. Nil gives them the girl, and he tells them to run.
They do. They take the girl, prying her from Nil’s leg as she clings to his calf, and run toward Plainsong.
Straight into a Carja trap. Nil freezes and is horrified to hear the echo of blast bombs exploding, but no screams or moans of survivors. He knows there are none.
His heart is heavy as he returns to the scene of the battle, only to find it ended in his absence. Any remaining Carja in Cinnabar Sands are slaughtered by the Tenakth. Survivors are taken captive, including his general. Nil retreats to the Daunt, per the orders relayed prior to battle, and enters an entirely fresh hell there.
The girl isn’t Nil’s only demon, but she is the one he sees tonight, appearing from the flames at the roaring campfire as Wikkoh roasts a boar on a spit.
The first time he sees her that night, it’s only for a few moments. She stares from behind the flames, as frightened as the day in the Sands, unnoticed by Elottak and Josekk as they pass a waterskin between them.
Nil is not an irrational man. He knows she isn’t there, and the fact that he sees her is a product of his unusual imagination – and, likely, the pint of that Oseram concoction Haxx brought back from Hidden Ember. Drunken Ealdorman. No. Corrupt Ealdorman. No, no, that isn’t it either.
It matters little.
Ah. He’s in his head again. Drink tends to do that to him, as does battle. His imagination toying with him again.
He once had a commander – not the one from Cinnabar Sands, of course – who told him he was in his head too much. Nil had asked him if he was not an efficient soldier; in response, he was told he was his best. It wasn’t his manner on the killing fields, but off that was a concern.
He felt too much. Thought too much. Spoke too much. He needed to do less of that. When Nil asked what he suggested, his commander told him he had a working cock and could figure it out.
Perhaps Nil had taken that too much to heart in those days. He had worked his way through fellow soldiers in his rank before seeking the challenge of those above. He learned that rank itself did not seem to matter between the sheets, not when he could bring Jiran’s most fearsome Kestrels to their knees and plead him for release.
He developed… another kind of reputation among the Carja, one that had nothing to do with his skill with a blade or the precision of his bow. And for a while it was amusing. Entertaining. Fun, even, to join a new squadron and watch his soldiers size him up and wonder which rumour they heard first.
But when the Raids moved further west, it wasn’t fun anymore. Not when the Sun-King’s orders were to bring in civilians for slavery or sacrifice. Nil enjoyed a fight, and the Tenakth were among the greatest he’d ever had, but a civilian was not an opponent.
But he was a soldier, and could never put a claw-footed boot out of line. Finding pleasure in the warmth of another felt like being touched by the ashes the dead left behind, so Nil satisfied himself by not satisfying others. The release they craved was not one he would give them, no matter how much they begged.
At the very least, Nil thinks as he tips the Dirty Ealdorman back and swallows (fuck, that isn’t it either), he never took actions to sully his honour, on-or-off the battlefield.
He hears the wings in the dark, sees the children lift their heads and hands in greeting, and a few moments later, feels the warmth of Aloy’s body as she parks herself next to him at the fire. Her arms are bare as they brush against his, and she takes the skin from his hands and has a swig.
It isn’t long before her hand slips into his and she leads him to his own shelter.
He’s made a home for himself among the ruins surrounding the track. The walls might have crumbled, and the ceiling may well collapse on him someday, but for now he has found a piece of comfort in the desert.
Once it was bare within, only his chest of personal possessions and a tightly-wound pallet for his bedroll within. Now, there are signs of Aloy scattered about – pieces of armour she left behind, a handful of weapons she broke in the field and insists that she’ll fix, and a small triangular metal relic that matches the one above her ear – and Nil has stopped trying to put order to her chaos. Whenever he does, she comes back and complains that she can never find anything, so now he leaves her things where she drops them.
He may not admit to liking the mess, but he does appreciate that it’s hers.
She comes to him almost regularly now.
*
A month after he unmasked himself for her, hoping he would be enough of a prize to make their game across the west worth it, she returns to the desert. The children are at the settlement, wanting to try the Oseram’s floating orb, and Nil stays back with the Chargers.
She seems… discontented. Nil asks if there is something wrong as she sits across the fire from him and stares into the flames. Her cheeks darken with a sheepish grin. “I guess I was hoping for a race tonight,” she admits.
Nil’s blood already begins to boil with the anticipation of the race, and his heart skips a beat… but that sensation, he knows, means something else. He smiles, stands, offers her his hand to pull her to her feet. “Then I would hate to disappoint you,” he says, and she grins and allows him to help her up.
With only the two of them on the track, Aloy rides more viciously than ever and holds nothing back. Their knees knock as she barrells her mount into his, pushing him closer to the edge. Her lips pull back from her teeth in a concentrated grimace, but her eyes are bright. Twenty feet from the finish line, her blow from her club knocks his Charger off its feet, and she whirls around on her mount to fire a shock arrow for good measure.
When he crosses the line, she’s waiting for him. He lifts his mask and smiles, starting to speak, but she turns away from him before he can.
Toward his shelter.
He follows her, and she takes him to bed, working his body as expertly as if she’s spent a hundred nights with him, and in each other they find the mutual release they crave. After, she makes no promises of when he will see her again, but she knows where to find him when she feels the need.
*
In the months that have passed since, she’s spent more time in his arms than on the track, and Nil has no complaints.
It isn’t all sex. They find times to talk, before and after, about what they’re up to these days mostly – though Nil doesn’t quite understand everything Aloy says, and not much changes with him in the desert. Aloy shows him how to braid her hair the way she likes and he does it with her. He teaches her how to properly apply Tenakth paint herself after she attempts to replicate his look and fails (“Miserably,” she says) adorably.
And when they do strip down, Nil… expands her borders. She gives him her trust and he shows her different ways of achieving the release she needs so badly. He’ll never forget the look on her face the first time he suggested she get on her hands and knees, but she listened when he promised it would be worth her while. The sounds she made as he pounded from behind had brought him to his own edge, and when she bent her elbows to lower herself to his bed, her ass tilted upward for his viewing pleasure…
That was the first time he climaxed before she did. He’d apologised with a chuckle when he caught his breath, and then had rolled on his back and held her above him to bring her pleasure with his tongue instead.
One day, he knows he’ll broach the subject of feelings above and beyond desire. Nil is well aware of his own and has a good sense of hers, but she isn’t ready to admit it or handle the implications. And Nil isn’t quite ready for such a conversation either, he knows. Not when there are still bits of him in pieces scattered about the east and west.
This doesn’t stop him from lowering to the bedroll with her on his hips and laying her down, holding and kissing her as tenderly as their first night together in the Forbidden West. Tonight, she doesn’t have her frantic, needful energy. She doesn’t have her rage or her desperation. Tonight she takes her time, she’s smiling, she even laughs as his hair tickles her throat when he kisses her chest.
She’s taken to Tenakth armour as naturally as he has, the echoes and promise of battle and glory beckoning with each piece of metal, and he unbuckles the leather fastenings of her chest plate to loosen it over her head. Her bindings are next, the freckles splashed across her chest a canvas for his lips as her arms raise over her head for him to slip the fabric over.
For a moment, everything comes to an abrupt halt when the top gets stuck during removal. It’s caught on a machine part spiking from Nil’s leg brace on the right side of her ribs, and her chest bindings are tugged back down. Nil stops, Aloy’s top pinning her arms by her ears, the material obscuring her face above her lips.
“Oops,” he chuckles. Aloy laughs beneath him and he reaches for the snag on his armour, but pauses before the fix. Instead, he takes a moment to lean down and press his lips to hers, surprising her in her temporarily-blinded and immobile state. Aloy shudders against him, and lets out a whine against his mouth.
Then he plucks the fabric from his armour and removes it from her body. They sink into each other, his arms wrapping around her shoulders to bring her closer to his chest, and Nil gives chase to her release.
By the time they finish, Aloy is on top of him, resting flat against his chest with her head under his chin. She lays there for several long beats, Nil’s hand stroking down her hair and spine, until she peels herself away with a sigh and sits up, swinging her legs around the slightly-raised pallet. His hand rests on her back.
“Do you remember…” She trails off and her lower lip slips under her teeth. A shy smile appears on her profile and Nil draws his arms back. Watching her curiously, he props himself on his elbows and waits.
When she doesn’t say anything, he sits up further and strokes his knuckles down her arm, then slips his fingers between hers when he reaches her hand. He brings it to his lips and presses into her palm, then each of her fingers in turn. Aloy smiles gently and leans into him, bringing her other hand around to cup his cheek while she kisses him.
“… when you went up against that Tremortusk? Not the fight, but when I saw you after.”
He does. He remembers both.
*
Pekka and Haxx should never be allowed to hunt together and everyone knows it, but they are the ones to go out to replenish the track that day. Apparently, Haxx spotted a Shell-Walker convoy, thinking their cargo holds would be full of blaze and other usable bits.
Then Pekka sees the Tremortusk, and believes that they can bring it down and strip its parts for months.
Haxx later says he told Pekka it was a bad idea, but Pekka went after it anyway.
Pekka, on the other hand, claims it was Haxx who shot the first arrow.
It’s their luck that the Tremortusk turns out to be a hunter-killer machine, and is not content to resume its sentry when they run out of arrows and decide to live to fight again. Instead, it chases them back to the track. Nil hears its mechanical trumpet, feels its steps quake the earth beneath him. He grabs for his bow and quiver, launching himself to his feet from his lounge on the sand, the second he hears Pekka screaming at them to “Fucking move!”
Nil doesn’t run. Neither do the kids, and after Josekk throws Pekka and Haxx more arrows and other ammunition, the seven of them turn to fight it together.
The great machine is down to its last legs when it finds its final bit of fire. It charges more swiftly than anyone expects, and Nil sees Wikkoh get his legs caught on exposed piping from the sand. The Tremortusk goes straight for him.
Nil sprints for him and slides, grabbing Wikkoh’s fallen spike thrower on the way and leaping to his feet from his back. Taking aim, he draws his arm back, and throws the javelin with all his might. Behind him, he hears Attah and Josekk untangling Wikkoh from the piping and dragging him to safety.
Then the Tremortusk’s trunk swings around and hits Nil square in the chest. As he goes flying, he hears the exploding tip of the spike thrower burst from deep inside the Tremortusk, and the machine is defeated. And so is Nil.
Something hard cracks as he lands. He feels his head swim, and hears an all-too-familiar ringing in his ears. He’s sure his eyes are open, but everything around him is… white. Bright. Too Bright. He can’t see.
There’s a body scrambling next to him, hands reaching for his head and pulling the shattered halves of his mask away from his face. Elottak is speaking, but her voice is slow, pulled through molasses. Elottak. Elottak. Elottak is the best at patching injuries. Wikkoh is the best at fixing machines, but Elottak is good with people.
Hands cradle his head. Others press rags into his ribs. Water is poured over him, washing away the blood he knows is in his hair.
He needs to cover his face, stop the water from washing the paint away, but he can barely move. It doesn’t seem to matter; the children cup around his forehead with their hands, diverting the water’s path, while another cleanses the wound. The brightness begins to fade, but his vision is blurry. So blurry he thinks he sees the face of an Utaru child staring back at him. Then Nil fades.
He comes to in his shelter, finally, days later, and Aloy is there. The Utaru child is gone.
“They said you took on a Tremortusk all by yourself. A hunter-killer, at that.” Her fingers wind together in her lap as she sits on the edge of his pallet. For some reason, she can’t meet his gaze.
“Is that what they said?” The children, for one reason or another, have exaggerated what happened for his benefit. Nil tries to rise, but a shock of pain through bandaged ribs prevents him from doing so. Aloy puts her hands on his shoulders and forces him down. “And what did you say?”
“I said they were full of shit.”
Nil remembers that laughter causes him to wince, and that Aloy tells him to rest and get better, and she starts to leave. Nil remembers stopping her with a hand on her wrist and asking if she wouldn’t mind keeping him company.
She does stay, a fact that still surprises him now. She sits with him and asks him what really happened and he tells her. She lay next to him and asks if this was his worst injury. (“An injury as caused by a machine, yes, this is my worst one.”)
She drifts off to sleep next to him and he memorises her until his own eyelids droop.
It’s still dark when he wakes to the feel of her leaving. Gently, he grabs her arm and pulls her to him again, this time guiding her lips to his. But when she leans over him and he shudders in pain, she pulls back and says she doesn’t want to hurt him.
He manages to shift over on his pallet to make more room for her. “You won’t,” he promises. And when she’s laying next to him again, Nil murmurs into her ear, “If I could touch you right now, what would you like me to do?”
She takes a moment to consider – not just the words, but the implication behind them. He strokes a hand along her cheek and feels the heat of her blush in the dark.
“Well,” she says slowly, tasting her words, “I would want you to… kiss me. Here.” Her pointer finger presses against her throat, over the pulse Nil loves to taste. “Then… here.” Her middle and fourth finger touch the dip in her clavicle.
“Keep going,” he encourages her, and she does. Tentatively at first, as if embarrassed by her words – the expression of her desires – but Nil eases her into it, and she relaxes after a while. Her eyes close as her body begins to move, and she guides Nil on a journey through her fantasies of the ways in which she longs for him to touch her.
“You… umm… you put your hands in my hair. Both of them. You run your hands through, and… You move up, kiss me on the mouth. You kiss… my face. My… my nose, my eyelids, my cheeks, and then my mouth again. But this time you… you put a little more into it. Your mouth is open and I open mine, and I can taste you. You taste like… some kind of spice from the east. I like it.
“And then you uh… you start to touch me. You put your hand here, just under my throat. You move to here, and you can feel… you can feel my heart. It’s… beating pretty hard.
“And we’re… we’re both already naked, there’s no… no need to undress, that’s long done, and… you cup my breast. You squeeze – gently – and you rub your thumb over my… nipple. You don’t pinch hard, but just enough that I feel it. I feel it. You kiss my other breast, the freckle you like, and you run your tongue… up the underside… I’m… I’m sensitive there, you know that. You know that, so you do it slow, like you’re teasing me. I like that too.
“But then you kiss my nipple, put your teeth on it just a bit, just a little pull, and it feels… good.”
There’s a tenderness to the actions she describes. When she speaks of how Nil kisses her, the actions are steeped in softness. Her breath catches, her breasts heaving beneath her armour, when she talks about how his face feels between her legs, especially when he hasn’t shaved in a few days.
“It’s… rougher. But not bad. You’re gentle, but the texture… the stubble… helps. The friction. It feels good. It feels so… so good when you kiss me… on my…”
She gestures downward, but Nil doesn’t speak, doesn’t break their immersion. He’s transfixed by her as she describes what she wants, what she truly desires from him when she gets it in her head to come to the desert.
“On my cunt,” she breathes at last, the word escaping her lips like a prayer. Vaguely, Nil wonders if she’s never said it before.
“You get me close,” she continues, and her hand finds Nil’s and grips, “but you don’t let me come. I’m there, I’m right there, and you know exactly what you need to do to finish me, but you don’t do it. You stop and come back up to kiss me, and you rub… you rub that spot with your fingers, real slow, and then you rub it with you, and then you enter me and you just start to fuck.”
Her hand grips his tighter, her hips rolling slowly into the air. Her other hand is still on her throat, and hasn’t moved since she first laid it against her skin.
“Not hard, not wild, just… calm, but passionate. And it’s… it’s so fucking good, Nil, the way you move into me, like a dance, you have a rhythm and you’re steady, you keep it, and you grab my hips and you tilt me up, just a bit, but my legs go around you and… you’re not deep, but your cock is hitting that spot inside, you know it, the one… The One. And you keep going, and going, and you’re kissing me, and it’s so fucking good, Nil.
“We come together,” she exhales at the end of things. “But you make sure I start first, and after, you hold me close, just me in your arms—”
Here, she stops, breaking from her fantasy as her eyes snap open and all motion comes to an abrupt halt. She seems to think that after everything she’s described, only now has she said too much. And maybe… maybe she has, because to Nil, what she most wishes for sounds a great deal like making love.
*
“I remember,” he assures her. He revisits the memory often, keeping it sharp and fresh for whenever she’s ready for him to enact it with her.
“I was thinking about it the other day,” she muses, “and how you let me go on and on and how you just always make me feel… pleasure, even if it’s… just for me. You’re always asking me what I want, and you’re always working to make sure that I’m… you know, taken care of.” She meets his gaze and holds steady, then leans in. “I want to do something just for you.”
“Is that so?” His lips twitch into a smile mirrored by her own, and she nods and touches his cheek. “What ideas do you have in mind to ensure my pleasure, Aloy?”
“That’s for me to know,” she murmurs, “and you to find out.”
Her lips press to his forehead and Nil’s eyes flutter closed. He leans into her touch and yearns for more of this Aloy, the one whose demons have quelled, the one who’s found release and has let go of her burdens if only for now. And then she pulls away from him, fingers brushing down his cheek until they slip away from his jaw. Aloy stands to finish dressing and gather her belongings that she came with (most of them, Nil notes, as she leaves behind a broken Tripcaster), and her eyes linger on the relic she’s left on Nil’s chest of belongings. Untouched. Unused. She looks at it for a few moments but says nothing; she gives Nil a final wave and leaves for another night.
When she’s gone, Nil dreams.
He’s back in Cinnabar Sands, the screaming child in his arms as he makes his way through fire and smoke and blood. Nil is part of the fighters, the meat of the Carja army, but his squad is not the first to have ripped through Utaru lands. The raiding party has been here already, en route to sack Plainsong, and they’ve burned fields and villages along the way.
The idea sickens Nil. This isn’t war anymore. It’s slaughter.
Still, he fights. The Tenakth have crossed the mountains into Utaru lands and fight with the ferocity of deranged Behemoths. They make worthy opponents, and deserve respect once they’ve fallen to his blade.
There are no Tenakth around him in his dream. Now, it’s Utaru, and for some reason: Nora.
The Nora lands were his training ground as a young soldier, new into the Carja army. Their braves were fierce and wild, composed of men and women, and Nil’s commanders laughed at them and said this put them at a disadvantage. Nil silently disagreed; after all, the Nora had more bodies for war.
In his dream, Nil sees the body of the Utaru mother, and hears the child screaming from several feet away. He finds her in the red grass and stares until his general comes upon them. Nil is ordered to take her to Plainsong and he picks her up from the ground.
Time… skips, as it tends to do in dreams, and Nil is leaving the child with the Utaru (and Nora, why are there Nora?) survivors. “Run,” he tells them, and they waste no time.
In his dream, he doesn’t turn back immediately.
In his dream, he watches them barrel straight into the blast traps, unable to warn them, unable to help.
Nil wakes with a start to find daylight creeping into his shelter through the cracks in the walls. He rests his arm over his eyes and wills the world to stop, just for a while longer. His fingertips begin to itch, his nerve endings scrambled from years of arrowhead abuse, and he clenches his nails to his palms for some relief.
When he removes his arm and opens his eyes, he sees the girl, her mouth open in her silent scream.
*
With a race he wins by a wide margin, Nil is able to silence his demons for another week. There has been no sign of Aloy, no word, but that is to be expected.
But then he sees a Nora woman, a brave he fought in his first real battle. She is another demon familiar to him, though her presence is considerably rarer than others. He recalls meeting her vividly; hesitating to kill him is what saves his life. In their struggle, she gets Nil on the ground, then aims her spear at his throat.
Here, she stops, her eyes widening. “You’re just a child,” she breathes, “not even old enough for the Proving.”
Nil picks up his blade and drives it through her.
He sees the woman now as he’s out hunting peccary with Josekk. The Tenakth boy would be considered a man by Carja standards. He’d be in the army. He’d be called a good little soldier as he trained for battle, but ultimately be given a posting to guard somewhere in the Sundom and fade into obscurity.
Josekk tracks the peccary with ease and points it out to Nil as they hide in a patch of grass. Sliding the Voice of Our Teeth from his shoulders, Nil slips an arrow and takes aim—
And the peccary is the Nora woman. She wears the same bewildered, horrified expression she did when she realised just how young Nil was when he marched on her land. Like the Utaru girl, she’s silent. Her sorrowful eyes are enough.
He falters. The peccary runs. Josekk swears and chases after it.
They end up having lizards for dinner, and Red Teeth, at fault, eats alone in his shelter, the smallest lizard his. It’s fair, he knows. The punishment must fit the crime. He’s lucky to get dinner at all.
Later, he joins Pekka as she checks the Chargers in their pen for the night. She’s running her hands down the front leg of her mount, frowning sideways at a large dent in the metal. “Sands damn you, Attah,” he hears her mutter, and he smirks under his paint.
(He needs a new mask, his original shattered beyond repair by the Tremortusk, and yet… the children don’t really look at his face. It’s curious. They steal a glance, they seem to want to know, but it’s as though they’ve agreed that they still need to earn it with a win. He still wears his paint, hiding his Carja markings, and no one has asked.
As odd as it is, Nil appreciates the children even more.)
He looks at her as she pokes the dent and sighs, then gets to her feet and puts her hands on her hips.
Nil was Pekka’s age when his childhood was torn from him. And if she had stayed with Regalla, perhaps Nil would have one day become her demon, horrified to see how young his opponent was before she gutted him.
He goes back to his shelter for the night, and elects to do something he never does, and sleeps on his front with his face buried in his pillow.
It’s another month before Aloy returns to him, and Nil has been struggling.
His sleep is plagued with nightmares, old memories blending together to form new hells. Waking hours not on the track are spent trying to hunt, trying to do, simply trying to keep busy enough so that he doesn’t have to see them. He keeps a candle lit in his shelter at night now, the light seeming to keep them at bay when he attempts to drift off. Somehow, it’s become easier to see them in the dark.
And Nil knows they can’t hurt him, he knows they’re not real. But they call for blood, and the blood that will soothe them most is his own.
When Aloy glides to the sand from her Sunwing, she lands and takes a few steps forward for balance as her glider disappears. She’s landed behind Nil’s shelter, out of sight from the children, and it’s dark enough that they don’t notice her as she comes to stand at the entrance. Nil, who only spots her out of luck, bids the children goodnight and goes to her.
She slips into his shelter ahead of him and he follows, and wraps his arms around her the moment she’s within his reach. One hand presses the small of her back, the other buries into her hair at the base of her skull, and he dips his face into the crook of her neck and breathes her in.
Aloy stiffens in his hold, the tenderness of his sudden embrace unfamiliar to either of them. But Nil doesn’t let go, not yet. He… needs this. He needs this.
After a few moments, her arms close around him, and her face presses into his chest. She sighs in his hold and for just a moment he feels her surrender, her muscles relaxing, her shoulders sagging as she deflates from the weight in her heart.
“I’m glad to see you, Aloy.”
“I can tell.”
He holds her a moment longer, and then finally releases and strokes the back of his knuckles against her face.
Aloy is beautiful. There has never been any denying this. From her freckles to her round green eyes, to her hair like blood spilling down her back, to the gentle angles of her face, she has never not had physical, superficial appeal.
He used to watch her at bandit camps and marvel at the way she moved, someone so young but with the skill of a seasoned warrior. She killed swiftly, no hesitation or regret, and with the sense of mercy to not allow even the most egregious of men to suffer.
But she’s most beautiful now, looking at him like this. Her cheeks have a windswept flush, somehow both warm and cool beneath his hand. Her eyes are soft when she looks at him, not filled with questions, not filled with worry or concern – only relief and affection that she has yet to acknowledge or name. And her lips, plush and pink, have the ghost of a smile that’s just for him.
His heart is full of love for her, and she isn’t ready for him to tell her.
Until she is, Nil has to express it in other ways.
Raising herself on her toes, Aloy tilts her face upward. Nil takes the hint and lowers himself to kiss her, his hands sliding to grip her arms under her shoulders.
She steps back after a bit and takes his hands, pulling him toward his bedroll. “I told you last time I wanted to take care of you,” she says. “So tonight, I’m going to.”
“Aloy—”
One of her fingers is pressed against his lips. She shushes him and starts to undo the straps of his armour, ridding him of metal and leather and hide to leave him in only the shorts he wears to ride. Nil moves his limbs how and where she needs for her to remove the pieces from his body, stealing a kiss with a grin whenever she lifts her face to glance at him.
“Bad,” she scolds him, admonishing with a wag of her finger.
She lowers to her knees, unclips his shorts, and tugs them down until he’s only in the smaller, softer black pair he uses to prevent chafing. Still below, Aloy looks up at him while Nil’s breath catches in his chest. She flattens her hand, extending her fingers, and runs her palm over the bulge in the front. With her moving back and forth slowly over his confined cock, it isn’t long before his body reacts, and he’s straining against the last of his clothes.
Aloy’s mouth hovers over his cock, her breath hot and moist through the thin black linen, and she places a kiss on the tip.
“Aloy…” Nil urges gently, his voice strained.
Fingers tuck under the top hem and pull down, while her other hand grasps his cock as it’s freed from the last of his clothes. Aloy rubs up and down slowly, and all he can see are her lashes as she focuses on it, and then she tilts her head back to look up at him as he steps out of the undergarments.
“Get on your bed,” she commands. “On your back.”
His heart flutters before it begins to race. He isn’t sure where this is going, and although he wants to know (and Sun be blazed, does his cock ever want to know), there is a part of his mind that is starting to gnaw and worry, an old instinct telling him to be vigilant.
But he lays down anyway. He slings his left hand over his lower belly, his right reaching for Aloy, and she takes it and kisses as she sits next to his side. “Nil,” she whispers, “do you trust me?”
“You can’t be partners with someone if you don’t trust them,” he answers, and she laughs and rolls her eyes.
“I’ll take that as a ‘yes.’”
“It’s a ‘yes.’” It’s an absolute.
She leans over him, her armour pressing into the bare skin of his chest, and kisses him softly, her lips barely touching his. “So if I said I wanted to tie your hands…”
He sits up on his elbows, his brow furrowing.
Binding during sex is not foreign to him, but the times he’s participated before, he is the one who did the binding. He never let anyone else touch his wrists, his hands, not even his feet. It isn‘t like Nil to find himself helpless, or subject to it willingly.
But this is Aloy. And he’ll hear her out.
“What made you think of this?” he asks, feigning casual curiosity.
She exhales a chuckle and rolls her shoulders in a sheepish shrug. “Last time, when my top got caught in your armour. For a bit there I was completely stuck and I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t see… I’ve never been so… powerless with you.” She looks at him, her eyes glittering with a strange desire. “And then you kissed me, and… I don’t think I ever felt more… hot in my life.” She sits up a little, starting to remove her armour. “I want to share that with you.”
Her confession is made in confidence, the vulnerability clear when she drops her armour and glances back at him. She’s silent as she waits for Nil to react, as if she’s almost expecting admonishment. And the longer he’s quiet, mulling it over, the more he sees her jaw begin to set.
It’s on the tip of his tongue to negotiate, to tease that if his hands are bound, then he can’t touch her. But something inside him stops, comes to a complete freeze, and he…
He wants it.
The feeling sneaks up on him, a surprise, but he looks at Aloy
(Aloy, this is Aloy)
and he wants to submit to her.
He wants to feel powerless.
“If you don’t want to, it’s fine, forget I asked.”
He grabs her wrist and holds tight, pulling her to him. His mouth is oddly dry and he licks his lips, seeking any kind of moisture. Glancing to her mouth, he sees it set tight, her own lips in a tight line.
“I want to,” he whispers, and his voice is… oddly hoarse. “I want you to.”
In fact, with the way his ears ring and his mind buzzes, Nil is starting to believe he may need her to. He swallows hard and brushes his thumb below her mouth.
“Are you sure?” And she isn’t upset or angry, but concerned. Nil feels his heart soften, and perhaps the look in his eyes does too, because a flicker of relief crosses her face as he nods. She cares.
Her green eyes remind him of the east, of the Jewel south of Meridian, a place he never wants to revisit. Not with the way he’d hurt her there. The look on her face when she realised his proposal was serious is one he never wants to see again. Nil leans into her and kisses her forehead, his hand slipping behind her head to lock her in place.
“As sure as the sun sets in the west.”
He releases her as she pulls back to rummage through her pouch. From it, she brings forth a narrow box, a few inches long, and opens it to reveal a black satin cloth. As Aloy pulls it out, Nil can see it’s quite long, probably twenty inches or more.
“If we’re going to replicate that feeling,” she says, “I’d like to put this over your eyes.”
Darkness brings forth demons.
(This is Aloy.)
“You may.”
“Lay back,” she instructs gently, and Nil does. Her outfit is equipped with a deep maroon scarf, which she pulls over her head, and then gets on her knees next to Nil. She swings one over him to straddle his belly, and he obediently raises his arms above his head. Aloy runs the scarf along his left arm as she leans over him, still in the circle of cloth covering her breasts and small shorts. Then she wraps the scarf around his wrist and fastens it to the leg of his pallet.
“How is that?” she asks him.
Nil gives a small tug. The cloth around his wrist pulls snug, sending a shiver down his spine. It doesn’t release. He nods at Aloy, who then reaches for the yellow scarf still around Nil’s neck and searches for the end of it. Finding it, she begins to slowly, carefully unwrap it from his throat, and he lifts his head to help.
His right hand is clenched into a fist when she drags the scarf to it. Nil forces it open before she can ask. And then he is completely bound and immobile as she sits upon his chest.
The black satin sits across her knees, but she doesn’t go for it. Not yet. Instead, she crosses her hands under her breasts to grip the soft barrier between her sensitive skin and the roughness of Tenakth armour. Aloy pulls it over her head and lets it fall from her fingers with the rest of her leather and metal on the sand.
Nil finds himself smiling, relaxing just a little. She did that for him, giving him a view before engulfing him in darkness.
“Are you ready?” she asks, her fingers toying with the satin cloth.
He takes a moment to consider. And for just a moment, Aloy’s eyes are glass, and Nil freezes.
*
Nil is always in control of himself. He may be a soldier who follows orders into battle, but keeping himself in line is never in question.
Horvid is across from him at the campfire west of Barren Light. There is a rodent unseen in the east – a prairie dog, he’s heard it called – roasted on the end of his spike, and he takes bites out of it, tearing meat from bone while he boasts of his most recent crimes. He is speaking of an Utaru village his squad ransacked, and one of the citizens – a Birthsinger, Nil guesses by the short mocking description of her facial markings – had punched his jaw as he was dragging her from her hut to bring to the Sundom.
“—thinks she can take me on, the cocky shit, so you know I have to teach her a lesson. I take out my blade, and I tell her that her head will look great on my mantle in Brightmarket. She spits at me! Tells me that her precious ‘land-gods’ will bury what’s left of me.”
“So what did you do?”
“I cut off her head,” Horvid beams, and rips more tendons from his dinner. Grease dribbles down his chin, and Nil wishes it would catch fire. “Grabbed her head, just like this, and right in front of that little Utaru squad, I cut her head clean off.”
“Where is it?” Nil asks.
Horvid whips his head to him, seemingly stunned that Nil spoke – or dared to question the authenticity of his story. “What’s that, soldier?”
Nil straightens his spine, his shoulders rolling back. “Where is the head? You claim you wanted it for your mantle, so I imagine you must have kept such a hard-fought prize.”
Horvid seethes, and the camp goes quiet. He is above Nil in rank, though he commands no men of his own. Still, for Nil to so openly question – and downplay – his ‘victory’ is a foolish move, and Nil knows it. But he doesn’t back down. There may be nothing he can do for the unarmed, untrained, unprepared Utaru woman slain without mercy by the beast before him, but Nil wants Horvid to feel the smallest sting of shame for his actions. They are heinous, and do not deserve glory.
Horvid reaches behind him, and draws his bag that is stained with blood and carrying a weight beyond supplies, and Nil’s stomach squeezes and twists. His hand reaches inside and he pulls the head out by the hair, and throws it over the fire to land at Nil’s feet. It rolls and Nil stares into the glassy, once-hazel eyes of an Utaru woman no older than him.
But that isn’t what horrifies him.
It’s the throat. It’s the jagged, broken, uneven slices through flesh and bone and sinew. It was not a clean cut.
It was not a slow death.
“It’s a shame,” Horvid says, but there is no trace of regret in his voice. “She would have made an excellent slave for a family in the Jewel.”
Not for the first time, Nil wonders exactly what they’re fighting for.
He stands and leaves the fire to the sound of Horvid’s laughter, the other soldiers joining him.
If he were to challenge Horvid, Nil knows he would win. The man didn’t have the strength to cleanly slice through a neck no thicker than Nil’s arm; it would be no contest. And Nil has to admit that he’s… tempted. This is not the first time he’s heard Horvid brag about the atrocities he’s committed. And if Nil is being honest, this is not the worst one. At least this one is dead and not suffering anymore.
He finds his general by the shore, his arms folded across his chest as he stares across the water. He glances at Nil over his shoulder, gives him a nod and turns back.
“You should be sleeping, soldier,” General Fashav says. “We travel to Cinnabar Sands at first light.”
Nil is quiet. Fashav is a newer leader of his, as Nil is a more recent addition to this outpost. Nil… respects him. Fashav can fight harder than the rest of them, and yet he discourages brutality. He leads them against the Tenakth and guides them in prayer before each battle, asking for the Sun to show mercy, and make their deaths swift and their lives worthwhile – both the Carja, and their foe.
He is also one of his few leaders who has not sought Nil for his prowess off the field.
He’s different.
Fashav eyes him in his silence. After a moment, he glances toward the fire, where Horvid is making obscene gestures to raucous laughter. Nil doesn’t hide the disgust on his face, and Fashav catches it.
He steps toward him and places a hand on his shoulder. “You have honour,” he says. Nil looks at him, the word sinking deep under his skin. For so long, the concept of ‘honour’ has seemed like a fable, something only told in the stories of Sun-Priests. “Don’t let them take it from you. That’s an order.”
There is nothing to say but, “Yes, sir.” Fashav nods again and gives his shoulder a squeeze, then walks away, disappearing to the privacy of his tent.
Nil finds his bedroll under the stars and stares at the sky, waiting for sleep to take him. There is something poking at his back, and he reaches beneath to pull out a broken arrowhead.
He thinks of honour and what it means, and the responsibilities such a concept carries. The arrowhead twirls between his fingers as he does, his gaze fixed on the blanket of stars high above his head. He feels the weight of honour in his hands as he passes the arrowhead along.
The metal shard slips and Nil grabs at it unthinkingly, and hisses through his teeth as it pierces his skin. Holding up his finger, he watches the growing droplet of blood, and the weight of honour… lifts. Just a little, before it can overwhelm him. He focuses on the sting in his finger instead.
The droplet stops growing. He sucks his finger into his mouth and pulls it away, the metallic taste of blood on his tongue.
At least it’s his own.
*
He blinks, and she is Aloy again. Beautiful, tenacious, ruthless Aloy. Aloy who trusts him to push her boundaries. Aloy whom he trusts to test his.
“I’m ready for you, Aloy,” Nil promises. He isn’t sure that she understands the double meaning of his words, but he hopes she does. After tonight, he’s never been more certain. And he hopes she’s ready for him, too.
Her reassuring smile is the last thing he sees before the blindfold is placed over his eyes, and Nil’s world is swallowed by darkness.
“Can you see?” Aloy asks above him. She ties the blindfold into a knot on the side of his head so he doesn’t have to lay on it.
“No.”
“Are you comfortable?”
“I’m all right, thank you.”
She gives a little laugh, and he can feel the weight of her breasts against his chest as she does. Then she’s leaning down, her fingers pressing against his cheekbones.
“So polite,” she murmurs against his mouth, and then she kisses him.
Moving on their own, his arms strain against his restraints, the urge to wrap around her and hold washing over him. Nil sighs against her mouth and grips the bindings instead. His movements don’t go unnoticed by Aloy, who chuckles and kisses him again for good measure. Her fingers slip from his face down either side of his neck, resting in the crook, leaving a trail of fire in the path they carve.
Her weight shifts on his abdomen, her breasts lifting from him and cool air hitting his face as she sits up. Aloy begins to slide down his body, and even through the thin shorts she still wears, he can feel a damp heat as she slips over his cock and down his legs. With her straddling his shins, his legs are trapped too, and
(This is Aloy)
Nil’s mind gives a jolt. There is an instinct long buried threatening to emerge, and he vaguely wonders where his bow is.
He feels Aloy shift, relaxing on his legs, and hears her rummage through her pouch. After some shuffling, she lets out a small, “Aha!” of triumph.
Moments later, there is a scent that fills the air, and Nil breathes it deeply as he tries to place it. It’s something floral; he catches that immediately. There is an earthiness to it too, a rich, sweet quality, and… a hint… of musk. Is it… jasmine?
The more he breathes it in, the more he enjoys it, and the more his body begins to relax. He puffs a chuckle and hears Aloy hum in satisfaction.
Hands are on his knees, and begin to travel up his thighs. It’s Aloy’s nails that make contact with his skin, trailing over him and (he imagines) not even leaving pink traces with how lightly she’s touching. She grazes over his hip bones and settles around his lower abdomen.
Then her fingernails feather his groin, just above his hair, and muscles Nil doesn’t even know he has seem to jump to attention. He gasps and groans at the same time, jerking on his bindings as his entire body reacts and wants to crush Aloy to his chest.
“Does that feel good?” she asks softly.
Nil lets out a shaky exhale as he nods. “Yes, it does,” he confirms, and Aloy does it again, drawing another moan from deep inside of him. His cock feels harder than it’s ever been, and Nil wants – needs – Aloy to touch him there. He opens his mouth to ask.
Aloy moves swiftly, lifting off of his legs. He feels the warmth and weight of her as she leans over him, and then her breasts graze along his chest. Her nipples are hard against him and he can picture her as she slides up his body. Her hips shuffle forward above his groin, promising glorious wet heat beneath the linen hovering above his cock.
Then her mouth descends onto his, and Nil…
Understands.
He throws his head back as she crushes against him. The passion of her kiss is not what he expected, not with the lightness of her touches, and the juxtaposition sends his mind whirling in an exceptional way. Her tongue slips into his mouth and the taste of her mixes with him, and Nil’s hips thrust upward of their own accord. His pelvis is pressed against hers and Aloy whines into his mouth, and Nil does it again—
She pulls away, leaving him to kiss the air as he realises how cold he is without her on top of him.
He’s at her mercy. And even though a small part of him is still itching to fight, a voice ordering him to yank himself free of the bindings, he doesn’t.
Nil submits.
She runs fingers over his lips and Nil sighs against them. Those fingers travel down his throat and his flesh quivers, then lower, raking the growth of dark hair on his chest, and circle around one of his nipples. Aloy is sitting next to him now rather than on top, and when her hips brush his side, Nil realises: There is no more linen.
The thought causes his breath to hitch, even more-so as Aloy’s hand descends lower, back to those newfound muscles in his groin.
It is not her hand that finally touches his cock, but her mouth, and Nil’s back arches from the surprise of it as he lets out a cry. Aloy pulls him deeper inside, her lips closing around him. Her tongue presses against the underside of his cock and she drags upward to the tip, giving a gentle suck when she gets there, and Nil writhes.
He feels her fingers wrap around the base of his cock, then Aloy’s mouth is pressed to the underside, where his nerve endings start to scream for release. Nil is dimly aware that he’s sweating, the desert night sending the occasional chill through his body, and the shivers only make the heat of Aloy that much stronger.
She drags the very tip of her tongue over the bottom of his cock to the tip, and then her mouth is around him again. This time, Aloy pulls him deeper, deeper, and Nil is straining hard against his bindings.
The desert chill disappears. All he feels is her mouth, swallowing his cock, and he can only imagine the look of intense concentration on her face as she focuses on his pleasure.
His pleasure.
She slides up on his cock, back to the tip, and then plunges downward again, bottoming out properly for the first time, and Nil lets out a sound he never knew he was capable of.
Bound, blindfolded, and helpless to Aloy’s will and wants, Nil is learning a lot about himself.
And the voice telling him to fight is starting to quiet, starting to… appreciate what is happening to him.
She moans around his cock and Nil lets out a slew of curses, trying to regain some semblance of control over his body before he comes, but Aloy understands. She pulls her mouth back from his cock, her saliva chilled on him in the night air. There are a few moments where she doesn’t touch him at all, and says nothing, and Nil takes the silence to calm the rage in his loins.
It’s the fastest he has ever approached orgasm, and he thinks there might be something to the bind and blindfold after all.
Her kiss falls to his lips again, and this time he can taste himself on her. Her hair tickled his shoulders and chest as it falls on him.
The fact that he so desperately wants to plunge his hands into it and he can’t brings him right back to the brink he just escaped. Nil grips the bindings in his palms hard, but he doesn’t pull. Instead, he simply flexes his biceps and inhales through his nose.
Aloy pulls back, just for a moment, then presses a tender kiss to each corner of his mouth, and Nil melts beneath her.
He trusts her completely to have her way with him. It is not startling, as far as epiphanies go, but it gives him the sense of calm he desperately needs.
His lips curve into a smile.
And then Aloy sinks onto him with a sigh of her own, taking him to the hilt, and the sudden softness of her cunt, the hot, and the wet, is so overwhelming that he bucks his hips before she starts to move. Aloy chuckles, her hands pressing down on his chest, her legs squeezing his hips. She clamps down hard, not letting him move.
And there it is:
Powerless.
Aloy has complete control over Nil, and it’s…
A relief.
A soft, “Oh” escapes him. His breath catches and shudders, and he furrows his brow beneath the blindfold. For the first time, Nil can do absolutely nothing without someone – without Aloy – allowing it.
He realises then what he fears about it – and it is fear, not anxiety, not trepidation. Total submission of his body and will to anyone reminds him far too much of the version of himself who first ventured into Nora lands in search of a good fight, and who found only pain. It reminds him of the efficient soldier of the Setting Sun who volunteered to head to the Forbidden West at the rumours of the viciousness of the Tenakth. It reminds him of the man, barely more than a boy, who laughed at his first conquest in Cinnabar Sands, the Tenakth Marshal slain before him, and then whirled around at the sound of a child’s cry. The man who carried honour into battle, but who increasingly questioned why he bothered as the considerably dishonourable crimes of his fellow soldiers ran rampant and unchecked. It makes him think of the man – the monster – he might have become, had he not been given two direct orders from General Fashav.
The faces of his demons swim in the darkness of his blindfold.
The screaming Utaru child.
The horrified Nora mother.
The glassy eyes of Horvid’s careless decapitation.
And more. So, so many more.
But he isn’t submitting his body and will to anyone, he reminds himself.
This is Aloy.
Nil is not a spiritual man, not for a long time, but he feels something leave his body as he lets out another cry. Aloy starts to move against him, allowing him to finally move with her, and the relief he feels is so much more than physical. There is a stinging, hot pressure at the back of his eyes, a strange choking lump from inside of his throat, and Nil moves his body in time with Aloy’s as she rocks on top of him.
It’s tears, Nil realises. The stinging pressure at his eyes. But not of sorrow or pain or fear. It’s relief. It’s finally, finally letting go, and the freedom that comes with it even as he, physically, has no freedom at all.
They soak into the blindfold before they have a chance to fall, each one carrying a horror out of his mind, leaving him just a fraction lighter than before.
She, of course, sets the speed, a torturous slowness at first. But then her hips rock faster, bit by bit, until they buck with an intensity matching nights of their most heated passion.
He feels her shift, and then she’s laying on top of him, pressing her whole body into his as her hips continue to grind. Her hands slide up his arms, fingers interlocking with his as he releases his vice grip on the scarves. Her lips are on his throat, pressing a kiss above his pulse, then up under his ear, then his earlobe and sending shockwaves of pleasure through his entire core, and she finally settles her mouth on his.
Aloy, with all her power and strength, never needs a spear or bow to reduce Nil to a quaking, moaning, utter mess of a man. She’s done that now, herself, with no weapon other than their own lust.
“Come for me, Nil,” she whispers, her command so soft and gentle that he follows her order almost instantly with a groan and a few powerful thrusts of his hips. Aloy lets out her own small cries as he pounds up into her, gripping his hands as she kisses him and they drown each other out into their mouths.
He continues to buck even as he’s spent, but slower, less urgent, and Aloy rolls her hips in time to match. When Nil can move no longer, he stills beneath her completely with a sigh, kissing her lips as she begins to rise.
She doesn’t, however, move off him. Instead, Aloy reaches for his bindings, and Nil smiles and chuckles, her breasts brushing against his face. With one hand free, he cups her breast to his mouth as she undoes the other. A giggle escapes her as she pulls away, her nipple leaving Nil’s mouth with a pop! of suction, and her thumbs tuck under the blindfold and pull it up over his head.
Her face is flushed, her hair dishevelled, her eyes still glittering if tired. She, too, is covered in a sheen of sweat, but she looks… happy. More than content.
Finally, Nil wraps his arms around her and she sinks into him. His softening cock is still inside of her, but she makes no effort to remedy that, and neither does he.
“Thank you,” Nil says. Aloy looks up at him from his chest, and he can see the questions in her eyes. She always has questions, and Nil has answers he doesn’t always share. Not directly anyway.
“Any time,” she replies, and Nil chuckles and kisses her forehead.
After some silence, during which Aloy finally shifts to lay at his side, Nil brushes hair from her face with his thumb and looks into her eyes. Losing control like this has been cathartic, and may have put his demons at bay, but it isn’t enough. He knows he can’t kill, or race, or fuck his darkness away for good – and maybe nothing will. Maybe no fix will be permanent, and perhaps he doesn’t deserve it. But to soothe them, to convince them of the depths of his remorse… That, Nil thinks he can live with, and so can they.
“I want to tell you about the Red Raids,” he confesses. “Will you let me?”
Aloy looks surprised. But she nods silently, and Nil starts at the beginning.
When he’s finished, he can see the little Utaru girl in the corner of his shelter. She is not screaming.
He’s far too spent in every sense of the word to return the favour of the release, the gift that Aloy has given him, but he’s sure she understands. But Nil does know that next time she’s in the desert, he will take her in his arms and enact her fantasy, and make love to her the way she deserves.