1. Bhadra

Bhadra was becoming a decent archer. Not as good as Ajay, she admitted. But Sabal would only let her shoot at inanimate targets, and even then only when he didn't feel like another argument with Amita.

She'd asked Ajay to teach her. Ajay agreed. Partly because he could use the practice himself, but partly because he realized that Bhadra really did need to learn. Amita was usually too busy and Sabal thought it was unfitting for the Tarun Matara to use a weapon. It was one of their many, many recurring arguments. Bhadra was too valuable to risk in combat, said Sabal. Amita would say that their soldiers couldn't be everywhere at once and Bhadra might need to defend herself in an emergency, to which Sabal would say that no true soldier of the Golden Path would fail in their sacred duty to defend the Tarun Matara, and so forth, untill Ajay sighed and retreated to somewhere beyond earshot of their shouting.

Ajay had picked the skill up because a bow was quieter than a gun, and because "Miss this shot and you're going to die" was a strong incentive to learn quickly. So he learned in the field and tried to pass it on to Bhadra as best he could. When he wasn't out hero-ing they'd find somewhere to shoot arrow after arrow into target, while he offered the occasional "Move your hand a bit higher" or "No, no, stand like this" and hoped he was being useful.

"Ajay?" asked Bhadra, who was suddenly looking up at him with a great deal of concern. "Are you alright?"

Oh, he was fine. Everything was fine. The only thing wrong here was this entire awful situation, and for whatever reason it weighed especially heavy on him today.

Ajay had seen kids shoot arrows, but only for sport. Or as a hobby. Or in mimicry of some action movie star who dramatically put arrows in the bad guys. In America, or at least in the parts he knew, children did not pick up a bow because they believed a corrupt dictator might send soldiers to hunt them down as a message to the revolution attempting to overthrow him. Bhadra was a good kid. She deserved better than this. So did every child in Kyrat.

So Ajay tried to tell her as much.

Bhadra set down her bow and stepped forward to wrap her arms around him. "That's why you're here," she said. "You and the Golden Path are going to free Kyrat."

"I'm gonna try," said Ajay, returning her hug. "We're all going to do our best to keep you safe. I promise."

"I know. That's why I'm not scared." Bhadra sighed. "But I still need to learn how to shoot, just in case. Sabal thinks I can...wave my hand, and the Royal Army will all bow before me."

Ajay laughed. Just a little chuckle, really, but it broke some of the tension. "I can't teach you how to do that. But if you're up for more target practice-"

So they shot their arrows underneath Kyrat's clear sky, just in case, while the war raged on elsewhere.

2. Yogi and Reggie

Mom hadn't talked about Kyrat much, if at all. But her last wish was for her son to bring her back to the country she'd once called home, so she must have felt some connection to it even after all these years. When Ajay learned that the Ghales had a house up in the mountains, he thought that maybe it might be the end of his quest. He'd asked around just in case his parents had named their house "Lakshmana"; no such luck.

He didn't want to call it disappointment. It's just that when the Golden Path called the building a homestead, Ajay had pictured something a little grander. He'd hauled himself up a cliff to lay eyes on peeling paint, rotting boards, and walls overgrown with vines. The Golden Path had let it fall into disrepair. He couldn't blame them; it was out of the way and their resources were better spent on fighting the revolution than repairing a single uninhabited house, even one belonging to their founders.

Ajay sat by his parents' house and tried to picture it full of their love and laughter. The air redolent with the scent of spices from Mom's cooking. The echo of her voice as she sang to herself. A home. Anything but the crumbling ruin it was now. The most casual glance confirmed that no one had lived there since his father died and his mother fled the country.

No one besides those asshole stoners, anyway. The ones he'd specifically ordered to stay away. The ones who were standing right behind him.

"I thought I told you two to fuck off," said Ajay. There wasn't a lot of force behind it. He couldn't be properly mad at them just then. His shoulders sagged, against his will. "This is a bad time. Can you just- leave me alone?"

"Sorry," said Yogi and Reggie, in perfect harmony.

"Havin' a moment, are we?" said Yogi. Or Reggie; he could never remember which was which.

Ajay sighed. "I told you this used to be my parents' house, right? As far as I know, I was born here," he said. "This was my home once. And the Golden Path just let it rot. Seeing the house like this, it's-"

As one, Yogi and Reggie hugged him.

"Chin up," said Yogi, lightly patting Ajay on the back. "Building's still here, innit? We can help you fix it up, if you want."

"Spot of paint, it'll look brand new," added Reggie.

"You need us to swing a hammer, we're in."

"I can't guarantee he'll hit anything with it, though," said Reggie. "His thumb, maybe."

Ajay reflexively tried to tune out their chatter, but they had a point. It could be a home again, he thought. It would take some work, but they could repair the house. He was here to help restore the entire country, after all. Why not start right here?

He turned to his newly-recruited helpers. And because you just never knew with these two, Ajay said "If either of you injects me with anything, I will throw both of you off a mountain."

"Nah, there'll be time for that later." Reggie (or Yogi) waved it off. "Let's get to it, shall we?"

3. Willis

No one should ever be this cold. He was turning to ice.

Ajay huddled, shivering, in an alcove out of the wind, near the landing site Willis had indicated. He couldn't feel his toes and his gloves were frozen so stiff that he could barely move his fingers. It figured; Willis had seen fit to give him a wingsuit but not a thicker jacket.

Still, he got the job done. Killed the men that Willis had said needed to die. All Ajay wanted to do now was crawl into bed and stay there for a week or so, curled up beneath a mound of blankets. Right now, all he could do was think warm thoughts.

Ajay heard the plane land, heard Willis trudge through the snow. "Christ, look at you," said Willis, by way of greeting. "Poor thing. It's like seeing a baby bald eagle lying in the rain."

Willis' eyes were unreadable behind his sunglasses, but Ajay thought he saw something softer than usual in the agent's expression. Ajay braced himself for a speech about how real Americans couldn't feel the cold over the strength of their burning patriotism, or something to that effect, but Willis pulled him in for a quick hug instead. Just an arm around Ajay's shoulders, really.

"Nice work," murmured Willis. "C'mon. Let's get you out of here."

It wasn't much warmer in the plane, but at least they were out of the wind. There was a thermos of coffee, "black as a Commie's heart" as Willis put it. It burned on the way down. Ajay drank in silence, but as usual Willis seemed more than happy to listen to himself talk.

"I know, it's tough," said Willis. "Trading purple mountain majesty for..." He gestured vaguely at the snow-capped peaks beneath them. "This. Drink your coffee, Buttercup. That's real American coffee, straight from the motherland. Remember, Uncle Sam's proud of you."

Ajay, still too cold to answer, just nodded and watched Kyrat speed by, far below them.

4. Amita

The first time Ajay had ever seen a live tiger, it was in a zoo. He remembered it lying stretched out in the sun like a big housecat, while Ajay pressed his sticky little fingers to the glass that formed a barrier between them. And he'd smiled, and then he'd followed Mom to the next exhibit.

An hour ago he'd had a wild tiger's fangs mere inches from his neck. Its claws had raked his side, and blood still oozed through the bandages. The wound ached every time he breathed.

He'd been stalking a herd of sambar. Amita had asked him to bring back meat and hides, and of course he'd said yes, because people asked him to do things so often that by this point, he just agreed automatically. So there he was, crouched in the bushes with his bow drawn, when a tiger took exception to his presence there.

When he finally managed to put the beast down, the sambar were gone.

Kyrat was beautiful, but every time he tried to stop and appreciate that fact he was rudely interrupted by the inexplicably hostile wildlife. Kyrat's shining lakes and rivers? Infested with demon fish. When it wasn't tigers, it was bears, or snakes, or wolves, or the wild boars that he'd been assured were "just really big, really mean pigs". Bacon on hooves.

He hadn't really considered the boars a threat at first. Now he had tusk scars on both his asscheeks.

Then there were the eagles. They'd looked so majestic soaring through the air. Then one saw fit to deliver Ajay's first faceful of eagle talons. Ajay was now devoutly appreciative of Kyrati architecture; specifically, he liked their solid roofs and walls.

He'd grown up not having to deal with any animals more aggressive than that one mean dog down the street. And now he got mauled by fucking tigers for trying to bring the Golden Path their dinner.

How was he going to stop Pagan Min's army when he couldn't fend off the wildlife?

Bloody and sore, Ajay finally arrived back at the outpost. To be fair, he was not coming back empty-handed. It just wasn't as heavy a load as he was hoping. Probably not as heavy as Amita expected, either.

But she actually smiled a little when she saw his haul. "You're becoming quite the hunter," she said. "We'll eat well tonight because of you."

"Can't wait," he said, trying to feign enthusiasm. Not well enough, apparently.

"Ajay? Thank you," said Amita, hugging him and not seeming to care when she pulled away spotted with blood. "Everything you do for us is a great help. More than you can know."

5. Sabal

For once, the air was still. The Royal Army had been pushed out of this area. Inch by inch, the Golden Path was reclaiming Kyrat. They held what they took, too. Slowly, they were making progress, or at least that's what Sabal told Ajay.

"Kyra smiles on us." Sabal was sitting outside. Sometimes he meditated. Quieting his mind so that he might better hear the divine, as he put it. On this occasion he was simply sitting, enjoying the stillness. Ajay joined him.

"It's like everything's going okay, for once." It was a strange feeling.

"Your parents would be proud of what you're doing here. Your father was a a great man and a true leader," said Sabal. "If the Royal Army hadn't murdered him-"

Everything always came back to his parents. No matter how much Ajay explored Kyrat, no matter how much Sabal lectured him about his heritage and his birthright, Ajay could not see Kyrat as anything but his parents' homeland. It hadn't been Ajay's since...well, before he could remember.

"Mom never talked about Kyrat. Or the war, or the Golden Path, or...any of this." Ajay sighed. Well, if he couldn't admit it to Sabal, who could he tell? "Everyone tries to tell me about all the good I'm doing, but...I don't know if I really belong here."

"You're a child of Kyra," said Sabal. "Even across the ocean you must have heard her crying out for her lost son."

For most of Ajay's life, "Kyra" had been a statue in a candlelit room. Mom offered prayers in solitude and rarely spoke to Ajay of the goddess. Ajay sometimes snuck in to touch the statue, but where Mom felt reverence he only felt cold stone under his fingertips. He had certainly never heard Kyra speak, much less call out to him.

Mostly he'd heard his friends back home telling him to at least wait until the war ended. That his mother would understand, that she didn't want him to die carrying out her last wish. And somewhere, deep inside, he'd heard his own voice saying that he could just stay in the US. Mom would never know, right? She was gone. What difference would it make to her now?

"Ask yourself," continued Sabal. "Truly, why did you come to Kyrat?"

"I had to," said Ajay. He'd dreamed of snow and mountains, not knowing if his dreams were imagination or distant memories or a subconscious need to return his mother to her home. He'd always been curious about where he came from; come to think of it, was returning Mom's ashes an excuse to revisit Kyrat, or the other way around?

"Whether you know it or not, whether you believe it or not, you are serving the will of Kyra," said Sabal. "You are helping to free her children from Pagan's tyranny. Your parents would be proud. Families are sleeping soundly because of you. Be still for a moment and listen, Ajay."

Ajay closed his eyes and at first heard nothing but the wind in the trees. Then there was something else; just the ghost of an echo of a whisper, but he heard it.

The first time he'd stood on Kyrati soil and looked up, really looked up, to see the mountains looming over him he'd felt something ache in his chest. Sabal always treated the mountans as if they were not walls of dead stone formed by impartial geological forces; in this moment, Ajay could almost believe that they really were sung into existence by Banashur.

"Can you hear her?"

Ajay was quiet for a long moment. He really didn't believe in their goddess and he wasn't sure how much he believed in their revolution. Pagan had to be stopped, that was true. But there was something here. Something he couldn't name. Something else. Something he half-remembered, that perhaps he'd always known.

"I- think so." And it was not entirely a lie. "I don't know. But-"

"Do you still believe that you do not belong here?"

"No," said Ajay, and he meant it.

Sabal wrapped him in a tight hug. "Then welcome home, brother," he said, clapping Ajay on the back.