"How much longer?"
Aloy did not know where Rost's family had gone.
"Shush! You move when you talk." A pause. "Not much longer."
She knew it had been something tragic. There were not many questions Rost left unanswered aside from Aloy's origins, but this had always been a sensitive topic.
"My nose is itching."
The way he spoke of his former mate with quiet reverence had her wondering for hours on end what kind of woman she had been - kind, surely, like Rost, with a gentle hand that made one feel safe and protected. Was she big and strong like Rost? Or was she smaller, more delicate, like the Nora mothers Aloy observed longingly from a distance? Did she have long, flowing locks? Did she braid or loc them? Or maybe she shaved it short to keep it practical and out of the way? Was her skin fair like Aloy and Rost's own, or dark from the sun's kiss?
"Just wait! I'm almost done."
What was her name?
"All right, all right."
Aloy's knowledge of the topic's severity sunk in the day she fell into the ruins. The way Rost had held her close, even if just for a heartbeat, and his later prayers for his dear Alana when he thought Aloy was asleep - it brought a contagious grief into Aloy's heart. She knew many of her belongings were once Alana's own. She knew when Rost looked at her, he often thought of his lost daughter, despite his reluctance to name Aloy as such.
How old had she been when she was cruelly taken from Rost? Did it have something to do with why he was Outcast? Was she like Aloy, brimming with wonder for the world and determined to make her way in it? Had she even been old enough for Rost to know?
Rost's unwillingness to call Aloy his own was because of tribal law, Aloy knew. Because Aloy merely existing put them both on thin ice. Because she had heard the way Rost spoke quietly to All-Mother in the early morning hours when he thought he was alone. Because she had heard him quoting the matriarchs' scathing words, had listened to him quietly denounce them to himself.
"Okay, done! What do you think?"
We told you to raise her. We said nothing of love.
His sigh had been so weary.
As if you would allow any of your children to go without love. Spoken hopefully, almost fearfully, as though he worried the mountain may show him a sign that All-Mother thought otherwise. As if I do not have too much love to give.
"Well done! It really looks like me. But what is it for?"
"You'll see!"
Aloy was not his own, but he desperately wanted her to be.
Even had she never overheard his talks with All-Mother, or his quiet prayers to his mate in the stillness of dawn, the way he showed it through his actions spoke volumes. A decade had passed, and then some, and Rost had never dampened the urge to reach out and pat her shoulder or head for a job well done, always pulling back at the last moment. A decade and some years, and Rost still tucked her delicately into bed when she allowed it. A decade and some years, and he still wore the dandelion crowns she made him like they were gifts to be revered.
She desperately wanted him to be hers, as well. Aloy did not know if fathers were meant to be as close or loved as mothers - she had never seen men carting Nora children around the Embrace - but she did not care. She traced her fingers over the charcoal drawing, crudely made with clumsy fingers that rarely attempted art, careful not to smear it. It truly did not look like Rost, but he had encouraged her anyway.
She wanted Rost like she wanted a mother. A home. Belonging. They both craved it, and cruel as fate was, neither was very good at pretending otherwise.
Aloy was tired of pretending.
She dipped her fingers into the bowl of paint and went to work, the drawing as her muse. The cracked looking-glass made things difficult, and the paint smelled terrible when wet, and halfway through she realized she was doing things the wrong way and had to scrub her first attempt off, but she worked diligently nonetheless. Rost would be home soon with the hunt and Aloy needed to be quick, if precise. A stroke under one eye, above an eyebrow, a long line curving around her eye and stopping at her cheek. Familiar, yet she worried still that it was not correct.
Rost's heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs, and the door creaked open. No more time to worry. Aloy delicately covered the bowl of paint and set it aside. It still sat drying on her face, cooling with the frozen air Rost let in as she turned to greet him.
"Aloy? What are you . . . "
Suddenly, in the face of his shock, a casual greeting did not feel as though it would cut it. Nerves cut into the determination that had driven Aloy to do this; had it been a bad idea? She had known the severity when she decided upon it, but what if Rost did not agree? What if she had misread all the years of kindness? Was this a wound too deep, too fresh to open? But she could not back down now, not with the blue already marked on her skin.
"Oh, Aloy," Rost said, setting the fresh boar on the table and dropping to one knee before her, "what have you done?"
"I belong to you," she answered simply, though the anxiety of potential dismissal had her voice wavering. "I thought it was high time I showed the world."
"Aloy," he said again, like all he could muster was her name, and with his great bushy beard it had taken her too long to realize his lip was quivering, though his kind eyes brimmed with tears. "Oh, Aloy."
Before she knew it she was being swept up into a hug, Rost trembling, and he began to weep into her unruly hair.
How long had it been since she felt this? Since he had begun to force more distance between them, clearly attempting to distance himself before he got too attached, before she was stolen away from him forever? How long since she felt these strong arms dwarfing her, making her feel safe and protected? And yet it was all too clear this hug was not for her; he shook around her, drawing her close as though he could hide her from the world, as though he could not bear to let it see her.
"You cannot," he insisted through his tears, yet the way he held her tighter betrayed his reluctance to admit it. "You cannot be mine."
"I am," Aloy insisted, his grief at the admission strengthening her. "You can wipe this paint from my face as many times as you'd like, and I'll always be yours!"
"The tribe can never accept you like this," Rost tried, and though Aloy faltered for a moment, it was not something to stop her. "I will always be outcast. To belong to an outcast - "
"So let them cast me out again!" Aloy pushed back against his chest far enough to force him to look her in the eye, to see the fire and fury there, the determination to convince and keep him. "I don't need them - I've never needed them! I'll take my answers and go, and - and you can't stop me!"
"You deserve better," Rost said, and Aloy shook her head passionately, wrapping her arms around his huge shoulders and burying her face in the fur draped over them.
"You're better. You're better than the whole lot of them," she declared, and there was nothing truer in her world than that.
She did not know if she had convinced him; they remained there for a long while as he held her, body trembling with what she could only assume was grief and fear and the sheer strength it took to stop himself from accepting what he had craved for years. Aloy did not know what she would do if he rejected her. What was she to do if the only person that had ever cared for her, had even treated her as a human being, denied her? What if . . . what if Rost truly did not want her? It was a silly insecurity - she knew Rost - but as the minutes dragged on she could not help herself.
But Rost finally did release her, large hands on her shoulders now, until one moved to her cheek. He thumbed delicately over the fresh paint, the blue much brighter than his own faded markings, and still tacky as it had not dried, but it was undoubtedly his.
"My little girl," he murmured, and Aloy's heart rate spiked with hope. "Aloy. Was I truly to expect anything else, after speaking your name to All-Mother? Do I even deserve you, after denying you all these years?"
Aloy shrugged, though it was a feat with the weight of his hand on her other shoulder.
"I don't know," she said truthfully. "You'll have to take that up with All-Mother." She was young, and unsure how to console him, but there were some things she knew to be true. "But . . . but I deserve a father, don't you think?"
"Yes," Rost replied gently. His eyes were still rimmed red from his tears, but they were unbearably soft now, fond and loving. "I would say you do."