#LISTEN. this has been driving me hogwild these last couple of weeks

[hanalwayssolo]

i’ve allowed these random hfw headcanon things to gnaw and nibble away at my hyperfixating brain like a bunch of starving squirrels and god (by the forge! by the sun! by the ten!) i might as well write it down before i go insane during this long holiday weekend:

erend, in his thorough research of the ancient ones’ history with music, begins to use phrases like, “this beat is sick,” “this bop slaps!” or “this is a banger!” to describe the songs he thought are good. which are mostly heavy metal. in his defense, the only reason why the genre appealed to him was because it’s “the oseram blood” in him. (“it’s metal??? get it??? by the forge my people would love this!!”)

varl, to keep erend from blasting his questionable music taste in the base, often hijacks his focus with classical music he discovered along with zo and alva. mostly, varl plays vivaldi’s winter. erend was pissed at first but after being forced to listen to it on repeat, it’s actually… not that bad. in fact, his words were: “the beat drop in the middle? a solid 10/10.”

kotallo asking aloy about seashells has been a thing, but honestly, this was not at all a random question, nor did it come from nowhere. truth is, when he was a kid, he often traveled with his parents to the long coast, where he would watch the sea’s ebbs and flows, would listen as the water foams and makes a rustling sound as it meets the shore. he found it so mesmerising, somewhat resenting that he was not born in tide’s reach. now, after watching all the data that aloy has gathered in her travels and having learned that this strange object called a seashell carried the sound of the ocean in its body, he remembers a time when he told his mother how he wanted to “keep the music of the crashing waves in his pocket” so he can continue listening to it even from the bulwark. she only smiled at him and gave him a hug so warm his mother could have been the sun itself. anyway. this seashell seems like lovely thing to have, not just to have the ocean at his fingertips, but perhaps something to remember his mother by.

alva learns this thing called scrabble from the archives, a game played by the old ones to enhance their knowledge of the glyphs. (their word for it was vocabulary. or something to that effect.) she explains the mechanics to the rest of the gang, says that it’s similar to machine strike given how it’s played on a wooden board, but instead of machine pieces, it’s glyphs on a wooden tile. this discussion with the gang happens to coax beta out of the basement.

beta, of course, knows a thing or two about scrabble through the apollo training interface. she’s been so keen to try it out except she didn’t have anyone to play it with when she was still with the zeniths. here in the base, she offers to help in making the board, which more or less astounds everybody considering how… well… she’s been keeping mostly to herself, an isolation / kind of introversion worse than kotallo’s. this makes erend and varl immediately volunteer in carving the board. even kotallo promises he would find the best pigment to paint the glyphs on the tiles. zo and alva exchange a look that’s like, “did we just witness a nora, an oseram, and a tenakth agree on… collaborating?? for a board game??”

zo discovers the recipe for this thing called coffee and chocolate frosting, which she has heard kotallo mentioned during one of his machine strike sessions with erend. (“an oseram forging an unlikely friendship with a tenakth marshal? can you believe??” erend exclaims proudly one night, sharing his piss-poor ale with kotallo.) she lets erend, varl, and of course, kotallo, taste-test for her. the results yielded positive, if not close to catastrophic results. positive because they all seemed to thoroughly enjoy the coffee and the chocolate, but by catastrophic results, she supposes that maybe she added too much sugar and cacao beans? because somehow, the guys kind of… went berserk. they were so awake and alive and burning with a rush of energy that the trio decided to go out to train and hunt that by the time they came back, varl left a trail of dead burrowers outside the base. erend managed to collect a dozen of apex bristleback hearts. and kotallo… returned with a carcass of a stormbird and a massive boulder from the bulwark. zo will have a lot to explain to aloy about this.

aside from varl, the other person who enjoys talking to beta is actually alva. alva is very much fascinated with how beta knows a lot of things!! they spend evenings reading through the archives and talking to gaia, with beta often correcting alva’s quen version of things. of course, alva understands how beta might somehow come off as blunt and rude; after finding out how beta has been treated by the zeniths, alva would raise hell over these immortal jackasses if she could.

zo religiously tends to her garden outside the base by the cliffside facing plainsong, but every now and then, she’d notice how the plants are freshly watered just before she can get to the task herself, or how there’s often an unfamiliar addition to her pot of flowers. she doesn’t mind this at all; frankly, she appreciates it. she assumes varl might be behind this as he’s the only one who lends her a hand to keep their little lush space alive and to bring in more plants for the base—until gaia points out a fun fact in their passing conversation that the new flowers blooming in her garden are only native to tenakth soil. specifically, it only grows in the sheerside mountains. well. with that in mind, it doesn’t take long for zo to put two and two together. besides, it really doesn’t take a genius to figure out the identity of this secret gardener. 

so yeah, sure. sure. kotallo takes care of the cliffside garden in secret. i mean, why wouldn’t he? it’s on the way to the sunwing site where he often trains, and erend usually forgets to water the plants, anyway. and about the flowers... he wanted to bring something that reminds him of home and to honour the friends he lost. truth is, this was all gaia’s idea. ever since he told gaia about how he lost his arm and what happened in the embassy, she mentioned that one of the many things the old ones did to cope with the kind of thing he’s been through is to make a garden. (and by ‘that kind of thing’, the words that gaia used specifically were trauma and grief. he knows she means well but this didn’t make sense to him—he’s pretty sure he’s neither traumatised nor grieving. of course not. he’s fine. he’s absolutely, totally fine.)

(of course he’s NOT fine but by the fucking ten why would he dare to admit that out loud? and what is he if not in denial? yes, he felt this when he lost his parents—but how come this is different? how come this feels a lot heavier than when he was a kid? does grief change its form the older you get? what if he’s struggling to process these big and complex feelings because he grew up being taught how to fight and not to sit with grief? to only bury the dead and to keep moving forward? besides, who has time to grieve and to wallow on losses when his tribe is at the brink of another civil war? this has always been the tenakth way: to keep a stiff upper lip, to never let sentiment get in the way of duty. to mourn is as unnatural as a dreadwing being docile. so how, pray tell, could he ever let himself have a say when he’s hasn’t been taught to do so?)

so instead, kotallo learns how to plant flowers to make room for grief. he makes space for another when they lose varl in gemini. he realises later on that he might have been unkind to erend, how easily he let go of the words “we can’t sit around wallowing in our losses” as if varl was a thing and not a friend, because truthfully, he was coming from a place of fear for his tribe, which, in turn, diminished the way erend was dealing with this loss, who’s taking this harder than the rest of them. of course varl and erend go a long way back. this time, kotallo is the outsider to their friendship. and kotallo of all people should know what that kind of pain feels like. he lost an arm, yes, but to lose your friends, to be the only one to survive… isn’t the grief from all of that a kind of maiming, too?