Title: carrots and other wartime propaganda
Fandom: Horizon: Forbidden West
Rating: General Audiences
Length: 289
Author's note: time travel
Summary: There's no do-over so miraculous that couldn't be bettered.

Aloy, if she had been given a choice in the matter - instead of merely waking up near a campfire two days ride from Meridian, two days after the Spire - would have picked ... well. Before. Before the Proving, preferably, and the war party massacre. And Rost.

No loss, not even Varl's, hurts as much as Rost.

But Rost is dead. Vala, and the tribe's braves, and Hades ... they are, all of them, dead, and buried. Even now, when she is so many months earlier than when -

Hades.

If she turns around right now, she might reach the Spire before the transmission. Might kill the malign program properly this time, without giving Sylens the satisfaction of his data delve. Aloy's not used to counting on that sort of luck, but even the thought of the chance (and Sylens' helpless irritation) is sweet.

Can pick Varl up, though. Not letting him out of her sight, never mind leaving him trailing through the west for half a year.

She blinks at the distant glow of machine light, steady steps slowing. Her search ...

She doesn't need to search. She can get a head start on rebuilding GAIA, on reversing the blight, on preparing for the Zeniths (and Beta - Beta), rather than waste time trying to trace a faded trail centuries old.

Aloy even knows where to find Eleuthia, once she makes it back to the base - it's hardly the largest of the subfunctions, and not as directly relevant as the other four - but every increase to density of matrix reduces the time it will take to contain Hephaestus. (And if she takes a little petty spite in denying the Zeniths, well ... they started it.