Chapter Text
1
The first gift comes a day after Ajay suffers a particularly nasty fall while scaling a bell tower. At Sabal’s prompting, Ajay’s taken to ripping the cords straight from the boxes projecting the self-proclaimed King’s law (and giving the boxes a few punches for good measure). The ones to the far south had been easy enough to scale, but the further north he worked, the more soldiers there seemed to be holding down the ancient towers. He thought this last tower would be a cinch; as always, Pagan’s trigger-happy shits in red had something to say about his plans. The bullets were easy enough to dodge but his shoulder would be smarting from the fall for the next few days.
At least he’d only fallen two levels.
Sabal’s scolding over the radio only pissed Ajay off more. He was the only person competent enough to scale the towers and rid the gorgeous Kyrati air of the messages; screw Sabal if he wasn’t going out and trying himself.
So Ajay was making the (equally) treacherous climb back to the Ghale homestead. Forcing himself not to dwell on the dull throbbing in his shoulder as he hauled himself up the cliffside, he reminds himself to be grateful for the isolation of the old homestead. It was quiet here, far enough removed that he could almost pretend that there wasn’t a civil war waging with him caught in the middle (if he tries hard enough to ignore the echoes of gunshots across the mountain). Here, there was no Sabal yelling about what their traditions needed, no Amita berating him for keeping a country he barely knew in the confines of the dark ages.
Instead, there was a box.
Ajay frowns as he approaches the front door. The wooden crate is taking up the space near where the self-appointed caretaker sits, and as Ajay stares, the Golden Path member appears from around one of the house’s corners. “…what is that?”
The man shrugs. Ajay’s become used to the guy’s presence, but he reminds himself that the Golden Path member won’t be around forever; he was only here recovering from a gunshot wound taken during the liberation of one the first outposts. Sure, the secluded house was nice, but some days Ajay did miss having good company. The guy was something, at least.
“No clue, Ajay. Just showed up here yesterday. Hasn’t blown up or hissed at me yet so, what the hell, it’s probably safe.”
Oh of course, naturally. It would be just like someone from Kyrat to send him a booby-trapped gift as means of assassination. Ajay heaves the box inside and briefly entertains the thought; at least then his shoulder wouldn’t ache. What was inside the box didn’t seem to carry too much weight, but the wood itself creaks the floorboards as it settles on the living room floor.
A quick rest is in order, and then Ajay’s grappling with the top of the box with the help of a crowbar. The nails finally separate, the box face falls to the ground, and Ajay’s anticipating the worst–
Pink. The first thing he sees is a muted pink. At least it’s not Pepto Bismol pink, and it almost fits in with the other light-red fabrics he’s got strewn all over the living room. More like the pink of Pagan’s suit–
Ajay groans. Of course. Pagan’s the only person Ajay knows, both here and in the US, that’s ostentatious enough to send a gift in a crate that’s bigger than he is. He finally gets his hands on the fabric inside and almost groans aloud again. They’re pillows, he realizes, some large enough to spoon with if he’s ever inclined to do so (and isn’t that just a weird thought, Pagan sending him things to cuddle with). They’re not all the same horrifying shade of pink, thank Jesus, and some of them are actually in his favorite shade of green. Underneath all the soft fabric is a note:
Ajay, my dear boy, it’s utterly appalling that despite your recent fabric strides with that fashion week degenerate, you’ve neglected to get yourself an interior decorator. Really, how you manage to relax in a place that has not a single loveseat is beyond me. But as much as I’d love watching the help scrabble over the mountain while carrying a twelve-piece couch, I’m not partial to wasting good fixtures. So for now, these will have to do, until someone can whip your tastes into fucking shape, boy.
-Pagan Min
The man knows the sparse decorations of the homestead. The thought is a little unnerving, though Ajay reasons that if Pagan wanted him killed in his own home, he’d be dead already. So instead of worrying, Ajay dumps the crate’s contents and flops down into all the fluff. It’s much more comforting than he’d expected, and he drifts quickly into sleep, the twinge in his shoulder forgotten.
2
The next box isn’t as much of a surprise as it is something for Ajay to roll his eyes at. It’s something as obnoxiously over-the-top as before, though this time, he doesn’t even recognize where it’s from. It’s obviously a crate of wine, but the label is a complete mystery to him. Could be some kind of Kyrati wine, could be stolen from an ancient king’s crypt in France when wine-making first began.
With Pagan, you never really knew.
Ajay nudges the box in with his foot, then his hands when he realizes he’s not making too much headway. All he wants is a shower to get the smell of ash and brick dust from his skin, but he impulsively pries the box open. The bottles of blood-red gleam back at him; sure enough, they’re from some kind of winery in France. Specially imported, by the look of the invoice. Several parts of it have been blacked out, but that doesn’t stop Ajay from assuming that they were obscenely expensive.
People in Kyrat are starving, people are losing their houses, and families are disintegrating around him, so the unnecessarily expensive gift should make his stomach churn, but he pries the cork from the first bottle and takes a long drink. He doesn’t have much frame of reference for this kind of thing, but he thinks it’s good wine. It must be, or Pagan wouldn’t have bothered. He’s not a betting man, but Ajay would bet all the money from Rochan’s drug sales that Pagan prides himself on an exquisite taste in wine.
He’ll just have to take the King’s word for it.
The note is, of course, sassy as ever:
Ajay, my boy, I’ve been getting reports of an increased indulgence of some backwoods, toilet-brewed Kyrati beer. I’d be remiss to allow you to drink such swill, despite the fact that you’ve truly been a naughty little shit hell-bent on upending everything from my largest outpost to my morning breakfast, so I hope you truly appreciate what this took. You wouldn’t believe what it takes to grease the palm of customs in France these days, like they’re not greasy enough already, the swine. I digress, dear boy, if I catch you drinking that piss-water again, I’ll be half in mind to flatten the entire rebellion in one go.
-Pagan Min
The note leaves Ajay chuckling. He’s probably right, the daft old man, in that he could end things far sooner than any of them want. With unlimited access to resources, guns, and a seemingly endless supply of bodies to throw at them, Pagan probably could end the war in minutes if he really set his mind to effective strategy. But he hasn’t yet, and if that note is anything to go off of, he doesn’t plan on doing so anytime soon. Ajay swallows another mouthful of wine thoughtfully. There has to be a reason for that, but instead of dwelling on the fact, he settles for taking the rest of the bottle into the shower to let the hot water relax the muscle in his back.
3
Ajay’s making his way up the winding steps to the homestead when the Golden Path caretaker whips past him without a single word. The man looks terrified but offers no explanation.
He knows what’s up instantly. It’s been far too long since Pagan left him some kind of gift for the house. Whatever it is, it’s not immediately visible as the house comes into sight, which is both reassuring and yet scary as hell; whatever it was had scared the poor Golden Path guy from inside the house.
That's not good.
Ajay turns the front door knob slowly. Nothing hisses or spits at him, so it can’t be anything furry and lethal. His tense shoulders drop a little. So what could cause the caretaker to bolt like that?
The answer screams silently at him as he turns to face the main wall. Ajay almost flinches at the violent blush that immediately hits his face.
It’s a huge, showy oil painting that reminds Ajay of the many hanging in DePleur’s compound during that first botched dinner with Pagan. Unlike those paintings, though, this one’s definitely not suited for dinner company.
Because apparently, Pagan took a leaf out of Mr. Chiffon’s book and commissioned an oil painting of Ajay as Adonis. Except all the paintings he could remember seeing of Pagan hadn’t been quite this…
…naked.
“Jesus Christ.” Ajay feels wildly around the edges and for the back of the painting, but the asshole seems to have managed to find some way to permanently fix it to the fucking wall. It’s a joke, it has to be. Nobody in their right mind would want something like this in their own home; a tasteful portrait in a suit, maybe, but far too much bronze skin stares back at him. And God, was this all the artist’s imagination for reference, or Pagan’s?
The note is carefully placed beside the painting, as if it could somehow be missed, but that was what Ajay wants to see more than anything. How in the hell would Pagan defend this?
It’s the shortest note so far:
Well, my boy, I heard Mr. Chiffon was drawing inspiration from some rather interesting places. In the event that tire of running around in the buff for all of Kyrat, you could always just show him this as a substitute.
-Pagan
The pure cheek.
Pagan’s mocking him for the naked run in the Shanath Arena. Ajay can’t even bring himself to be mad about the fact that that hadn’t been his choice, thank you very fucking much, because the sheer sass behind the gift and note has him bent over in laughter.
He’ll be laughing until he finally figures out how to get the damn thing off the wall.
4
The next thing doesn’t arrive until he’s recovering from the events that transpired in the mine. Sabal had checked in with him but hadn’t stayed nearly long enough for his sanity. It was impossible for Ajay to ask him to stay. He’s torn between needing to get a grip on his sanity and being worried about seeing the ornate, blue-masked face of the Rakshasa when he looks at the Golden Path leader. He doesn’t trust what he sees the first day of his freedom; whatever Yuma hit him with had packed even more of a punch than the first time in Durgesh.
The next day, when the drugs have finally leeched from his system, Ajay’s angry. Pagan’s nonchalant attitude about his face-off with Yuma, after the sting of leaving him in Durgesh, is like a knife to the sternum. Ajay’s mind barely feels like his own; he wonders if he will ever get the images of demons, of Yuma’s slender frame wrapping over him, out of his mind.
Just because Pagan’s a degenerate that lives off of mind-altering drugs doesn’t mean the rest of them are okay with it.
And that’s what gets Ajay angry more than anything. Sabal and Amita, he’d gotten used to their manipulations. But this is the first time Pagan’s been willing to throw him to the dogs without telling him the truth of the matter. Ajay had been kept in the dark about what Durgesh really meant, and he’d been completely blindsided by Yuma’s visions of Kalinag.
Pagan hadn’t really given him reason not to trust him before.
There’s a subtle knock at the door. Ajay knows it’s probably another gift (God forbid, maybe a thank you for killing Yuma gift, and wouldn’t that just be even more fucked). That thought and the prevailing exhaustion keep him in bed for several hours before he finally slides downstairs.
Ajay flinches violently in the dark living room. The lights are out and his mind immediately veers sharply back to the chamber, to the sounds of whipping arrows and the flow of blood from Kalinag’s throat on his hands–
His hands are on the box before he knows it. It comes apart easily this time, and Ajay surprises himself with the laugh that barks out of him.
They’re candles. Of all fucking things.
The colors rival those of the pillows still littering the living space. He hastens to light one and basks in the light.
Much better than the crushing blackness.
There’s no note accompanying this gift. That alone speaks to Ajay more than the rest of the written words combined.
There’s not much to say.
He knows it’s probably a fire hazard, but he brings enough of the candles up to bathe his room in a comfortable light. The pillows he brings to bed are grounding enough for his sanity, for now. Ajay tosses and turns through the rest of the day, the raging fire of anger gently fading to embers in his gut.
5
The last gift is more startling than the others because it arrives while Ajay is asleep. It’s one thing to think about Pagan snooping around his house while he’s gone; it’s another thing entirely to realize that even in the dead silence of the night, Pagan’s people can move about without waking him.
Ajay walks outside the front door and just stares. The grass before the cliff face has been transformed into possibly the most beautiful garden he’s ever seen. Granted, he’s got no knowledge of neither local nor general horticulture; but he has to assume that the breathtaking flowers brightening the ground are no less than rare and expensive. There are shades of blue and purple he didn’t think existed, and even what look like some of the plants he regularly uses for his healing syringes. They’ll have to be carefully cultivated so that he doesn’t totally strip them for healing, but they’re better than having to constantly feel about the wilderness for similar plants.
The smell is absolutely enchanting. Ajay’s no stranger to death after what he’s seen in Kyrat, but there’s no denying that the pungent stench of decaying flesh in some parts of the country and the acrid odor of the burning landscape in other parts take their toll. The air, despite its mountain freshness, already feels cleaner, more pure. He laughs at the irony; Pagan, making something more clean and pure? It’s an improvement, though, one Ajay can’t ignore.
Tacked to one of the garden’s posts with a throwing knife, of all things, is another note, this one bittersweet and to the point:
You may not remember, dear boy, but you always talked of having a garden one day. I had the help who ridiculed you for ‘liking something so girly’ executed and promised you that day that you’d have one. Sorry this one is many years too late. I would have created it with you but frankly, I have one white thumb and one red thumb, which doesn’t leave much room for a green one.
-Pagan
The drug reference isn’t lost on him and neither is the one to all the killing. But Pagan’s frankness regarding both is somewhat surprising. Ajay’s reminded that Pagan’s the one who’s been the most honest with him so far, despite Durgesh and Yuma. He’d at the very least spouted less lies at him than Amita and Sabal had.
Ajay settles on the ground, crosses his legs casually, and breathes deeply. He thinks maybe this gift is really peace of mind, though he doesn’t dwell on the thought as a fresh mountain breeze tugs the floral scent toward him again.