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Pairing: Jake Sully x Varang
Chapter Ten Excerpt: First Flight
Varang had been vague about what was required. All she'd told him was that one of the beasts would try to kill him and that he'd need to join his kuru to that one. He huffed. Of fucking course it'd be the animal trying to kill him. He wondered if she'd found her nightwraith that way. Man, he couldn't imagine having to fight off that massive thing to bond with it. He was so lucky she hadn't fed him to that thing when they'd first met. Among the aggravated hisses around him, he heard a different snarl from behind. This one sounded pissed off. He turned just as a blue ikran lunged forward. He leapt out of snapping range but the animal followed him, snarling and flaring its wings. Jake risked a glance at Varang. The woman's grin told him all he needed to know. "Okay, okay."
The ikran lunged forward again. Jake crouched, letting its head go by above, before he wrapped his arm around the beast's neck and leapt onto it. The animal shrieked and twisted. God damn it! Jake scrambled to stay on the pissed creature. His heart hammered in his chest as it jumped and shook itself, trying to fling him off. The man dug his nails in and wrapped his legs around the lower part of its neck. The ikran tried to snap at him. He flinched at those sharp teeth, then his fear turned to frustration. If this god damn overgrown bird was the thing that killed Tommy-! He clenched his fist, swung his right arm back, and punched the thing right in its face. The ikran shrieked as it swayed, giving him the precious few seconds he needed to grab his kuru and ram it into the animal's. "Stop!" he shouted at it. The beast's flared wide wings immediately slumped the rock below them. "Sit still!" The ikran did as he'd commanded.
"Good," Varang said. She strode forward to their side. Jake heard a familiar howling call from down the mountain. The other ikran scattered into the wind, fleeing as Varang's mount swept up the mountain side to join them. Her huge beast settled beside them and lowered itself so that Varang count climb up onto it. "Now, we fly." Jake's ikran shuffled back as the Na'vi's ride spread its wings. Jake could feel its barely controlled terror at the sight of the nightwraith.
"It's okay," Jake murmured, trying to send reassurance through their new connection. "It's friendly." And that's how he discovered that the overgrown birds could, in fact, feel doubt. The Na'vi gave a shout as her beast took to the skies. "Come on," he urged his ikran. "Look, she's gonna be mad if we don't go." He pictured her many, many attacks on him. "You want that thing joining in? Then fly! Go!" His new ikran full body shuddered before it crouched and sprang into the air. Jake clung onto it for dear life. He felt an expectant blankness through their bond. Was it waiting for something? For him? "Follow her!" The ikran angled its wings to climb through the skies after the nightwraith. Varang twisted to look down at them. She raised a fist and gave a celebratory shout. He mirrored her. As they flew through the air, Jake following Varang's lead, everything finally felt right. This? He grinned at the wind in his hair and the sky above them. He'd been born to do this.
