When Titans Fall
(Recon!Avatar oc x Na'vi!Reader)
Warnings for this chapter: Avatar typical violence, death, mentions of nausea, guilt, moral crisis, Sam is down bad from the start, fem!reader, vague mentions of scents, mostly meet cute (not really). Sam is a moron, reader is fed up. Terrible Na’vi translations (I’m sorry) slow burn (this chapter)
Synopsis: Set directly after the events of the first movie, a RDA soldier finds himself stumbling into the unofficial territory of a skilled Omatikaya hunter. While she’s busy knocking some “sense” (treehugger crap if you ask him) into him, he’s busy trying to figure out what rules he’s gotta abide by to make her irrevocably his
Or: you are unfortunately stuck with the task of rehabilitation, for the moronic RDA dream walker who couldn’t keep his eyes (or hands) to himself.
wc: 3k
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
Pain thudded against his skull with the deafening force of crashing thunder.
His skin damp and cold burned with pulses of life against prickling grass and falling debris. Through the glimpses of consciousness that flashed within his eyes, he watched as his fellow men and soldiers fought with blazes of fire and cries of misguided anger. fear.
He wondered briefly, in these blips between realities and dreams, as he watched men and women die in the name of….of?
…What was he fighting for again?
Maybe the blood that dripped from his wounds and stained the soft flowers beneath him was making his mind hazy. Weakening his resolve.
Because for a moment, the sight before him stopped making the same sense it had before. While he watched through the heavy fan of his lashes, he saw the families of na’vi warriors cry and scream. As their spears and arrows punctured his fellow men, and as they cried for each comrade they lost. They stopped looking so…alien.
Stopped looking like the beasts the government had painted them as.
He clawed through the soil, nails darkened by dirt and grime that stuck like glue and burned like acid. He tried to focus. Tried to keep his eyes from closing, to stop the sway of the world beneath him. But his body wouldn’t move the way he wanted. Wouldn’t crawl to safety, if there was any.
To the RDA, he was expendable. A grunt with nothing worth more than his aim.
To the Na’vi, a threat. A disease.
Witness turned participant.
God, He felt sick. Nauseous with vertigo and the terror of it all.
A thud echoed beside him. A tapestry of blue filled his gaze.
The body of one of the natives lay shot and bleeding beside him. Their heavy breathes and hisses of pain in a tongue unknown to him, their feline gaze settling with his. They snarled with the remains of their strength, a pained wail of anguish that scorched his skin even through the haze. And even in the eyes of the enemy, they cried. Tears poured down their blue cheeks in endless rivers of sorrow. For their comrades, their friends and family. For their forest, for their world, for their home.
Nothing left to lose but their pride. And that seemed to matter very little now.
The cause.
It felt wrong to be the witness of this raw vulnerability. To be allowed to see these fearsome warriors so broken.
What right did he have to this moment? Wasn’t this too cruel?
Then they quieted.
Stilling with the last echoes of their endless suffering at the hands of his own kind. And he wondered again.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
What was this all for?
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
Branches curved beneath the swell of your heel in gentle sways and arches, propelling you further through the thicket of low hanging leaves and large towering ferns. The faint pools of sun that peaked through the sky warmed your skin, urging you faster through the forest in hopes of beating the coming eclipse.
You had been warned time and time again, that a recovery mission of the western borders was not needed. Near prohibited if anything. But you did not listen. (when would you?)
Your mind is wired with need for retribution, for vengeance. Your skin alight with the desire to save and find what could still be used. To return what had been lost. A fool's wants, your brother had chided. Material possessions were meaningless in times of war, and even more so in the wake. What was lost should stay lost.
But you yearned to bring them back. To reunite a child with her favorite toy. To return the necklace of a grieving husband or wife. To save the woven headpiece of a beloved father. If you could even find one, you would be satisfied.
You searched, and searched. High and low, through metal and charcoal, past weapons and machines reclaimed by the great mother. The decay already setting in. Her will to erase the travesty, that scarred her beautiful heart.
Your pouch hung heavy on your side, the weight of memories carried in its dyed leather.
Crunch
Back to the trunk of the tree you had been perched on, you exhaled, slow and cautiously. Tense and firm with the need to blend deep into the giants very being, peaking from over your shoulder.
Down.
Within the bushes and roots, a blue body walked brutishly amongst the forest flowers. A sturdiness in his gait that spoke nothing of na’vi grace. Of care for the life now squashed beneath his boot.
A Demon.
Your arrow was notched before you let yourself breathe again, the sharpened stone aimed to kill, now squarely aligned with the back of this cheap imitation of your people.
Drawing back, till the string grew taught and trembled with thinly veiled rage.
You tracked him with a predators eye, narrowed and slitted as it honed on his stumbling form. You mapped the muscular width of his back, trailing across the expanse of broad shoulders connected to bulging arms. He was bigger than many of your tribes men. Even for a warrior, this dream made flesh exceeded what you had grown used to in life, coming closer to the familiar form of your clans most recent Olo’ekytan.
He was handsome, from what you could see. A build that would attract many clans women, despite the imperfections that littered it. Scars, new and old. An additional finger or brows of hair. Different. Not necessarily bad.
Not things would ever allow yourself to admit or fully acknowledge though. He was still demon all the same.
And you would purge him from this world, in the name of all your fallen brethren and sisters. Maybe then others could be spared.
The wood of your bow creaked and groaned, the bend curving just slightly as you drew in a final, steadying breath.
Then you stopped.
A spirit. A seed. All soft light and whispering gentleness.
Floating down to the body of the man you had so readily planned to kill.
It fluttered just past his ear, that swiveled with focus and unease, before darting away just as he turned, golden eyes searching briefly before they darted up.
Directly locking onto your now frozen form.
You gasped.
And then ran.
“Hey- Hey wait a second!”
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
It felt like days since he’d woken up, buried beneath thick layers of ash and leaves. Days since he had a clean filtered sip of water, and days since he’d become completely and utterly lost in this forest.
The last thing he remembered was fire and regret, then nothing. In sleep, he did not return back to the base. To the sterile walls of the scientist bay. In the cramped corners of his connecting pod. To his human body. His real body.
Though that reality didn't seem so real anymore. Almost like a dream. Like his skin was always blue and he was always a giant that walked through damp forest floors that never seemed to end. And the human body he had grown in was just a brief state of mind. A recurring nightmare with a dying home and no purpose other than canon fodder for the “good of man kind”.
“Careful Reeves…” He chided quietly to himself, "You're starting to sound like that traitor.” A humorless chuckle bleeding past cracked lips to be met with empty air and an emptier sense of duty.
Right and wrong had become a topic he dwelled long and hard on in his waking hours.
Was it wrong to seek a new place to settle? (Probably not, He’d think)
Was it wrong to tear it apart and destroy it just like the last? Forcefully trying (failing) to remove the natives who belonged here first?
…Probably. (most definitely, he’d correct himself later)
To try and give himself some grace, he argued he wasn't the one digging up the earth for some pieces of scrap metal. Though he was still a witness to it all. A bystander. Before he joined the fight and became another cog in the machine.
He supposed apathy became permission one way or another. And with permission came acceptance that it was the way things had to be, that there was plenty of land for them to move to, till there was a gun in his hands and blood stained beneath.
Till he watched the cries of people who were supposed to be savage. Unfeeling and wild.
They seemed to feel a whole lot when their homes were burned and their loved ones were killed.
Above
His eyes snapped back and up.
And then the sky ran.
“Hey..” he called, voice weak with shock and then again with urgency, “Hey! Wait a second!” his feet propelling him forward, faster and faster with what little energy he had left
Into the woods
Into the forest
And further from anything he had ever known.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
A blade pressed firm against the thin skin of his neck.
This was a truly worse outcome situation. Exposed on all sides, in an unfamiliar place, now held captive by the piece of the night he had so desperately chased. Now being threatened, by said night too. A native woman.
A warrior, if he was to make an educated guess by the muscular of her body.
“Vrrtep.” Her beguiling voice snarled in his ears. A lean and strong body curved against the flesh of his back, and he wondered briefly if she could hear his heart. If this beauty that now threatened his life, could feel the way he trembled in her hands. Not with fear. (maybe just a little), but with unknown.
He knew he was excited, in a sort of dumb way. Excited to see someone else. Another conscious being and not one of the 5 thanators he had now come across in the last few days.
However, no less blood thirsty it seemed.
But there was another feeling that swirled deep in the depths of his core. That twisted and shivered in anticipation of her every move, as if his very life was not currently on the line. As if this body knew hers more intimately then his mind did. A call that he had never heard and didn’t know how to answer.
Yet.
“...fuck. I’m not a masochist am I?’
His murmur of disbelief earned another sharp hiss and the feeling of skin splitting ever so slightly beneath sharpened stone..
“Quiet.”
Damn. Maybe.
Sam swore under his breath as his body was yanked to stand, pushed forward by the point of the na’vi woman's blade between his shoulders.
“Walk, vrrtep.”
Another poke when he didn't move fast enough and his tail whipped against her thigh in surprise, swiftly rewarded with a harsher shoved forward.
“Alright, alright I’m going. No need to get testy with me. I don’t even know your name lady-“
“Quiet! You are too loud. Watch tsenga nga tìnvi, careless tawtute skxawng!”
He didn't even know what half those words were, (though he was almost positive she had just cussed him out) so it was a little hard to heed them properly, evident in the way he seemed to do…something incorrectly, and her hand slapped against his still tender skin.
“Ow!”
“Skxawng.” She repeated, equally as vexed. Or more so. He couldn’t really tell since this scowl she currently wore seemed like a permanent feature of her pretty face.
He also couldn't decide if he minded or not.
Why was this something he was even thinking about right now?
Steps and more slaps passed by in the only noise the forest would allow. Crunching leaves, nearby streams and the chirps of some bird or animal he was sure would eat him in one bite if he came across them.
Eventually the silence was too much for someone so used to the sounds of war and machines, so he decided to test his luck with the ill tempered woman.
“So....where we headed?”
“Home.”
“Ohh, so you can hear me, I was starting to think”
Wait.
“—wait sorry. Home? Like,” he paused both briefly in his steps (though he was shoved forward once again), and in his mind before his thoughts caught back up. He wondered vaguely if he should see a neurologist soon. Maybe he had a concussion?
“Like…your home?”
Feline eyes rolled so hard he worried they might fall out. (He was still smart enough to figure out what that was a universal sign of)
You looked at him like he was stupid, which he guessed to you he probably was.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“You ask too much.”
Shot down again. But Sam was a Reeves, and Reeves were nothing if not persistent. (Or stubborn jackasses depending on who you asked)
“You’re not like..bringing me to be sacrificed are you?” It was supposed to be a rhetorical question. He’d rather not know to be honest. Ignorant till death if he could help it
But he watched in quiet awe as it got a reaction out of you. Well besides like, general irritation at least. The faintest furrow of your hairless brow, and the briefest twitch of your forever frown.
“...Maybe.”
And then you moved on. The breeze carrying the glittering beads of your hair in brief chimes, and curved past the swell of your hips. Your tail swaying behind like a hypnotic taunt.
It took Sam a moment to let go of the enchanting movement of your strong thighs before he caught back up with you. Mind reeling with new scenarios before a dawning thought settled into his mind. A lilt in your voice that only registered now.
“...was that a joke?” His own graveled out in the teeniest tiniest faintest purr. A strange sense of accomplishment warming his ears and neck.
Silence greeted him but he found himself laughing a bit despite it. The twitch of your ears seemed to confirm it.
“...so you can be something other than angry.”
Strike #2
Wrong thing to say apparently as he found himself on the floor once again, knees buried in the dirt and hair gripped tight in blue clawed hands.
Your face was close to his now. So close he could map the pattern of your freckles, and count each blemish and scar. (Of which there were very few, he noted in a weird, quiet pride. She must be very strong.)
Though that pretty scowl was now twisted in a much more visible display of anger. Maybe even sadness.
“You never know when to stop!”
He grunted as your grip tightened, “it’s one of my biggest flaws I’m told, heh-Ow!” He hissed, silenced again with a rough jerk of his head
“You speak and speak on things you do not know! My anger is righteous! My anger is pain caused by your people. Your hands!” you yell, eyes shining wet but you let no tears fall. Weakness in front of the enemy is death, and you would rather cut your own kuru then let a sky demon like him see you weak. “If I am angry it is because I have suffered! Because my people have suffered your-”
You breathe heavily. And he watched as you pause as if reminded of yourself. Your grip is still unforgiving but loosening. Before it's let go and tossed aside as if the words “why bother” were etched into your eyes.
It stung a little.
“Hey-” you stepped further through, faster now as if urged by your own frustration and desire to leave him behind, lost just like you found him.
“Look, lady- Miss I..I’m sorry okay-”
“Do not lie.”
He nearly threw his head back in frustration. A groan torn from his raw throat. “I’m not-” a gigantic leaf to the face interrupted him but he carried on, as if led by an invisible leash. “I’m not lying.”
.
.
.
And then softer,
“I really am sorry.”
He watched through tired eyes as you stopped. Shoulders still tense with the urge to fight. Or to run.
I guess I’m doing this.
“I…..Look.” A plead.
“I don’t know what im doing here. Or who…what I'm fighting for anymore. If you can..if you could help me…I’d…it’d mean alot.” He exhaled, slow and heavy and with all the pride left in his body, he lowered in his head in what he hoped was a clear of his own desperation. “Please..”
He waited.
For a hum, a step. Something. Anything.
But when he looked up,
she was gone.
And the feeling of loss and disappointment settled so heavily in the slumps of his massive shoulders, he wondered if just laying down to starve in the land he ruined would hurt less than the shame in his heart. Despite being taller, bigger, stronger than he had ever been before. He felt small.
But,
Then a scent wafted towards him. Sweet and familiar with the bitter richness of dirt and unknown fruits that had never graced his pallet. It burned his sensitive nose in the best way, traveling into his lungs and beneath his skin, and he felt himself breathe in deep before he could question the source.
A hand cupped leaf disrupted his staring contest with the ground. Water, clear and crystalline sloshed in the green foliage, untouched by the nature or ash that lingered around it, and he suddenly became all to aware of his dry throat
“Drink.” Your voice urged, firm and expectant as his gaze snapped back towards yours, and relief flooded his aching bones.
“...thank you..” he whispered, hands reaching out in reverence to take the offered refreshment. The coolness startling him as it bit his teeth, though he did not pull back. Only swallowed with the eagerness and fervor of a very dehydrated man.
“Thank Eywa..” you corrected, paired with a sigh in what he could only assume was unwilling resignation. And while not accepting, he couldn’t help the happy little sway of his own tail at the thought of the pretty forest lady warming up to him.
“Thank you..Eywa..” It was awkward coming from him, but he figured it was a name he’d have to get used to it sooner than later. Being her people's goddess and all.
He breathed with the ease of thirst well quenched, before raising his head to hers. Softer now with appreciation that cooled his feverish skin.
“....can I know your name now?”
You paused for a moment, and he now wondered if it took you a moment to understand his words. Your English was well spoken, though not quite fluent. Where had you learned, he questioned distantly. That old ladies' school? You didn't seem quite that young though.
The school hadn't been that old.
Still, after careful consideration you offered it. And the smile that splattered across his face was so genuine and excited that it seemed to even surprise you.
Your name slipped off his tongue, thick with thrill and unbidden joy, enough to make your ears pin back and the beautiful blue of your galaxy-like skin to warm in a soft purple that nearly stole his breath.
“I like it…I mean- I don’t really know what it means but..it suits you”
You nodded only once, firm and quick as if too embarrassed to entertain any longer and you turned ready to retreat again, but stopped halfway.
“...Yours?”
He blinked. “My what?”
Your eyes narrowed, tail giving an agitated flick before his brain decided to work again and he scrambled to stand.
“Sam!” He swallowed, face hot with embarrassment at the echoes of his own voice, before he continued, quieter. “Sam Reeves.”
You assessed him, and while wasn't sure if you approved or even like the sound of his human name, ( though he hoped you at least thought it was cool), you nodded with acknowledgement.
“Come Sam’Reeves. We’ll see if a vrrtep like you can be saved.”
“That's not quite-“ He sighed, hand pushing through dark hair, a laugh tickling his chest. “...yes ma’am.”
Eywa sure had a weird way of doing things.
Watch tsenga nga tìnvi, careless tawtute skxawng - “Watch where you step, careless human idiot”
Vrrtep - “Demon”
Author: sorry there’s not a lot of romance and stuff in the first chapter! It’s mostly build up right now but I promise the next chapter will be 🫦
Tags: @hummingblurb @justformio234 @estorawastaken @icemorgan10
Divider credit: @pixopix @strangergraphics