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[zephyrwritesthings]

Fly High - Chapter 22

Pairing: So’lek x Fem!OC

Trigger warnings: Violence, swearing.

Summary: Disgraced but cleared of wrongdoing, former flight lead Robin Walker accepts an RDA mission that promises redemption—only to awaken on Pandora in a recombinant body she never agreed to inhabit. Sent to hunt a legendary traitor, she instead finds herself stranded between two worlds: too human to belong among the Na’vi, too changed to return to Earth. As the planet challenges everything she was taught to fear, Robin must confront the meaning of loyalty, survival, and identity—and the quiet, dangerous pull of a warrior who sees past what she was built to be. 

Masterlist

Chapter 22 - No One Will Come

When Robin first woke in this body, the first thing the RDA gave her was a lesson.

Not care. Not explanation.

Information.

Hostile natives. Rouge insurgents. Lethal contact risk. Kill zones. Ambush patterns. Cultural vulnerabilities to exploit if capture became useful and survival remained possible.

Then, later, they had given her the report—her report.

A fake autopsy, signed and filed by several doctors who had either never seen her body or had seen it and lied anyway. Cause of death—projectile trauma, Na’vi arrow. Entry through an eye socket, exiting through the rear skull. Catastrophic encephalic damage. Killed in action after hostile native engagement.

Clean words. Neat words.

Words made to close a grave they themselves had already robbed.

Even then, before she knew the truth, before W-17 returned to her in fragments of blood, static, and gunfire, Robin had not been able to hold much hate for the Na’vi.

Not then. Not before anger, revenge, and fear took hold of her copied mind and turned her into something that wandered from one RDA installation to the next like a war machine with a pulse.

Back then, when the lies still had weight and the RDA’s version of her death was the only version she had, the hatred still hadn’t stuck.

‘They were here before us,’ she had thought. ‘This is their land. They are protecting it.’

Hostile had always seemed like the wrong word for the People.

Humans used violence like architecture. They built with it. Expanded with it. Drew borders with it—then named those borders progress and acted surprised when the world bled.

Hostile was not the right word for the Na’vi.

It was, however, a perfect word for the ones surrounding her now.

Na’vi in shape. Not Na’vi in anything else.

Not in the way they stood. Not in the way they moved through the forest with that patient, unhurried cruelty, as if the trees themselves had learned to make room for them out of fear rather than belonging. Not in the way they looked at her—not with suspicion, not with caution, not even with the clean anger she had learned to expect from people who had every reason to hate the body she wore.

No. This was different.

Their paint was wrong too.

White across shaved skulls and cheekbones. Red at throats and jaws. Black dragged over chests and arms in marks that didn’t look ceremonial, didn’t look sacred, didn’t look memory honored in pigment.

It looked like a warning. Like old blood dried over their skin. Like death given color.

Their weapons were wrong too. Too many knives. Too many trophies tied into their belts and braids.

Their scars didn’t sit like the marks of hunters or warriors who had survived the necessary violence of a living world. They looked displayed. Kept. Fed. Some of them intentional, even.

Nothing about them resembled the way of the People. There was no sign of Eywa in them, Robin realized.

The thought arrived with such certainty it frightened her.

She had no idea how she knew that. No idea whether she had any right to claim she recognized the absence of something sacred. Maybe it was because her soul—if that was what she was allowed to call it, if that word wasn’t too large and too dangerous for what lived inside her—had been held in this moon’s living network long enough to know what called to it and what did not.

Maybe she had simply spent too much time with So’lek.

Maybe both. Maybe neither. It didn’t matter.

The truth of it sat cold inside her.

These people were empty in a way that wasn’t absence.

Absence could be quiet.

This was hunger.

Robin didn’t fight—she knew the fight was over the moment she realized there were more behind her.

Not because she didn’t want to fight. Her body wanted it. Her hands wanted it. Every old piece of training inside her was already measuring angles, distances, weapons, the gap between bodies and trees, with her bow on her back and knife at her side.

Three in front. Two behind. More above. One close enough to lunge at with her knife—and another close enough to cut her down before she finished drawing it.

The calculation completed itself with brutal efficiency.

Fight, and she died badly.

Run, and she died faster.

So she did neither. She held still—it cost her more than she showed.

They closed in slowly, as if disappointed she hadn’t given them the entertainment of panic. One of them snatched the bow from her hands before she could decide whether dying for it would be worth the attempt. Another took the knife So’lek had given her before they reached the Plains—that loss landed somewhere sharp, not because she believed the knife would save her, but because it was his.

Because he had placed it in her hand with that same quiet gravity he gave to things that mattered more than he would ever explain aloud.

A warrior pulled it from its sheath, weighed it once, and smiled as if he had found something amusing. Robin kept her face still.

Then someone kicked the backs of her knees—pain flashed white through her legs, and the ground came up fast. She caught herself badly, palms scraping on damp earth, shoulders jolting against the sudden stop. Before she could rise, hands caught her arms and wrenched them forward.

Leather cord wrapped around her wrists. Thin, tight, and expert. It bit into the skin as they pulled the knot closed, a narrow line of pressure that became pain the moment she tested it.

Robin kept her breathing even, or tried to, and she found herself kneeling, bound, surrounded, and with her heart hammering against her ribs so violently it seemed impossible that none of them could hear it.

Still, she straightened her back. Chin up. Shoulders steady.

If terror wanted to live in her body, fine. It could do so—quietly.

They spoke around her. Robin understood only pieces—enough of them.

Reward.

Kuru.

Who.

Cut.

None of the words led her mind towards a promising future.

She lowered her gaze to her wrists and began working at the knot anyway. Small movements with careful pressure. Thumb against cord. Skin dragging. The knot didn’t give.

Of course it didn’t. Of all the skills these people could have lacked, apparently ropework wasn’t one of them.

Fucking fantastic.

A foot nudged hers. Not gently.

Robin looked back over her shoulder, first to her feet, then up.

A woman stood over her, staring down with a small frown. Her head had been shaved close, the exposed skin painted in streaks of white and red. Her eyes moved over Robin’s feet with sharp interest.

“Look,” the woman said. Ordered, really.

Two of the men nearby followed her gaze.

Robin’s stomach tightened before she remembered why.

Five toes—of course.

The woman crouched and grabbed Robin’s bound wrists, yanking them up hard enough for the cord to burn across her skin. Robin hissed once through her teeth before she could stop herself.

The woman’s smile grew.

She pried Robin’s fists open with unnecessary force and studied her hands. One finger after another. The thumb. The wrongness. The human shape written into blue skin.

“Demon,” she said. Amused.

Robin almost laughed—she had been about to say the same thing to her.

A sound split the forest ahead of them.

Laughter.

High. Sharp. Terrible.

Not loud in the way of someone trying to be heard. Loud in the way of someone who already knew everyone would listen.

The painted woman’s face snapped toward the sound, her grip still cruel around Robin’s wrists.

A few of the others shifted. Not fear—or maybe a little fear—but mostly with recognition. Submission, too—or yielding. The subtle change of bodies making room for something worse than themselves.

Robin followed their eyes.

A Na’vi stepped through the trees.

A leader of sorts, her mind supplied at once.

He didn’t hurry—not that he needed to. The others had already made the space for him before he entered it, and he moved into it as if it had always belonged to him.

His head, too, was shaved clean. White paint covered the crown of his skull and swept down across his cheekbones. Black and red marked his jaw and throat. The patterns over his skin were too deliberate to be accidental, too ugly to be beautiful. Two scars crossed his face, one cutting through the paint near his brow, another dragging down towards his mouth.

The smile he wore did nothing to soften him. If anything, it made the severity worse.

In one hand, he held a braid. Robin’s eyes dropped to it before she could stop them.

Her body remembered Ïyo lying on his back nearby, eyes open towards the canopy, chest unmoving, the back of his neck bare.

It was them—they had killed him.

Not the thanator. Not the forest.

Them.

They had cut him apart in the one way that mattered beyond death.

Desecrated him.

Robin’s mouth went dry.

What the fuck were they?

And then memory opened beneath her.

Firelight. Food wrapped in green leaves. So’lek sitting beside her with the careful stillness he brought to anything that mattered too much to mishandle.

—

Robin had been tying the knife to the woven belt around her waist when So’lek came to sit by her side. He carried two bundles of food wrapped in broad green leaves and set one in front of her before his eyes moved to the blade.

“You kept it,” he said.

He meant the knife—the one he had given her.

Robin raised her eyes to him for only a moment before returning to the knot with suspicious focus.

“Well—yeah.” Robin replied.

The answer sounded too casual. It wasn’t casual. Robin felt like she was about to throw up just by talking about this with him.

She finished tying the knife into place and immediately reached for the food just to have something else to do with her hands.

So’lek’s eyes remained on the blade for a moment longer before he began to eat.

“It is old,” he said.

Robin paused, hands halfway through opening the leaves.

She cleared her throat.

“It works.” The words came out almost defensive. She felt more than saw So’lek’s gaze shift to her face. “You sharpened it before giving it to me. It works.”

She had hated how nervous she sounded.

Hated more that she was nervous at all.

It was just a knife. A weapon. Nothing soft or remotely unique.

It was also a gift.

From him—for her.

They ate in silence after that, because apparently both of them were very gifted at turning ordinary meals into awkward, emotional endurance tests. It sucked. She hated it.

When the food was finished and the fire had settled lower, So’lek spoke again. “I had another. Cycles ago.”

Robin turned to look at him.

He continued, “It was taken from me.”

She searched for something intelligent to say and found absolutely nothing.

“A knife?” She asked.

Obvious.

Dumb.

Very articulate.

So’lek answered anyway. “A knife—kept from before my clan was lost.”

The pull in her chest was immediate and strange. Painful in a place she didn’t have a name for. Not yet.

“Who took it?” she asked, though she wasn’t sure she had the right to know.

“Wukula,” he said. A name, she guessed. 

“Of the Mangkwan. During a raid.” His gaze remained steady, but something hard sat behind it. “We fought. I lived. He gained a wound. He kept the knife, too.”

The first thing Robin found in herself was anger. Not toward So’lek—of course not.

Towards this Wukula—whoever he was— who had taken something from him. Something old. Something from before loss had carved So’lek into the person sitting beside her now.

And despite her best efforts not to become ridiculous about it, Robin had begun to think of So’lek as someone close.

A friend, maybe.

In the quiet privacy of her own mind, where no one could accuse her of optimism as a crime, she liked to think he might see her that way too.

Then another thought arrived—a fight. Na’vi against Na’vi.

Why?

“Mangkwan?” Robin asked.

So’lek’s eyes found hers. “Ash People.”

Robin offered him a nervous smile. “That doesn’t sound very reassuring.”

He narrowed his eyes. “It was not meant to be.”

The smile slipped.

“They are a clan that lives far east, in dead lands.” So’lek said.  “Near a mountain that breathes fire and ash.”

‘So—a volcano,’ her mind supplied. For once, she decided against speaking her sarcasm. The moment felt too solemn for that.

“They have strayed from the way of the People,” So’lek said.

Robin’s frown deepened, more out of concern than anger now. “Why?”

So’lek looked down at the space between them for a moment, as if considering how much truth to give her.

Then his eyes found hers again. “They reject Eywa.”

Robin leaned back slightly.

He continued, voice low. “They are vicious. They act with aimless violence and anger.”

A cold discomfort moved beneath her skin.

When she first came to Pandora, that had been the nightmare. Violent aliens in the dark. Teeth. Arrows. Savages who killed because killing was what they did.

Then, slowly, the nightmare had become embarrassing.

The Na’vi were people who respected and protected their land. The RDA had been the monster in the story, and Robin, too young, too desperate, and too guilty, had not been able to see it clearly at first.

What So’lek described now sounded like the old fear wearing Na’vi skin. Her old nightmare, personified.

That made it worse.

She lifted a hand to the back of her neck, suddenly uncomfortable with the thought.

Robin, being herself, tried to hide the fear behind humor—a skill she had honed through the years.

“Good to know.” She let out a humorless laugh. “I’ll keep it in mind in case I ever see one.”

The humor didn’t reach him. If anything, he looked offended by it.

“Do not joke,” he ordered.

Robin closed her mouth.

“If you ever come to face one of the Mangkwan,” he said, low and very clear, “You run.”

He inclined his head toward her, as if to press the instruction into place. “You do not fight. You do not linger. You run.”

Robin was not against the idea—truly. The look on his face, along with the very short and very haunting description already offered, had thrown any curiosity she might have had miles away from where she sat.

Still, because apparently self-preservation had limits, she asked, “Didn’t you fight one of them?”

“Because I had to,” So’lek answered. “Not because I wanted to.”

Robin had no answer to that.

As if he believed he had not yet carved the warning deeply enough into her mind, he added, “With the Mangkwan, a quick death would be mercy.”

Her breath caught.

“Robin, they are not merciful people.”

—

The memory ended.

Mangkwan. 

That’s what they were. Mangkwan.

A braid landed in front of her.

The leader had thrown it there, casually, as if discarding a strip of hide. It hit the ground barely a foot from Robin’s knees.

Her stomach turned.

The severed end was clean—precise. A cut made by someone who had done this before, and would continue to do so.

The freezing realization struck her all at once.

She had not followed So’lek’s instruction at all.

Run. 

Do not fight. Do not linger. Run.

Not that she had been given much of a choice. By the time she knew the Mangkwan were there, they had already closed every path. Running would have turned her death into a chase. Fighting would have turned it into entertainment.

She refused both, but refusal didn’t change the shape of the trap she had fallen into.

She was still bound. Still kneeling. Still at their mercy—or lack of.

The leader crouched before her.

He had presence even in silence. The kind that pressed into the space around him and made everything else smaller. Robin refused to bend under it, and even when her eyes would not quite meet his face, her back remained straight.

He seemed to enjoy that. The defiance.

A breath of laughter left him through his nose.

“Demon of the People,” he said. As if that explained her.

Robin was not sure anything explained her that easily. Not in this life. Not in this body.

“Are you one of Toruk Makto’s?” He asked.

She understood the question. Toruk Makto. Jake Sully.

Once human. Once a dreamwalker. Once a demon, maybe, in the eyes of those who had not yet known what he would become.

A demon who had dressed like the People. Spoken like them. Learned their ways. Been accepted by Eywa in a way Robin still found impossible to fully understand without feeling something hollow and ugly open under her ribs.

She didn’t answer, thinking—maybe foolishly—that maybe silence might buy time.

Enough time for Nawk’tan to find her, or for Vauk to circle back—if either was still alive. Enough time for a distraction, a mistake, a shift in their attention. Enough time for her to get her bound hands under herself, force her weak knees to work, and run the way So’lek had told her to.

Her gaze dropped briefly to the braid at her knees.

Whose?

Vauk’s?

Nawk’tan’s?

Some other poor Na’vi who had crossed the wrong path in the wrong forest and found these bastards waiting?

A small part of her hoped Nawk’tan was alive at least. He seemed like the kind of man who would not leave his own behind—she only hoped she counted as one of them in his eyes. The thought hurt more than she wanted it to.

Before they had left, she had insisted on the radio. Nawk’tan had hated it immediately.

Too small. Too mechanical. Too complicated for something whose only purpose was speaking across distance. Robin had given him the communicator anyway and explained how to press the switch, where to speak, how close to hold it, what not to touch unless he wanted to turn the whole thing off and make her regret ever trying to bridge the technological divide.

He had looked deeply unimpressed.

She had kept hers on anyway.

Now, a larger and much more useless part of her wanted to press the comm at her neck and call So’lek’s name.

Not because it would work—she knew it would not.

He was too far away. She was too deep under the canopy. The terrain was wrong, the distance worse. Even if the signal reached somewhere, even if by some miracle—some impossible mercy—-it found the right receiver, he wasn’t close enough to do anything.

Calling him wouldn’t be strategy. It would be hope, stained with fear—that was worse than hope alone.

She wanted his voice anyway.

Not only because he would know what to do, though she believed firmly he would—though maybe that was unfair. Maybe she gave him too much credit because some part of her had started assigning steadiness to his presence and didn’t know what to do with herself when he wasn’t there.

‘Foolish,’ she called herself in her mind.

Still. It didn’t feel wrong to trust that. To trust him.

The leader’s eyes moved over her in one sharp sweep.

Then he reached out.

Robin recoiled before she could stop herself when he lifted the edge of her coat, exposing the skin at her side to the humid forest air. His fingers brushed the scar tissue there.

Not hard—that made it worse somehow. The touch was almost thoughtful, curious.

Robin’s breath shortened.

The scars along her side remembered claws and impact. They remembered Tamtey’s voice breaking above her. Remembered the white-hot certainty that she was about to die because Pandora had finally decided to finish what the RDA started.

He tilted his head, considering. His smile widened as he pressed one finger into one of the raised scar lines against her ribs, painfully.

Pain licked through her side. Robin’s mouth tightened. She did not give him the sound.

Then, through the panic, something important returned.

Two scarred lines.

Two scratches on the tree bark.

The thanator.

It was still out there.

Still hunting.

Still angry, reckless, and feral in a way nothing born to the forest should have been. Both kurus cut away, severed from connection forever, leaving only a creature driven by pain, confusion, and ungrounded hate.

A thing made wrong—Robin understood that better than she wanted to.

Her gaze lifted towards the canopy—too thick, too crowded. Nika could not land here even if she came.

Good.

Robin didn’t want her close to this.

Noise. She only needed noise. Movement, maybe.

One mistake from the circle around her.

“You will look at me,” the man said.

His hand gripped her side fully now. Robin didn’t look, her eyes remained raised to the hidden sky behind the leaves, thinking.

Spite was a stupid, petty form of courage. It was all she had left at the moment. She accepted it anyway.

“Look at me, demon.”

She turned her head, but not to his face. Past his shoulder. To the trees.

His fingers dug harder into her scarred side, displeased.

Robin drew air into her lungs.

Then she called. High and sharp, cutting through the damp air. The way she had heard the Na’vi call for their ikran—her own version of it, shaped by practice, embarrassment, and Nika’s selective willingness to acknowledge she had any rider at all.

A sound meant to carry. A sound meant to pierce through distance.

The man’s expression changed.

Robin drew breath to call again—a hand clamped over the lower half of her face. Hard.

His fingers dug into her jaw with enough force to make pain flash behind her eyes. His palm crushed over her mouth, stealing sound and breath in the same motion—instinct surged so violently she nearly threw herself backward without plan or purpose.

She stopped herself—barely.

Her nostrils flared as she tried to breathe around the obstruction.

He leaned close.

Now she looked at him. Now she could not help it.

Only then did he seem pleased with himself.

His hand tightened over her face. The other stayed at her side, keeping her pinned in place through pain alone.

“No one will come for you.” The words were quiet. Certain. He said them like he was telling her the weather.

Robin’s eyes burned, partly from pain, partly from the sharp panic of not having enough air.

He watched that too. Enjoyed it.

“Dreamwalker,” he said softly. “I will cut away every stolen piece of you until fear has nowhere left to live.”

His hand left her side and reached back.

For a weapon, most likely.

Robin did try to move away, then. His hold on her face didn’t yield.

A faint laugh left him, low and almost fond, as if her attempt had amused him.

“I will take your kuru last,” he murmured. “I want you to know the moment you become nothing.”

The words went through her colder than the knife could have.

Not death.

Erasure.

The fear in Robin’s body changed shape.

Her hands strained once against the cord—the knot held.

Wukula’s fingers shifted against her jaw.

Her heart lurched before she could stop it.

His smile deepened.

“Your people will follow what I leave,” he said. “Enough to understand. Not enough to bury.”

Robin’s vision narrowed.

For one terrible second she wasn’t in the forest. She was back in another room, another death, another voice asking for last words while her body bled beneath her and the air tasted like metal.

I won’t be able to protect you, Walker.

The memory hit hard enough that she almost broke against it.

Then the forest answered.

A roar tore through the trees, deep and furious. Close enough to rattle through the ground beneath her knees.

Every Mangkwan body around her shifted at once.

The leader’s head snapped toward the sound.

Robin’s ears pressed flat against her skull. Her side throbbed, not from his touch, but from the memory of claws, weight, and Tamtey’s trembling hands trying to hold her together.

The thanator roared again. Closer.

Wukula looked back at her, eyes narrowing as understanding settled over his face.

“Demon.” He spoke it like an accusation, then he shoved her aside by the hold on her jaw.

The force sent her hard into the ground—pain burst through one shoulder and for half a second she saw nothing but roots, leaves, the severed braid lying too close, the shape of Ïyo’s unmoving hand.

The pressure on her face was gone. Air came back violently. Robin didn’t waste the breath on sound.

The Mangkwan formation had broken—not fully, not enough for safety, but enough. Some turned towards the roar. Others moved to higher ground. One shouted a warning. Another drew a bow.

Robin rolled onto her knees.

Her wrists were still bound.

She had no idea where her own bow was, but she saw the startled Mangkwan who had taken her knife. Wrists bound and all, she pushed at him with her shoulder towards a tree, and taking advantage of his surprise, she snapped her hands forward, snatched the knife from his hold, and ran.

The forest floor was slick under her feet and every root seemed built for the express purpose of killing her pride before the Mangkwan could.

She ran anyway.

Behind her, the man called something. Too close. Too controlled to be panic.

A promise, maybe.

She didn’t understand. She didn’t look back either.

Looking back was for people with spare time and better options. Robin had neither.

She ran with her hands tied in front of her, using them for balance when she had to, catching herself against trunks, shoving through broad leaves and low hanging vines. Pain flashed through her wrists each time the cord pulled. The leather bit deeper. Warmth slid beneath it.

Blood, probably.

Branches slapped against her face and shoulders. The ground dropped without warning. She stumbled, caught herself, kept moving. Somewhere behind her the thanator crashed through the forest with the sound of something too large and too furious to care what broke in its path.

A scream cut off sharply.

Mangkwan.

Robin didn’t let herself feel relief. Not yet.

Another voice shouted behind her, closer than before.

She angled left, then immediately right, refusing any clean path that might give a pursuer line of sight. The canopy was too thick. Nika could not come down here. Nawk’tan had to be somewhere. Vauk too, unless they—

No. Not that thought. She shoved it away.

The comm at her neck crackled.

Static first.

Then a voice, broken by interference and distance. “Does anyone hear?”

Robin almost tripped.

Nawk’tan.

He had used the radio.

Stubborn bastard had actually used the radio.

Her bound hands flew to her neck, careful with the knife she held, and her fingers fumbled with the switch. The cord cut deeper with the movement. She pressed anyway.

“Nawk’tan!” Her voice came out rough, breathless. “There are Mangkwan!”

A beat of static.

Then his voice returned, shaken beneath the control. “I saw.”

That answer was worse than she wanted it to be. Robin pushed through a curtain of hanging leaves and saw light ahead.

A clearing. Small. Open enough.

Maybe.

“Fly,” Nawk’tan said. “Find a clear path and fly. We will meet in the air. Be quick!”

Robin would have rolled her eyes if she had not been busy trying to avoid dying.

Very helpful.

Just fly.

Brilliant.

Fantastic insight.

A roar shook the trees behind her—okay, maybe he had a point.

The clearing opened ahead, green and bright after the undergrowth, sunlight filtering down in hard shafts through the canopy break. Robin stumbled into it, chest heaving, wrists burning, side screaming with each breath.

She threw her head back and called for Nika. Once. Twice.

Nothing.

Her nerves spiked so violently she felt it in her teeth.

Behind her, something crashed through the trees. Not close enough to see. Close enough to feel.

Robin called again, sharper this time, throat tearing around the sound.

For one unbearable second, the sky didn’t answer.

Then a screech split the air above her.

Nika dropped through the opening like fury given wings.

She landed hard in the center of the clearing, talons tearing into earth, wings flaring wide enough to scatter loose leaves across Robin’s face. Her head snapped towards Robin, then towards the trees behind her, pupils narrowing.

Robin had never been so relieved to be judged by a reptile in her life.

“Yeah,” she rasped, already running toward her. “I know. Bad day.”

Mounting with bound hands was inelegant—that was the kindest possible word for it.

Robin grabbed the harness, missed one grip, caught it again, and hauled herself up with a sound she would deny making if anyone survived to mention it. Pain tore through her wrists. Her knee slipped. Nika shifted beneath her with an irritated shriek, which, frankly, wasn’t helpful.

“Oh—shut it!” Robin snapped breathlessly.

A figure broke from the trees. Mangkwan.

Robin didn’t wait to find out who.

The ikran launched. The ground vanished beneath them with a force that drove Robin’s stomach into her throat. She pressed herself low against Nika’s neck, bound hands twisted awkwardly in the harness, every muscle locking around terror.

The sky caught them.

Below, the clearing shrank. The trees closed around it. A painted figure stepped into the open and looked up.

Even from above, Robin knew him. He stood at the edge of the clearing. His face lifted, painted skull bright against the green.

He didn’t shout. Didn’t rage. He only watched her rise.

Robin’s breath came hard and uneven against the wind.

Her wrists throbbed. Her side burned. Her mouth still remembered the shape of his hand.

Nika climbed higher, wings beating strong beneath her, carrying them through the gap in the canopy and into the brutal relief of open air.

For one second, Robin looked towards the distance.

She felt the exact moment her face crumpled, a sharp breath escaping her mouth against her will. She leaned down and pressed her face against the back of Nika’s neck.

It was a search and rescue. A simple mission. 

She remembered telling So’lek she could do it. That she had survived worse.

What a fool.

She thought of him again. Not as a strategy this time. Not as a rescue.

Robin thought of his hand offering her the knife. His voice warning her to run. His face in the dark before dawn, serious, steady, and asking her to be careful, as if care could be ordered into the world by saying it clearly enough.

She had tried.

She was alive.

That would have to count for something.

Nika banked hard, answering some movement below, and Robin tightened her grip.

Static cracked at her neck again.

“Nawk’tan?” she forced out.

A burst of interference.

Then his voice, faint but present. “Fly south, Robin. We go to Hometree.”

Robin let out a breath that almost became something else.

Not relief.

Not yet.

She let her forehead rest again against Nika’s hide.

“Copy,” she said, because some habits survived every life.

Behind and below, the forest rolled on, green, endless—hiding its dead.

Ahead, the sky opened.

Robin held on.

—

So’lek watched the great Toruk climb into the sky.

Its wings caught the light above the Spires, vast and red against the open blue, each beat carrying it farther from the stone teeth and drifting cloud.

For a long moment, all sound seemed to draw back around it. Even the wind appeared to pause, as if the world was remembering old stories and had gone still to make room for them.

Against his better discipline, So’lek thought of Robin—her name rising inside his mind without permission.

He wondered what her face would have done at the sight. Whether her eyes would have narrowed first in suspicion, because wonder rarely reached her without passing through some wall of practical distrust first. Whether she would have gone quiet. Whether some small, dry comment would have found its way out of her mouth because silence made her feel too seen.

Her relationship with the sky was still complicated.

He had learned that not from what she said, but from what her body did before words could interfere. The way her shoulders still tightened when Nika climbed too quickly. The way her hands sought the harness with too much force, even when her seat was steady. The way her breathing changed before she mastered it. The way she looked away from height and then looked back, as if afraid and hungry for it in the same breath.

She loved the sky.

She feared it too.

Both truths lived in her at once, and neither seemed willing to yield.

A part of him believed she would have loved the Spires more than she had liked the Plains. The high wind. The vastness. The sharp stone rising through cloud and light. The sense of being above the world, untethered from all the things that waited below.

Then he stopped the thought.

It was not his place to assume the shape of her wonder. It was not his place to decide what would hurt her or heal her. Not yet—perhaps not ever.

He turned his gaze away from the sky.

Tamtey, Teylan, Ri’nela, and Rasi remained near one another, their voices low after all that had passed. The Spires still held the echo of battle. The RDA’s smoke had not yet fully cleared at the distance. But among the Sarentu, something quieter had taken root—something fragile and stubborn, like green returning to burned ground.

Rasi had given them song.

Old words carried through her own grief and survival, passed at last to those who had been left reaching for a history stolen before they could know its shape. So’lek stood among them while the sound rose, and though the song did not belong to his clan, though he was Trr’ong and would always carry that loss in the center of himself, he had felt the offering all the same.

They had welcomed him—not as an ally only, not as a weapon to be called when the fighting grew too difficult, not as the last remnant of a dead clan standing at the edge of another people’s future.

Family, they had said, without saying it too loudly.

The word sat strangely in him.

It had been a long time since he had allowed any place near it.

There was still much to do. Much to learn. Much to find. Nor was still missing, they would have to find him. They would have to make him see that the Sarentu had not ended in the dark places Mercer built for them—their future still existed. Not because it had been spared, but because they had chosen to make it with their own hands.

So’lek closed his eyes for a moment.

Only a moment.

When darkness came, it did not bring rest. It brought the Plains.

Smoke. Pale new wood. Firelight low against tired faces. Robin sitting beside him with her elbows on her knees, one hand caught in the sleeping child’s fingers, pretending she did not know he was watching her.

It had been days since he left.

Tamtey had asked him, once, whether there had been any word from Robin. She had asked it as if he would be the one to know—as if Robin’s movements, her safety, her silence, had become things that would naturally pass through him first.

So’lek had not disliked this as much as he should have. What he had disliked was having no answer.

There had been none to give. No quick communication existed across such distance, not in the way the Sky People liked to pretend all distance could be conquered by machines. The radios they carried had limits. The land had more—stone, forest, weather, and the strange interference of Pandora itself, all had their own will.

A signal from the Plains would not reach the Spires, much less one from Kinglor.

He knew this.

Knowing did not quiet anything.

Her mission—the one she had called simple—should have been over by now. By this time, Robin should have returned either to the Zeswa or to the Resistance’s hideout near the Hollows.

Or perhaps she had been sent elsewhere after. Perhaps she had chosen, against the better sense she sometimes found after long struggle, to move towards another problem before resting.

Or perhaps she was on her way to the Spires—no, he dismissed the thought almost as soon as it arrived.

She did not know the territory. Reckless as she could be, Robin did not cross unfamiliar forest alone when there was no need. Her respect for the wild still bordered on fear. He had seen it. He had seen the way her gaze moved through trees too dense for comfort, the way she listened for danger even when no danger had yet spoken.

She had learned the forest could take without warning. She had learned this in blood.

So’lek let out a slow breath and opened his eyes once more.

He hoped, perhaps uselessly, that her recklessness had not found a sharper edge wherever she stood now.

He did not enjoy the shape of that thought.

Robin was not his responsibility.

He was not her guardian. She was not a wounded hunter needing care. Not a duty given into his hands by clan or oath.

She had survived before him. She would survive beyond his sight. She was capable, stubborn, trained—she was also far too willing to step into danger if she believed there was someone on the other side of it who needed help.

He knew all of this.

Truly, he did.

Understanding did not make the worry leave.

By then, he had learned to accept this concern as part of his days. Fighting it had become a useless thing. A waste of strength. Like trying to stop rain with his bare hands.

The worry remained—so he carried it.

He had begun walking back towards the cave when he heard the voices.

In his hand, almost without realizing he had taken it out, was Robin’s bracelet. The one she had called ugly.

He looked down at it briefly, thumb resting against one of the beads. These days, he had developed the habit of finding it inside the pouch at his belt and holding it in his palm. There was no purpose to it, no reason that could be spoken without sounding foolish.

He only did it.

The bracelet was poorly made—there was no kindness in pretending otherwise. The spacing was uneven. One knot had been tied twice as if the first attempt had angered her. The pattern had the uncertain quality of a thing made by hands with no grace.

A small child could have made it better, perhaps.

Still, the colors had meaning.

He could see Nika in them—her hide, her markings. The choices were careful, even if the craft was not. Robin had chosen them with attention, and maybe also irritation, along with fondness she would have denied if named.

He had kept it because it had been hers. No cleaner reason had come since.

A young hunter passed nearby, speaking too loudly for the words he carried.

“They saw them by the forest,” he said, voice solemn and strained. “They were Mangkwan. It is true.”

So’lek stopped. Every part of him went still.

The young hunter did not see him. Neither did the warrior beside him, who turned sharply with disbelief already on his face. “It cannot be. Mangkwan in Kinglor?”

Kinglor.

The name struck through him cleanly.

The first hunter continued, troubled by the fact that he had to believe his own words. “It is. Si’na saw it with his own eyes. Demons, he called them.”

So’lek’s hand closed around the bracelet.

“They hunted animals and hung them for display while they were still alive,” the hunter continued, his voice lowering now, as if the words themselves were unclean. “Wounded and crying, still. They have no feeling. No respect for our brothers and sisters.”

The warrior exhaled hard through his nose, ears flattening with offense so deep it looked almost like pain. “How can they do this?”

“I do not know.” The first shook his head. “I have never seen one face to face. I did not believe people could stand so far from Eywa and still be alive.”

Their voices moved past him.

So’lek remained where he was.

Mangkwan in Kinglor.

Robin’s voice came back to him at once, talking about a group of hunters lost in the forest in Kinglor, with no reason for their disappearance.

He saw her kneeling beside the half-finished frame, back turned slightly, hands too still against the wood. He heard the careful flatness of her voice. The way she had told him she was leaving too, as if stating a fact plainly could keep him from hearing what sat beneath it.

Her voice was clear in his mind.

It is a search and rescue.

Four people.

Daylight.

Known terrain.

Known terrain meant little when the danger did not belong there.

His grip tightened around the bracelet until the beads dug into his palm and pain answered. He loosened his hold at once and looked down—a dark mark had formed where one of the beads had pressed too hard into his skin. For one breath, the mark held his attention with unreasonable force, his eyes on the colorful beads.

Blue, yellow, pink—Nika.

Then the thought came.

Nika circling above Kinglor Forest. Calling. Searching.

No rider answering.

So’lek’s chest went cold.

The image changed before he could stop it—not the sky. Ground.

A body in the undergrowth. Blue skin gone still. A braid cut clean. The forest too quiet around what had been left behind.

He pushed the thought aside, and another rose in its place.

The white room—metal bars, sky People lights, the smell of blood on cold air. A human woman on her knees with death already in her body.

He had told himself he would speak of it when he returned from the Spires. He had told himself he would find words worthy of what they would open. Honest ones. True ones. Not perfect, because perfection did not exist for a wound of that shape.

Later, when he returned—

If later existed.

The thought landed like a blade.

His hand moved to the pouch at his belt. The bracelet went back inside, carefully now, as if careless movement might break something more fragile than beads.

His fingers brushed the dog tags there too.

Cold metal. Her name carved in a language he could not read.

The dead woman’s name.

The living woman’s name.

His breath left him slowly.

Robin was alive.

The thought came with such force it was nearly command.

She was alive because she had survived impossible things before. Because she was not easy to kill, that was her nature. The RDA had failed to keep her dead.

Because Pandora itself, in some way even he did not understand, had returned something of her that no machine should have been able to touch.

She was alive because he had not yet told her the truth. Because he had promised himself he would.

Because he had looked at her in the morning light and said only, ‘Be careful,’ when there had been so much more pressing against his teeth.

She had nodded.

‘You too.’

Two words, given softly.

Not command. Not farewell.

Something worse.

Trust.

So’lek turned towards the outside. His stride was steady before he had fully decided to move.

Someone called his name behind him, but he did not stop.

The distance formed itself in his mind with the clean precision of a hunt.

From the Spires to Kinglor Forest, three days at ordinary pace. Less if the good weather held. Less if Iley flew hard. Two days if he pushed through dusk and found only short rests on stone. One and a half if he flew through the night and accepted what it would cost them both.

He would accept it.

Iley would be angry.

He would forgive him later—or he would not. Still, he would understand.

The Spires opened before him in sudden air and height. Wind moved through the stone, carrying the scent of cloud and old ash. Iley waited on a ledge above, head lifting the moment So’lek approached. The ikran’s pupils narrowed, reading the change in him before any word was given.

So’lek placed one hand against Iley’s neck.

The ikran rumbled low, not soothed. Neither was So’lek.

“We fly,” he said.

Iley shifted, wings flexing.

There were questions he should answer before leaving. People he should tell. Plans that should be made with more care. Ri’nela would understand the need for information. Teylan would need reassurance he could not give. Tamtey, if she heard of Mangkwan in Kinglor, would want to come, and that would waste time in refusal.

Time was the only thing he could not spare.

He mounted.

Iley launched from the ledge in one powerful motion, wings catching the wind hard enough to pull the world away beneath them. Stone dropped. Air opened. The Spires spread outward in ridges and cloud-wrapped peaks, beautiful and indifferent to the chaos building in his mind.

So’lek leaned low against Iley’s neck.

Southeast, towards the Kinglor Forest. Toward where Mangkwan had been seen.

Toward the woman who was not his responsibility, not his to command, not his to keep, and yet had become the first place his mind went when danger found a name.

The wind struck his face. He welcomed the sting. It gave the body something clear to understand.

Below, the Spires began to fall behind.

Ahead, distance waited.

So’lek fixed his eyes on the horizon.

Robin was alive.

He knew she was.

He hoped she was.

For the first time in many cycles, hope felt less like weakness than a blade held too tightly in the hand.

Robin was alive.

—

Robin wanted to die.

No, not really—she was being dramatic, she knew it.

Her wrists hurt.

That was the main problem. Or one of the main problems. There were several, actually, and she was beginning to resent the universe for it.

The leather binding around her wrists had been tight when the Mangkwan tied it. It had become cruel after the flight. Every shift of Nika’s body, every hard beat of her wings, every instinctive tightening of Robin’s hands had dragged the cord deeper into already-broken skin.

At first, the pain had been sharp. Now it had gone strange. Numb at the edges. Hot underneath. Tingling in her fingers in a way she didn’t love and had no interest in examining too closely.

She had spent the last several minutes trying to work the knife into position between her hands—So’lek’s knife.

The one she had nearly lost to them.

Everything had become an ugly sequence of images too loud to hold in proper order.

Knife.

Cord.

Blood.

Nika’s scream.

Wukula’s hand over her mouth.

The severed kuru on the ground.

Robin swallowed hard and pushed the last image away.

Not now.

She turned the knife again, trying to find the angle. Her fingers barely obeyed. The leather slipped against the blade. The harness shifted under her knees as Nika banked with a dissatisfied shriek, and Robin froze.

She pictured the knife slipping from her clumsy hands and falling into open air, lost forever—So’lek’s knife, vanishing into the forest beneath her because she had decided to perform emergency surgery on her own restraints while flying on the back of an irritable ikran.

Absolutely not.

“Nope,” she muttered, voice rough from wind and panic. “Not doing that.”

She stopped trying.

The knife remained awkwardly trapped between both hands, blade turned away from her wrists now. Safer—useless, but safer. Her fingers throbbed. Blood, some dried and some still fresh, had tracked in thin red lines down her forearms.

Below, the forest rolled endlessly beneath them.

Too green. Too dense. Too full of things that wanted her dead.

Some minutes earlier, she had seen Nawk’tan’s ikran flying low through an opening between the trees. She had pulled Nika towards him, or tried to. Nika had responded with the approximate enthusiasm of someone being asked to attend a meeting she had already decided was beneath her.

Still, she went.

Nawk’tan had turned sharply the moment he sensed another ikran drawing close. His hand went to his bow before his eyes caught the shape of her, and even when he had recognized her, his posture only relaxed by a fraction.

Robin didn’t blame him. She, too, was too shaken still.

She was also very aware of how she must have looked.

Hair wind-tangled. Coat pulled wrong at one shoulder. Face still aching where the man had gripped her jaw. Bound wrists held awkwardly in front of her, smeared with enough blood to make the situation look worse than it probably was.

“Robin!” Nawk’tan called through the air.

Not through the radio—of course not. The man had used the thing once and apparently decided that was enough technological cooperation for a lifetime.

Stubborn.

“Land!” he called.

Robin stared at him as if he had lost his mind.

Land?

With the painted nightmare people somewhere beneath them and a thanator tearing through the forest?

‘Are you suicidal?’ She wanted to ask.

Then she saw where his eyes had gone.

Her hands.

Robin looked down too.

The cord had bitten deep. Blood had dried dark along the leather and across her skin, while new blood still welled in thin places where the movement had reopened the cuts. Her fingers looked stiff. The knuckles paling beneath blue skin.

That was probably bad.

The place of the attack was far behind them now. Far enough that landing might not be the stupidest idea anyone had ever had. Far enough that Nawk’tan seemed willing to risk it, which meant the danger had changed shape, if not disappeared.

Still, Robin felt her whole body resist the thought of touching ground again. Ground had not gone well today. For once, in a very long time, the sky seemed the safest.

She was left with no real option when Nawk’tan banked and lowered his ikran toward a small opening in the forest below.

Robin cursed under her breath and followed. Reluctantly. Very reluctantly.

Nika landed first, because apparently even when irritated she enjoyed proving she could do things better than everyone else. Her talons struck the ground, wings flaring once before folding back with a sharp rustle. Robin stayed mounted for half a second longer than necessary, scanning the tree line.

Leaves.

Roots.

Deep shadows.

Nothing moving—apparently.

Nawk’tan had already dismounted by the time she slid down. He crossed to her quickly, eyes flicking over the surrounding forest as he moved, alert, and controlled, fully aware that distance from danger didn’t necessarily mean safety.

That, at least, made Robin trust him more.

He caught her by the arm when her feet hit the ground and steadied her in one quick, practical motion. No fuss. No comment. No dramatic concern. Just one hand bracing her until the slight wobble in her knees passed.

Robin pretended not to need it. He pretended not to notice that she did.

Nawk’tan took the knife from her numb fingers.

For one second, Robin’s hand twitched after it—not because she thought he would keep it, but because letting go of it felt like losing something she had no right to miss yet.

His gaze flicked to her face, then back to the cord.

He said nothing. He simply turned the blade and cut.

The binding snapped apart with a soft, vicious sound.

Robin inhaled through her teeth as the pressure released.

Pain came back all at once—of course it did. Her hands had apparently been waiting for the cord to come off before reminding her that they existed and were extremely unhappy with the recent hypoxic conditions.

Nawk’tan pulled the leather away in one quick motion and tossed it aside. Then he returned to his ikran, unfastened a waterskin from the saddle, and came back without wasting a breath.

“Hold still,” he said.

Robin did, mostly because she was too tired to argue.

The water was cold when he poured it over her wrists. She hissed.

The cuts were not terrible once the worst of the blood washed away. Ugly, yes. Shallow in most places. Deeper where the cord had sawed against her during the flight, especially near the inside of her right wrist. The kind of wound that looked dramatic and would heal if cleaned, wrapped, and given a few days without anyone tying her up again.

Low bar.

Apparently, that was the standard now.

“Can you move your hands?” Nawk’tan asked.

He took one of them before she answered, turning it over with careful efficiency. Then the other.

Robin braced herself for the pause. For the look. The tiny catch of attention most people tried to hide and failed anyway—five fingers, human in shape, wrongness arranged neatly at the end of each arm.

But Nawk’tan’s gaze didn’t linger. He checked swelling, blood flow, the bite of the cord, the movement of her fingers. Nothing else.

Robin found herself oddly grateful for that.

She opened and closed both hands in front of him. Once. Twice. Her fingers tingled hard enough to make her stomach turn slightly, but they moved.

“Still attached,” she said, voice dry.

Nawk’tan gave her a look that suggested he didn’t find this as charming as she had hoped.

“Good,” he said.

Then he returned the knife.

Robin took it carefully.

She looked down at the blade instead of at him. “Thanks.”

Nawk’tan inclined his head once. Then his gaze lifted toward Nika. “Back to the air. We will get you treated when we get back to Hometree.”

Robin almost said there was no ‘getting back to Hometree.’

Not for her.

Nawk’tan was Aranahe. He had been at the Heart of the Plains for the Games, had learned of the lost hunters, and had gathered people who were strong enough to help and not too broken by recent tragedy to leave the search to someone else.

Robin had never been to their home—never stood under their Hometree. She had wandered the forest, yes, after leaving the RDA months ago, but she had never entered that space with invitation, recognition, or anyone familiar at her side.

Reaching the Plains had been difficult enough, and there she had arrived with So’lek, with Ri’nela, with Tamtey, with enough context around her to make her presence something other than an immediate crisis.

Now? Now she had just been chased through Kinglor by a feral thanator and a clan of painted murderers who collected extensions of other people’s nervous systems, with an old hunter who glared at radios for a companion.

Not exactly a diplomatic arrival.

Still, it was not as if she had better options.

Returning to the Plains injured and alone would be difficult. Staying in the forest would be stupid. Trying to reach the Hollows from here with no clear route and Mangkwan somewhere below would be the kind of decision people made shortly before being used as a cautionary tale.

So.

Hometree it was.

‘Great.’ Robin thought, humorlessly. ‘Love that.’

Robin looked once towards the trees. The forest gave nothing back. No movement. No painted faces. No flash of white skull-paint between trunks. No thanator moving like living wrath through the undergrowth.

That did not help.

Her jaw ached where the Mangkwan’s fingers had dug into the bone. When she swallowed, she could still feel the moment he had stolen breath and sound from her at once.

No one will come for you.

Her grip tightened around the knife.

Then she made herself loosen it.

Not here.

Not now.

She mounted Nika in silence.

It was easier this time with her hands free, though the cuts pulled sharply when she gripped the harness. Nika turned her head far enough to look back at her, pupils wide with attention.

“Yes, I know,” Robin muttered. “I look terrible. Thank you.”

Nika huffed. Robin chose to believe that meant agreement.

Nawk’tan watched long enough to make sure she would not immediately fall off, then returned to his own ikran and mounted. A moment later, he launched into the sky.

Robin followed.

Air rushed over her face, cold against the sweat still drying at her temples. The forest spread beneath them in layers of green and shadow, beautiful in the way a knife could be beautiful when held to the light.

Her wrists pulsed with each beat of Nika’s wings.

Slowly, her right hand rose towards the comm at her neck. Her fingers hovered there.

The radio was warm from her skin. Useless at this distance.

Even if the signal somehow carried, even if some impossible line opened through Pandora out of pure desperation, what then?

What would she say?

I ran into the Mangkwan. You were right. They are fucking crazy.

No.

He put his hand over my mouth. I was so scared I thought about you.

Right. Absolutely not.

Robin’s fingers stayed over the comm.

The thought of his voice came to her with such sudden tenderness that it almost hurt more than her wrists.

Just his voice.

Low. Measured. Irritatingly calm. Saying her name like it was something that had weight and place in the world. Looking at her and telling her to not be foolish, not be reckless, as if the words themselves might follow her wherever she went and stand between her and harm.

The wind tore at her hair. Nika’s wings beat steady beneath her. Ahead, Nawk’tan’s ikran banked towards the distant rise of Aranahe territory.

Robin’s fingers pressed once against the comm.

She didn’t speak.

Then she let her hand fall.

No. She would not call into dead air just to hear silence answer.

She adjusted her grip on the harness and focused on the flight.

On Nika’s breathing beneath her. On the pull of the wind. On the ache in her wrists. On staying seated.

On staying alive.

The sky opened ahead, wide and bright and merciless.

Robin followed Nawk’tan towards the Aranahe Hometree.

—

The night after the Mangkwan, Robin barely slept.

Calling it sleep at all felt generous. It had been more like lying very still in a borrowed corner of Hometree while her body performed the motions of rest and her mind remained wide awake, unpleasantly creative, and committed to making that a problem.

Every time she closed her eyes, she saw paint.

White across a shaved skull. Red over a throat. Black down arms that had held a knife with too much patience.

She saw Ïyo on his back beneath the canopy, eyes open to nothing. Saw the clean absence where his kuru should have been. Then she saw the braids the Mangkwan held in their hands as though they were no more meaningful than a strip of hide.

She saw his face, leaning close to hers.

No one will come for you.

Robin opened her eyes after that and kept them open.

The Aranahe had given her a spot near the base of Hometree. Not a room, exactly. Not even a proper alcove.

Not that they had not offered—they had. She hadn’t accepted, that was all. She didn’t want walls. She didn’t want closed spaces.

So she had been given a place where one enormous root curved high enough to make a wall at her back and the woven mat beneath her so that the place she slept on didn’t feel entirely like the ground.

She had been treated by the Tsahìk herself—Etuwa.

Robin had known who she was before anyone said it. Not because she had met her properly, but because some people carried authority without needing to lift their voices—the war Ri’nela often did, just to mention an example.

Etuwa moved like someone who knew what every hand in a room was doing and why. Her eyes were sharp, but not cruel. Her silence had weight, but not judgment.

“I saw you at the Games,” Etuwa had said while cleaning the blood from Robin’s wrists. “You stood with the Sarentu.”

Robin had looked down at the bowl of stained water between them.

She hadn’t had the heart to say that she hadn’t seen Etuwa. Not really. Not because she hadn’t cared, but because she had spent most of the Games trying not to visibly look like a stranger standing in the middle of a celebration she didn’t understand, surrounded by clans who had every right to stare and every reason not to trust her.

She had been too petrified with nerves to absorb much beyond the shape of the crowd, the sounds, the colors, So’lek somewhere near and at the same time far enough that she could pretend she wasn’t using his presence as a brace.

So Robin only nodded.

Etuwa’s gaze lingered on her for half a second too long, then she returned to the bandage.

The right wrist was worse than the left. The cord had bitten deepest there, cutting half-moons into skin that had gone swollen and tender around the abrasions. Etuwa washed it with something that stung sharply enough to make Robin’s fingers twitch despite every effort not to react.

The Tsahìk noticed. Of course she did.

She only wrapped the woven bandage with careful, even pressure and asked about the Mangkwan.

So, Robin told her.

How many she had seen. The paint. The violence. The thanator.

Etuwa had already known part of the threat, Robin realized. Not enough, but more than nothing. Her face didn’t change much, but her questions sharpened.

How many?

Were they alone?

Had there been victims?

Who?

Practical questions.

Questions for someone preparing not only to mourn, but to decide what kind of conflict had come walking into her forest.

Their conversation had grown quieter when Etuwa’s father entered.

The Olo’eyktan of the Aranahe had not looked pleased to find Robin there, though whether that was because of Robin herself, the Mangkwan, or the general inconvenience of fresh disaster, she couldn’t tell. Possibly all three.

Etuwa’s tone changed around him too. Not weaker. Never that. Only more deliberate.

Later, quietly, she told Robin that her father preferred to avoid conflict whenever he could. Etuwa herself, apparently, believed there were times when fighting was the only way forward.

Funny family dynamic.

Robin didn’t say that out loud. She had learned, at least occasionally, not to make things worse for herself.

The day after the first night, Robin went to a nearby lake to wash.

The water had been cold enough to bite, clear enough to see through it, and still enough to show her reflection before she could prepare herself for it.

Some of the Mangkwan paint had remained on her face.

Not much.

Enough.

A faint smear near her jaw. A white and black dragged too close to one cheekbone. Some paint was caught at the edge of her hairline where someone’s hand must have touched during the struggle.

For a moment she had only stared at herself.

Then the urge to punch the water had risen so strongly that her hand actually curled. As if the reflection had personally offended her on a spiritual level.

She didn’t punch it.

Growth, maybe.

She scrubbed until her skin hurt and the marks dissolved into the lake, black and white breaking apart over the surface before vanishing completely.

After, when she entered Hometree once more, someone brought food.

A young Aranahe woman, maybe close to Tamtey’s age, or maybe younger. Robin could never tell as easily as she wanted to. The woman offered the bowl with careful politeness and did not linger once Robin accepted it.

Robin ate little. Enough not to insult anyone. Not enough to satisfy the hollow place in her stomach.

Then she went to find a place near the base of Hometree, inside but close enough to the entrance that she could see the night beyond it. That mattered for reasons she was too tired to explain to herself.

Walls had never been her favorite thing. Neither had open forest. Apparently, the ideal solution was sitting exactly between the two and being unhappy with both.

She lowered herself onto the borrowed mat, back pressed to the high root behind her.

Grounded.

That was the word her body seemed to want.

Something solid against her spine. Something older than the panic. Something that had been there before she was met with violence and would remain after the memory finally stopped trying to crawl under her skin.

Robin adjusted her bandaged wrist against her stomach.

The wrapped skin pulled. Her jaw ached. Her side, traitorous and dramatic, throbbed where the scars had been pressed against bone.

She closed her eyes. Just for a second. Only resting them, nothing more.

The first night, Robin barely slept.

The second night, exhaustion won.

It didn’t win gracefully. Nothing in Robin ever seemed to. It dragged her down by inches while she fought it, as if refusing sleep on principle would somehow prove she was still in control of the body currently trembling from stress and the aftermath of not dying.

Then sleep took her hard. Deeply enough that the world vanished without negotiation.

The exhaustion had been heavy enough that when hands closed around her shoulders, she didn’t wake all at once.

That was the frightening part.

She came up slowly, through layers of dark and weight and the distant awareness of touch. Firm, not harsh. Fingers at her shoulders. A voice saying something she was not able to catch. The pressure of another body close above her.

For one stupid, suspended moment, her mind didn’t understand where she was.

Then it did.

Robin jolted upright.

A scream died somewhere in her throat, cut off before it could become sound. Her back hit the root behind her, and her hands came up too late, one catching uselessly against the root behind her, the other pressing to the mat as if she could push herself through wood and earth by force alone.

Her heart went wild. Too fast. Too loud.

The world blurred at the edges—root, shadow, woven mat, dim bioluminescence, a shape crouched over her.

Tall. Close. Still holding her shoulders.

Robin blinked hard, forcing the drowsy smear from her eyes.

Then she saw him.

Her breath caught so sharply it hurt.

For half a second, she could not make him fit into the space she sat in.

He belonged to the Spires, to distance, to first light and leaving.

He belonged to the place she hadn’t been able to call.

And yet he was there, crouched in front of her, travel-worn and still, his hands on her shoulders like he had reached for her before he had remembered whether he was allowed.

His eyes moved over her face. Her jaw. Her wrists, and the bandage.

Something in him changed.

Not visibly enough for anyone else, maybe. Enough for her.

“So’lek?” she said. Whispered. No, not whispered. Shouted. Whisper-shouted?

His hands tightened once on her shoulders. Only once. As if proving she was there. As if proving he was there, too.

Robin stared at him, still half inside sleep and fear, staring at the impossible relief of his face.

For the first time since stepping into the Kinglor Forest, the panic in her body forgot what it was doing.

[adeninee]

[kekereads97]

The die is cast: Chapter 2

Pairing: Neteyam x Fem!OC

Trigger warnings: PTSD, trauma, insomnia, anxiety, war themes, grief, existential/identity themes, references to past violence and medical trauma.

Summary: It is 2175, 5 years after the final battle in Awa'atlu (during ATWOW) with the RDA and Jake Sully. Neteyam is now 20 years old.

After surviving a near-fatal injury and a war that has since ended, a former heir returns to a world that no longer needs him in the same way it once did. Struggling with PTSD, insomnia, and the weight of a life he no longer fits into, he tries to serve as a stabilizing force in fragile new alliances between his people and humans.

But as he rebuilds what remains of his purpose, he begins to question whether survival was ever meant to return him to who he was—or force him to become something else entirely.

Word count: 2489

Wattpad link:

The die is cast - Chapter 2

Read Chapter 2 from the story The die is cast by kekereads97 (Keke) with 1 reads. kiri, avatardlc, loaksully. A shiver...

A shiver creeps down my spine as the cool morning air hits my skin. Before I can think too much of it, I walk over to my ikran waiting impatiently next to my father’s. My whole family is gathered to send us off, my father waiting next to them.

Everyone shares hugs and says their goodbyes. My mother hugs me forcefully enough to slide my chest guard out of place slightly. She apologizes immediately with teary eyes. I mutter to her that it is fine as she fixes it for me.

They all looked devastated. I stand there waiting for the feeling to reach me. It does not.

We are leaving.

Now.

There is no more thinking, no more questioning.

I do not know what I am doing. But I do know that whatever comes next, it will finally be mine.

My eyes sweep the village one last time. The eclipse is still fading, and it carries the strange stillness of the quiet before a storm. I take in a deep breath to commit everything to memory one last time. Wet sand, salt, cold ocean air.

The waves crash lazily across the shore. I pause to listen for one more moment. I do not know why.

I quickly mount my ikran and look to my father. He nods to me. I nod back. We take flight unceremoniously.

Every shift of the saddle sends aching pain through my ribs and shoulders. The exhaustion makes the world feel distant around the edges. My skin stings from the cold air against my skin, but I barely notice it.

My father looks at me as the eclipse slowly dampens the glaring sun. He signals for us to land in between two large cliffs.

We climb down together, and I land less gracefully than usual.

"There's a stream nearby. I'll catch some fish, you should start a fire. We can rest for the night here and travel again at first light."

"Okay sir." I reply. My gaze scans our surroundings, already mapping out the area and seeing what I can use to start a small fire.

"Neteyam..." my father questions.

"Yes?"

"Are you okay? Last time we flew straight through but you don't look so great, so I figured we should take a break."

"Yeah sir, I'm okay. I just had a hard time sleeping last night, the nerves were getting to me."

"Okay then, son. I'll go get some fish. Make the fire and I'll be right back."

I stumble into the brush, gathering small sticks and dry leaves what will catch fire quickly.

My father walks up slowly with our fish already cleaned and ready to cook. We work in silence and begin to prepare our meals.

The silence is much welcomed with the way the exhaustion still aches in my bones.

As we sit down to eat, my father clears his throat "you know Neteyam, I've been meaning to have a talk with you."

I hum in response as I chew on my meal, fleetingly thinking that I would be getting another one of his many lectures.

This was seemingly a satisfying response, as he continues without a beat "you're getting older now, and you're healed up. The war is behind us... I know it hasn't been easy but I think it's time to start thinking more about yourself and what you want. There are going to be many different women coming and going with the negotiations, and the resistance around. It would be good for you to find someone, a partner."

I cough and choke on the food in my mouth, it suddenly tasting ashy and dry in my mouth. I desperately try to clear my throat and regain any shred of dignity in this situation that I still may be able to.

"Father" I eventually croak out, "I do not need "the talk" from you. I am old enough to know how it works. Besides... the war may technically be over, yet there is a lot of work to do. Finding a woman is not more important than this mission."

My father sighs deeply, and his brow seems to furrow twice as much as it usually is "son, I know things still aren't as simple as they used to be. But with war... nothing is ever simple. Things may never truly return to the way they used to be. We are entering a new time, where the Na'vi are working with humans... I never thought I'd live to see the day. I'm just saying, think about it. I can even try to help set up some meetings so you can get to know-"

I suck in air and gasp "I do not need my father to set me up on play dates. Besides, I have more important things to worry about. The people need me."

"Okay, it's just an option. I will always be here to help you. I just can't help but think that this war has taken so much from you, from us and that you deserve to find peace for once. Having someone by your side can change everything. You deserve a long, happy life with someone that loves you. I don't want to see you lose yourself to your duties and miss out on that because you put the people before yourself to a fault."

Before I can even fully process what he is saying I bite out "would that be so bad if I really put the people before myself? It is my duty, I am a soldier for the people. It's what I was raised for. I have sacrificed so much, even put my life on the line. How can I suddenly become something else?"

His eyes soften as he studies my face. "I felt the same before I met your mother. I lost my legs, my brother. I was alone on a dead planet. Then I got offered a chance to come here... to have a purpose again, a mission. So I took it. And then I met her. Everything changed.... She didn't take me away from duties or leadership. She helped strengthen me when it felt like too much. She was soft when the world felt too hard, like it would crush me at any moment. Every transition, she breathes life into me. Love is not weakness, son. It brings meaning even to the moments where there's nothing you have to fight for." He pauses, a twinkle in his eyes at the mention of my mother. "There's no rush, you don't need to go find someone tomorrow. I'm just saying... I don't want you to be too closed off when the right person comes along. Even the strongest person can't wait for you forever."

My brows furrow as I stare at my hands, tearing apart my fish seemingly by their own accord. The fire crackles in the background.

He studies my hands for a few moments, and then his eyes flick to my face. Whether he is satisfied by my apparent contemplation of his words, or just assumes they went over my head I do not know or care. He chuckles and stands up, placing his hand on my shoulder and lightly squeezing it. The feeling grounds me as if I were young again.

"I will set up a space for us to rest. If we head out at first light, we will arrive by the end of the day tomorrow. Finish eating, then clean up here."

I hum in response and absentmindedly finish the rest of my meal. My head swirls at his words. How can I allow myself to let my head float to the clouds when the war still echos in my nightmares? I cannot even figure out where I belong and why, let alone why someone would want to be by my side for the rest of their life.

I understand what my father is saying. It makes sense to hear this from him, given my parents were around my age when they had me.

That was a different time, however. In fact, I do not even know if I would be in one place enough to give a mate attention let alone have a family. One could not drag their love across pandora constantly for battle plans and alliance meetings.

Attachment complicates things.

I know this better than most.

Plus, it would be too much of a distraction for me. I have much to do with the resistance. Perhaps one day I will feel content to settle down and find a mate, but I cannot see myself on that path— at least right now.

I shake my head at my thoughts. The eclipse begins to roll in against the sky, causing a chill to settle in the air. My hands plant onto the log I have been leaning against, allowing me to push myself up much more quickly than my energy should've allowed.

The scent of our fish lingers in the air. I smile, flashes of my mother cooking her favorite meal coming to my head. I wonder if my father cooked this dinner for us because he wanted it, or simply because it is my mother's favorite and she is not here with him.

Embers from the fire still glow from when my father cooked, however I know it will need to be tended to with the chill creeping into the air. I work quickly to clean up and stoke the fire.

Once I finish, I slowly move towards the firmer ground further away from the river where he has set up a temporary structure for us to sleep in.

A scraping noise fills the air as crystal hits the bone shaft of an arrow. The sound settles something instinctive inside me.

"Why don't you rest son? You look like you need it. I'll join you soon." My father states without looking away from his arrow.

"Okay sir. Goodnight." I breathe lowly as I stalk towards one of the sleeping mats. The idea of rest feels almost intoxicating but I know it will not fall upon me that easily.

A feeling of uneasiness creeps up my spine after lowering myself. Even exhausted, my body refuses to fully relax against the mat.

The sounds around the sleeping area gnaw at my already frayed nerves. Exhaustion and anxiety tangle together beneath my skin.

One, two three.

Each breath counted and slowed.

It does not work.

My aching muscles relaxed one by one.

They do not listen.

I want to snarl from the frustration.

No.

This is more than frustration.

Deeper.

I try over and over.

I can not tell if it has been hours or minutes.

Nothing works. I try to not look at the eclipse.

My muscles throb from the journey.

The sounds of the forest press in on me from every direction.

Every chirp, rustling of leaves seems to add to the pressure on my chest.

The river in the distance flows heavily. Loose stones drag against one another in soft, uneven clicks.

The sound in theory should be calming.

Every shift of a stone jolts me back awake as soon as my body gives way to exhaustion.

Click.

Scrape.

Click.

My body stays tense on the mat, one hand half curled near the knife beside me. More out of habit than intentional.

The current pulls harder against the bank.

Stone scrapes sharply against stone.

My chest tightens.

Cold rock presses against my back.

No—

Not the river.

Blood.

It runs between the cracks in the stone.

Too much.

My heart lurches painfully against the rush of adrenaline.

A metallic tang fills the air.

As if miles away, I can hear voices yelling, screaming.

I desperately try to cry out for help. Nothing comes out except for a weak, gurgling noise.

Every small movement feels sluggish as if underwater.

Panic burns through my veins like fire.

No. No.

My hand closes around my knife as my body lurches upright.

I am alive.

I am okay.

One. Two. Three.

I count each breath, desperately willing my pulse to slow.

The morning light softly filters through the trees. Birds call to each other in the distance. Warmth creeps into the air.

Our hut is empty, the mat next to me no longer occupied. Through the haze in my mind, I can smell roasted fish and fire.

My ikran screeches loudly in the distance.

Right.

I am with my father.

We are traveling.

Footsteps pad over to my direction "Oh hey, you're up! Good. Breakfast is ready. Come, we need to head out soon."

His eyes flick to my hand on my knife then back to my face.

I blink at him. Before I can register his words, I stand up and walk over to him. My muscles ache in protest as I squat next to him.

His eyes follow me, concern etched into his features. I am grateful that he says nothing.

We eat together in silence.

My father stands up as he finishes eating and walks toward the shelter.

"Alright son, I'll clean up the shelter, you clean up breakfast and we'll go."

"Okay sir."

I absentmindedly clean up our breakfast and move to the ikrans where my father is already waiting. The heat from the stones along the river sink into my toes with each step.

We check our harnesses and mount our ikrans without ceremony.

"Ready son?"

"As I will be. Let us go. We have a long journey to home still."

With that, we launch into the air.

Wind tears against my ears for hours until the noise becomes numbing.

As the light begins to soften, familiar landscapes appear on the horizon.

Home.

The concept sits wrong in my mind.

It has been so long that I am not sure that is the correct word.

However, I hope it can become home again.

The closer we get, the louder the ringing in my ears persists. My knuckles are white against the harness.

Soft orange light hits the hallelujah mountains as we duck through vines strung between the floating rocks.  It is breathtaking.

My father chirps as he descends between one of the mountains and lands in a hole in the side of the rock face.

High camp.

I land with a jolt that echoes through my whole body. I will have to get used to this again. Landing in the side of a floating mountain is significantly more difficult than landing on a vast open beach. Especially when you're so exhausted you can't even think straight.

As soon as we land, we are surrounded. Some are familiar faces, some are not. My father, ever the leader greets everyone with a warm smile and a genuine fondness in his voice.

Tarsem saunters over to us with a huge smile on his face.

He greets my father first, and then he turns to me.

"My dear friend and mighty warrior, it is so good to see you!"

Chapter 1

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Alright yall we bout to get intoooo it finally. Okay so I will hopefully be uploading about once a week. I will more often if I can get into flow state with writing again lol. This is kinda difficult for me even more so cause the symptoms that he has I do too, and it's very difficult to put into words what it's like. Anyways hope yall like it!

[zephyrwritesthings]

Fly High - Chapter 21

Pairing: So’lek x Fem!OC

Trigger warnings: Violence, swearing, mentions of death.

Summary: Disgraced but cleared of wrongdoing, former flight lead Robin Walker accepts an RDA mission that promises redemption—only to awaken on Pandora in a recombinant body she never agreed to inhabit. Sent to hunt a legendary traitor, she instead finds herself stranded between two worlds: too human to belong among the Na’vi, too changed to return to Earth. As the planet challenges everything she was taught to fear, Robin must confront the meaning of loyalty, survival, and identity—and the quiet, dangerous pull of a warrior who sees past what she was built to be. 

Notes: Oh noooo...

Masterlist

Chapter 21 - Hollow Ground

Robin had known, in some abstract way, that things would be different after. She had simply not anticipated this specific kind of different.

She and So’lek sat side by side at the communal fire, knees almost touching, eating dinner—or she was trying to eat, though the knot in her throat had other ideas.

So’lek had not said a word since she had come back from Seyari’s hut—new coat, rearranged hair, one small girl’s worth of insistence accounted for. Robin had been grateful for Seyari’s hands. The child’s attempts would have looked like she had lost a fight with a thanator. She had almost made a joke about that to herself, then remembered the scar at her side and decided against it.

Robin had told him, of all people, the thing she had spent weeks trying not to look at too directly.

The impossible thing.

The sacred thing.

The thing that should have made him look at her like a trespasser, a ghost, or both.

He had not.

Which, somehow, made sitting beside him worse.

She had found So’lek almost without meaning to. One moment she was alone, and the next he was there, falling into step beside her without ceremony or explanation, the way he sometimes did. The way he seemed to do now more than ever.

They had moved towards the fire together. Grabbed food. Sat down.

Said nothing.

The quiet was making her skin crawl.

Robin stole a glance at his profile and found him the same as always — still, composed, watching the fire with the particular kind of attention that suggested he was thinking deeply and showing none of it.

Just the way he had been the first seventeen times she had turned to look at him from the corner of her eye in the last hour.

She looked back at the flames.

‘A rock,’ she thought. ‘He is in a contest with a rock.’

In an attempt to break the ice, she spoke.

“Tamtey should be on her way by now,” she said. “Right?”

“Yes,” he replied.

Robin waited.

Nothing followed.

She picked up the small bundle of food, still wrapped in green leaves, then set it down again. Rested her elbows on her knees and looked at her hands instead—her wrong-shaped hands. Odd hands. Five fingers where there should have been four, a fact the People’s eyes always found eventually.

She rubbed her left thumb over the knuckles of her right hand. Once. Twice. Then turned her palm up and pressed the thumb against the scar there, the one from Mercer’s base. From the metal structure. From the specific calculation she had run in real time about how long her grip would hold before it did not anymore, and she fell to her death.

Luckily, that had not happened.

Tamtey had been there—alone, inside the base.

She had found Robin and almost pointed her bow in her direction. She had been angry at her for leaving the Resistance in that dumb attempt to protect them from a danger bigger than herself, the way it had always had been—Robin had just been too much of a fool to see it then.

Too scared.

Then Tamtey had continued on her way, planning to bring the base down with only the promised help of the warriors outside and nothing truly guaranteed.

Now she was out there alone—again.

On another mission she had taken upon shoulders too young to carry war.

‘She’s capable,’ Robin reminded herself. ‘She’s been doing this longer than you’ve been in this body.’

The concern came back anyway. It had a habit of doing that, now.

She had warmed to Tamtey since the beginning, against every intention she had possessed back then. Even early on, before the Trees of Voices—before anything remotely good, really—she had looked at the young Sarentu and thought, ‘If something was coming, I would tell you before I escaped.’ Which had been, at the time, the closest thing to tenderness she could have managed.

Robin pressed her thumb flat against the scar and stopped moving it.

When she looked up at So’lek once more, he was already looking at her.

She almost flinched.

Didn’t.

She hesitated before asking, “Do you think she’ll be all right?”

He held her gaze for a moment. “She is a strong warrior.”

Robin pressed her lips into a thin line.

Not yes.

Not no, either.

She stared at him for a beat, then looked back at the fire. “Could you answer a question without sounding like a riddle, just once?”

A pause.

“I answered.”

“Right,” Robin said, sarcastically. “My mistake.”

He didn’t react to that. Not visibly, anyway.

Of course he didn’t.

Robin picked up the food again and made herself eat despite her body’s clear opposition to the idea. She didn’t need to look to know he was still watching her. She was fairly certain she was developing some kind of specific sensitivity to it.

A So’lek-stare-o’meter.

The fire popped once, scattering a brief constellation of sparks.

Robin swallowed with difficulty, both from concern and awkwardness.

“She went alone,” Robin said.

Not a question. Just the thing that had been sitting in her chest since Tamtey had told them about Anufi’s favor, finally finding its way out through the path of least resistance.

So’lek said nothing for a moment. Robin thought he was going to keep his silence, then. Let her drown in worry until it passed on its own.

Then he spoke, against her expectations.

“The first time I saw her, she had just come out of a deep sleep. In a cold box.” His gaze returned to the fire. “She had not seen the sun for cycles.”

Robin didn’t say anything.

“The others were still learning where they were,” he continued. “What had been taken. What had been done to them.” A pause. “Tamtey was already planning what came next before anyone had offered her food.”

Robin looked down at the bundle of food in her hands.

She knew some of it, maybe not with all the details. Tamtey had told her when they went to the Kame’tire, looking for healers who would help the injured at the Resistance. She had spoken of the little flashes of memory she still held of her infancy—the real one, without enclosure and metal walls and guns forced into her hands. She had spoken of lost family. Of cryosleep. Of the drowsiness that followed it, and the strain in the body—that part Robin knew well.

Tamtey had told her, maybe, because she had been too vulnerable then. Too shaken by Mokasa’s words and had found comfort in Robin’s. Or maybe because Robin had just agreed to follow her into TAP Con-1, despite her better judgment, and wanted her to understand enough of her life not to be taken by surprise by whatever they found there.

Robin had been surprised, all right. Just not in the way either of them had expected—with a feral tanathor on her tail and evisceration narrowly avoided only because the beast had failed to claw a little deeper into her flesh.

She grimaced at the memory.

“She does not stop,” So’lek said. “Not when she is tired. Not when she is afraid.”

Another pause, shorter than the first.

“I have not seen her fail to finish a thing she started.” He added.

Robin looked at the fire for a long moment, not completely convinced. But not untouched, either.

“Okay,” she said quietly.

It was not gratitude. Not exactly. Not relief either. Just the sound of something wound too tightly finally easing, only slightly, without making a performance of itself.

So’lek didn’t acknowledge it. He only picked up his food and looked back towards the fire, as if he hadn’t just given her the only comfort she would have believed from him.

His hand shifted once near his belt. Not towards a weapon—towards the small pouch there.

Robin noticed because she noticed too much about him lately, which was quickly becoming one of her least favorite personality traits.

Then his hand stilled, and whatever had drawn it there disappeared behind the same quiet discipline he wore like armor.

Robin looked away before he could catch her looking.

The quiet remained.

It only stopped feeling quite so much like punishment.

—

The Plains would not recover quickly.

So’lek had known this before the fires were out. He had known it in the first breath of smoke, in the first body carried from the wreckage, in the first child’s cry rising too thin and sharp above the confusion.

He had seen enough of what the Sky People’s weapons did to land and body alike to hold no illusions about the shape of repair.

Still, knowing a thing and watching it were not the same.

The Heart of the Plains had been made for movement. For voices, games, mounted races, painted zakru, the low thunder of many feet crossing grass made bright by sun and wind. Even at rest, the place had never felt still.

Now the movement remained, but differently. Slower. Careful.

The frames of broken shelters stood half-raised in the morning light, new bindings pale against smoke-darkened wood. Torn fabric had been stripped away and sorted into piles—what could be cleaned, what could be cut down for smaller use, what could only be burned. The air held many scents layered over one another—ash, wet grass, crushed healing leaves, blood gone old, and the sour metal stink left behind by fallen Sky People machinery.

The living continued because they had to. The wounded were carried into shade. Children were counted more than once. The dead were named softly where the young could not hear, and then named properly when the time came for grief to have its place. Those who could stand helped those who could not. Those who could not help sat with the injured and held bowls, held hands, held silence.

So’lek worked where there was need.

He lifted beams. Cut away collapsed bindings. Searched the grass for fragments of metal that had no place in the flesh of the land.

Work did not require much thought—that was useful. The body knew how to carry weight. The hands knew how to tie, brace, pull, and cut. The eyes knew how to search for weakness before it became failure.

And still, more often than he intended, his attention found Robin—she was difficult not to watch.

At first, he told himself it was habit.

He had watched her since the beginning. Tracked her. Measured her. Searched for the shape of danger in her posture, her silence, the way her gaze moved through a room before she allowed her body to follow. Watching had once been a necessary thing. The recom had been RDA, then not RDA, then something more difficult to name. It had been wise to observe.

He told himself this was the same.

He was no longer certain he believed it.

Robin had taken to the work without announcement. No attempt to make herself seen as useful. She simply appeared where need was visible and put her hands to it.

On the first morning, he saw her at the edge of the healer’s space, passing folded cloths and cleaned tools to those who did not have enough hands. She did not enter too far. Did not presume knowledge she did not have. She stayed at the edge until someone told her to come closer, and then she did.

Then, she carried water.

The vessel was large enough that one of the younger warriors looked ready to take it from her, perhaps thinking the wound at her side had not finished closing enough for the weight. Robin looked at him once—only once—and he stepped aside. She carried the water herself, jaw set, gait only slightly altered.

On the second morning, So’lek found her crouched beside a Zeswa warrior whose lower leg had been bound too tightly.

The hunter who had made the binding was young and tired. Too tired to enjoy correction. Robin seemed to understand this. She did not speak as if giving orders, she pointed instead, her fingers touching the edge of the wrap, then the cold skin below it.

“Too tight,” she said in careful Na’vi.

Her accent sat heavily on some sounds. Others had improved. She had learned by Tamtey’s insistence, by stubborn repetition, and by listening more than she admitted.

The young hunter frowned. “It must hold.”

“Yes,” Robin said. She looked down, searching for the words. “Hold. Not kill the foot.”

The warrior on the ground gave a short breath that might have been a laugh if pain had not taken most of it. The hunter’s mouth tightened.

Robin did not push harder. She waited. That, too, had changed. Once, she would have met resistance with force because force had been the only language she trusted to move things in time. Now she had learned that among the People, sometimes patience moved faster.

At last, the hunter gave a clipped bow of his head in acknowledgement.

Robin redid the binding.

Her fingers were not shaped like Na’vi fingers. The warrior watched her hands as she worked. Many still did. The difference always drew the eye eventually.

Robin noticed—So’lek knew she noticed. She gave no sign of it.

Her hands remained steady as she loosened the wrap, checked the skin beneath, then tightened the support again with better pressure. Not soft. Not delicate. Exact.

When the binding was finished, the warrior moved his foot once, then looked at her.

Robin sat back on her heels. “Better?”

He agreed. She seemed relieved, though only because So’lek had begun to know the smaller signs of it. The slight release at her mouth. The way her shoulders lowered by less than a breath.

“Good,” she said.

Then she stood too quickly, pressed one hand briefly to her side when the scar pulled into an uncomfortable feeling still, pretended she had not done it, and went to find the next problem.

By the third day, the small girl found her again.

Tseya had been moving through the recovering camp at Seyari’s side, solemn in the way children became when disaster had frightened them but not yet taught them stillness. Her voice, however, had not been diminished by fear. It carried with impressive strength for someone so small, cutting through the work around her with the confidence of one who had never believed the world should continue without her commentary.

She attached herself to Robin shortly after the midday meal.

So’lek saw the moment of impact from across a half-mended shelter frame.

Robin was kneeling beside a broken storage crate, trying to force a damaged hinge back into alignment with a small tool borrowed from one of the human resistance members. Her new coat shifted over her shoulders when she moved, lighter than the old cloak, made with Seyari’s hands and accepted with the strained discomfort Robin gave to kindness she had not earned.

Tseya appeared beside her as if summoned by trouble.

Robin looked down. Something moved across her face—not alarm, not exactly. More like the careful resignation of a warrior who saw an attack coming and knew no honorable retreat remained.

Tseya began speaking at once. Robin looked back at the hinge. The child continued.

The words came quickly enough that even So’lek did not catch all of them from where he stood. Something about the fire. Something about her mother’s weaving. Something about a creature near the water that had looked at her and then left without explanation, which Tseya appeared to consider insulting.

Robin kept working. She also did not tell the child to leave.

“Is that true?” Robin asked when the girl stopped long enough to breathe.

“Yes,” Tseya said, with grave seriousness.

Robin braced the crate between her knees and pulled the hinge straight with a sharp metallic sound. “That does sound rude.”

Tseya looked satisfied. Then she began again.

So’lek’s hand tightened once on the shelter beam he held. He looked away before Robin could find him watching.

He had seen her endure pain with less visible effort than she used to endure children. And yet she let them come.

Tseya was loud. Her younger brother was not.

The boy came differently.

He had known Robin before the plains, before the smoke, and the wounded, and the half-mended shelters.

He had seen her in the Resistance after the tanathor had torn into her side, when she had been weak with pain and reluctant fear, trying very hard to pretend neither had any claim on her. He had watched from near his mother then, half-hidden against Seyari’s leg. He had grabbed her hand and counted her fingers relentlessly too, while she slept, waking her with a start the first time.

So he did not approach her now with the caution of meeting something unknown. He approached her like a child returning to a strange thing he had already decided, once, was safe enough.

Still careful. Still watching. But not afraid enough to stay away.

At first he only appeared near her while she worked, close enough to be seen, far enough that he could retreat if Robin turned too quickly or looked too directly at him. He spoke in small pieces. A word here. A question shaped more by tone than language.

Sometimes he pointed at what she held and said, “That?” with solemn expectation.

Robin, who had faced RDA teams with less visible uncertainty than she showed when confronted with a child’s question, would look at the object, then at him.

“Tool,” she said once in Na’vi, holding up the small metal piece, one she borrowed from Teylan.

The boy repeated it badly.

Robin’s mouth moved at one corner. “Close enough.”

He seemed pleased with this, though So’lek doubted he understood the expression.

Another time, the boy brought her a small carved figure, rough and unfinished, shaped vaguely like some plains creature if one had a generous eye and a forgiving heart. He placed it on the ground beside her knee while she was sorting through a bundle of salvage and waited.

Robin looked at it. Then at him.

The boy pointed to himself. “It is mine.”

“You made this?” she asked.

He nodded once, very seriously.

Robin picked up the figure with great care, turning it between her fingers as if it were a weapon that might misfire or a sacred object she had not been warned how to hold.

So’lek saw the moment she understood what was being asked of her.

Not a repair. Not a strategy. Not a wound to bind.

Only witness.

The boy wanted her to see what he had made and agree that it had meaning.

Robin looked at the boy, then down at the carving again.

“It is good,” she said carefully.

The boy watched her face.

Robin seemed to realize the first answer had not been enough. She adjusted the figure in her hand and added, “Very good.”

That satisfied him.

He took the carving from her hand, turned, ran three steps towards his sister, then turned around again to make sure Robin was still looking.

She was.

When he saw that, he smiled.

Robin blinked once, as if the smile had caught her somewhere unguarded, then looked back down at her work with suspicious focus.

After that, the boy came more often.

Sometimes he played near her, not with her exactly, but within the circle of her attention. He would jump from one flat stone to another, then look back to see whether she had noticed. If she had not, he would do it again with greater force until the movement became impossible to ignore.

Robin learned, slowly, what was required.

“Yes,” she said one afternoon, without looking away from the broken fastener in her hands. “Wow.”

The boy stopped, dissatisfied. Robin felt the silence and looked up.

She stared at him for a moment. Then, with the grave exhaustion of someone accepting defeat, she set the fastener down and watched him jump again.

This time, when he landed, she lifted both brows. “Very impressive.”

The boy beamed. Tseya, nearby, immediately declared that she could do better.

Robin closed her eyes for one brief moment.

So’lek pretended not to see it.

The hands came later.

Robin’s unusual hands, the boy seemed to find them deeply interesting still, but not with fear. More with the direct curiosity children gave to things adults had already learned to stare at indirectly.

He would appear at Robin’s side while she worked and take one of her hands in both of his, examining it with focused attention. Turning it. Pressing a thumb against her knuckles. Considering each finger in turn.

Robin, more often than not, let him.

Once, the boy spread her fingers apart, then placed his own hand against hers to compare them.

Robin looked at the small hand over her larger one.

Something in her face went still. Not badly. Only quietly.

The boy looked up at her. Neither of them said anything.

Then he patted her palm once, apparently satisfied, and ran off to show Tseya the carved figure again.

Robin stared after him for a moment longer than she needed to.

So’lek did not know what to call what moved through him, watching that.

He left it where it was, because names had weight. He had learned long ago not to give them carelessly.

The foot, he did not anticipate.

Robin had been sitting, crosslegged, with a damaged signaling unit across her knees, one from the Valkyrie—some human-made device that had taken damage in the attack and had been resisting Teylan’s and the rest of the human’s efforts for the better part of an hour. She had asked to have them let her give it a try, and had been unsuccessful so far if her expression was anything to judge by. The boy had been playing nearby, building a small line of stones, then knocking them down with careful taps of his carved figure.

Every few moments he looked back at Robin.

Every few moments Robin, without seeming to realize she had become part of the game, gave some small sign of acknowledgment.

A nod. A hum.

He came closer while Robin bent over the signaling unit, and apparently determined that her foot, also quite odd with its five toes, was as worthy of attention as her hand had been.

Her reaction was immediate.

She pulled her foot back sharply, made a startled sound that dissolved before it became a word, and looked down at him with wide eyes and an expression So’lek had not seen on her face before—unguarded, briefly helpless, her composure caught entirely off-guard.

The boy stared at her. Robin stared back. 

Then she drew a breath, long and controlled, and said, very carefully, “Please do not grab my feet.”

The boy blinked.

Robin lifted one hand as though the explanation could be measured there. “Hands are fine. Arms are fine. The coat, apparently, is also fine.” A brief pause. “But not the feet. That is very—”

She stopped. Her mouth twitched.

“Uncomfortable,” she finished with great dignity. “Very uncomfortable.”

Tseya, sitting nearby, looked fascinated by this new weakness.

The boy considered the instruction.

Then, with grave acceptance, he moved to Robin’s side and grabbed her coat instead.

Robin looked down at him. The corner of her mouth moved again, closer this time to a real smile than a failed one.

“Thank you,” she said, as if he had made a solemn bargain.

The boy leaned against her arm without looking up. Robin went back to the signaling unit.

So’lek turned away before the sight could settle too deeply.

He failed.

It settled anyway.

In the evenings, they sat together at the fire.

There was no arrangement. No spoken agreement. He did not ask. Robin did not ask. One of them would arrive, and the other would eventually sit nearby. Sometimes close enough to feel the other near even without sight. Sometimes with a little distance between them, depending on the shape of the day, the number of people around the fire, the level of exhaustion sitting on Robin's shoulders.

The first night after Seyari gave her the new coat, Robin arrived before him. She sat with one knee drawn up, the other leg stretched carefully to avoid pulling at her side. Her hair had changed, though not as intricate as the first Tlalim braids. It remained practical. Neat. The kind of concession Robin could pretend was only convenience.

She looked into the fire when he sat beside her.

“You’re late,” she said.

“I did not know there was a time for arrival.” He replied.

She said, “There wasn’t.”

He looked at her.

Her mouth moved slightly. “That was the joke.”

“I see,” he answered after a moment.

She looked at him then, and the brief amusement that passed through her face came and went like the wind. It was a small thing. He kept it anyway.

Another evening, she brought two portions of food and placed one beside him without comment.

He looked down at it. Then at her.

She did not look back. “They gave me too much.”

“That is not true.” He said.

“They really did,” she lied.

He accepted the portion.

She ate slowly. More slowly than he would have liked. Some days, she also ate too little.

When she thought no one watched, her gaze drifted over the wounded, the children, the half-repaired shelters, and remained there too long.

He never told her he noticed. She would not thank him for it.

Sometimes they spoke of Tamtey. Sometimes of the work that still needed doing. Sometimes Robin asked for words she did not know, pointing with her chin towards an object or gesture and repeating the answer under her breath until it settled. Sometimes she said nothing at all, and he did not fill the silence simply because he could.

The silence between them had changed since the confession.

Before, silence had been a thing with edges. Silence had been defense. Punishment. Restraint.

Now it simply existed.

Not always comfortably. Not always easily. But it no longer demanded explanation every time it arrived.

The Plains breathed around them in the dark. The fire cracked low. People moved in tired patterns at the edges of the light. Somewhere behind them, Tseya argued with another child in a tone that suggested the future of the clan depended on the outcome. Farther away, the wounded zakru shifted in its sleep, the sound low and pained but alive.

Robin sat beside him.

He had been watching her a lot lately. Perhaps too much.

He knew she watched him in return.

Not too directly. Robin did not stare unless she wanted to make a point—but her attention had a shape. It came from the side. From the brief turn of her head when she thought his gaze was elsewhere. From the pause before she answered him. From the way she sometimes looked towards his hands, his bow, the lines of pigment that adorned his face, then away again before the act could become too visible.

He had felt it for some time. The careful presence of her attention. He had spent many days pretending he had not.

He was not certain anymore who he had meant to convince.

What he knew was this—something was growing between them.

He was not skilled at naming such things. He had lived too long with discipline as his closest companion and grief as the shadow walking beside it. 

Growth had a shape, like seeds sleeping until the season changed enough for them to finally wake.

He knew it when he saw it.

He saw it in the space beside the fire that remained empty until one of them took it.

In the food brought with false excuses.

In the quiet she no longer fled at once.

In the fact that when danger moved through camp, his first glance still sought her before he allowed himself to breathe properly.

He saw it in the way the children had decided, before many adults, that Robin could be approached. In the way she allowed this, not because it was easy, but because she would not punish them for offering what she did not know how to receive.

He understood then, because he was too aware of this to not realize it, that he was allowing it to grow over a hollow place. Hollow ground.

He had been in the cage—this was the thing he had not told her.

He had carried it since through her confession, through the moment she told him what she believed Eywa had done, or given, or returned. He had carried it while she stood before him frightened not of death, but of rejection. Frightened he would look at her and see trespass where she had only survived.

She had given him the truth she feared most. He had kept his own hidden.

He did not wish to deceive her, but a lie by omission did not become clean because one did not enjoy keeping it.

He had been in the cage. He had watched the human woman come through the door with blood already on her clothes. He had heard the broken Na’vi she forced through a mouth not made for the language, trying to tell them something that was not true and yet still kind.

‘All is well.’

It had not been well.

He had watched her go to her knees.

He had watched the Sky People drag her back.

He had watched the rifle rise.

He had done nothing.

The bars had held. The guards had been armed. The prisoners had been weak from confinement, rage, fear, hunger, injury. Struggling would have done nothing except fill the cage with bodies. A bullet for him. A bullet for another. A bullet for another after that, until the room fell silent and the woman on the floor had died for no one at all.

He knew this.

He had known it then. He knew it now.

The knowledge did not make the memory lighter.

It did not change the fact that she had died facing them.

It did not change the fact that he had remembered her for years only as the human who had failed to open the cages and died trying.

It did not change what she was now—not a ghost, not an echo.

Robin.

Returned to herself by means she did not fully understand and perhaps did not need to.

She did not know that when she spoke of W-17, he remembered the room from the other side of the bars.

So’lek looked towards the fire.

The pouch at his belt seemed heavier with every breath.

Inside it lay the cold metal of her human life. A thing the RDA had made to mark ownership and identity in the same small piece of metal. Beside it lay the bracelet from the stream, uneven and ugly by her own judgment, left behind as if it had not mattered.

He had kept both.

He had told himself there were reasons.

Dog tags carried names. Names carried cost.

The bracelet had been different—he had no clean reason for that.

It had simply been hers.

And he had not wanted the water to take it.

Beside him, Robin shifted.

The boy had fallen asleep near her, earlier than usual, curled on a folded mat. Tseya had finally been collected by Seyari after arguing that she was not tired in a voice made entirely of exhaustion. Robin had watched the exchange with the guarded fascination she often gave to tenderness when it belonged to others.

Now she looked down at the sleeping boy.

Something passed over her face.

It was small enough that most would have missed it. A tightening near the eyes. A brief softening at the mouth immediately hidden. Not grief, not quite. Not longing in any simple shape.

Robin looked away from the child and her gaze lifted.

Caught his.

For a moment, neither of them moved.

The firelight changed the color of her eyes, made them seem darker, less sharp. There was a healing scratch crossing one side of her jaw. Her hands rested loosely between her knees.

She looked tired. Not only in the body.

It struck him, suddenly and without mercy, that there might never be a kind time to tell her.

There would always be a wound. Always some new grief. Some new danger. Some new reason to wait one more night, one more meal, one more quiet moment by the fire.

He could tell himself he was protecting her. He could tell himself that truth, too, had its seasons, and this one had not yet ripened.

He could tell himself many things.

The hollow place would remain hollow, and whatever was growing between them would continue until it was heavy enough to break through the ground and fall into the depths of nothing.

Robin’s eyes narrowed slightly.

“What?” she asked.

The word was quiet. Not defensive yet—but close.

So’lek held her gaze.

The first words rose and died before even reaching his mouth.

I was there.

Too abrupt.

I saw you die.

Too cruel.

At W-17—

Too little.

He did not know how to shape it into something that would not cut her.

Perhaps that was impossible. Perhaps truth, when held too long, became a blade no matter how carefully offered.

Robin watched him for another heartbeat. Then her expression shifted, turning dry around the edges in a way he had come to recognize as discomfort seeking armor.

“What is it?” She insisted

So’lek looked closely at her expression. “I am thinking.”

“That’s what worries me.” The words should have been light—they almost were.

Beneath them, though, he heard the question she had not asked.

He had learned to hear those too.

Are you still here?

Did what I told you change this?

Are you going to become another silence I have to survive?

The boy murmured in his sleep, a small sound without words. Robin turned at once, attention breaking from So’lek as she looked down at him. He shifted, brow pinching.

Robin hesitated.

Then, very carefully, she reached out and set her hand against his, carefully.

The boy’s fingers closed around it at once.

His face eased. Robin froze.

So’lek watched the change move through her in silence. She did not smile. She did not make any soft sound. She only sat there, caught by a sleeping child’s trust, looking down at the small hand closed around her strange fingers as if she had been handed something fragile and did not know whether she deserved to hold it.

When she spoke, her voice was lower. “He keeps doing that.” Her head tilted slightly. “I don’t know why.”

So’lek looked at the child’s hand around hers. “He has decided you are safe.”

Robin let out a faint breath through her nose. Not clear amusement. Not real disbelief. Something between both. “That seems unreasonable.”

So’lek’s eyes moved to her once more, “It is not always reason that sees clearly first.”

Her gaze flicked to him. He had not meant the words to carry as much as they did. They settled between them anyway.

Robin looked at him for a long moment, and this time there was no wit ready in her face. No quick turn of speech. Only quiet, more cautious.

Then she looked back down at the boy.

Her thumb moved once, lightly, against his knuckles. The gesture was so small it might have been mistaken for an accident. So’lek did not.

The fire burned lower. The Plains moved around them, wounded and alive. Somewhere beyond the light, nightlife called through the wind. Someone laughed softly near a shelter, tired but real. The sound remained, softer than before, but still there. Among the People.

This, too, was how life returned.

Not all at once. Not cleanly.

A repaired binding. A shared meal. A child’s hand. A place beside the fire no one spoke of.

So’lek looked at Robin and understood with a heaviness that settled deep in his chest that if he allowed this to continue without truth, then the silence would not remain silence.

It would become betrayal—because she had trusted him without knowing the full shape of what he carried.

He would tell her.

He did not have the words yet—not ones worthy of the wound they would open. Worthy words did not arrive to men who used their absence as shelter, he knew this too.

He would tell her.

The fire collapsed inward with a soft hiss of sparks.

Robin did not look at him again. Her eyes remained on the boy’s sleeping hand around hers.

So’lek stayed where he was.

He said nothing, and carried what he carried.

For now.

—

He had known the message was coming before Ri’nela found him.

Not in any way that could be explained cleanly. No sound had reached him first. No scout had crossed the recovering plains with warning on his tongue. No cry had gone up from the edge of camp.

Only the weight had arrived.

It settled in the chest before the mind had cause for it, heavy and familiar. The body understanding ahead of anything else, the old instinct that had kept him alive through ambushes, through raids, through the moments before the world burned through war.

Ri’nela moved through the camp with the quiet purpose she reserved for difficult things, and when her gaze found his across the distance of the recovering plains, So’lek had already understood.

He set down the shelter beam.

The warrior beside him shifted to take the weight without question. The frame held. Pale new wood against smoke-darkened posts. A thing rebuilt because the living required shelter, and because grief and pain did not stop rain or wind.

Ri’nela stopped before him. She did not waste words.

She told him what there was to tell. Tamtey. The Spires. The Kame’tire. The RDA pressing from the east with the particular patience of something that did not need to hurry because it believed the outcome already decided.

Then, last, with the weight she gave it—Nor.

Still missing. Not seen by anyone. Not since then.

So’lek said nothing for a long moment. Then, “When do we leave?”

“At first light. Teylan is already preparing.” After speaking, she waited. In case he had more to say.

There were many things he could have spoken. Questions. Anger. Orders. The shape of a plan already forming around the edges of the wound her words had opened. Ri’nela knew this. She watched him with the calm steadiness of one who had learned too young that leadership often meant standing near another’s silence and not trying to force it into speech.

He gave her nothing. She accepted this, and left him to it.

He stood alone in the morning and looked across the Plains.

The land was still healing. Everywhere he looked there was evidence of hands at work.

The light was clean and low, the way it was in the early hours before the heat arrived and reminded the world of what it had been through.

So’lek remained still.

The Spires called.

His gaze moved without permission, and it found her, as it had taken to doing.

She was at the far edge of the healer’s space, crouched beside a half-finished frame, her new coat pale against the still-darkened grass. Her hands moved with the focused grace she brought to physical tasks. No wasted motion. No softness unless softness served the work. Her braid fell forward over one shoulder when she bent her head.

She had no idea he was looking.

For a moment, he did not move.

He told himself there were reasons. For looking.

He went to find her when he could no longer justify standing still.

She heard him coming. She always did, with that particular awareness that had developed over months of proximity since her arrival back at the Resistance, some mutual understanding of the sounds of their steps and breath, the form of their gait, and the shape of approach, until the camp around them had grown full of people whose arrivals blurred together, and still they arrived differently.

She did not look up.

“You’re here,” she said, without looking up.

He crouched nearby. Close enough to speak without the morning taking his words. Close enough to see the shallow pull at the corner of her mouth where exhaustion had set itself into the skin, the small nick along one knuckle she had not bothered to wrap.

She kept working, her eyes focused on the task before her.

He told her plainly, the way she did when what was being said was difficult—without cushion, without lying for comfort. The Spires. The Sarentu. The departure at first light.

Then—“Nor has not been found.”

He saw the moment her movements faltered. Robin recovered quickly, shifting so that she was facing away from him. Not entirely, only a degree—her shoulders angling just enough to put the line of her back between them. Her hands returned to the wood with the focus of someone who had decided, quickly and deliberately, to be elsewhere in the mind without moving the body.

He watched the change settle into her.

The set of her jaw. The way her fingers pressed harder against the binding. The particular stillness that arrived when something landed in a bruised place.

Nor’s absence was not simple for her. Neither was his presence, So’lek knew. He had noticed.

Nor himself had not been simple.

So’lek did not now the full shape of the discomfort. The distrust. Robin had never told him, or anyone, but he had seen it in her wary eyes and steady silence that carried the shape of impact. 

Still, he was missing.

“Robin—”

“There is a group of hunters…” she interrumped.

He stopped.

Her voice was even. Too even.

“Lost in the forest, apparently.” She explained. “In Kinglor. Only one returned. They are gathering a party to go look for the others.”

The morning continued around them. Somewhere behind them a beam was dragged across the grass. A child called for someone and was answered. The wind moved through the new pale bindings and the low smoke-stained wood and did not care about any of it.

So’lek looked at her back and waited for her to continue.

“I leave in the morning as well.” She said.

The silence that arrived was sharp, as it used to be before.

It did not break against them. It settled, before taking shape, and the shape threatened to cut. It filled the small distance between his crouched body and her kneeling one until that distance seemed larger than it was.

He held it for a long moment before he spoke. “That is not a simple mission.”

“It is a search and rescue.” Still not turning. “Four people. Daylight. Known terrain.”

“Kinglor is dense.” He said. “If they have not returned—”

“Then they need someone to go find them.” She pressed one hand flat against the frame. So’lek knew he was not only talking about the hunters in Kinglor Forest. “That is what search and rescue means.”

So’lek narrowed his eyes, “You are healing—”

“I’m healed enough.” She retorted.

He rose his voice without meaning to, “Enough—”

“—Is enough.” A breath. Controlled. “I've moved through worse with less.”

He was quiet.

She was right.

That was the difficulty of it—she was right, he knew she was, and the knowing sat in him like a stone he did not want to carry and could not put down either.

She had moved through worse. She had survived the wild alone without knowing it. Survived the RDA before that. Survived the body forced upon her, the lies placed in her mind, the hunt that followed when those lies failed to hold her.

She had survived things he had not been present for.

She would survive things he would not be present for still.

He understood this.

He did. Truly.

Understanding it did not help.

The silence stretched between them even more. Not hostile. Not comfortable. The kind they had learned to share the days before.

Robin’s hands had slowed against the wood.

She did not turn. But the quality of her stillness had changed once more, and he had been watching her long enough now to know the difference between the stillness that meant nothing and the stillness that meant she was listening for something.

He opened his mouth. Closed it. There were many things he could have said.

Too many, and none of them arrived in a form he trusted—none that would not say more than this moment had room for, none that would not cross a distance neither of them had agreed yet to cross.

‘Do not go. Stay where I can see you.’

The words had no right to exist.

He had no claim that would make them honorable.

He had other words to say. Larger ones. Older ones. Words that belonged to W-17, to cages and blood and the face of a dying human woman who had not yet known him.

‘I was there. I saw.’

The thought rose and pressed against the back of his teeth.

He said nothing.

Robin let the silence sit for a moment longer.

Then, quietly, without turning, “I know.”

Two words. Offered to the wood, not to him. Simple enough to mean nothing. Heavy enough that they both understood that was not it.

She knew what he had not said.

Not the secret—not that. But the smaller thing beneath this moment.

The worry. The useless shape of it. The way his silence had crowded too near the edge of a request he would not make.

So’lek looked once more at the line of her back. The fall of her braid. The careful stillness of her body.

Then she drew a slow breath and went back to work.

“You cannot be in two places,” she said. Quieter now. Not unkind, just honest. “Tamtey needs you there. The Spires need you there. The Sarentu…” A pause. “So, go.”

He did not answer immediately.

The morning held them both, inside the recovering land breathing around them.

After a moment, she spoke once more, “First light, you said.”

So’lek let out a slow breath,“Yes.”

Her thumb moved once against the wood. A finished task. She still would not turn to him.

“Then you should go prepare.” Robin said.

The deflection was gentle this time. He recognized it—the careful drawing back.

It was almost mercy. He did not push against it.

He rose.

For one breath, he looked down at her and allowed himself to see the shape of what would remain when he left. Robin kneeling by the finished frame, remaining there as if there was work left to be done. The pale coat gifted by Seyari’s hands. The hair she had let someone else arrange.

Then he crossed the short distance between them and crouched down beside her, closer than before.

Close enough that she would have felt the shift in the air.

“Robin,” he called.

He saw her expression harden in her profile, her head tilting away just slightly.

His voice became firmer. “Robin.”

She closed her eyes.

Then, she turned, and she looked at him. Her face was open in the way it almost never was—not armored, not performing steadiness, not holding anything managed behind her eyes. Only the honest and unguarded thing beneath it, the part she usually moved away too fast for him, or anyone, to see clearly.

The light had shifted, fuller now, with the morning committing to itself.

So’lek looked at her. She looked back at him.

There were many things he should have said.

There were many things he would have to say.

But this moment could hold only one.

“Be careful,” his voice was low.

Something moved through her face.

The seriousness remained but the edges of it changed—softened. Her eyes stayed on his and there was no performance in them. Only honesty. Only the quiet, real thing that lived under everything else and almost never had occasion to be seen directly.

She held his gaze for a moment longer.

Then she gave one slow nod. Not the clipped efficiency of acknowledgment. Something more careful.

“You too,” she said. Asked, with few words.

He stayed longer than was necessary.

Long enough that neither of them could mistake what the staying meant.

Long enough that the morning around them became peripheral and the space between them became the only thing in it.

Then he rose, turned, and walked toward the center of the camp.

He did not look back.

Some part of him wanted to. The desire moved through him once, sharp and unwelcome, and he let it pass without obeying it.

He walked as the light came full over the land, and the camp moved into its morning with it. 

He carried what he carried—the metal at his side, the unsaid words, the image of her face in the moment it had softened.

When he returned, he would tell her. He would find the words worthy of what they would open—not perfect ones, perhaps. He was not certain perfect ones existed for something this size. But honest ones. True ones.

He would not allow whatever this was to grow any further over hollow ground.

Ahead, the Spires waited. He walked towards them, and held onto what he was walking towards returning to.

—

She told herself it was not because of him.

She woke in the grey before dawn and lay there for a moment staring at the underside of the temporary shelter's roof, listening to the camp. It was quiet—not silent, not exactly. It was never silent on Pandora. But the Plains were breathing at a different pace. Slower. Carefully. 

She told herself she was awake because she always woke early. Because the ground was hard and the blanket was too thin. Because her side pulled when she shifted wrong.

She lay there for another minute.

Then she got up.

The air outside the shelter hit her face, fresh, still smelling of ash a little, but also of wet grass and the deep green heaviness Pandora carried at night. She pulled the coat tighter over her shoulders and stood for a moment. The camp was a scatter of low light and dark shapes, the half-rebuilt shelters standing pale against the dark, the fire pits banked to coals. A hunter kept watch, moving at the far edge of the torchlight, unhurried, and unaware of her.

She told herself she was just walking.

She found them near the camp's edge, where the ground was clear enough for ikran to launch and land without risk to those still sleeping. Ri'nela was there already. Teylan too, he stood to one side, speaking to a warrior Robin didn't know. So'lek was beside Iley, one hand resting on the ikran’s neck, checking the harness with the focused quiet he carried into everything, his bow already secured. 

He heard her coming before she reached them. She knew the moment he did—the slight shift in his posture, the way his hands stilled for a half-breath before continuing their work.

He turned after he was finished.

The expression that moved across his face in the moment before it settled was not surprise exactly, but something more careful. His gaze moved over her—the coat, her stance, the fact of her standing here in the dark with no particular reason to be—and then it came back to her face and stayed there.

"Why are you here?" He asked, not harshly. 

Robin shrugged and looked somewhere past his shoulder. "Couldn't sleep."

A pause.

"Your departure is not until midmorning." He said.

"I'm aware of when my departure is." She met his eyes for a moment and then, because the moment was becoming something she didn't want to name, looked at Iley instead, who regarded her with the flat imperious attention the ikran had apparently decided was appropriate for their species. "Nice morning."

He looked at her. She could feel his gaze without meeting it.

"It is still dark," he said.

"Yes. Very atmospheric." She nodded at the sky. The stars were still visible, pale and cold, and Polyphemus rested low on the horizon. "You get a good view of the stars before dawn. I appreciate that."

Robin couldn’t care less about the stars, if she was honest.

She was not honest, that was the problem.

He said nothing and Iley continued to regard her with sovereign indifference.

Around them the sounds of departure continued—Ri'nela's quiet voice, the creak of harness leather, the low percussion of an ikran shifting its weight. The camp remained asleep behind them.

Robin kept her gaze on the ikran.

"Robin." He called.

She looked at him.

His face was serious. Not unkind—it was almost never unkind, she had learned, even when it was hard to read.

His voice held the particular steadiness it wore when he had chosen his words carefully and intended them to land. "Be careful in Kinglor."

She held his gaze. Something pulled in her chest at that, and she chose—deliberately and with full awareness—not to examine it too closely. "You already said that."

His eyes remained steady. "I am saying it again."

She looked at him for a moment. 

"Go," she said, quietly. 

He held her gaze for one more breath. Then he turned back to the ikran, checked the last strap, and mounted with the practiced movement of someone who had done this ten thousand times and expected to do it ten thousand more.

And then… they left.

Robin stood there, alone, and watched the sky until there was nothing left to watch anymore.

She went back to her shelter to lay down and tried to sleep.

She didn't.

More like couldn’t.

She lay on her back, stared at the roof, and thought about the mission and the missing hunters.

She thought about her bow. About the pull of it, the snap of release, the way her elbow still moved inconsistently on the left side in a way she couldn't fully correct yet.

“You rush the draw,” So’lek had told her. “You commit to the release before you are ready for it.” He had said it without ceremony, standing beside her in the thin morning light three days ago, watching her send an arrow six inches wide of where she'd intended. No sting in it. Just the fact of it, offered plainly.

“You are better than you were,” he had added, which from him she had learned to read as something close to encouragement.

She thought about So'lek's face in the dark before dawn. The way he had looked at her when she appeared.

She turned onto her side.

She thought about the boy's hand closing around hers in sleep, and the small carved figure placed on the ground beside her knee with great seriousness.

She thought about Nor, her uncertainty regarding him, and the question the recom had placed in her like a seed in damaged soil back then, when Alma’s avatar died.

She thought about Tamtey in Hollows, alone. About the first time Robin had met her properly. And about the particular brightness she carried even through the terrible things.

She thought about W-17.

She turned onto her back again.

She thought about the far away voice ringing in her right ear. A voice she wanted to recognize but was not able to. 

“Last words…?”

Robin shut her eyes with force.

“I won’t be able to protect you, Walker.”

Her eyes snapped open.

Someone passed outside the shelter, footsteps quiet, and was gone. 

‘This,’ she thought, ‘is ridiculous.’

Deciding she wasn’t getting anymore sleep, she got up.

—

The bow sat in her hands with the familiar unfamiliar weight of a skill not yet fully inhabited.

She checked the string, the grip, and the arrows in the quiver. She had wrapped the grip herself, tighter than the previous wrapping, the way So'lek had shown her. Her elbow was still inconsistent—she was working on it.

She slung it across her back, grabbed the quiver she would strap to Nika’s saddle, and walked to the meeting point.

She was the last to arrive.

There were three others. The elder hunter—Nawk’tan, she had learned his name the day before when she had been told who would be leading the party—was perhaps in his late forties, built lean and capable in the way that came from decades of practice and discipline. He had the eyes of someone who had been reading terrain longer than Robin had been alive in any form, and when he looked at her it was with the same careful assessment most of the People still gave her, only it was followed by a deliberate kind of setting-that-aside because he had decided that judgement wasn’t practical for the mission.

She respected that.

The other two were younger.

Vauk, who carried himself with the quiet sureness of a man who had proven himself and no longer needed to perform it.

And Ïyo, the youngest of them, who had the particular lean energy of someone well-trained and not yet tested enough to know which parts of his training would hold under real pressure and which would fail him.

She hoped he would not find out today.

Nawk’tan told them what he knew.

A scouting party—small, three hunters on a route they had known well, going to retrieve food and materials from the forest's edge. Not a dangerous mission. Not unusual, either. The kind of errand experienced hunters completed without breaking sweat. Out of four, only one had returned.

He had described separation—a moment of distraction, a direction chosen wrong, the forest's density swallowing the sound of the others before he'd known there was anything to worry about. He had looked for them until dark. Then he had come home alone.

The Aranahe had been searching since. They found nothing.

Robin listened and filed the shape of it away—the terrain, the last known position, the hours elapsed, the condition of the one survivor. She thought about the gap between ‘I got separated’ and ‘I don't know what happened to them.’ A lot could happen in that space.

She said nothing about this.

They mounted.

—

The forests received her the way it always did—as an imposition.

They landed in a clearing where the canopy opened enough to allow their ikran to pass, and from the moment Robin's feet touched the ground she felt the weight of the place settle over her. The trees were still enormous, their roots breaking the surface in complex tangles that made each step a calculation. The bioluminescence was quieter in the day—underlying, present but subdued—and the sounds layered over one another in ways she was still learning to read.

The forest still got on her nerves—it made her think of her time alone in it—but less now. 

She touched Nika's neck before leaving her. The ikran made a short, dissatisfied sound. Robin didn't blame her.

They moved on foot.

Nawk’tan set the pace—measured, quiet, the kind of forward motion that minimized disturbance. They spread slightly, covering more ground without losing sight of one another. Robin stayed to the right, watching the space between the trees.

The first stretch gave them very little.

No blood. No obvious signs of impact or struggle. The ground was disturbed in places, but Pandoran forest floors were always disturbed—too much lived and moved and died here for disturbance to mean anything without context. Vauk crouched near a section of pressed undergrowth and spent time reading it with the focused patience of someone trained to draw meaning from what others would dismiss. Robin watched him from a few paces away. Whatever he found, he decided it held no importance for their cause.

She kept moving. Slowly. Watching wide.

She was studying the base of a broad root formation when something at a higher level caught the edge of her attention and pulled it upward.

She stopped.

High on a trunk—well above her eyeline, higher than she would have looked instinctively—two parallel lines scored into the bark. Not a scrape. Not the wear of weather or branch contact. Each line ran clean and deep, the wood exposed pale beneath, the force of it evident in the way the bark had curled at the edges of each cut.

She reached up and ran her fingertips along the edge of the nearest line.

Her side throbbed with the deep memory of the body, down in the scar tissue that had formed over the place where something very large and very fast had decided she was worth the effort.

The sensation moved through her like an echo—sharp, specific, unmistakable.

She knew exactly what had made this mark.

"Nawk’tan," she called, keeping her voice low.

He crossed to her. His eyes went to where her hand rested, then moved up to study the full extent of the score. He raised his own hand and pressed into the depth of the cut, inspecting it, the angle, the height of the strike. His jaw set.

She watched his face. He was reading the same thing she was.

He had not spoken yet when she heard it.

It was low—below the ordinary noise of the forest, in the frequency range that most sounds occupied before they became identifiable. A rhythmic displacement, something large moving through dense vegetation at a pace that was neither running nor casual.

She had heard that exact sound before, and minutes after she had been horizontal and bleeding with Tamtey crying over her. She had thought, with the flat clarity of someone who has moved past fear—´This is how it ends.'

She turned.

The plants at the far edge of her vision were moving in a direction the wind had no business sending them.

She looked at Nawk’tan, eyes wide.

The hunter said one word only.

"Run."

—

She ran.

The forest became noise, and motion and the fundamental problem of moving at high speed over ground that didn’t want to cooperate—high roots caught, wet earth, low branches. 

She heard Vauk ahead of her, then didn't. Heard Ïyo somewhere to her right, and then that too dissolved into the general chaos of pursuit and flight.

She changed direction. Used a dense cluster of root flanges as cover, flattened herself into the shadow on the far side, and held completely still while the sound moved past her — too close, close enough that the air changed.

Then it passed.

She waited.

She counted her own heartbeats until they began to slow. Fifteen seconds. Thirty. A minute.

The forest resettled around her. Sound returned—the ordinary sound, the layered ambient noise of a place that was not currently being moved through by something enormous. She listened to it for a long moment, checking each layer.

Then she straightened.

She thought about the young hunters—experienced but still green, out on a route they had taken before. This was probably how it had started for them too. Something ordinary becoming something terrible without warning. The kind of separation that happened in the first fifteen seconds of a run, when the only thought was ‘keep moving’ and the question of where everyone else had gone was a problem for after.

They might have been very afraid before the forest took them.

If that’s what happened. If.

She moved.

Carefully now. Measuring each step before placing it. Back towards the clearing, towards the last position she had marked before the run, towards the place where she guessed Nawk’tan would try to bring the party back together if the animal had moved on. Because the canopy was too dense to call Nika, or any of their ikran, through. 

She watched everything.

She was scanning wide, keeping low, when the shape registered at the edge of her peripheral vision and her body stopped before her mind had fully processed it.

She turned slowly.

A figure on the ground. Face up. Arms at his sides with a looseness that didn't belong to sleep or unconsciousness.

Her chest contracted.

Her first thought was the missing hunters—the ones they had come here to find. Then she got close enough to see the coat and the thought collapsed.

It was Ïyo

She circled wide before approaching, checking the trees methodically, the shadows, the ground for disturbance. Then she crouched beside him.

He was looking at the canopy—no, not looking—that was the word she was trying not to use and couldn't avoid. His eyes were open and directed at the canopy, seeing nothing. His mouth had gone slack, the expression of someone from whom all the effort of expression had simply been withdrawn. His fingers lay loose and open in the grass at his sides.

His chest was not moving.

Robin set her hand on his shoulder. She already knew, but she shook him once anyway as though she needed proof.

Nothing.

She pressed two fingers to the side of his throat and held them there, counting. Or wanting to count.

No pulse.

Dead.

The silence in the forest felt different now. Still. Attentive.

She sat back on her heels and made herself look carefully—at the visible surfaces of his skin, his neck, his arms, his torso. She was looking for the injury the thanator had left. The crushing force, the tearing, the specific damage that came from something that large moving that fast.

She found nothing.

She frowned.

She looked more carefully. Ran her eyes over every surface she could see. Checked for the grey-blue of Pandoran plant toxins, the swelling of impact, the collapsed quality of something struck hard enough to damage what was underneath without breaking the surface.

Nothing.

‘Where is his braid?’ She suddenly asked herself, noticing what was missing in the picture only then.

The back of his neck was bare.

Cold arrived quietly into her body and stayed.

She reached across him and gripped his far shoulder and turned him.

The braid was gone. The kuru it had protected—gone with it. The cut was clean. Not worried at, not torn away in haste or animal desperation. A quick cut, straight and deliberate. The kind that required a sharp edge and a decision made before the hand moved.

Robin knelt there in the undergrowth and looked at the damage done, and she understood.

Whatever had come through this forest today, the thanator wasn’t the worst of it…

Somewhere in the trees, a branch snapped.

She turned.

A figure stepped from behind a tree trunk and looked at her.

He was Na'vi. At least in shape — tall and moving with the particular deliberate ease of someone who had already decided how this went.

His head was shaved clean. His skin was covered in paint—white across the skull and cheekbones, red at the jaw and throat and chest, black in patterns down his arms that had nothing ceremonial or beautiful in them, nothing that spoke of Eywa or the way of the People.

His eyes were fixed on her with an attention that held no curiosity.

In one hand he held a knife.

In the other… a braid.

Robin felt as though the blood was suddenly drained from her body.

A second figure stepped from behind another tree. Then a third, to her left. Then sound—from her right, from somewhere above, from behind—and she turned once, twice, her body completing the rotation before her mind had finished the instruction, only to find them everywhere.

She was surrounded.

There were too many to count quickly. She counted anyway. Seven. Eight. More, perhaps, still behind the trees.

They stood with the stillness of people who had done this before and found waiting easy, arranged at intervals that closed off every direction she might have moved in. Their eyes were on her with the particular quality of attention that she had felt before, in other rooms, in other life.

Her breathing had gone shallow.

She was aware of this the way she was aware of most things her body did without her consent when it was afraid.

Her heart was very loud, the sound of it seemed to fill her ears in a way that made the forest quieter. Her hands were cold, not the cold of the air, it was warm—the cold of blood retreating to the center of the body, the ancient, involuntary calculation of what was important to keep warm when warmth had to be rationed.

She didn’t move.

The figure with the braid and the knife looked at her across the small distance between them.

Her legs were telling her to move. Her training was telling her to wait. She breathed through the shallowness, watched the figure with the knife and thought—

‘They caught you, Robin.”

[morihel]

Grace Augustine AND Eywa

artist: HiKu

[enbaluka-tokyo-drift]

[kekereads97]

The die is cast: Chapter 1

Pairing: Neteyam x Fem!OC

Trigger warnings: PTSD, trauma, insomnia, anxiety, war themes, grief, existential/identity themes, references to past violence and medical trauma.

Summary:

It is 2175, 5 years after the final battle in Awa'atlu (during ATWOW) with the RDA and Jake Sully. Neteyam is now 20 years old.

After surviving a near-fatal injury and a war that has since ended, a former heir returns to a world that no longer needs him in the same way it once did. Struggling with PTSD, insomnia, and the weight of a life he no longer fits into, he tries to serve as a stabilizing force in fragile new alliances between his people and humans.

But as he rebuilds what remains of his purpose, he begins to question whether survival was ever meant to return him to who he was—or force him to become something else entirely.

Word count: 2041

Wattpad link:

Neteyam Sully X Fem OC This story will have deep emotional turmoil, conflict, Trigger warnings: PTSD, trauma, insomnia, anxiety, war themes,

————————————————————————The sand was still warm from the sweltering heat of the day. Blue and purple colors blended together seamlessly in the night sky and the stars seemed to shine brighter than usual. Perhaps it was my nerves.

I dug my toes into the sand, trying to focus on the warmth sinking into my skin. Anxiety bubbled in my chest and throat and my heart hammered painfully in my chest .

I know that the reef is much different than the forest I was raised in, however, I did not expect to feel this uneasy once it was time for me to leave.

It was my choice to go, after all. Insecurity clawed at my chest, sharp and brutal.

What if the forest did not recognize me anymore?

What if I no longer belong?

What if I no longer fit into the scenery, into the people?

Those thoughts were quickly shoved down, as I tried to slow my breathing down from the shallow gasps escaping my lungs.

Could it really be any worse than what I felt in this moment? The warmth from the sand between my toes felt like a distant echo compared to the thoughts consuming my entire being.

Growing up, I was shaped to become the next leader of the Omatikaya. Then, once war came to us, we had to leave to protect our people. I never thought twice about it... it was my duty. My identity has always been focused around serving the people and caring for my family.

Now, the war is over and my siblings are growing up. Although, I don't know if war is every truly over, yet the battles we fought have long passed and settled into a different time. We are still here, in the land my family fled to before the final battle. I no longer have the expectations to step into the shoes of a leader, my siblings do not need me anymore, so what am I to do? My purpose feels unclear.

I'm not even sure I should be standing here right now. Everyone knows I almost was not. For some reason, Eywa decided to give me more time. The question of why haunts me. Everyone says this is Eywa's will as if that was explanation enough, but is it really? What is there for me to do or to fulfill? I have survived, but at what cost?

My entire cause has been ripped away, there is no more war or fighting. With all the resting, healing, trying to rebuild my strength back, I have not been able to build my own life as my siblings have.

I would never hope for anything less... anytime I sit and watch them, it is the only time that I feel my heart settle. However, they do not need my protection anymore... not as they once did. I cannot attach myself to them with the purpose of "watching over" them. My siblings are not fragile, curious children that might wander off too far by themselves anymore.

Their path is not mine to walk. I have to learn how to walk by myself. It would not be fair to them to intrude on their journey just because I do not feel strong enough to stand on my own.

The only problem— I do not know how to walk alone. Do I even want to? All of the people that I have lost along the way flash through my mind when I close my eyes, and I feel a sickening dull ache in my chest. It never really quite subsides once it starts— only settles.

It almost feels like a sick joke. In the moment, choices don't always seem as deeply significant as the ripple they can cause.

If I had been taken back to Eywa the night I was shot in the chest, I would not be here. Perhaps I would be at peace with my ancestors, however what would become of my family? The feelings of pain, panic and desperation from that night surfaces in my nightmares still.

A deep sigh escaped my lungs and I shook my head. The motion caused the beads in my hair to clink together, bringing me back to the present, away from the emotions trying to suffocate me.

My legs wobbled as I turned around and walked slowly through the sand. I narrowed my eyes at the ground where I placed my steps as I tried to commit the warm feeling in my toes to memory.

I slip into my mauri, stopping the worn leather parcels lined up neatly against the edge near the wall. My fingers cool as they run over the smooth material. For the fourth time, I check my packs and make sure I'm not missing anything important. No matter how many times I check, it does not feel right.

At first light, my father is going to fly with me back home to the forest. After months of convincing my family that I will not bleed out in front of them— or suddenly collapse, my father agreed.

The western frontier, Omatikaya and Metkayina weakened the RDA to the point of retreat, at least for now. Because of their previous attempts at returning after their losses, almost all Navi agreed to build bridges between clans in order to strengthen their front lines.

For some strange reason, no matter how many people they lose, how much destruction they cause, the humans never seem to stop. Yes, we have defeated them multiple times, but it has become clear that in order to truly shift the dynamic that something needs to change.

It has been difficult to build these bridges, especially at first, but after so many precious lives lost, the delicate relationships have begun to blossom. I am actually quite amazed that something like this would be possible, given how stubborn and strong willed Navi are.

They have even begun to accept and respect So'lek, the dog tag warrior. He was widely despised at first, much like my father because of his path and his use of weapons. However, he has gained the respect and trust of many during his time with the resistance and fighting to protect the clans in the west. He is one of the main pillars of this new alliance, somebody that I will be working with, alongside Tarsem for the Omatikaya.

This is something that could give me purpose again, it would allow me to be useful to my people. My family was very against it at first, especially given the extent of my injuries, but eventually they gave in.

One of the last things they heard from me before they almost lost me was that I wanted to go home. By now, my injuries have long healed, and I have regained most of my strength back.

Occasionally, I feel a dull ache in my chest where my wound was but other than that, I forget about it. That is, unless I look at my scar. I see the way my family looks at me when they think I'm not looking— like I might disintegrate at their feet at any moment. This is not a way to live, like I am doomed to be broken.

My father will come with me on my journey back to the forest, and he will bring back one of the resistance members with him to the ocean to help with negotiations. This will avoid any of us traveling long distances alone.

My mother will be staying behind because Tuk is now big enough that it would be difficult for her to ride with my mother on her Ikran for such a long distance, yet she is not quite old enough to have her own yet. Perhaps when she is old enough, we will find a way for her to make the travel.

Lo'ak is pretty busy these days— he is courting Tsireya, he has Payakan here and he is pretty involved with the hunting. There is no purpose for him to travel back home. In fact, this place is more of his home now than the forest.

The same goes for Kiri. Spider is here with her, and they spend most of their time together. When she is not with him, it seems like she is swimming in the ocean or at the healers hut, helping with whatever is needed.

My eyes sweep the mauri that has been mine for the last four years, cataloging the space for the last time. My hands run through my hair as I suck air slowly into my lungs. I have a long journey tomorrow and I know I need rest.

There is much to do, and we have a mission already. As soon as we arrive, we will need to debrief before we even settle in. Then, we will get to work.

My feet shuffle over to my hammock, where my body lowers onto the creaking fibers. The action did not initiate sleep.

I no longer wanted to check the progression of the eclipse. It keeps moving, yet my mind finds irritation rather than the physical pull to rest.

The waves crash relentlessly against the rock and the shore. It sounds too loud, too close. Every creatures call feels amplified. My skull pulses painfully at every sound.

I shifted, trying to find the familiar spot where sleep would begin to pull me under. It would not come, despite the exhaustion that feels like an ache settled deep into my bones.

My eyes closed anyway, as if I could will my body to listen if I push it hard enough.

I tried relaxing each muscle one at a time. Tried counting breaths. It did not work.

My body started to drift, and I jerked awake as if I was falling through the sky.

What if leaving changes nothing?

What if I can never become even a fragment of the person I was before the war?

What if there is no purpose for me on this planet anymore?

The exhaustion is so heavy that my thoughts no longer feel connected to each other.

I stared at the ceiling, which started to blur from looking at it too long. Shadows from the outside of the Mauri shifted slowly across the woven walls. The sound of the waves drifted father away somehow, like the tide itself was pulling away from the room.

Another wave crashed.

"Neteyam!" A voice pierced through the haze clouding my mind as I felt my body shaking from hands planted firmly on my shoulders.

I jerked upright so violently that pain shot through my chest where my scar is.

For a few moments, I didn't know where I was.

"Are you ready? We need to go!"

Soft morning might filtered into the mauri. The air was thin and cool.

I stared at the light hitting the walls, confused. My eyes blinked slowly, each drag burning and gritty. I felt interrupted rather than rested.

"Neteyam! I said are you ready?"

"Yes." I replied before I could fully process what I was answering to.

"Okay, I already packed your things on your ikran so you could get as much rest as possible. We have a long ride. Get dressed, I left some food over there for you. We need to head out in a few minutes."

I pulled myself up in my hammock with excruciating effort. The figure in the doorway was illuminated by the morning filtering in behind them. My eyes swept the Mauri, then focused back on the person. Then the light outside. I blinked again.

Oh.

Right.

I am leaving today with my father. We are going home— and I am staying.

I nodded to my father slowly as my mind caught up with me. Satisfied, he nodded back and slipped back outside to let me get ready.

I sat there for another moment taking in my surroundings, trying to feel anything about leaving this place behind. 

It seemed smaller in the soft morning light— almost empty. Like it had already forgotten me.

All I could truly feel was exhaustion settling into my bones.

From outside, I heard "Neteyam!"

I stared at the Mauri for another second. A sigh escaped my lungs, and I forced myself to stand.

Chapter 2

_________________________________

Hi. So I haven't written in about 10+ years and I'm trying to get back into it. I will upload as much as possible, but bear with me. I am trying to make sure the story makes sense and flows as much as possible, while properly explaining/depicting complicated emotions and characters. Thanks for reading!!!

[goth-queen]

[anxietyproblem]

[lalaleeiillaa]

“yeah i read a lot!”

“oh awesome! What books do you read?”