chapters: p.1 crimson tides, p.2 & 3 after the tide turns
During a brutal RDA raid on Pandora’s eastern seas, a human medic trained as both nurse and soldier, finally seizes the chance she has planned for in silence. Haunted by years of complicity, she flees the chaos with only her medical kit and her guilt, diving into the ocean with no clear destination—only instinct.
What she finds is a dying Na’vi warrior bleeding out on a rock, abandoned by circumstance but not by fate.
As gunfire echoes and the sea runs red, she makes a choice that will brand her a traitor to her own kind: she saves him.
When his family returns, weapons drawn and grief-stricken, her presence ignites tension, fear, and fury —but her work speaks louder than her species. In the midst of explosions and impossible decisions, the wounded warrior refuses to let her go, binding their fates together.
notes: guys i've been dreaming about this idea for days and i couldn't find a fic like my imagination ˙◠˙ so i wrote this during the hours of midnight in a literal daze, i rlly hope its ok. I want to continue but i genuinely don't know how i would finish the story - idk i guess i'll see how it plays out in my dreams HAHAH
(๑ > ᴗ < ๑) ᡣ𐭩
𓂃 ོ☼𓂃 𓇼𓏲*ੈ✩‧₊˚
ACT I
The water feels wrong.
Neteyam notices it before the pain, before the weight in his chest, before the way his limbs suddenly refuse to answer him with the same sharp precision they always have. The ocean closes over his head as he dives, powerful stroke after powerful stroke, chasing the silhouettes of his siblings toward safety.
The reef blurs past him, light bending and warping through salt and motion. He kicks harder, his muscles burning, his lungs screaming, but then—
His strength falters.
It’s subtle at first. A drag. Like the sea has hooked its fingers into him and decided he should stay.
Neteyam frowns, confusion flickering through him. He adjusts his stroke, tries to correct his form, but his body lags behind his intent. The water presses heavier against his side, each movement suddenly costing more than it should.
He reaches the rock outcropping on instinct alone.
His hand scrapes stone, fingers slipping before finding purpose. He hauls himself halfway out of the water, breath stuttering—sharp, shallow, wrong. The sounds of the battle crash around him now, no longer distant: engines, shouting, the crack of gunfire echoing across the open sea.
He looks down.
Red.
Not the soft glow of reef light or the shimmer of bioluminescence clinging to coral. Something darker, blooming outward in lazy clouds beneath the surface, curling around his thigh and drifting away with the current.
His ears flatten.
He presses a hand to his side and feels warmth.
Too much warmth.
“Oh,” he breathes, barely audible over the crash of waves. Not in fear but in realisation. “No…”
His knees buckle.
Lo’ak is there instantly.
Neteyam barely registers the impact as his brother grabs him, shouting his name, eyes wide and wild. The world tilts as Lo’ak pulls him upright, panic bleeding through every sharp movement.
“I’m shot,” Neteyam manages, the words tearing out of him like they cost something vital.
Lo’ak’s face crumples.
“No.. no, no.!” he says, voice cracking as he swings Neteyam onto his back. “Stay with me. Stay awake. I’ve got you.”
They plunge back into the water.
Neteyam clings loosely to his brother’s shoulders as they move, each second stretching thin. The pressure of the sea is unbearable now, his vision dimming at the edges, sounds muffled around him as if he’s sinking deeper than he really is.
By the time Lo’ak reaches the rock outcropping again, Neteyam is barely conscious.
Lo’ak drags him up, hands shaking as he presses hard against the wound, blood slicking his fingers no matter how hard he tries to stop it.
“I’ll get Dad,” Lo’ak says desperately, voice breaking. “I’ll get Mom. Just—just stay here, okay?”
Neteyam doesn’t answer.
Lo’ak hesitates only a second longer before diving away, fear driving him faster than exhaustion ever could. Tuk’s small form follows, her cries swallowed by the sea.
The rock grows quiet.
Neteyam lies half-submerged, chest rising faintly, blood continuing to leak from beneath his ribs and slide into the water.
𓂃 ོ☼𓂃 𓇼𓏲*ੈ✩‧₊˚
You have been waiting for this moment longer than you care to admit.
Not this—not the RDA shooting against a few boys —but the distraction. The fracture. The second where the RDA’s attention splinters just enough for someone small, quiet and expendable to disappear.
You move through the flooded wreckage like a ghost.
The raid has fractured the ocean into chaos. There is a raging noise above the surface, the constant roar of shouting, crashing and movement. Yet there is silence in the surface below, but beneath it all, the water speaks. It always has. You’ve learned to listen to it the same way you listen to a pulse or a breath.
Your waterproof pack is tight against your back, weight familiar and reassuring. Inside: compressed rations, emergency meds, suture kit, antiseptic foam, sealant patches, two spare breathing masks. You packed light on purpose. Everything else waits for you—hidden deep in the mountains, far from sea lanes and patrols. Your avatar body. Your exit.
You slip from the sinking structure without hesitation. The mask seals with a soft hiss as you dive, breath evening out as the sea closes around you.
The water is cold as it envelops you, pressure squeezing your ribs as you kick downward, mask sealing with a soft hiss as it engages. You’ve done this before. You’ve slipped past patrols, sunk into the shadows and stayed unseen against enemy lines.
For years, you’ve walked the edge of this war, patching wounds, issuing orders, following protocols that kept your hands busy and your conscience quiet. You stayed detached because you had to, stayed distant to make no more noise than necessary. Because speaking up meant disappearing in a way no one would ever question nor investigate.
You tell yourself to focus. You remind yourself that it is too dangerous to let your mind wander, even for a moment.
Then you see it.
Blood drifts past your visor in slow, terrible ribbons.
Thin at first. Then thicker. Dark, unmistakable.
Your chest tightens.
This was supposed to be clean.
You were supposed to disappear.
You slow instinctively, adjusting your course, following the trail without thinking. You don’t tell yourself why. You don’t justify it. You just move.
The blood leads you to a rock formation breaking the surface.
There someone lies sprawled across it, massive body barely moving, skin marked with streaks of red that the sea keeps trying to claim. No one else is there. No weapons. No guards.
Just a Na’vi male, young, badly wounded.
You hover at a distance, heart pounding.
This is not your fight.
Surfacing here means risk, a possibility of cameras, patrols and witnesses. Everything you’ve planned could unravel in seconds.
But you’ve watched too many bodies sink quietly into water like this.
You surface.
The air hits your lungs as you pull yourself onto the rock, movements careful and deliberate. You stay low, scanning the horizon once before crawling closer.
The Na’vi male stirs faintly.
His eyes flutter open, unfocused, catching on your shape. A human. Small. Close. His fingers twitch weakly against the stone, confusion and pain etched into every shallow breath.
You lift your hands slowly.
“It’s okay,” you say softly, even though you know he won’t understand the words. “I’m a medic.”
You kneel beside him, hands already working, pack open, supplies laid out with practiced efficiency. The wound is severe—but not beyond saving. Not yet.
As you press gauze to his side, his breath hitches.
He watches you dimly, vision slipping, but something in your touch steadies him. Your hands are sure. Your movements confident.
For the first time in years, you stop waiting for someone else to do something.
You choose.
And you don’t stop.
𓂃 ོ☼𓂃 𓇼𓏲*ੈ✩‧₊˚
Your hands don’t shake.
Not now.
They used to, years ago, when you were still just a nurse moving through bombed-out clinics and half-lit tents, learning how to keep your voice calm while the world came apart around you. They trained that out of you eventually—first through repetition, then through necessity, then through war.
You push fear down where it belongs and let instinct take over.
“Okay,” you murmur, more for yourself than him. “Let’s see what we’re working with.”
You start at his shoulders, palms firm and efficient as you sweep down his torso, checking fast for additional wounds. Entry wounds hide. Exit wounds kill. You’ve learned never to assume there’s only one.
Your fingers slide over smooth, warm skin, then around his back, careful but thorough. Blood slicks your gloves, saltwater diluting it just enough to mask how much he’s lost.
“One,” you breathe quietly. “Just one.”
Relief flickers through you, sharp and fleeting. You don’t let yourself linger on it.
You press gauze to his side again, harder this time, and his breath stutters in response. His chest rises shallowly beneath your hand in what you quickly recognise as too shallow, but nevertheless he is present. Still fighting.
“That’s it,” you say softly. “Stay with me.”
He doesn’t answer.
But his eyes don’t leave you.
They’re glassy, unfocused at the edges, but locked on your face with a quiet intensity that makes your throat tighten. You’ve seen this look before—patients anchoring themselves to a single sensation because everything else hurts too much to hold.
You keep talking.
It doesn’t matter that he can’t understand the words. Tone has always mattered more than language.
“You’re doing really well,” you tell him, voice low and steady as you cut away the damaged edge of his armor. The material is intricate—layered and etched with patterns you’ve seen on warriors before but never this close. “This is beautiful craftsmanship,” you add, deliberately conversational. “Someone put a lot of care into this.”
His ears twitch faintly.
Good. He’s still responding.
You peel the armor back just enough to expose the wound properly. It’s ugly—ragged at the edges, still oozing, but clean enough to work with. You irrigate quickly, antiseptic hissing softly as it hits raw tissue.
His jaw tightens.
“I know,” you murmur immediately. “I know it hurts. You’re okay. Breathe with me.”
You exaggerate your own breathing, slow and deliberate, letting him follow the rise and fall of your shoulders. His chest mirrors it, unevenly, but enough.
Shock is the bigger threat now.
You keep him talking by asking gentle, meaningless questions you know he doesn’t have the energy to answer, filling the space so he doesn’t slip too far inward. You tell him about nothing. About the sea. About how the light looks different under water. About how his armor caught the sun when you first saw him.
Your hands move with ruthless efficiency.
Packing the wound. Sealing it. Needle out. Thread through.
You stitch fast but careful, fingers sure despite the blood and the risk and the pounding of your heart. Every second feels stolen. Every sound from the distance makes your spine go tight with the fear of being seen—of being labeled what you already know you are choosing to be.
A traitor.
Like Jake Sully.
The thought flashes through you, cold and sharp, but you don’t let it slow you down.
You’ve lived too long doing nothing.
Neteyam barely registers the pain anymore.
It’s distant, like thunder heard from deep underwater. His body feels heavy, unresponsive, but the pressure on his side lessens slowly, gradually, in a way that tells him something important is happening.
He focuses on you.
On your voice, your soft, steady and grounding voice. On the warmth of your hands as they move over him, purposeful and kind. On the way your fingers trail along his skin as you work without hesitation, and without any fear.
He doesn’t know who you are.
Only that you are here.
His breathing stays faint but constant, each inhale an effort, each exhale shallow. His eyes never leave your face, even when they sting, even when the edges of the world blur.
When you near the end, his fingers twitch.
They lift weakly, drifting until they brush your arm.
Just barely.
You still.
You look down at his hand where it rests against you, blue fingers trembling with exhaustion. A tear slips free from the corner of his eye, tracking slowly along the curve of his ear.
Without thinking, you reach up.
Your thumb is gentle as it wipes the tear away.
“It’s okay,” you whisper. “I’ve got you.”
He tries to smile.
It’s small. Crooked. Barely there—but it’s everything he has left to give. Gratitude floods his chest, heavy and warm, even as his body fails him. He wants to thank you. To speak. To offer something, anything.
Instead, he holds your gaze.
Eywa, he thinks dimly. Thank you.
Thank you for sending her.
And then his eyes flutter, his grip loosening, breath still there — still fighting as the world finally, mercifully, slows down.
𓂃 ོ☼𓂃 𓇼𓏲*ੈ✩‧₊˚
You don’t hear them.
Not the rush of wings overhead. Not the heavy, rhythmic flapping as skimwings circle low, nor the frantic splashes as bodies break the surface and scramble onto the rock.
Your entire world has narrowed to the rise and fall of his chest.
To the faint warmth still present beneath your palm. To the steady miraculous fact that he is breathing.
You’re adjusting the final dressing, fingers already moving to secure it it, when a shadow falls across you.
Then another.
And another.
A sharp intake of breath slices through the air.
You look up.
They stand there now beside you, suddenly and impossibly close.
Na’vi warriors crowd the rock, wet and wild-eyed, weapons half-raised on instinct alone. Their grief is raw, barely contained, and when their eyes land on you—
A human.
Small. Unarmed. Kneeling beside their son.
Neytiri moves first.
A sound tears from her throat, sharp and broken, and she lunges forward with lethal speed, blade flashing in her hand. Her face is contorted with fury and terror, grief so sharp it borders on violence.
“Get away from him!”
You freeze.
Not because you don’t understand her, but because you do.
You know enough Na’vi to catch the edge of it. The command. A mother’s scream underlying her words. You’ve studied the language in secret for years now, late at night, hunched over stolen files and recordings, telling yourself it was only practical. That if you were going to disappear into Pandora one day, you couldn’t afford to be ignorant.
You had thought knowing the language might help you stay invisible.
It doesn’t help now.
Before Neytiri can reach you, a voice cuts through the chaos.
“Wait—!”
Lo’ak.
He stares at the scene in front of him, eyes darting wildly. His gaze drops to Neteyam’s chest.
To the bandages.
To the stitching.
To the fact that his brother’s chest is rising.
“He’s—” Lo’ak chokes. “He’s breathing.”
That stops everything.
Neytiri falters mid-step, eyes snapping down to her son. She drops to her knees beside him, hands shaking as she presses her ear to his chest, one hand cradling his face.
A sob rips free from her, unrestrained and devastating.
“Oh, my son,” she whispers, voice breaking completely. “My son…”
You understand that too.
Enough that your throat tightens painfully as she clutches him, forehead pressed to his, trembling with the aftershock of a grief she had already begun to accept. Her hands roam him desperately, checking for wounds, for warmth, for proof that he is still here.
Jake is there too in an instant, his presence solid and steady despite the way his jaw tightens as he takes everything in. He helps turn Neteyam carefully, eyes narrowing as he inspects the wound.
It’s clean.
Stitched.
Packed properly.
Jake looks up at you.
Really looks at you.
Recognition hits you like a blow.
You know him.
Everyone does.
Jake Sully. The name whispered through RDA halls like a warning. The human who crossed a line that couldn’t be uncrossed. The example they used when they wanted to scare you straight.
This is what happens when you forget your place.
You meet his gaze without flinching.
“I’m a medic,” you say, voice hoarse but steady. “He had a single entry wound. No exit. His blood loss was bad, but I caught it in time.”
Jake studies you, eyes sharp, guarded. You can see the calculation happening there: threat assessment, intent and risk.
“You RDA?” he asks quietly. His voice is low and controlled. The words are short and clipped, spoken in English, direct and to the point.
“Yes.”
Neytiri stiffens at the word.
You swallow. “Not for much longer.”
Jake’s brow furrows.
“I’ve been waiting for a chance to leave,” you continue, the words spilling out now that they’ve started. “I couldn’t keep pretending anymore. I—” Your voice catches. “I couldn’t keep watching.”
Silence stretches.
Then Jake nods once.
“Thank you,” he says simply. “We’ll take it from here.”
That’s your cue.
You shift back, slowly rising to your feet, suddenly very aware of how small you are among them. You hesitate, eyes drifting back to the Na’vi warrior still lying between his parents—still alive because you chose not to look away.
You kneel again.
Just for a moment.
You reach out, resting your hand gently on his shoulder. His skin is warm beneath your fingers.
“You’re going to be okay,” you whisper instinctively and softly, using the few Na’vi words you trust yourself not to stumble over. It is a small offering of reassurance, not a promise you can guarantee but of the quiet hope you carry that he will be okay. Not enough to draw attention. Just enough to mean something.
You start to pull your hand away.
You don’t get far.
His fingers close around yours.
Weak—but deliberate.
The grip isn’t strong, but it’s enough. Enough to stop you. Enough to tell you that somewhere beneath the haze and pain and exhaustion, he knows.
Lo’ak notices.
So does Jake.
You look down at him, breath catching as his hand tightens just a fraction more, like you’re the only solid thing left in the world.
You squeeze back just once.
Then, gently, you try to pull away again.
He doesn’t let go.
And for the first time since you dove into the water, fear gives way to something else entirely.
Connection.
𓂃 ོ☼𓂃 𓇼𓏲*ੈ✩‧₊˚
His fingers don’t loosen.
They tighten.
The pressure is shocking—sharp enough that it steals the air from your lungs for a split second. You glance down instinctively, disbelief flickering through you. He has been shot. He has lost blood. You stitched him together with shaking hands and hope.
And yet he holds you like this—like letting go would cost him something vital.
The others notice.
Lo’ak’s eyes widen first. Neytiri stills completely, her gaze snapping from your hand to her son’s face. Even Jake hesitates, registering the way Neteyam’s grip curls around your wrist, knuckles pale, stubbornly alive.
Another explosion tears through the air.
Closer this time.
The rock shudders beneath your feet, spray erupting around its base. Gunfire cracks in jagged bursts, echoing off the water.
Jake straightens instantly.
“We need to move,” he barks, voice cutting clean through the chaos. Commanding. Absolute. The kind of voice that doesn’t ask—it directs. You see it then, fully: not just a father, but a leader forged in war.
“Now!”
The family springs into motion.
Jake crouches beside Neteyam, already positioning himself to lift him. “I’ve got him,” he says, decisive. “We fly.”
But when Jake reaches for his son, Neteyam doesn’t respond the way they expect.
He doesn’t release you.
Jake pauses, eyes narrowing. He follows the line of Neteyam’s arm. Sees the way his son’s fingers are wrapped around your wrist—not frantically in a dazed confusion but in a purposeful way like something important.
It is intentional.
Jake looks at you.
Then at the sky, where tracer fire lights up the clouds.
A decision is made in a heartbeat.
“She comes,” Jake says.
Neytiri whirls on him. “Jake—”
Another blast detonates somewhere too close for comfort, the shockwave rattling your bones. Neytiri flinches, eyes snapping back toward the horizon, calculating the danger with a warrior’s instinct.
She looks at Neteyam again.
At the steady rise and fall of his chest.
At the way his hand still clings to you.
Her jaw tightens.
“Fine,” she snaps. “Move.”
They lift Neteyam carefully, Jake shifting him onto his back with practiced ease. You’re pulled along with them, swept into motion before you can even process what’s happening.
Only then—only when you’re moving, when the decision is no longer theoretical does Neteyam’s grip finally loosen.
His fingers slip from your wrist.
You feel the absence immediately.
His eyes are closed now. His breathing is stronger than before—still weak, but steady enough that relief floods through you in a dizzying rush. You don’t know if he’s conscious, but something in your chest tells you he is.
That he chose this.
Gratitude wells up unexpectedly, fierce and aching. Toward him. Toward fate. Toward the impossible mercy of timing.
You mount behind Neytiri, hands gripping tight as the skimwing launches into the air. The force of it punches a breath from your lungs.
And then—
You are flying.
The world opens beneath you in a way no sim, no cockpit, no briefing ever prepared you for. The eastern sea stretches endlessly below, a living mosaic of color and light. Coral reefs bloom beneath the surface like constellations, in turquoise, gold and a bright and burning pink, threaded together by currents that glow faintly in the fading light.
You gasp, unable to stop it.
The wind roars past your ears, warm and salt-heavy. You glimpse the others flying ahead. Jake flies steady and surely despite the weight on his back, Lo’ak flanking him protectively, the family moving as one unit.
Ahead, the water shifts.
Structures rise organically from the shallows—woven marui homes nestled within the roots of colossal mangrove-like trees. Their trunks arch outward and upward, forming a living cradle above the waterline, shielded from the open ocean by a natural, ring-shaped seawall of coral and stone.
It’s not built against the sea.
It’s built with it.
Your breath catches.
This, this is what they were destroying.
As Neytiri guides the skimwing lower, banking toward the village, something settles inside you. Not peace. Not yet.
But certainty.
You didn’t just save a life.
You crossed a line you could never uncross.
And as Pandora rises to meet you, glowing and alive beneath the sinking sun, you know—without doubt—that you are not going back.
Heyyy you’re like the first blog I followed on here because crimson tides was sooo good, I’m so excited to see how you will expand on this concept you’re an exceptional writer!
thanku! ur words mean everything to me 🥹. I just posted p.2, hope you like it!
chapters: p.1 crimson tides, p.2 & 3 after the tide turns
During a brutal RDA raid on Pandora’s eastern seas, a human medic trained as both nurse and soldier, finally seizes the chance she has planned for in silence. Haunted by years of complicity, she flees the chaos with only her medical kit and her guilt, diving into the ocean with no clear destination—only instinct.
What she finds is a dying Na’vi warrior bleeding out on a rock, abandoned by circumstance but not by fate.
As gunfire echoes and the sea runs red, she makes a choice that will brand her a traitor to her own kind: she saves him.
When his family returns, weapons drawn and grief-stricken, her presence ignites tension, fear, and fury —but her work speaks louder than her species. In the midst of explosions and impossible decisions, the wounded warrior refuses to let her go, binding their fates together.
notes: Hello! here’s part 2 —it’s actually p.2 + 3 which you will notice by the way I divided it into 'Acts.' it honestly would not have been written without everyone’s kind words so rlly truly, thank you. Before i started p.2 I sat my ass down and wrote a whole story structure/guide for myself just like our king james cameron did for the avatar franchise heh. Again I wrote this in the hours of midnight bc that’s apparently the only time i get bursts of adrenaline and imagination. That and anytime i see a neteyam tiktok on my fyp lol.
its a bit of a slow burn but in my defense I feel like there was just so much to establish between her & Jake + neytiri ? At minimum i felt like i had to include their conversations and reaction to her as some kind of a prologue before i got the ball rolling which is why there's mayb like 7k words of neteyam lingering in the fragile space between unconsciousness and brief moments of lucidity.
(*ᴗ͈ˬᴗ͈)ꕤ*.ﾟ
𓂃 ོ☼𓂃 𓇼𓏲*ੈ✩‧₊˚
ACT II
Acceptance is not the same as safety.
You wake to the sound of water moving through wood.
It’s not silence — Pandora never offers that, but a softer kind of sound. Water lapping against woven roots. The distant click and trill of reef-life waking with first light. Just the quiet circulation of tide, breath and life flowing through something that has learned how to bend instead of break.
For a moment, you don’t open your eyes.
You catalog sensations instead, the sway beneath you, gentle and rhythmic like being rocked by something alive. The texture against your back is woven, organic, smelling faintly of salt and plant resin. Your mask hums softly, steady and reliable. Air fills your lungs without effort.
You’re alive.
That fact lands slowly.
When you do open your eyes, the first thing you see is the ceiling.
Or rather, the inside of something spherical.
The structure curves inward above you, layered and braided, strands of living fiber interwoven with shell and root. Light filters in through natural gaps, refracting blue and green like sunlight underwater. Shadows move gently along the walls, cast by passing bodies and swaying leaves.
A marui.
You recognise it immediately.
You remember happening upon them when you studied in secret, piecing together fragments from stolen files, intercepted reports, whispered stories passed between scientists who knew better than to ask questions too loudly. Spherical, multi-level living pods nestled within the roots of mangrove-like trees. Built to sway with storms. Built to breathe with the sea.
This one is large.
Large enough to hold a family.
Large enough to hold you —though that feels temporary in a way you can’t quite articulate yet.
You sit up slowly. That’s when you feel it.
Eyes.
Not one pair but many.
They are everywhere, perched on upper levels, leaning against curved supports as well as in hammocks strung between living beams. The marui is arranged vertically, layers spiraling upward around a central open space, like the inside of a hollowed pearl.
And in the center of it all—
He lies there.
The warrior you saved.
He is placed deliberately in the heart of the pod. A woven platform has been constructed beneath him, broader and lower than the hammocks around it, as if the entire structure has quietly reorganised itself around his survival.
His color is wrong.
That is the first thing you notice.
Not the bandages — those are unmistakably yours. They remain layered cleanly and carefully around his torso, your work unmistakable even in the filtered reef light.
His skin is too pale.
Not the deep sea-greens of the Metkayina and not the vibrant tones of the rest of his family glowing with deep ocean blues, streaked with bioluminescent markings that catch the light. His color is muted. Washed out. Like the sea before a storm. Like the tide hasn’t finished deciding whether to keep him.
Alive.
But fragile.
His chest rises and falls in a slow, careful rhythm. You count every breath anyway, out of habit, out of fear without realising you’re doing it.
One.
Two.
Still there.
You exhale, slowly.
Only then do you allow yourself to look back at them.
His family.
They do not hide their attention.
Neytiri stands slightly forward of the others, posture rigid, tail tight behind her. Her eyes are sharp like a predator, fixed on you with an intensity that borders on accusation. She doesn’t blink.
Beside her stands Jake Sully. The RDA’s favorite cautionary tale. The traitor. The symbol of everything you were never supposed to become. His stance is deceptively relaxed, but you see the tension in it instantly. He stands close to her, one hand resting on her thigh, not in a possessive or controlling way but steadily, like he’s grounding her. Or holding her back.
He is watching you too, but differently. Measuring. Calculating. A commander assessing a variable he didn’t plan for.
Lo’ak, in stark contrast, is terrible at hiding anything.
He’s perched on the edge of a lower platform, tail swaying freely, eyes bright when they meet yours. There is no suspicion there — only relief. Gratitude so open it almost hurts to look at. When you catch his gaze, his mouth quirks upward in something like a smile.
Then you register movement at the edge of your vision beyond the walls.
Heads poke through the living roots that cradle the marui. Faces appear between woven gaps. Children first. Then adults. Then more, drawn by curiosity and rumours, by the presence of something that does not belong. They are staring at you, eyes following you when you move. Trying to get a look.
The feeling hits you unexpectedly, sharp and old. For a brief, unwelcome second, it reminds you of home — of glass corridors and controlled environments.
A spectacle.
Like the cloned tiger back home — the one displayed behind reinforced glass, endlessly watched. Not for what it was, but for what it represented. Proof that something impossible could be owned.
You shove the thought away.
This isn’t the same.
And even if it were, you don’t blame them.
You are alien here. You are wrong. The wrong color. The wrong shape. The mask strapped to your face suddenly feels heavier, the soft hiss of air marking you as other, as human. You’re acutely aware of its quiet hiss, of the barrier between you and the living air around you. Pandora does not accept you.
You are living on borrowed breath.
Borrowed time.
Voices murmur softly around you. Someone speaks nearby, low and measured. “…alive because of her.”
You don’t need to understand all the words to know what they mean. You feel it settle in your chest like a verdict.
You swallow and lift your chin anyway.
The room hums with unspoken tension.
The warrior’s family are talking quietly among themselves in low urgent tones, the cadence of a family accustomed to making decisions under pressure. You don’t understand everything, but you understand enough.
She should not be here.
She is human.
She is RDA.
She could be lying.
Neytiri’s voice is unmistakable even when you only grasp fragments. Her distrust is sharp, immediate, absolute. Jake responds in calmer tones, grounding, reminding, weighing.
Your hands curl slightly into the woven bedding beneath you.
Your guilt rises like bile.
You don’t interrupt.
Not at first.
You wait until there’s a pause — until Neytiri’s eyes flick back to you, daring you to justify yourself.
Your heart pounds, but your voice does not shake.
“Rewon lefpom,” you say quietly.
Good morning.
The sound of their language in your mouth still feels strange — practiced in secret, whispered over stolen recordings late at night, repeated until the shapes of the words stopped cutting your tongue. It is not perfect.
But it is understandable.
That alone earns you their full attention.
You sit straighter, meeting Neytiri’s stare head-on. You don’t look away. You don’t soften your gaze. You’ve learned, in too many places like this, that weakness is a language everyone understands.
“I can reassure you that I will not go back to the humans,” you say, slowly, choosing each word with care. “Even if I do not stay here.”
A murmur ripples through the marui.
You continue, before anyone can cut you off.
“I expect nothing from you. Not protection. Not forgiveness.” Your gaze flicks briefly — just briefly — to the wounded body at the center of the room. “A place to sleep last night was enough.”
Your throat tightens.
You push through it.
“I know what humans have done.” Your voice drops, heavier now. “I know what I have done. What I was part of.”
Silence pursued whilst they listened.
“I have been planning to leave for a long time,” you finish. “In the dark. Quietly. I studied your language because I thought it might help me survive without causing harm. I thought… maybe I could stay out of the way.”
You let the words settle.
You don’t beg.
You don’t apologise again — not because you don’t mean it, but because apologies don’t undo burned worlds.
Something shifts.
It’s subtle. Almost imperceptible.
Jake’s posture eases just a fraction.
Neytiri’s eyes remain sharp — but now there is something else there too. Not trust.
But uncertainty.
And in the center of the marui, surrounded by the quiet judgment of his family and the steady breath of the sea, the warrior you saved lies unmoving.
Alive.
Waiting.
Unaware that the gravity of an entire future has just begun to tilt around him, and around you.
𓂃 ོ☼𓂃 𓇼𓏲*ੈ✩‧₊˚
The days passed in a quiet, measured rhythm. Neteyam remained semi-conscious, hovering somewhere between the faint awareness of his surroundings and the deep exhaustion of his body trying to heal. You stayed close, curled near the woven platform where he rested, hands ready on his bandages or gently brushing away loose threads, your ears tuned to every subtle shift in his breathing. Every flick of his tail, every shallow rise and fall of his chest, told you more than any words could.
The clan accepted your presence begrudgingly, always with eyes lingering a fraction too long—but they allowed it for his sake. No one could deny the truth: he was alive because of you. Proof enough that your intervention worked. That alone gave you a small slice of autonomy, though the weight of it was heavy on your shoulders.
You had obtained a paste from Neytiri, passed to you indirectly through Ronal, the clan’s healer. She had approached you hours after your arrival with the paste, her eyes sharp, watchful, distrust lingering at the edges. You suspected that Jake had quietly vouched for you; something he said must have softened her stance. You accepted the paste with a nod and whispered thanks, recognising the tiny act of trust it represented.
Your mind drifted back to your first meeting with Ronal and Tonowari. You had been brought before them formally, the rest of the clan standing in quiet observation around the edge of the clearing, tails and heads craned toward the proceedings. The air had been heavy with scrutiny, their gazes cutting, assessing.
Ronal had been openly hostile, arms crossed, eyes narrowing with suspicion at every word you spoke. She didn’t hide her distrust, her posture rigid as if every muscle were primed to strike at deception. You remembered the way she leaned slightly forward, the faint flare of nostrils as if she could smell your intentions, and the sharp edge in her voice as she asked pointed questions about your presence and your skills.
Tonowari, in contrast, had been a calm, steady presence, watching the exchange with measured patience. His broad shoulders and upright posture spoke of a leadership tempered by experience. Eyes like polished amber took in every detail of your movements, but without accusation—only calculation. There was a quiet power in the way he held himself, the sort of presence that compelled attention without needing to demand it. His deep voice, when he finally spoke, resonated with authority but also with a protective warmth toward his people, a balancing force to Ronal’s sharp intensity.
You had studied the two of them carefully even then, noting the unspoken balance in their partnership. Where Ronal struck with caution and pointed precision, Tonowari provided steadiness and protection. You thought, not for the first time, that they mirrored the bond you had observed between Jake and Neytiri—the same harmony of trust, leadership, and fierce devotion to family. You had admired that balance silently, wishing you could grasp even a fraction of it yourself.
Rushed footsteps broke your train of thought.
It was Lo’ak. Lo’ak the youngest son, who first breached the silence between you and the family’s watchful eyes. He had approached quietly one morning while you adjusted a bandage, tail flicking with mild excitement, ears forward, eyes bright.
“I am Lo’ak,” he said in broken English, trying to match the syllables Jake had taught him. “Brother… older… he… Neteyam?” He gestured toward the platform where the wounded warrior lay, the soft rise and fall of his chest still uneven beneath your careful wrapping.
“Ne… te… yam,” you repeated slowly, letting the name roll over your tongue, testing its sound. “Neteyam.”
His face lit up, his tail flicking with delight. “Yes. Neteyam.” He stepped closer, curiosity twined with gratitude in the tilt of his head. Then, as if deciding English wasn’t enough, Lo’ak switched back to Na’vi, his words tumbling out in a slurry of questions. You caught fragments, enough to understand the gist, even though the rapid, inquisitive rhythm was unfamiliar.
He asked questions constantly, a flurry of them as he hovered near you while you worked. How did you clean the wound? Why did you wrap it that way? How did you know the cut wouldn’t get infected?
You found a surprising comfort in speaking to him. It had been days since you had conversed with someone who seemed to truly want to listen, someone who bore no judgment yet. You explained your methods carefully, teaching him the human ways of aseptic technique, avoiding infection, and monitoring for signs of shock or sepsis. His ears twitched at each explanation, eyes wide and attentive. You watched him absorb every word as if the knowledge were something sacred. Slowly, carefully, a thread of connection began to form. In the quiet of the Marui, amid the swaying roots and filtered reef light, you realised he—this boy Lo’ak was the first Na’vi who seemed to genuinely meet you halfway. Not suspicious, not interrogating, just… curious and grateful.
It was a small thing, but it felt like a lifeline.
In the following days, he returned with his younger siblings, Tuk and Kiri. Tuk’s curiosity was blunt, almost overwhelming, a bright gaze and unfiltered questions that bounced from topic to topic. Kiri, quieter and calmer, observed you like an old soul would a wandering traveler—curious, measured, and accepting. She asked little, but her presence was steady and her eyes lingered with a quiet recognition of your role.
You realised slowly that, as you tended to Neteyam, taught Lo’ak and fielded questions from the siblings, your presence had begun to weave itself into the rhythm of the pod. You were still human. Still other. Still alien. But here, among these blue and green figures of the Metkayina clan, you were allowed a measure of purpose, a space carved out solely to keep a life alive.
And Neteyam who is still semi-conscious, still breathing shallowly remained at the center of it all. Each careful movement of your hands, each whisper of instructions to the children, each measured touch over his bandages, was a quiet promise: you would not leave him.
𓂃 ོ☼𓂃 𓇼𓏲*ੈ✩‧₊˚
The room smells faintly of salt and antiseptic. Your gloves squeak softly as you rinse the shallow wound along his side with warm saline, careful not to tug against the tender tissue. Each movement is deliberate and precise, it is something that comes naturally to you: scrub, dab, inspect then repeat. His skin is the muted pale blue of the Omaticaya, the vibrancy of his normal color dulled by blood loss and trauma. Veins show faintly beneath the taut surface. The edges of the wound are clean, fragile but healing.
You reach for the paste Neytiri had passed to you days ago reluctantly, with that unmistakable wariness only she could wear — and rub it into the tissue. It’s thick, earthy, smelling faintly of the forest and sea. You marvel again at its effectiveness.
Layer by layer, you wrap the bandages, keeping them snug but not tight, smoothing the fabric over his torso until it rests against him like a protective shell. Your stock of supplies is dwindling; the bandages, saline, and paste will barely last a few more days of dressing changes. You push the thought aside. He’s healing, steadily and beautifully. That is what matters.
You notice something else today. His family or at least those who have been silently observing, have slowly drifted back from the platform. Neytiri and Jake, who had always lingered on the edge, watching your hands and the way you worked, have left you alone granting you this space. The silence stretches across the pod, broken only by the quiet rhythms of the sea. It is peaceful, nurturing almost, like a melody. Hope stirs in you that maybe, just maybe, they trust you slightly more than before. But you remain realistic, ever the pessimist reminding yourself that a little trust does not erase years of caution, nor the weight of what you represent.
A soft hum escapes you as you work.
You don’t realise you’re doing it at first. It’s low and instinctive, a quiet melody shaped more by comfort than intention. The sound fills the Marui gently, sinking into braided roots and living walls, absorbed rather than echoed. A lullaby of sorts. You’re not even sure he can hear it yet.
But you notice the change anyway.
The rise and fall of his chest smooths beneath your hand. His breathing evens, slows, steadies when you’re near—when your voice is there, when your presence anchors the space around him. You adjust the bandages again, fingertips light and respectful of bruised skin and healing flesh.
You lean closer and whisper, almost instinctively, the name Lo’ak taught you days ago.
“Ne…te…yam.”
The syllables fall slowly, deliberately and fondly from your lips. You say it again, softer this time, letting the sound settle into the quiet between you.
His tail twitches.
Just slightly. A subtle curl, shy and unconscious. His ears flick toward your voice, pricking with attention. A faint smile touches his lips—so faint you might have imagined it if you weren’t watching him so closely.
You swallow.
You repeat it again. “Ne-te-yam.”
Slow. Gentle. In tune with the steady rise and fall of his chest.
The name comforts you too. Grounds you. Makes this feel less like penance and more like purpose. You smooth his bandages again, carefully adjusting the wraps, letting the sound tether him — tether you both in this fragile moment.
A thought stirs: he may wake soon. And with that realisation comes the decision. For the first time in days, you rise from the woven platform. You step lightly, almost reluctantly, toward the edge of the Marui. Your bare feet skim over the wooden planks as you leave the pod entirely. You need to find someone — Lo’ak, Jake, Neytiri, someone who can help if the worst happens.
The air outside is sharp with salt and morning light. You run carefully, silently, your heart thundering, praying the Metkayina may forgive your interference. Your presence here is still precarious. Conditional. Forgiven only because a life still breathes where it nearly didn’t.
But Neteyam — the steadiness of his breathing, the subtle flick of his tail, the faint smile at your voice is worth every risk.
𓂃 ོ☼𓂃 𓇼𓏲*ੈ✩‧₊˚
Neteyam does not remember pain.
Not the sharpness of the bullet, not the hot, searing ache that had stabbed through his chest, not the panic that had clawed at him as he fought to stay afloat in the open water. All of that is gone, blurred by the fog of weakness and blood loss.
What remains is kindness. The memory of hands that are careful, warm and steady, moving over him with a precision that soothed rather than prodded. The rhythm of his name, spoken softly and repeatedly, curling around him like a tether he could cling to. The gentle wrap of bandages against bruised skin, the quiet hum that filled the space, sinking into the braided roots of the Marui, a lullaby of survival.
His eyes flutter open. Slowly. Exhaustedly. As if the act of opening them requires a negotiation between body and mind, between him and the fragile vessel of himself that remains. His vision swims, light cutting through shapes he cannot yet make sense of. The world feels… wrong. The air tastes of salt and something faintly earthy, and yet the familiarity of it all is utterly meaningless to his scrambled senses.
He sees… nothing.
No figure bending over him, no soft voice echoing through the Marui’s living walls. Only the blur of light, the sway of shadows, the impossibly quiet drone of a world moving without him. His chest tightens. Panic floods in, sharp and uninvited.
He thrashes weakly, calling out in Na’vi, his voice raw, ragged and desperate. Not for his mother. Not for his father. Not for Lo’ak or anyone else. For her — for the nameless, faceless voice that had whispered life back into him, that had made his chest rise again, that had carried him from the brink of death upon rough waters that threatened to pull him in forever.
“!…” His words crack, hoarse and trembling, echoing off the living walls, small against the immense space of the Marui.
His body refuses him. Limbs heavy, unresponsive, like roots grown into the floor. His hands claw at nothing. He is pinned by his own weakness, tethered to the bed of woven fiber, and the rising tide of panic thrumming through him.
Then —
“…Neteyam.”
Her voice. Gentle. Low. Reassuring. Perfectly her own, and yet somehow it has become a part of the air around him. The world tilts. His chest eases. His frantic, shallow breathing slows almost instantly.
Instinct overrides thought. Survival has a name now. Her name, or at least the voice attached to the warmth, the comfort, the safety. His hands reach without thinking, searching blindly for her. When they find her, when he feels the press of her arm against his, a tether of life he had been clinging to without even knowing it, he grips firmly, desperately, like she is the only anchor in a stormy sea.
Behind her, there is a flurry of noise — a shout, laughter followed by cheers, the voice of Lo’ak, but he doesn’t notice. There is only her. Only the soft, commanding cadence of her presence.
Even when his body finally surrenders to sleep again, weary from days of strain and healing, he does not let go. Fingers remain curled around her arm. A faint tremor runs through him, and yet there is an unspoken promise in his hold: he will not release her. Not yet. Not ever if he can help it.
The last thing he feels as darkness overtakes him again is the quiet certainty of safety, of survival — and it is tied irrevocably to her.
𓂃 ོ☼𓂃 𓇼𓏲*ੈ✩‧₊˚
You had answered him on instinct, voice already moving before your mind caught up. You hadn’t expected him to reach out again. Hadn’t expected the same strength in it. Not after days of fevered stillness, of pale skin and fragile breaths. His hand is warm. Too warm still, but firm. Alive.
You don’t pull away.
Instead, you sink down beside the woven platform, careful not to jostle him, letting his grip settle where it has chosen. His fingers twitch once, then still. His ears relax slightly, flattening just a fraction in sleep. His tail even in rest gives a faint, unconscious flick.
You lift your free hand and check his breathing again, habit overriding thought. Count the rhythm. Feel the warmth of his skin beneath the bandages. You remind yourself that the wound is clean. Healing. Angry-looking still, but no longer weeping and longer threatening to take him away from you—or from anyone else.
You exhale slowly.
“Easy,” you murmur, barely louder than the hush of water moving through the roots of the marui. “You’re okay. I’ve got you.”
The words slip out before you can stop them.
You realise, distantly, that this is the first time you’ve said something like that in a long time and meant it.
He doesn’t wake again, but something in him responds anyway. His grip tightens a fraction, just enough to remind you he’s still there. That he heard you. Or felt you. Or simply knew.
Minutes stretch. Then longer. You lose track of time entirely, the way you always did when you were deep in the work—when survival narrowed the world down to breath and pulse and the quiet space between disaster and relief.
At some point, someone kneels nearby.
You don’t look up immediately. You don’t have to.
Jake’s presence is unmistakable even without sound. A weight in the air. A steadiness. You sense him watching the way your hand moves, the way you don’t try to free yourself from his son’s grasp. You wait for him to speak.
He doesn’t.
Not right away.
When he finally does, his voice is low, careful, as if he’s learned over many hard years that moments like this can shatter if handled poorly.
“He wake up?” he asks.
“Briefly,” you reply just as quietly. “He was scared. Disoriented. That’s normal after blood loss and prolonged unconsciousness.”
Jake nods, eyes fixed on Neteyam’s face. On the faint crease between his brows that hasn’t fully smoothed even in sleep.
“He called out,” Jake says.
You hesitate.
“Yeah,” you admit. “He did.”
Jake’s gaze shifts to you then. To the place where his son’s hand is wrapped around your arm like you are something essential.
“For you,” he says. It isn’t a question.
You don’t try to deny it.
“I think,” you say carefully, “he associates my voice with… staying alive.”
That lands heavier than you expect.
Jake exhales through his nose, slow and controlled. You see something flicker across his face—something raw and unguarded that he doesn’t let linger. Gratitude, maybe. Or fear, delayed and sharp.
“He’ll remember you,” Jake says finally. “Even if he doesn't remember much else.”
You nod.
Silence settles again. Comfortable this time. Earned.
Jake straightens after a while, resting a hand briefly against the woven edge of the platform. A grounding touch. A promise made without words.
“Stay,” he says. Not an order. Not a plea. Just… acknowledgement.
You do.
You don’t ask how long you're allowed to stay.
Hours pass that way. The light shifts, filtering deeper blue and gold through the living walls as the sun sinks lower over the Eastern Sea. Somewhere outside, the village continues. Life moves forward as it always does. You hear distant laughter. The splash of children diving.
None of it pulls you away.
His sleep is thin, fragile, stitched together by exhaustion and the careful work of hands that knew how to keep him alive when his body no longer could. It is not the kind of rest he knows from long hunts or calm nights beneath the trees of the forest.
But he sleeps.
His fingers stay curled around your arm even as his breathing evens out again, shallow but steady, each rise of his chest less strained than the last. There is tension in his grip, not panic like before and not fear, but insistence. He doesn’t let go.
Not when his family returns to quietly check on him. Not when Lo’ak can’t contain his relief and presses in close, whispering his brother’s name over and over like a prayer. Not even when his mother finally kneels beside him, fierce and shaking, one hand hovering uncertainly before settling against his shoulder.
He holds on.
As if, somewhere deep in his recovering body, something has already decided—
You are part of what keeps him alive now.
𓂃 ོ☼𓂃 𓇼𓏲*ੈ✩‧₊˚
You feel her before you see her.
It’s a shift in the air. A tension that presses in rather than announces itself. The Marui has gone quiet again—too quiet, as though even the sea beyond the roots is listening.
You look up from where you sit beside him.
Neytiri stands a few paces away.
She does not approach at first. She does not raise her voice or bare her teeth or draw a blade. That almost makes it worse. Her posture is rigid, grief held taut beneath her skin like a drawn bowstring. Her eyes are fixed on the place where her son’s hand is curled around your wrist, fingers locked there with quiet, unyielding insistence.
Neteyam sleeps.
He does not stir when she enters. Does not release you. His grip remains firm even in rest, as if your presence has been written into him somewhere deeper than memory.
You see it hit her.
The discomfort. The disbelief. The quiet, frightening reality that her firstborn, her beloved son has chosen you as his anchor. That in his unconscious state, something in him reached for you and has not let go since.
A human.
An RDA soldier, only days ago.
She swallows, jaw tightening. One hand flexes at her side before she stills it. You can almost hear the war inside her—gratitude colliding with fury and relief cutting against instinct.
Her grief is raw. Untreated. Still bleeding.
“You do not leave him,” she says finally.
It isn’t an accusation. It’s an observation. Her voice is low, tight around the edges.
“No,” you reply quietly. “I don’t. I-I won’t.”
Silence stretches between you. You do not look away. You don’t challenge her either. You simply remain where you are, one hand free, the other held fast by her son.
She steps closer then. Slowly. Carefully. Like someone approaching something that might break if startled. Her gaze flicks briefly to the bandages, to the careful layering, the clean edges. To the steady rise and fall of his chest.
“He lives,” she says. It sounds like a realisation she is still catching up to. “Because of you.”
You nod once.
Her eyes sharpen on you then. Not cruelly but in a piercing manner, as if searching for cracks.
“Why?” she asks.
The question is not philosophical. Not ceremonial. It is bare and direct, stripped of pleasantries. A mother demanding the truth.
Why him.
Why my son.
Your answer comes slowly. because you realise you don’t quite know yourself.
“It wasn’t destiny,” you say at last. “Or prophecy. I didn’t know who he was.”
Her ears twitch faintly at that.
“I followed blood in the water,” you continue. “I saw someone dying. And I couldn’t—” Your voice falters, just briefly. You steady it. “I couldn’t let another innocent person die. I’ve seen too many. I’ve stood by too often.”
The words sit heavy between you.
Neytiri studies your face, searching for deception, for weakness, for something she can cut away. What she finds instead seems to unsettle her more.
Honesty. Imperfect and unadorned.
She exhales sharply through her nose. Her gaze drops again to Neteyam’s hand around your wrist.
“You are human,” she says. Not a condemnation. A truth. “You were RDA.”
“I was,” you agree.
A beat passes.
“And I’m… sorry,” you add quietly. “I should have left sooner. I should have objected. I knew what was happening, and I stayed silent longer than I should have.”
She does not respond immediately.
You think briefly that she might order you out. You brace yourself for it. You would understand.
Instead, she straightens.
Her voice, when it comes, is quieter.
“You may stay,” she says. “For now.”
It is not forgiveness nor acceptance, but it is not rejection either.
Her eyes meet yours one last time like a warning. She is still wary, still burning with grief and love in equal measure.
Then she turns and moves to her son’s other side, kneeling beside him. Her hand hovers before settling against his shoulder, reverent, protective.
She does not tell you to move.
And when she stays, you stay too.
Together, in the fragile space between what has been lost and what has been spared, she pauses her open objection to your presence.
For him.
And for now that is enough.
𓂃 ོ☼𓂃 𓇼𓏲*ੈ✩‧₊˚
Jake finds you exactly where he expects to.
You are seated beside the woven platform, shoulder angled inward, body unconsciously positioned as a barrier between Neteyam and the rest of the world. Your fingers rest lightly near his arm, not touching now, but close enough that you could if he stirred.
Jake stops a few paces away.
He watches for a moment before speaking. Long enough for you to feel it.
When you finally look up, he’s standing just inside the marui, silhouette framed by woven roots and filtered sea-light. His expression gives nothing away. No anger. No softness. Just assessment.
He tilts his head once and jerks it subtly toward the entrance.
A wordless command.
Your stomach drops.
This is it, you think. The line had been reached. You’ve overstayed whatever fragile grace you were given and now you were being kicked to the curb. You glance once at Neteyam. He is still sleeping, still breathing steadily and the sight steels you even as it hurts. He’s safe now. Healing. He won’t need you much longer.
That had always been the price.
You rise carefully, making sure Neteyam didn’t stir, then follow Jake out without a word.
Outside, the air is sharper. Salt and sunlight and the distant sound of the reef breathing in and out. Jake stops a few paces from the marui, far enough that voices inside won’t carry.
He turns to face you.
For a long moment, he just looks at you.
Not like Neytiri does—not with fury or grief sharpened into a blade. He looks at you like someone looking at an equation they’ve solved before, in another life.
You think briefly about arguing. About saying you could help longer, that Neteyam still needs monitoring, that infection doesn’t care about politics or borders. But the thought dissolves as quickly as it forms.
You know you have no right.
“I understand,” you say quickly. Too quickly. “I won’t argue. He’s stable now. He’ll wake soon. I can—”
Jake lifts a hand, stopping you.
“What do you want to do?” he asks.
The question lands so unexpectedly that you almost miss it.
“…What?” you manage.
He studies your face again, then asks, almost casually:
“What do you want to do now?”
The question knocks the air from your lungs.
You stare at him, caught completely off guard. You had braced yourself for judgment. For exile. For accusation.
Not this.
“I—” You stop and swallow before you try again, “I don’t expect… anything.”
Jake exhales through his nose. “I didn’t ask what you expect.”
With his permission, the words come spilling out. “I was a medic, a doctor,” you say slowly. “Before they trained me to fight. Before they decided I was more useful that way.”
Jake nods once, encouraging you to continue.
“I treated RDA soldiers,” you go on. “Patched up men who went back out and killed Na’vi. Burned villages. Hunted tulkun.” Your voice stays even, but your chest tightens. “I watched it happen even though I knew it was wrong. And I stayed silent because being useful kept me alive.”
You meet his eyes.
“I survived by making myself necessary.”
You brace yourself for the judgment that should follow. For condemnation. For being told what you already knew — that survival isn’t enough, that silence is complicity.
Jake doesn’t give you any of that.
He studies you for a long moment, gaze distant in a way that tells you he’s not just looking at you—but through you. At something older. Something familiar.
“You know,” he says quietly, “I wore their uniform once. Took their orders. Told myself I was just doing my job.”
Your breath catches.
“I saw what they did,” he continues. “Saw it up close. “I was sent here on a mission,” he continues. “To learn. To infiltrate. To help them take this place apart piece by piece.” His jaw tightens. “I saw what the RDA was doing long before I stopped them. Long before I chose differently. Neytiri… she understands that too.”
He meets your gaze, steady and unflinching.
“And I think you stayed alive long enough to choose,” he says. “That matters.”
The words land heavy. Devastating in their calm.
Jake looks past you briefly, toward the marui where his son sleeps.
“Your choices don't erase what came before,” he adds. “But it’s the only thing that changes what comes after.”
Silence stretches between you, filled with the sound of water and wind and distant life continuing as it always does.
He straightens slightly, the weight of command settling back into his posture. “You saved my son,” he says finally. “That buys you time. Not forgiveness. Not trust.”
A pause.
“But time.”
You nod, throat tight. “I don’t expect forgiveness,” you state. “From you, from her. Or from anyone.”
Jake considers that.
“Good,” he says simply. “Don’t ask for it. Earn whatever comes next.”
Jake turns back toward the marui, then stops.
“One more thing,” he says, glancing over his shoulder. “He woke up again last night. Just for a second.”
Your heart jumps.
“He didn’t ask for us,” Jake adds. “He asked for you, asked for you again.”
And with that, he walks away leaving you standing there, breath unsteady, the future no longer sealed shut… but not yet open either. In the distance, the ocean breathes quietly beside you, steady and patient.
𓂃 ོ☼𓂃 𓇼𓏲*ੈ✩‧₊˚
A few days pass after Jake’s conversation with you.
You stop counting them somewhere along the way.
The marui no longer feels foreign in the way it once did. The curve of its walls, the woven platforms, the quiet breath of the sea —it has settled into you, or perhaps you’ve settled into it. There is a strange inversion at work now: inside this space feels real, solid, anchored. Outside beyond the braided threshold, beyond the watchful eyes and the open water—the world feels distant and alien. Like out there is the true world, and in here is the dream.
The sun had already risen when you move.
Light filters in through the living walls, refracted and soft, painting the marui in slow-moving blues and greens. You don’t look outside. You don’t need to.
You go to him first.
You always do.
Your routine has become instinctive. You kneel beside the platform, setting your supplies down with careful familiarity. Your hands move without thought now, memory guiding them where fear once lived. You unwrap the bandages slowly, methodically, mindful of skin and healing tissue underneath.
The wound looks good.
Better than yesterday. Pinked at the edges. Closed where it once gaped. You feel a quiet, private satisfaction at knowing that your efforts had earned his recovery.
Then—
He stirs.
It is subtle at first. A shift you almost miss. His lashes flutter once, twice. You register it distantly, the way you register a change in breathing or a twitch of muscle—filed away for later assessment.
Then his eyes open.
Fully.
You see it happen.
And somehow it still doesn’t land.
Your hands still for half a second, mind lagging behind your senses. This has happened before—half-waking moments, drifting awareness, consciousness slipping like water falling through fingers.
Except this time, he doesn’t fade.
He focuses.
A beat passes. Then another.
And suddenly it hits you all at once.
Your breath catches sharply, eyes widening as reality crashes in. He’s awake. Awake awake. The finality of it sends a jolt through your chest, equal parts relief and panic, sharp enough to make you dizzy.
You don’t know what to do.
A ridiculous thought surfaces, unbidden and embarrassing: I don’t know how to be with him like this. As if there has been a relationship here at all. As if caring for an unconscious body, whispering his name, learning his breathing patterns, meant—
You almost laugh at yourself.
Get a grip.
Before you can decide how to move, how to speak, how to rearrange yourself into something appropriate—
He does it for you.
His eyes drift first, unfocused, scanning the space above him. The curve of the marui. The filtered light. His breathing deepens, steadies. Then, slowly, inevitably, his gaze finds you.
The moment his eyes lock onto yours, something changes in his expression.
He inhales.
Then exhales as his lips curve, small at first then unmistakably into a smile.
It strikes you how alert he looks despite everything. Worn, yes. Weak, certainly. But present. Anchored. As though his consciousness has snapped cleanly into place the moment he sees you.
His voice is rough, unused. Soft.
“You…” he murmurs in Na’vi. “Tìrey”. Thank you. The syllables are soft, shaped like a feather brushing against your skin. It’s familiar despite it being the first time you hear it.
Before you can respond, his hands lift—large, steady despite the tremor you know must live in his muscles. They settle on your shoulders, grounding, certain. He holds you there as if testing whether you are real.
You don’t flinch. You don’t pull away.
Then his hands shift.
They rise slowly, reverently, cupping your face like it is something fragile. Something precious. Like you might disappear if he doesn’t hold you just so. Then, almost casually, his large hand moves down, settling atop yours. The warmth of his palm presses into yours, and before you can think to react, he draws your hand closer, tilting his head so your fingers brush the side of his cheek. He leans into the touch, the faint scent of him brushing against you.
You freeze. You don’t know what to do.
This is not familiar. You’ve tended to him, spoken softly while he slept, brushed bandages across his skin—but never like this. Never with this closeness. Never like he knows you the way only someone you’ve known for years would.
“…Hey,” you manage softly, the word barely more than breath. Your instincts scramble belatedly into place and you realise, with a sinking surprise, that all the Na’vi you’ve spent years teaching yourself has vanished in an instant.
Your cheeks burn red. Heat creeps up your neck, settling sharp and humiliating beneath your skin. You’re suddenly acutely aware of how close you are. Of his hands. Of your hand in his. Of the way you’re kneeling beside him like you belong there –like his mate.
His thumb stills against your hand.
There’s a pause — not awkward, not uncertain — but thoughtful. As if he’s listening to something deeper than the moment. Then he swallows, breath steadying.
“I think…” he says slowly in Na’vi, carefully and deliberately. “Eywa meant for you to be here.”
Your chest tightens.
“With me,” he adds quietly.
Not as a question, not as gratitude, but as a fact.
You hear your heart before anything else. It thunders in your ears, loud and relentless, drowning out the distant hum of the marui, the sea beyond it, the quiet life continuing just outside this delicate moment.
And as his cheek brushes yours, as his warmth presses into your hand, as his eyes hold yours with a softness that could unravel you, a sharp, undeniable wave of fear crashes through you.
The weight of it crashes into you all at once.
You were a doctor. Then, begrudgingly, a warrior. You were trained to follow orders. To be quiet. To blend. To make no waves so that one day you could leave without a trace. Connections were weaknesses in the RDA. Bonds were distractions. You survived by being invisible, by being small and unnoticed, by never letting anyone in.
And now this. This closeness. This knowledge in his eyes. This claim of familiarity. As if he expected your presence, your proximity, your hand in his.
You have no training for this.
No instinct.
No script.
Nervousness coils tight in your chest, sharp and unfamiliar, spiraling into something dangerously close to panic. It’s almost physical — a pressure, a pull, as if your body understands the threat long before your mind can name it.
This wasn’t the fear of violence you had become so accustomed to.
This wasn’t a fear of starting anew.
It was the fear of being seen. Of being chosen. Of being tethered to something or someone that could change you beyond recognition.
Your pulse stutters and suddenly you realise that it’s all too much. This isn’t something you can tend to, or bind, or heal with your hands.
Before his warmth can settle too deeply, you pull back.
Just one step — sharp and instinctive, but enough to break the moment. His hand slips from yours, fingers lingering in the space you leave behind, surprised by the distance. His brow creases and his expression shifts, searching and confused. There is hurt in his gaze.
Your heart is pounding as you realise, with a cold, sinking certainty that the dream-space of the marui no longer feels entirely safe now, nor entirely unreal. It feels… thin. Like a boundary that has already begun to give way.
Before he can speak again, before you can think better of it —you turn and leave.
And you don’t look back.
You leave the marui in a rush, your bare feet carrying you out into the light, into the open air. The distance spreads between the two of you with each passing second, shielding you from the weight of his gaze. From the truth you’re not ready to face.
And you know, with a certainty that settles cold and heavy in your gut—
Whatever this was, whatever had begun here wouldn’t be simple.
And that terrified you more than anything the RDA ever trained you to survive.
ACT III
Neteyam had woken.
That fact rippled through the clan like a tide.
You did not stay for it.
You weren’t there when his family gathered in their marui, when voices rose in relief and quiet awe, when hands brushed his shoulders and foreheads pressed close in gratitude. You weren’t there when members of the Metkayina clan poured in to see him— to marvel at his survival, to murmur of Eywa’s will and whisper about the grace of her design. You heard it all from a distance: the hum of voices, the shift in energy, the way the pod seemed to breathe easier now that he did.
But you kept yourself away. You did not stay close, as you had before.
You didn’t sit at his side. You didn’t hover. You didn’t reach for his pulse or listen to his breathing or murmur his name like a talisman against loss. You blurred into the background, busying yourself with nothing in particular, pretending there was still something for you to do.
You hadn’t spoken to him.
Not since that morning.
Not since he had touched you like you were something precious. Like you were necessary. Like you were – you cut the thought off before it could finish forming.
It was ridiculous. You knew that. You were too experienced for this kind of fear. Too tainted. You had survived warzones, moral rot and the slow violence of the RDA. You had stitched bodies back together while the world burned around you because of the brutality of humans with no honor, keeping your hands steady no matter how loudly your chest screamed.
And yet here you were.
Avoiding a warrior because of the way he had looked at you. Because of what he had said. Because of how easily he had made something inside you feel seen.
You told yourself it was gratitude. Confusion. The lingering fog of near-death. That he would wake fully, settle back into himself, and whatever fragile thing had passed between you would dissolve into something sensible and distant.
You told yourself that over and over.
Neteyam, for his part, did not seek you out. He did not call your name. Did not ask for you. Did not corner you with questions or gratitude or anything that might force you to face him. He was thoughtful like that. But you noticed him anyway.
Always nearby.
Always just within the periphery of your vision – standing a little apart from the others, pausing mid-step when you passed. His presence was quiet, unassuming, but constant. When you glanced up, his head tilted slightly, eyes softening with something that made your chest ache – gratitude, gentleness, a warmth that never dulled. And when your eyes met, his mouth would curve into that same small, easy smile.
You always looked away first.
At first, you told yourself it was coincidence.
That Metkayina spaces were communal by nature. That paths overlapped. That it was only natural he might be nearby as you navigated a place not built for you. But the pattern persisted, subtle but unmistakable.
Wherever you went, he was not far.
Now that he was alert, responsive, fully himself, there was nothing left for you to do. No wounds to dress. No vitals to monitor. No justification for your continued presence. You were just a human standing out among the Na'vi, a wrong note in a song that had already resumed without you.
This world was unfamiliar to you. Its rhythms, its rules, its unspoken languages. You moved through it carefully, always aware of your difference, your borrowed air, your tenuous welcome. You supposed that Neteyam knew that. He watched with a quiet attentiveness that felt protective rather than possessive.
Then the pattern became habit.
Something quieter and heavier than before. He was always there. Walking behind you. Sitting near you when you ate the offerings the clan had left. Waiting outside in the shadows while you prepare to sleep, the dark of the marui folding around him as if it were natural for him to be there.
Since he woke, you have been moved—silently away from the family pod to your own space. A marui, yes, but smaller, meant for one. Not unpleasant, but not expansive like the place you once slept and tended to him in. You recognise the gesture for what it is: a quiet suggestion that you are separate, that you are alien, that you should feel the distance between yourself and them, between yourself and their lives. A subtle mark of difference, a sign that they wanted you to consider leaving eventually.
And yet, before you woke each morning, he was already there. Always. Outside your sleeping space, waiting. Watching.
You thought briefly that he acted like a lost puppy. Silent, devoted, loyal beyond reason. Fierce in his quietness. A fictional being you had read about in books before Pandora. No one has such a companion now—not in the real, harsh world you came from.
You do not think, for a second, that to Neteyam it was anything deeper than gratitude—a patient’s quiet thankfulness for saving his life.
And yet, in the softest corner of his mind, the part that cannot yet name or understand, he feels something more. There is a pull in the way you move, the way you breathe, the way you exist in this place. It draws him, quietly, insistently, as though the reef itself were tugging him toward you.
Near you, the world shifts subtly. The weight that usually sits on his shoulders—the heavy mantle of being the eldest, the son who must always live up to the image of his father, loosens just enough for him to breathe. He has spent his life holding himself to impossible standards: keeping his siblings safe, mastering every skill, honoring every expectation. He has learned to place duty above desire, to silence the stirrings of his own heart in service of others. And yet, in your presence, he is allowed a small, fleeting freedom. A permission to be simply Neteyam, not the perfect son, not the warrior who could do no wrong. Here, with you, he does not have to measure every breath against the weight of legacy.
Even so, he does not understand this feeling, not fully. He cannot name the pull that draws him back to your side again and again. But he knows it in his body, as surely as he knows the forest. His chest eases when you are near. When you leave, the tension coils tight again, a reminder that the world still demands he be more than himself.
And so he simply acts without question, following his instinct that tells him to be near.
And so he waits.
And so he follows.
He doesn’t know that you’re planning to leave.
𓂃 ོ☼𓂃 𓇼𓏲*ੈ✩‧₊˚
As the days passed, the weight of your future ponders heavily on your mind, like a pounding headache threatening to burst. Even despite your conversations with Jake and Neytiri, the plan has always been to slip quietly away from the RDA to the place you had been secretly stocking over the years, hidden deep within the mountains. A place of solitude you had been quietly building, a life removed from war, from chaos, from orders.
But some things could not be learned alone.
As you trail by the shallow pools, spurred by thoughts of your future, you hesitantly approach a Metkayina warrior to learn to ride a skimwing. You had found no manuals, no reports, no whispered instructions tucked away in the RDA archives that explained how to connect with an ilu, skimwing or an ikran the way a Na'vi warrior could. But if you were going to leave, truly leave, you cannot do it half-prepared. You needed to learn and you hoped they would be forgiving enough to teach you.
The warrior you approach turns as you near, expression already guarded.
“Excuse me,” you said, voice soft but steady, careful. “I… I want to learn to ride. Could you teach me?”
His brow furrows, gaze flicking over your smaller frame and unfamiliar posture. He says something sharp in response, words clipped and edged with irritation, perhaps misunderstanding your words or your intent. You catch only pieces of it, but the tone is unmistakable. Calmly, you lowered your eyes, letting the tension roll off you without snapping back and without angering.
You lift your hands slightly instead, palms open, expression calm even as your pulse stutters. You begin to respond, steady and composed, already searching for a way to smooth the exchange—
—but you never finish.
Neteyam, as always, had been nearby, a silent watchful shadow. His brows furrowed the instant he heard the raised voice, the slight hardening of your stance, the ripple of discomfort that ran over you. He lingered no longer.
His hair swung as he strode forward, long legs striding towards the space between you and the warrior. In a single fluid motion, he stepped between the two of you, chest lifting, shoulders squared, every line of him taut and alive with intent.
His hand shoots out, a finger pressing against the other warrior’s chest, steady, immovable. “Back away,” he says, voice low but lethal, vibrating with quiet danger. “Now.”
The warrior freezes in surprise, unprepared by the intensity in Neteyam’s tone, the explosive protectiveness radiating from him.
You stare at Neteyam’s back, momentarily stunned by the speed of it all—by how quickly the situation has escalated because of you.
You instinctively reach toward him, touching his arm gently. “Neteyam—” you began, voice gentle, almost scolding at the chaos he’s caused. His ears lower, drooping slightly, but he doesn’t retreat. His body stays aligned with yours like a living shield.
You let out a small sigh as you step closer, touching his shoulder. “It’s alright,” you murmur. “I can handle it.”
He glances down at you, eyes catching yours, shimmering with something unspoken—devotion, tenderness and fierce protection. Nevertheless, through it all, you couldn’t deny the warmth that rose in your chest at his protective instinct, at the way he placed himself, choosing you over the judgment, over the misunderstanding, over the eyes of his clan.
The warrior mutters something under his breath and turns away, tension dissolving as quickly as it formed.
Around you, the clan resumes their tasks but not without notice. Some glance from one to another, whispering in low tones, their heads tilting in quiet acknowledgment. They see the way he remains close, attention undivided from you, how easily he places himself in your defense without being asked. And in that moment, the bond between you, fragile and complicated, becomes visible even to them.
They notice.
And you feel it too—the quiet, irreversible shift of something unspoken settling into place.
𓂃 ོ☼𓂃 𓇼𓏲*ੈ✩‧₊˚
You don’t argue with him there.
Instead, you turn and tilt your head slightly, a silent invitation. “Come,” you say, soft enough that it’s meant only for him.
Neteyam follows without question.
He falls into step behind you, close but careful, eyes fixed not on the path ahead but on your hand—on the way your fingers uncurl as you walk, on the small, human motions you never seem to notice. His chest tightens with every step. Since the moment he woke, since the haze lifted and the world sharpened back into color and sound, he has wanted this. Nearness. Proof that you were real. That you hadn’t vanished the moment he could stand on his own.
But you had.
You hadn’t sat at his side anymore. Hadn’t checked his breathing. Hadn’t touched his wrist or murmured reassurances while he drifted in and out of sleep. You spoke politely when you had to, distantly when you didn’t. The sudden absence of your care had left something raw behind his ribs, a dull ache he didn’t know how to name.
He wonders—briefly, painfully—if you simply stopped caring.
The thought hurts more than the wound ever did.
Without thinking, his hand lifts.
His fingers brush yours—hesitant at first, barely there, as if testing whether he is allowed. When you don’t pull away, when your pace doesn’t change, his breath stutters. He curls his fingers around your hand, gentle but sure, as though afraid that if he loosens his grip you might disappear again.
You feel it immediately.
Your head tilts a fraction but you don’t glance down. You don’t tell him to stop or pull your hand free. Instead, you give his hand a small and brief reassuring squeeze and let him keep holding on.
Neteyam exhales shakily.
He follows you like that, hand in yours, through winding paths and away from the noise of the reef. The chatter fades. The watchful eyes thin. Even the ocean seems to hush, the water smoothing itself against stone as if it understands you meant for this to be private.
You stop near a stretch of water half-shadowed by rocks, the tide lapping softly at the edges. When you turn to face him, he still doesn’t let go.
“Why are you always following behind me?” you ask.
Your voice isn’t sharp. It isn’t accusing. But it is careful—guarded in the way of someone who already suspects the answer but doesn’t want to hear it.
Neteyam falters.
He opens his mouth, then closes it again. His ears twitch, lowering slightly as he searches for words that he doesn't know how to say. He knows how to fight. How to obey. How to protect. This—this quiet, aching pull in his chest—is not something he recognises, or can name.
“It feels…” He swallows. “Wrong. When you are not near.”
He lifts your joined hands, just slightly, as if to show you what he means. “Here,” he says, pressing his free hand to his chest. “Like something is missing.”
You nod slowly—not in agreement, but in recognition. Understanding settles over you with a practiced, clinical certainty and calm.
Attachment, you think. Trauma. Gratitude tangled too tightly with survival. You’ve seen it before. In soldiers pulled back from death who cling to the medic who found them. In patients who wake with someone’s hands on their chest and mistake survival for destiny. Battlefield medicine forges bonds that run deep and fast—born of fear, relief, gratitude, and the fragile miracle of being alive at all. They feel like love. They can mimic it perfectly. But they are not the same.
This is trauma speaking, you tell yourself. A nervous system that learned your presence meant breath, meant life, meant safety.
It will fade, you think. With time. With space.
And yet, the idea of leaving, of disappearing too suddenly sits wrong in your gut. You know what abrupt absence can do to a mind already shaped by loss and pain. You fear the distance might wound him in ways you cannot stitch closed, even if his body has healed cleanly.
You stare at him, caught somewhere between disbelief and hesitation.
“I do not know everything about you,” he admits. “But I know this.” His thumb presses lightly into your hand in a firm and grounding motion. “I want you. Not because you saved me.”
A pause. Deliberate. Certain.
“But because you saw me—and I am still here because of it.”
Surprise etches itself across your face before you can stop it.
You look up at him, really look at him, meeting his gaze at last. You don’t answer. You don’t pull away. You don’t correct him or soften the moment into something safer and easier to explain.
And to Neteyam, that matters more than any words you could have given.
𓂃 ོ☼𓂃 𓇼𓏲*ੈ✩‧₊˚
Midday settles gently over the reef.
The sun hangs high, bright enough to turn the water into mirrors. The village breathes in its familiar rhythm. Sounds of quiet laughter, the soft slap of water against wood and the creak of drying nets being lifted and turned perked your ears.
Nothing feels wrong.
That, you know, is what makes it dangerous.
You are mending a torn strap with thread you scavenged weeks ago when the sound hits — sharp, jagged, wrong. A voice breaks through the calm like a spear through water.
“Sky people!”
Your chest tightens violently, air punching from your lungs as your mind snaps into clarity. Not panic but calculation. You know their tactics too well. A patrol this close to the reef means surveillance. Testing. Mapping. The quiet before something far worse.
You look up.
The Metkayina live beneath open sky. No canopy. No stone. No caves to vanish into. The reef is beautiful but utterly exposed.
Voices rise around you now, overlapping. Warriors reach for weapons. Mothers pull children close, ushering them toward the shallows. Someone drops a basket; fish scatter, flashing silver before vanishing beneath the water.
Then the first blast hits.
The impact cracks against the sea with a thunderous boom, water erupting upward in a violent column. The shockwave rattles the platforms, tossing bodies sideways. Screams cut through the air.
You spur to action without command.
You run because someone is already falling.
A young warrior is thrown clean from the edge of the platform, hitting the water hard and not resurfacing. You don’t hesitate — you dive.
The water swallows you, cold and brutal. You kick hard, lungs already burning as you reach him, fingers hooking beneath his arms. He’s limp and heavy, his armour and unconsciousness dragging him down. You haul him upward with a strength born of urgency, breaking the surface in a gasp as you drag him onto the nearest platform.
His breathing is wrong. Shallow. Erratic.
Your hands are already moving — tilting his head, checking his pupils, pressing fingers against his throat.
“Pressure,” you say sharply, grabbing the nearest warrior. “Here. Don’t let go.”
They stare at you for half a second too long, at the strange human barking commands, but something in your voice cuts through the chaos. They obey.
Another explosion rocks the reef.
A Metkayina warrior stumbles toward you, clutching his side, crimson blood dark against his fingers. Metal glints beneath torn skin — jagged and wrong. Shrapnel. You guide him down, rip the fabric screwed on his body without asking and bind them tight against his side, tighter than what feels comfortable.
He hisses.
“It has to be this way,” you tell him, already moving on.
You move again. And again.
You don’t stop. You don’t flinch when another shot screams overhead. You are everywhere at once—dragging, binding, directing. A Metkayina warrior stares at you in disbelief as you shove him back towards safety.
You adapt — human triage reshaped for Na’vi bodies. Longer limbs. Stronger hearts. Different pain thresholds. Same rules. Stop the bleeding. Keep them breathing. Don’t let shock take hold.
Another warrior is dragged free from wreckage, leg twisted at a terrible angle. You immobilise it with one swift precision, ignoring the way your hands shake only after you’re done.
Your palms are slick with blood that is bright red and dark crimson, mingling until it no longer matters which is which.
The skirmish ends as abruptly as it began.
The patrol retreats — distant engines fading, satisfied perhaps with what they’ve learned. The reef is left trembling, wounded but alive.
Only when the last echo dies do you feel it — the delayed tremor in your arms, the ache blooming along your spine, the sharp awareness of how exposed you still are.
Around you, the Metkayina watch.
They had known of you — the human who saved Neteyam. The quiet presence who kept in the shadows, spoke little, belonged nowhere. Trust, thin as sea glass, had formed around that single act.
Now it shifts.
They see the way you moved through chaos without fear. How warriors twice your size listened when you spoke. How you chose who needed help first and did not waver. How you did not look to the sky in terror or rage — only to the wounded at your feet.
Whispers ripple through the crowd.
Not praise. Not yet.
But recognition.
And through it all, Neteyam watches.
He had fought. He had defended. But more than that — he had seen.
Seen the way you ran toward danger without armor or blade. The way your hands never faltered. The way his clan began to look at you differently, something like understanding dawning in their eyes.
There is awe in his gaze, unguarded and raw. Not the sharp admiration of battle. Something heavier. Something that settles deep in his chest and refuses to loosen its hold.
You not only saved his life, but stood to heal when others faltered.
And Neteyam knows with absolute certainty that he would stand wherever you stand. Without question and without hesitation.
𓂃 ོ☼𓂃 𓇼𓏲*ੈ✩‧₊˚
The calm never fully returns.
The following day, another skirmish broke the peace again.
You are crouched again beside another fallen warrior, fingers slick with blood as you secure a final binding, when the air cracks.
Not the distant thrum of engines. Not the echo of retreat.
A second shot.
It is sharper. Closer.
Neteyam sees it. His eyes had darted frantically around to find you as soon as the silence broke.
He sees the spray of water explode behind you, sees the metallic glint spin through the air, sees the way your body jerks as something strikes flesh. A dull, sickening thud — not loud or dramatic, but unmistakable.
You gasp, more in surprise than pain.
Your hand flies to your side. Warmth spreads beneath your fingers. You stagger one step, then catch yourself, breath coming fast as you assess, already calculating the depth and gravity of the wound
Not deep. Not fatal. You’ve had worse.
But Neteyam doesn’t know that.
For a heartbeat, the world narrows to a single image: you, wounded.
Something inside him fractures.
He is moving before the sound finishes echoing.
He forgets the shouted orders behind him. Forgets the warriors regrouping, the defensive line reforming along the reef’s edge. Forgets his father’s voice — steady and commanding, cutting through the chaos.
For the first time in his life, he does not turn back.
Not because Lo’ak has gone too far ahead.
Not because Tuk needs guarding.
Not because duty demands it.
Because you are hurt.
He runs like he is drowning, like the only air left in the world is wherever you are. His stride eats the distance between you in seconds, heart slamming so hard it drowns out everything else. The disciplined warrior, the careful son, the perfect brother is gone.
What remains is instinct. Raw and unchecked.
“No—” His voice breaks as he reaches you. His hands are on you immediately, shaking as they skim over your sides, your back, your arms, searching for damage he cannot bear to find. His breath comes in ragged pulls, chest heaving like he’s the one who’s been shot.
You blink up at him, stunned—not by the pain, but by him. By the way his control has shattered so thoroughly it frightens you.
“Neteyam—” you start, steady despite the pain. “I’m—”
He doesn’t hear it.
His knees hit the platform hard as he pulls you against him, arms locking around you with desperate force. You feel the tremor running through him, violent and uncontrolled. His forehead presses to your shoulder, face buried against your chest, like he’s trying to anchor himself to proof that you’re still here.
A sound tears from him — broken and unguarded.
A quiet sob.
The reef goes quiet around you. Na’vi stop where they stand. Heads turn. Eyes widen.
They have never seen this from him. Never seen Neteyam Sully lose himself. Never seen the golden son abandon his post, forget the sky, forget the war, forget orders.
You are conscious. Breathing. Very much alive.
And that is what makes it so shocking.
You lift a hand slowly, carefully, touching his braids, then his shoulder. “Hey,” you murmur, soft but firm. “Look at me.”
It takes effort — visible effort — for him to pull back.
His eyes are wild. Wet. Fear stripped bare and no discipline left to hide it. Tears track freely down his cheeks, dark tracks cutting through the markings of his skin like inked lines, unashamed and unstoppable. He looks at you like he has already lost you once and cannot survive doing it again.
“I thought—” His voice breaks completely. He swallows hard, fingers tightening in your clothes. “I thought—”
You take his hand and press it flat against your side, guiding him. Letting him feel the truth of it—the shallow wound, the warmth of your skin, the steady rise and fall of your breath. Your other hand lifts, gentle despite the sting in your side, and you rest it against his back. You pull him closer, giving him the space he’s already claimed, letting him hide there if he needs to.
“I’m here,” you murmur, low and certain. “I’m still here.”
His grip tightens in response.
“I’m not dying,” you say quietly with a soft smile, hoping to dull the fear raging through him. “I know what this is. I promise.”
He doesn’t answer.
He had seen you fall.
Seen red bloom where it should not have.
And in that instant, a thought had taken root in him, cold and absolute.
I will not survive losing her.
He bows his head again, forehead resting against yours now, breath shuddering as if his body hasn’t yet learned that the danger has passed. His tears soak into your skin. His grip never loosens, holding you like the only future he can imagine, the composure he has worn his entire life lying in pieces at his feet.
And something inside you shifts. A thin, aching thread of guilt tightens around your chest.
You had told yourself this was attachment—trauma tangled with gratitude, the kind of bond forged in blood and survival. You had seen it before. You had named it before. Ever the cynic, you had insisted it would fade. That the distance you had forced between the two of you was kindness. That the space you granted him was protection.
But as you stroke his back, slow and steady, heart aching in time with his sobs, you realise how wrong you were.
You had ignored him.
You had denied him even the chance to speak his gratitude.
You had decided for him what his feelings meant—because it was easier than believing they were real.
And you cannot deny it any longer.
You feel it now, clear and terrifying and undeniable: you want this. You want him. You want to stay, to learn his world, to take care of him the way he clings to you now—as if you are something precious, something irreplaceable.
And so you make a silent promise to yourself to go with it.
With his feelings.
With yours.
Behind you, the clan watches in silence. With something like understanding.
Neytiri stands a little apart, arms folded, silent. She has always known her son to be disciplined, precise, carrying the weight of his father’s name and expectations like armor. But this — this raw, unfiltered grief — is something else entirely. She sees the way his chest heaves, the trembling in his arms as they clutch you, the soft sobs escaping past lips that had rarely ever let out a sound of weakness.
And in that instant, understanding settles deep and sure in her chest. This was more than duty, more than legacy. More than the careful measures of warriorhood. He feels you. And he cannot bear the thought of your absence.
Jake sees it too. Lo’ak freezes, shock written plainly across his face. That this wasn’t just gratitude, it was devotion. Fierce, consuming and unrelenting devotion.
Whatever this is, whatever Neteyam feels, it is not rational, not bound by duty or expectation.
It is the fear of almost losing you.
And he has never learned how to survive that.
𓂃 ོ☼𓂃 𓇼𓏲*ੈ✩‧₊˚
You stay like that for a long time.
You don’t rush him.
Don’t hush him.
Don’t tell him to be strong, or brave, or composed.
You simply hold him.
Your arms stay wrapped around his back, firm and steady, anchoring him where he’s collapsed against you. Your fingers move without thought, tracing slow paths through his braids, smoothing over the warm skin at the nape of his neck. You rock him just slightly—a rhythm meant for frightened children and wounded things. His sobs come sharp at first, broken and gasping, his body shuddering violently with each breath.
Then, slowly, they soften.
The tremors ease.
His breathing evens and steadies out with each breath.
Eventually, his grip loosens just enough that it no longer feels like he’s holding you in place out of fear that you will disappear. His forehead rests against your collarbone now, breath warm and damp against your skin, exhaustion seeping into his bones now that the fear has burned itself out.
The world resumes around you in fragments.
The wounded are moved.
Bindings are tightened.
Orders are murmured and obeyed.
The reef exhales cautiously, like it’s unsure whether it’s safe to breathe yet.
But you don’t move.
You stay there with him as the chaos thins, as the noise dulls to something distant and irrelevant. You stay until the circle around you loosens, until the watching eyes turn away, until the space opens again like a wave finally released.
Until it is just the two of you.
He shifts slightly in your arms, lifting his body slightly so that he can look at you.
It’s careful. Hesitant. As if he’s afraid of what he might see in your face now that the moment has stripped him bare. His fingers move to brush near your wound to obtain proof, maybe, that you’re still here.
His eyes are red-rimmed, lashes clumped with tears he hasn’t bothered to hide. His expression is raw in a way that feels almost sacred, like you’ve been allowed to witness something no one else ever has. Shame flickers there now, quick and painful, settling in the wake of everything he’s revealed. Embarrassment lingers in the way his shoulders curl inward, guilt threaded through the last of his exhaustion — like his feelings are something heavy he’s set in your hands without permission.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers.
The words barely make it out.
You lift your hand without thinking, fingers sinking gently into his braids, palm resting warm and steady against the crown of his head.
“Don’t be,” you whisper. “It’s okay.”
Your voice is soft enough to be meant only for him.
But he doesn’t hear it.
Not really.
You feel his weight sagging fully against you, breath slowing further, lashes fluttering before falling closed. Sleep takes him not gently, but suddenly, like a body that has been running on fear alone finally giving out. Mental exhaustion claiming what fear and adrenaline can no longer sustain.
You realise that he’s asleep.
You look down at him then. Really look.
His face is peaceful now, or it would be, if not for the faint crease caught between his brows — a remnant of worry his body hasn’t yet learned how to release. His cheeks are still damp, tear tracks cooling against his skin, leaving darker shadows where grief had passed through him moments before.
The sky above has darkened while you weren’t looking. Twilight bleeds into night and in the growing dark, Pandora begins to glow.
So does he.
The freckled bioluminescent markings scattered across his face soften into light — pale blue at first, then brighter, pulsing gently along his face. Each one unmistakably his. A living constellation you could trace with your eyes alone. They glow more clearly now in the quiet, reflecting calm returning where panic once lived.
You think distantly and guiltily that he is beautiful.
Soft footsteps approach through the sand.
You lift your head to find Jake.
He doesn’t say much. Doesn’t need to. His eyes move from your face to his son asleep against you, and something unspoken passes between you. A small smile touches his mouth. A nod of acknowledgment. Gratitude, quiet and heavy with understanding.
He kneels beside you without speaking at first. He looks at his son, utterly spent, stripped bare by fear and feeling.
“Thank you,” he murmurs eventually, voice low. “I’ve got him.”
Carefully, he gathers Neteyam into his arms. Neteyam stirs once, brows pinching faintly, fingers curling unconsciously as he’s lifted, but he doesn’t wake. He only settles again, trusting, spent.
Jake turns toward the family marui.
You watch him go.
You stay where you are, unmoving, watching his retreating figure disappear into the shadows. You stay there long after the night swallows him whole. Your hands rest uselessly in your lap, slick with dried blood—his, yours, someone else’s—you don’t know. You don’t care.
All you can feel is the echo of his weight gone from your arms, the space he’s left behind, the ache of having witnessed him so unguarded, so openly devoted, and having let him leave believing he was alone in it.
All you can comprehend is the weight of knowing his feelings were never fleeting and you understand with terrible clarity that your restraint had not been kindness at all.
And the guilt presses into your ribs, sharp and unrelenting with nowhere left to go.
𓂃 ོ☼𓂃 𓇼𓏲*ੈ✩‧₊˚
That night, sleep refuses to come.
You lie awake, eyes fixed on the woven ceiling of the marui, pale silver casting through the openings above by the twin moons of Pandora. Your thoughts circle endlessly, heavy and insistent. You think of the way he chose you without hesitation, without doubt, while you stood there so carefully guarded, your uncertainty laid bare between you. You think of the quiet loyalty in his eyes, and of the distance you put between it and yourself.
You tell yourself you were being careful. Rational. Responsible. That you were doing the right thing—that giving him space was kinder, that feelings like his needed distance in order to soften, to fade.
But they hadn’t faded.
They had endured.
The realisation settles heavy in your chest, doing nothing to ease the ache already there.
Then, softly—so soft you almost think you’ve imagined it—
Your name.
You lift your head.
He stands just inside the threshold, half-lit by moonlight, broad shoulders tense as if he’s unsure whether he’s already gone too far. As if bracing, as if he’s expecting impact. His ears tilt back slightly, uncertain. He doesn’t step closer. He waits.
You see the caution in him. The quiet restraint he has learned around you. He looks like someone who has prepared himself for rejection and walked into it anyway.
Slowly, hesitantly, he reaches for you.
Not touching. Not yet. His hand hovers in the space between you, suspended and cautious—because you have never given him permission. Because he has learned, with you, to hesitate.
And for the first time, you don’t think.
You reach back.
Your fingers close around his hand and you pull him toward you.
A sharp inhale leaves him in surprise, his breath catching—but he doesn’t resist. He leans into the pull, follows it eagerly, as though he’d been waiting for this exact invitation. He comes down beside you, careful at first, testing the ground beneath him. As though this moment might dissolve if he moves too quickly. Then closer still, until the space between you disappears entirely.
In the quiet of the marui, you cling to each other.
Between the two of you there is a simple aching need to be close. His body is warm against yours, solid and real, and you feel the tension bleed from him the moment your arms come around his shoulders. But even as he relaxes, there is something fragile in the way he holds you, like he does not quite trust this. Like he is waiting for it to be taken back.
He stills suddenly.
His voice is barely more than a breath when he speaks.
“…Can I—” he starts, then falters and swallows. “I want… I want to be near you, with you. Can I?”
His question is delicate and careful, like he’s afraid of your answer. He watches you like you might disappear.
Your chest aches.
You lift a hand, gently, and touch his face. Your fingers brush along his cheek, tucking loose braids back where they’ve slipped into his ears. You cup his jaw, thumb warm against his skin, grounding him. Letting him feel that you’re here. That this is real.
“Yes,” you say softly.
Relief shudders through him visibly. His forehead dips closer, breath unsteady as he leans into your touch. For a moment, you simply hold him.
And then you speak again.
“I’m sorry,” you whisper at last. He freezes.
The words feel fragile as they leave you. “For ignoring you. For pretending I didn’t see you. For making you feel anything less than important.”
His arms tighten around your waist, firm but gentle, anchoring you.
“It’s okay,” he murmurs, voice low and steady near your chest. There is no accusation in it. No resentment. Only reassurance.
But you shake your head faintly.
“No,” you whisper. “It’s not.”
You swallow, fingers curling into the skin of his back, grounding yourself in the steady warmth of him. “I was afraid,” you whisper. The words come slowly, carefully, like stepping onto thin ice. “Of this. Of you.” A small, broken breath slips free. “Of letting myself want you when we are from such different worlds.” You hesitate, forehead resting lightly against his hair. “It didn’t feel fair to you—after everything I’ve done, after aligning with the RDA. I’m sorry.”
Your voice softens even more, nearly swallowed by the quiet. “You didn’t deserve that.”
For a moment, silence stretched between you. There is only the sound of his breathing, deep and steady against your chest.
“I thought,” you continued softly, “that if I stepped back, it would protect you. That your feelings would fade if I did not encourage them.” You swallow. “I told myself it was … because I saved you. That you were holding onto me because I was there when you woke. Because I meant safety. Not because you truly—” Your voice thins. “Not because you truly chose me.”
A small, wounded sound leaves him. You feel it where his forehead rests against you. Silence settles between you, vulnerable and exposed.
“…Are you sure?” you ask at last, the question barely more than a whisper. “About this. About me?”
He hums softly, a sound that vibrates through you, warm and certain. His head tilts, pressing closer, as if the answer is something he feels rather than thinks.
“Yes,” he says, without hesitation.
He lifts his face just enough for you to see him, eyes shining in the low light – earnest, unguarded, almost fierce in their certainty. “I am sure, I am certain.” he continues, voice gentle but unshakable.
You search him. For cracks. For hesitation. For the flicker of confusion you’ve convinced yourself must be there. You find none.
“I am not confusing survival with destiny,” he says quietly, without wavering as if he can see the fear moving behind your eyes. “I know what it is to survive.” His hand presses flat against your back, grounding. “This is not that. I chose you and I will keep choosing you.”
Something inside you softens completely for the first time.
“I want to be near you too,” you whisper. He stills again. The words seem to undo him more than anything else. “I want to learn about you,” you continue, your voice gaining quiet strength. “Not just as a warrior. Not as what everyone expects you to be.”
Your fingers slide slowly through his braids.
“I want to know you. The things no one asks about. The things no one else sees. The parts you keep for yourself.”
His breath catches.
“I want to be part of your world,” you say, softer now, the confession resting between you like something tender and luminous.
Then, almost shyly despite everything you’ve already laid bare, you ask, “Will you show me your world?”
The question surprises even you. It carries more weight than you intended, an unspoken thought of staying, of choosing something other than solitude for the first time since he woke.
His heart flutters. He looks at you as if you have just handed him something sacred.
“I would love nothing more,” he says, voice rough with emotion. Then, softer he adds in Na’vi, “Yawnetu.”
Beloved.
The word settles between you like a promise, a vow.
Emotion swells in your chest before you can stop it. You draw him back down against you, arms wrapping fully around his shoulders. He shifts willingly and eagerly, shuffling closer until his head settles against your chest, fitting there as if he’s always known the shape of you. You can’t help the small smile that curves your lips when he snuggles closer, arms slipping more securely around your waist. He shifts and shuffles until he finds the perfect place, clicking into you like the final piece of something unfinished. Like a puzzle you had finally allowed him to complete.
Your hand lifts again, fingers sliding through his braids. They slip beneath your touch like water, familiar and soothing. You stroke his back slowly and feel his body relax under your touch.
A quiet sound leaves him, content and relieved. His lips curve into a smile you can feel rather than see. His tail flicks once before curling up and around the both of you, loose at first then tightening securely.
You lie like that in the quiet, breath syncing with breath, heartbeats slowly finding the same rhythm. The world outside the marui fades. The doubts quiet. The war, the plans, the future you had imagined softens like a dream.
Minutes pass. Maybe more.
Sleep, it seems, comes easily after all—once your body finds his.
Forced into leadership by a dying clan, you discover a perverse comfort in the fire that had always defined your people's destruction, unknowingly walking the path paved with the bones of the fallen savior you swore you would never become.
It has been years since Varang fell, since the Sky People fled with their metal birds screaming into the clouds. Time moved on, and in the space left by the clan’s matriarch, the decay of your home has only deepened. The old lands were still there—ash-streaked soil, the blackened stump of the Hometree, yurts of chopped wood crouched on barren ground, smoke clinging stubbornly to the air. But Varang had taken the fire with her when she died, the fury that once bound the Mangkwan together through anger alone.
And for a clan that thrived from violence, the power vacuum was filled with blood. From the chaos rose a cruel tradition: Tupe slu txepìva—“Who becomes ash.” Leadership was no longer inherited, nor earned. It became a sick play of luck where the only end was a temporary claim to the mantle, followed almost immediately by a violent death before they could draw their first breath as leader. The shortest-lived claimants fell in an hour, killed in the middle of their own victory feasts; the longest, barely two weeks, killed in the night while the village slept. Some died in raids, others in broad daylight right in the center of the village.
The constant infighting bled the clan dry. Raids failed again and again, undone by the ever-changing leadership. With the food running low, the people began to waste away. Where Varang had commanded strength in numbers, now only a skeleton of her people remained. Fewer hunters meant fewer kills. Fewer kills meant less sustenance. Less sustenance meant death.
You were far from innocent in all of this. You had assisted in some of the killings yourself, deciding that a self-proclaimed leader was too weak or too foolish—which, in truth, they mostly were. Yet even as the blood of your own people settled in your hands, you had never thought yourself fit to take the mantle. That conviction cracked when your mother fell ill.
Stolen herbs, the crude remedies scavenged in haste, did nothing. The rot had sunk too deep into her bones, likely nourished by the ash-choked soil and poisoned air that had become the Mangkwan home. And in your desperation, you brought up the almost laughable idea of moving and settling somewhere where the soil breathed life rather than death. The rainforests.
It wasn't as if the Mangkwan were strangers to conquest. Back then, taking land wasn’t just a necessity; it was an art form. They would find a place. It might be a verdant stretch of riverbank, a grove of sturdy trees, or a patch of hardy scrubland capable of feeding a hundred mouths. And the first thing they would do—the very first act of claiming their new territory—was to set it on fire. The Sky People, with their strange, cold tools and their terrifying machines, had taught your clan a kind of brutal efficiency. Under Varang’s iron gaze, the Mangkwan had learned how to strip an area bare and build something formidable.
Sovamun, the clan’s current leader, throws his head back, the sound of a barking rasp that echoes off the yurt’s smoke-stained walls. He is a mountain of a man. A jagged, fresh slash runs from his temple to his jaw, a souvenir from a raid three days ago. He sneers at you, his yellowed teeth bared in a mockery of a grin.
“Move?” he wheezes, phlegm rattling in his chest. “To the trees like the Omatikaya? Like soft prey?” He laughs again, louder this time. "You think I am a fool? You think the Mangkwan crawl on their bellies to eat berries?"
You stand across from him, arms loose at your sides. You don't feel the sting of insult; you just feel the dull, grinding annoyance of listening to a man drowning in his own ego while the clan suffocates outside. You wait for the noise to die down, watching him with the patience of someone watching a child throw a tantrum.
Sovamun wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and leans forward, his small eyes narrowing. "You think you know better than me?" He walks closer to you, forcing you to crane your neck to look at him. "If you want to make the big decisions... why don't you try to take my place? Kill me." He spreads his thick arms. "If you can."
You just meet his gaze, your voice flat and unimpressed. "Who will you lead then, Sovamun? If all of your people are dead?"
The smile vanishes instantly. He lunges forward, his massive hand shooting out to grab your jaw. His grip is iron, digging into your cheeks, forcing your head back until your neck strains. He leans in close, his hot, foul breath blowing over your face.
"I will lead my people the way I want," he growls, spittle flying onto your skin. "I will lead as long as I live."
But now? The iron was gone, leaving behind only their wreckage—and a clan that suddenly didn't know how to stand on its own two feet.
It was pathetic. It was a sickness far worse than your mother’s. Without the RDA and Varang providing the structure, the weapons, the framework for their cruelty, the Mangkwan had devolved. The hunters who once stood tall under the banner of conquest were now little more than scavengers, picking through the scraps of a dead world. You remembered hearing the humans speak during the occupation, their strange, clipped words floating over the barracks. They had a phrase for it, a sneer of dismissal: "pussies." They had used it to describe those who couldn't hold their ground, those who flinched at the first sign of trouble.
You think Sovamun is a pussy.
And it didn’t take long for Sovamun to fall. An arrow to the neck during the next raid. It was quick and brutal, as if karma itself had finally decided to do its job. But the truth was far more pathetic, it was nothing more than a panicked, mistimed shot from one of his own men. And yet, just like that, the throne of ash was vacant.
That was how Tuso rose to the top of the food chain, or perhaps straight to the bottom, because he was arguably worse at the job than Sovamun. You didn't even know the man’s name until the night after the raid. He didn’t confess with pride. He collapsed right by the fire, slobbering into the scorched ground, head bowed so low it almost scraped ash. He was terrified, eyes wide with the realization that he had killed the Olo'eyktan by accident, expecting to be executed for his incompetence.
The clan celebrated him anyway. The delirium of Tupe slu txepìva had warped their minds so thoroughly that they treated this blunder as a miracle. They cheered like a swarm of kenten stirred into a frenzy, spinning with excitement that this man—this clumsy follower who had spent his entire life tailing the smartest person in the room—had somehow snatched the title of leader.
You were certain he would not last the night. You half-expected it to happen right there, while the clan squandered the meager scraps of the recent raid to throw him a celebration. It would have been easy. A single arrow to the heart, quick and clean. Or slower, your hands in the base of his kuru, his face pushed into the fire where he circled and screeched like an idiot. You didn't think the guy could even overpower you; he was trembling so hard before that he looked like he might vibrate out of his own skin.
But you didn’t do it, and Tuso was still alive the next morning.
You watched him stumble through the morning duties, looking terrified that someone might ask him to make a decision. If he lived, then perhaps he could be used. A leader too weak to command was still a leader—one who could be steered without ever realizing his hands were no longer on the reins.
So you decided to try again.
The flap of Tuso’s yurt brushes against your shoulder as you step inside. He’s crouched near the fire pit, fiddling with a bunch of dry wood, shaving the ends too thin, looking every bit of the impostor he feels. He startles, nearly dropping the knife he’s using, but recovers quickly enough to offer a strained, welcoming smile.
"Come in," he says, gesturing to a pile of furs across from him. "Sit. Please."
You didn’t acknowledge the offer and remained standing, your gaze sweeping over him. He looks pitiful in his attempt of authority. His clan markings are a mess of red paint, charcoal, and ash smeared across his forehead and cheeks, intended to look fearsome but currently appearing more like a child’s poor imitation of war paint. He tries to straighten his posture, pulling his shoulders back to appear larger, but he still looks like a scavenger playing dress-up in a dead warrior’s gear. Which, in truth, he is.
Realizing you aren't moving, Tuso drops his hand, the awkwardness shifting into a tense, defensive scowl. He crosses his arms, the leather of his chest covering creaking softly.
"You look ridiculous," you say, taking a step closer.
Tuso’s jaw tightens, the grey stripe running down his chin scrunching up. "What do you want?"
“Here is the truth, since you seem to be struggling to grasp it,” you say, “The people are starving. Dying. No amount of raids could keep the mouths here fed. We need to leave this cursed, barren land—pack the clan, and move closer to the rainforests. We settle there. The resources there would feed all your people for many seasons.”
Tuso blinks, his brow furrowing deeply. He looks confused, his tail twitching behind him as he tries to process the logistics. "Move to the rainforests?" He shakes his head, his voice rising with genuine confusion rather than malice. "That is Omatikaya territory. We have tried to kill their people, remember? And the people—my people. They will not follow an order to climb into the trees. Not without blood."
Your patience evaporates. You lunge forward, crossing the small space in a single stride. Tuso tenses, his hand flying to the knife he discarded. He barely has time to pull it out before you’re on him, fingers fisting his armor, slamming him back against the yurt’s wooden stake. The impact rattles the chain of animal bones hanging from the beams. You slam your forearm across his throat, pinning him, and with your free hand, you draw your own knife.
You hover the tip directly over his right eye. Tuso freezes, his breath hitching, his pupils dilating as he stares cross-eyed at the deadly point.
"Listen to me," you say, your voice a low growl. "You will do as I say. You will order the move. If you don't, I will carve this eye out of your skull. I'll leave you half-blind and screaming.”
Tuso glares at you, his chest heaving against your arm. The fear is there, but so is a sudden, sharp flare of anger. He bares his teeth, his fangs glinting in the dim light.
"Why don't you just kill me now?" he spits, the words straining against your forearm. "If you want to lead, take the mantle. Cut my throat and be done with it."
You let out a short, cold laugh. "And get myself killed? I am no idiot. The moment I kill you, three others will put a knife in my back before your body hits the floor. I have no desire to be the next ash."
He grits his teeth, his muscles coiled tight, still searching for a way out that doesn't end in him leading a migration or dying on this floor. He doesn't trust your word.
"I will protect you, Tuso," you say, your voice dropping, smoothing into something almost kind. "As long as you go through with this, I will be your shadow. No one touches you."
Tuso scoffs weakly, though he doesn't dare move his head. "How can you make sure of that? You are one hunter."
You look at him as if he is simple-minded, tilting your head slightly. "Do you really think I couldn't have killed Sovamun? Or all the others that also took the role you’re playing now?" You pause, letting the weight of it settle. “If I wanted the mantle, I would have taken it years ago. I didn't, because every leader stands with one foot already in the ashes. I want to live, Tuso. I’m sure the rest of the clan wants that as well. And the only way we do that is if you stand in front and give the orders, and I stand behind you to make sure nobody disobeys them. Now, do we understand each other?"
The order was given, but obedience has long been a foreign concept to the Mangkwan. For a people whose entire history was carved in the theft of land, lives, and resources, the irony of their refusal was bitter enough to choke on. You watched from the outskirts of the camp, arms crossed over your chest, as the clan erupted into a cacophony of snarls and disbelief. To you, the logic was undeniable, a bright, clean line drawn through the chaos of their lives: the rainforests meant water, meant meat, meant breath. But to them, it was a surrender.
They were people obsessed with gain, with hoarding, with the act of seizing, yet when presented with the ultimate prize—a land that could single-handedly arrest their slow march into extinction—they shrank from it as if it were poisoned.
Tuso was useless, of course. He stood near the center of the chaos, looking like a prey animal caught in a trap, his eyes darting nervously as his people glared at him. He lacked the presence to command, the venom to bite back their insolence. Every time a warrior spat on the ground near his feet, muttering about "tree-huggers" and "cowardice," you saw Tuso flinch, his hand hovering over his knife but never daring to draw it. He was a figurehead, a hollow shell, and every glance he shot your way was a silent plea for salvation.
You didn't have time to coddle him. The sun was climbing, burning with a heat that the sparse canopy of dead saplings couldn't block, and with every passing hour, the rhythmic rattle of your mother’s breathing back in the sick yurt grew louder in your ears. You had to get her to the rainforests.
Your mother lay on a pile of furs near the wall, her body curled in a way that suggested she was trying to occupy as little space as possible. Her breathing was a wet, rattling sound that seemed too loud in the small space.
You sat by the pot, stirring the stew with a rough wooden spoon. The rhythm was aggressive, the clatter of wood against ceramic echoing sharply every time the spoon hit the side. You weren't just mixing the broth; you were trying to beat the frustration out of it, your movements jerky and filled with a tension that made your shoulders ache.
Behind you, the furs rustled. You glanced over your shoulder to see your mother pushing herself up, her trembling arms struggling to lock under her weight.
"Sit down," you snapped, the harshness of your voice surprising even you. "This is almost done. Just lay there."
She ignored you, as she often did when it came to her own dignity. With a grimace of effort, she managed to prop herself up against the wooden struts of the yurt wall. The movement triggered a fit of coughing, a deep, chest-rattling hack that seemed to shake her fragile frame apart. She wheezed, hand pressed to her chest, her skin looking paler and thin under the dim firelight, stretched tight over prominent ribs.
When she finally caught her breath, she looked at you, her eyes glassy but knowing. She watched you stir the pot for a moment longer, taking in the tight set of your jaw and the way your tail lashed angrily against the dirt floor.
"What is wrong?" she rasped.
You didn't look at her, keeping your eyes fixed on the boiling liquid. "It’s them. The clan."
"They are... stubborn," she said lightly.
"Extremely so," You slammed the spoon down a little harder than necessary. "It’s not even stubbornness anymore, it’s stupidity. The ash must have clumped up in their brains, rotting out the memories of who we are." You picked up the spoon again, scraping the bottom of the pot. "That is what Mangkwans do. We go somewhere unknown, and we make it ours. We burn it out of the trees. That is the legacy. And now? Now they are scared to do it."
You turned to look at her, gesturing vaguely toward the village outside with a toss of your hand. "Why? Just because Varang is gone? They look like frauds standing out there, clutching their bows like children, afraid to take a step without their mother holding their hands. It’s frustrating."
You waited for her to nod, to agree with your assessment of their weakness. Instead, a low, wheezing sound escaped her throat. It started small, a vibration in her chest, and then grew into a quiet, rhythmic chuckle.
You frowned, the irritation flaring hot in your chest. "You laugh?"
"I am not laughing at them," she said, though the mirth didn't leave her eyes. "I am laughing at you."
"Why?"
"Because you sound just like her," she said softly.
You recoiled slightly, your nose wrinkling in an instinctive cringe.
"Varang would be proud of you," your mother continued, her voice drifting into a nostalgic hum. "The way you speak of taking, of owning... that fire she had. It is in you."
You looked away from her, staring back into the pot. You didn't want to hear it. You didn't want to be compared to the woman whose eyes were painted on every drum, whose name was shouted before every raid. You had followed her, yes. Everyone had. When you were younger, you believed she knew the way, that she was the shield against the world. But there was a detachment in you, a hollow space where that fervor should have been.
You reasoned it was because you had missed the defining moment. You never really got to experience the fire that fell on their home, the catastrophe that Varang wove into every story told during celebrations. You hadn't smelled the burning flesh of the Hometree or felt the sky scream. You only knew the aftermath—the grey, the ash, the endless stories of how Eywa had abandoned the Mangkwan, and so the Mangkwan must turn their backs to Her. It felt like history you were forced to inherit, not a wound you carried yourself.
"It doesn't matter," you muttered, ignoring the twist in your gut. "She's dead. And they are acting like idiots."
You pulled the pot from the fire and ladled the hot stew into a wooden bowl. The steam rose up, smelling of roots and broth, masking the scent of sickness that clung to the furs. You stood up and walked over to her, crouching down to hand her the bowl.
"Here," you said, your voice dropping, losing its sharp edge. "Eat."
She took the bowl with both hands, the warmth seeping into her pale fingers. She looked down at the food, her expression unreadable in the flickering light.
"I don't want you to die," you said quietly.
She didn't answer immediately. She took a slow sip of the broth, her eyes closing briefly as the heat hit her stomach. A long silence stretched out between you, filled only by the pop of the embers. Then, she opened her eyes and looked at you with a gaze that seemed to see right through the anger you wore like armor.
"Then let them know," she said softly, blowing on the steam. "That you will always get what you want, dear. One way or another."
It didn’t take long for the clan to notice your deal with Tuso. In the history of Tupe slu txepìva, Tuso should have been a corpse three times over by now. As the days dragged on and he continued to breathe—albeit nervously—the whispers began to coil around the campfires like smoke. They noticed how he parroted decisions he was too stupid to conceive, how he moved through the village with a new, terrified confidence, always looking over his shoulder as if checking for a safety net.
They cornered you one night near the central fire. You were sitting on the ground, a knife in your hand as you dragged it rhythmically along the edge of your arrow. You felt their presence before you saw it, a shadow falling over your work, blocking out the light. You didn't look up immediately. You just kept sharpening the wood.
"How is he still breathing?" a voice asked from your left. It was Rokk, a hunter with a jagged scar running through his chest. He sounded genuinely baffled. "We are nearing the third week. That idiot has beaten the record. It’s unnatural."
You said nothing. You just tested the edge of the arrow with your thumb, watching a thin line of welling red blood. The silence stretched, heavy and taunting.
"Hey," Rokk said, stepping closer, his foot kicking dust onto your shin. "You deaf? I'm talking to you. We’re asking how the trembling coward is still drawing breath."
You stopped sharpening. You lifted your head slowly, staring up at him through your lashes, your expression flat and unimpressed. "Maybe he's just lucky," you said, your voice dripping with a boredom you didn't feel. “Or maybe you’re even weaker than he is since none of you could kill him.”
Rokk bristled, his lip curling. "Watch your mouth, little one. You don't get to speak to us like that. Your fangs are barely even there. Don't think your weapon makes you a warrior."
A few of the others chuckled, low and mean. They drew confidence from the hierarchy of age, assuming your youth was synonymous with incompetence.
"Like you’re any better," you replied, standing up slowly. You didn't back away; you stepped into his space, forcing him to look down at you. "If you were half as good at hunting as you are at gossiping, we wouldn't be eating scraps of animal skin for dinner. You complain about Tuso, but at least he's still moving. You lot just sit around and gather dust."
The smile vanished from Rokk’s face. "You think you're tough?"
"I think you're loud," you countered smoothly. "And loud usually means you're trying to hide the fact that you're useless."
"We know what you're doing," a new voice cut in. It was Vura, a woman with a build like a tree, standing with her arms crossed near the firelight. Her eyes were narrow, calculating. "We aren't stupid. You and Tuso. You're the one whispering in his ear. You're the one who wants to run to the trees like a frightened child."
The mood shifted instantly from mockery to hostility. The air around the fire crackled with tension.
"So what if I am?" you challenged, not bothering to deny it. "Someone has to make the decisions, since clearly none of you can."
Vura’s eyes hardened. She stepped forward, nodding sharply at two of the larger men flanking her. "Grab her."
They moved faster than you expected. One lunged for your arm while the other slammed a shoulder into your midsection, knocking the wind out of you. You struggled, clawing at their skin, but they forced you down, driving your knees into the hard-packed ground. Vura stepped in front of you, seizing your queue—your kuru—in a tight, painful grip. She yanked your head back, baring your throat to the firelight.
"Since you want to act like a leader," she growled, her face inches from yours, her breath hot and smelling of raw meat. "Then let's end you like one. In a way that Varang likes.”
Panic flared hot in your chest, but it was cold, controlled panic. Your knife was gone, kicked away in the scuffle, but your hands were free. You were close to the fire pit. The embers glowed invitingly, dangerous and hot.
With a sharp, violent twist of your torso, you wrenched your head free from her grip, ignoring the stinging burn as strands of your hair tore loose. Before they could recover, you lunged sideways, your fingers brushing the edge of the fire pit. You grabbed a thick branch, the end of it blazing with roaring orange flame.
The pain was immediate and blinding. The heat seared your palm, flesh sizzling, but you didn't let go. You used the momentum to swing upward, driving the burning end of the branch directly into Vura’s face.
She screamed, a high, raw sound as the fire met her skin, stumbling backward and clawing at her eyes. You didn't stop. You scrambled to your feet, the branch still alight, and drove it hard into the chest of the man on your left, shoving him backward until he tripped over a log and fell into the dirt, clutching at the smoldering embers on his chest.
The third one hesitated, his wide eyes flicking between you and his screaming companions. In that second of hesitation, you scrambled for your bow, snatching it up from where it leaned against the log. You nocked an arrow in a blur of motion and spun around, drawing the string tight.
You aimed the arrow directly at Vura, who was staggering back to her feet, her face smeared with soot and burn, her eyes streaming with tears. She snarled, fumbling for her own bow, and in a heartbeat, she had an arrow nocked and pointed right back at you.
The distance was negligible. Ten feet, maybe less. At this range, a release from either of you meant the other died. It was a stalemate of death.
You didn't lower your weapon. The burn on your hand was agony, a throbbing, white-hot pulse that made you want to scream, but you held the draw with steady, merciless precision. You stared into her one good eye, your expression flat, void of fear.
"Go ahead," you said, your voice steady despite the racing of your heart. "Let’s see if you can aim through the tears.”
Vura’s breath hitched. Her hand shook on the string. She was a brute, used to bullying the weak, used to overpowering those who couldn't fight back. She wasn't used to someone who would stare down the arrow and not blink. She looked at you, really looked at you, and saw something that terrified her more than death: the certainty that you didn't care if you lived, as long as you took her with you.
Slowly, she lowered her bow.
The tension snapped, but you didn't relax. You kept the string drawn but pointed the arrow down, your gaze sweeping over the others who stood watching, their whistling and jeering dead silent now. You scoffed, the sound cruel and dismissive.
"If you're too much of a weakling to conquer the lands of the forest people, then you might as well grant yourself an early death," you announced, your voice carrying over the crackle of the fire. “Lesser mouths to feed.”
The secret was out, and with it, the fragile illusion of safety that had kept you alive in the village evaporated. You walked among the yurts with your hand constantly hovering near your knife, expecting a knife in the back or a rock to the skull at every turn. Yet, the blows never came. It seemed that after the display by the fire, the clan had decided to wait and see.
But more surprising than the lack of retaliation was the shift in their resolve. The words you had spat at them had festered. Maybe it was the shame of being challenged by someone younger, or maybe it was simply that they were tired of starving. Whatever the reason, the snarling resistance began to dull into a grim acceptance. When the next raid was discussed, the plan wasn't just to take meat or scraps of tools. It was to take territory.
You had led them to the place you had scouted in your head, a spot etched into your memory from countless travels deeper into the forest. It was south of what you knew to be Omatikaya territory, past the winding expanse of the Long River. It was a calculated gamble. It was far enough from any Hometree that you wouldn’t trigger an immediate, all-out war, but close enough to bleed their resources. The water there was clear, the canopy thick and filled with life. It was a strategic foothold, a place where the Mangkwan could hole up, regroup, and—most importantly—where your mother could breathe air that didn't taste of death.
You knew it wasn't a permanent fix. If the forest clans realized you were squatting on their doorstep, they would group up. They would bully you out, hunt you down like the vermin they considered you to be. But that was a problem for the future. For now, it was a patch of green in a grey world. If you had to run, you would run. Endless running was the destiny of the outcast anyway, and the Mangkwan had certainly made themselves the pariahs of the Na'vi. To be driven out again was just another day in the cycle.
When the hunting party finally breached the canopy, the impact of the landing was immediate. Old habits died hard. Before the packs were even unloaded, the tradition asserted itself. It was instinctual, carved into the bones of the clan. An arrow was set alight, and let loose.
It wasn't a massive blaze, just a controlled burn to clear the immediate underbrush and flatten the ground for the yurts. You were the one who wanted to preserve the canopy, to save their lives from their own stupidity. Yet, as you watched the flames lick at the vibrant green ferns, turning them black and curling, you felt an unsettling sense of relief. The scent of burning sap felt like homecoming. It was a sickness inherited in the blood, a phantom craving for the chaos that had defined your people, warring with the part of your brain that knew better.
Burning it felt like branding the flesh of the world. Of Eywa. It was a preemptive strike against the weak Mother, a violent comfort in the knowledge that if ruin was to come, you’d have done it first.
The ambush came in the dead of night, swift and merciless. One moment you were kicking dirt over a dying ember, and the next, the camp was swarmed. They moved like ghosts in the dark, efficient and terrifyingly silent. There was no grand battle, only the sudden, crushing grip of foreign hands and the sharp press of wood against your throat.
You hissed as a warrior wrenched your arms behind your back, binding your wrists tightly with rough fiber. They shoved you down, driving you to your knees in the center of the half-finished clearing. Around you, the clan was in the same state—a circle of defeated captives kneeling in the dirt. You scanned the faces, your heart hammering a frantic rhythm against your ribs. This was a disaster.
You told Tuso it was too early for a damn celebration; none of the yurts were even fully built. The ground was barely cleared. But the stupidity of your people knew no bounds. They had gotten high. Too many of them were swatting at invisible insects or giggling at the darkness, completely oblivious to the danger that had dropped from the canopy.
There was no fighting your way out of this. You were outnumbered, outmaneuvered, and most of your brethren were drooling on themselves. A dark, grim part of you was actually glad they had attacked now. If the rest of the clan had migrated, if the elders and the young had been here, the Mangkwan would have been erased tonight. This was a mercy, in a twisted way.
As you knelt in the dirt, forced to look up at the circling enemy, your mind raced. Only the Omatikaya was known to be this efficient. The elders used to whisper stories about them with a mix of hatred and fear, describing them as ghosts who could move through the leaves without bending a branch. Seeing it firsthand was terrifying, but it sent a spike of adrenaline rushing through your veins that had nothing to do with fear. It was anticipation. A visceral, gnawing thrill at seeing something you’ve been wanting to see for a long time.
Then you saw him. Jake Sully.
He stood in the center of the clearing, barking orders in a voice that cracked like a whip. The Toruk Makto. The demon who rode the last shadow. It was like seeing a myth step out of the stories and into the firelight. Beside him stood another Na'vi, tall and broad, wearing more armor than the rest. You guessed immediately that this was Tarsem, the current Olo'eyktan.
Tarsem stepped forward, his face twisted in a sneer of pure disgust. He looked at your people—not as warriors, but as vermin.
"Why are you here?" he shouted, his voice echoing off the trees. "You bring your filth into our home? You think we will not cut your throats for this?"
From the line of captives, Tuso had chosen that moment to find his voice. You almost groaned aloud.
"We... we didn't mean it!" Tuso sobbed, his voice cracking so pathetically it made your skin crawl. He was blubbering, snot running down his face, tears streaming. "Please, Olo’eyktan! We are sorry! Have mercy! We were just passing through!"
Disgust clawed up your throat. It was humiliating. It was weak. And it was getting you exactly nowhere. Apologies were for equals; to the Omatikaya, you were invaders. A sorry meant nothing to an arrow.
The desperation inside you clawed at your throat. You didn't want to die here, in the dirt, listening to Tuso beg. You didn't want your mother to die alone in the ash because her child got herself executed for stupidity.
"Our people are dying," you said.
The words cut through the night air, silencing Tuso’s whining instantly.
The hisses and groans of your people and the orders of the Omaticaya went silent, all eyes shifting to you. The warrior holding your arm pulled you harshly, forcing you to kneel straighter, but you swallowed the groan that threatened to escape. Tarsem and Jake Sully’s eyes locked onto you, looking at the sudden interruption.
Admitting defeat was a betrayal of everything the Mangkwan stood for. You were born of the ash, forged in fire. You didn't surrender. But sticking to that belief now won’t keep you warm at night, and it won’t stop the knife from cutting your throat.
Tarsem stopped circling. His gaze, heavy with the weight of the forest, settled on you.
"Dying?" Tarsem repeated, his voice dripping with disdain. He gestured broadly at the charred clearing, at the half-burnt logs and the reckless fires still smoldering against the roots of the trees. "You come here with fire in your hands, burning our land, and you speak to me of death?"
In that moment, despite the adrenaline, you couldn't help but feel like a little girl. Your experiences, the raids you’d survived, the leadership you’d forced upon the clan—they were merely nothing compared to the centuries of tradition and power standing before you. They had fought the Sky People. They had received help from Eywa. You were just a scavenger from the ashes. The reality of your youth pressed down on you, making your bindings feel tighter. You were young, untested by their standards, yet here you were, playing a game of stakes you barely understood.
But the life of your people was in your hands. You remembered your mother’s words, raspy and weak as she sat in ragged furs: You will always get what you want. It was a lie told to a child to make her strong, but you needed it to be true now.
"Most of the Mangkwan are dead," you said, pitching your voice to carry, forcing it steady despite the hammering of your heart. "Most of us are gone, wiped out by sickness and starvation since Varang fell. We are less in numbers, weak, and scattered. We would be nothing against you.”
You paused, glancing at the line of captives around you. Some were beginning to wake from their haze, shaking their heads as the reality of the situation set in. You could hear the low rumble of protests starting to build. You knew what you were doing would get you killed—not just by the enemy, but by your own kin. But if the Omatikaya let you stay, the least they could do was thank you later.
"Let us stay," you continued, looking back at Tarsem. "We require only this side of the river. We will not bother you. We will not bother other clans."
Jake Sully stepped forward then. "Why should we let you stay?" His voice was rough, gravelly with the authority of a man who had burned worlds to save them. "We know your history. You tried to wipe us out. You flew with Quaritch. You hunted my family."
He didn't need to elaborate. You knew the history. The battle in the skies, Sky People, Mangkwan, the Sully family. You weren't part of that war, but you knew the weight of it. You knew the Mangkwan had allied with the humans to bring down the other clans. You had no right to complain if they refused you. They owed you nothing.
A bitter thought rose in your mind—they judged you for the war, yet they had cast your people aside long before the Sky People came. The Mangkwan had always been the outcasts, the rot beneath the roots, and the other clans were content to let you fester until you became a problem. They weren't clean; they were just the winners.
But this was your only chance. You had to make a deal so heavy, so absolute, that it would erase what the Mangkwan were. You had to kill the warrior to save the survivor.
"Because then the killing stops," you said. "Give us the bank opposite yours, and you will see none of us. No more war… no more fire.”
Your people were struggling now. Around you, the clan erupted. They wrestled against the tight hold of the Omatikaya warriors, screaming insults.
"Traitor!" one shouted.
"We do not bow to the weak children of weak mother!" another roared.
You ignored them. You kept your eyes locked on Jake Sully. It was a gamble. You were stripping your people of their identity, offering them a life of subservience they despised. But it was the only way to buy time.
Jake watched the chaos, then turned his gaze back to you. He looked at your young face, the defiance in your eyes, and the desperation underneath. He seemed to be weighing the truth of your words against the reality of your actions.
"Do you speak for the clan? Are you Olo’eykte?" he asked suddenly.
You held his gaze, feeling the lie form solid and heavy on your tongue.
“I am.”
author's note: my talent is releasing fics nobody asked for. no neteyam yet, but i'd like to know ur thoughts on this one!
𝜗ৎ a/n. why is physical touch the most popular part of ts... ik what u guys are... i just cant prove it...
𝜗ৎ tags. fluff, sfw, metkayina!reader
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It had been made obvious when Neteyam started courting you, despite being in a completely new environment, it didn't stop him from bringing you whatever he could conjure up (with care).
You found out, not with much investigation, that people of the Omatikaya clan loved giving gifts to their loved ones.
He had always been real sweet with words too- like fresh berries picked from the highest mountain fed into your mind every time you two were together. He compared your skin to the ocean's ripples, your wide eyes to the brightness of the sun- your smile akin to the moon's wavering reflection at night.
When did Neteyam magically become a poet? You'll never know.
But what you did know, is how his efforts in gifts often overwhelmed and accompanied his words.
Seashells woven through dried seaweed, dainty necklaces decorated with the sea's gifts and any other trinkets he found, would all be bundled up in a woven basket, lying in front of your marui pod the next day. Your friends would squeal and poke at you as they noticed the new flowers adorning your hair, coloured to match your complexion perfectly.
The soft curve of your hips would be adorned with beads that matched the ones in Neteyam's braids, both swaying with movement- moving as one.
He would never allow your arms to be bare- always decorated with something he found or made. You were certain the elders had grown sick of the time he spent in their marui pods- always eager to learn more weaving techniques. You would laugh at the way the elders leaned in closer when you two were together, gossip weaving through the clan.
He would randomly disappear from your sight, appearing with light scars littering his body in the bruised indigo of sunset spilling over the reef, shining jewels strapped safely to his ilu as he makes his way towards you.
-
"Only the best for you, yawne."
"The prettiest shells for my sevin. I tried to find something to accompany your beauty, I hope these will do."
"Do not worry about me, how do you like this?"
"I spent more time with the elders- here, let me help you put this on."
His slender fingers would lightly clasp the handmade piece over your neck, dappling over your top to create beautiful patterns. You adored his work over anything, yet the immense trouble he went through continuously stressed you.
"Neteyam! It's almost sundown, don't tell me you were past the reef." You berated him, lightly flicking his forehead. Neteyam only gave you a small smile, his face grimacing in exaggeration as if he was in pain. His tail flickered playfully behind him, his golden eyes crinkling at your worried self. He remained silent, only brushing your arms up and down before presenting you his gift.
An akula's tooth with dried seaweed weaved around, small seashells delicately adorning the edges- creating a beautiful necklace that reminded you of the reflection of the stars.
"It's... amazing, Neteyam- how did you get this?" You gasped, gently clutching it as your eyes gazed over the details. Neteyam's eyes glimmered with mischief as he reached to place it around your neck, flipping it around to reveal a clumsy 'N' engraved in the back.
He laughed and kissed your tears away as you were overwhelmed by his kindness and generosity, your joy flooding out from your eyes as you thought about the danger he was in.
-
Due to his reckless antics in pursuit of presents for you, his body would always be littered by scars- an akula's imprint on his arm, the branches scarring his back when he fell, or the red that seeped into the water when he ventured too far past the reef. But he would always come to you, body battered and bruised as you angrily dabbed various ointments and herbs on his wounds.
"You have to stop this Neteyam. I hate seeing you get hurt for my sake." You sighed, hand steadying his arm as you wrapped it.
"This is nothing. I would do anything for you." He replied, eyes focused on the way your pupils dilated in surprise and the way your ears flickered in affection. An indigo dusted your cheeks and embarrassment became obvious on your face as you took in his sudden words- hand slipping as you gathered your composure.
He laughed at your awkwardness to his response, a light sound echoing through the woven walls.
You treated Neteyam, and he treated you.
You were sure that one day, there would not be an inch of your body uncovered in fine clothing and handmade jewels.
CRIMSON TIDE WAS SOOOO GOOOOOOOD OMLLLL I was also looking EVERYWHERE for a fic like it but none ever quite hit the spot like yours did!!! So good!!! But also can you imagine the deepened conflict neytiri would face if smth like that had happened in the movie?? On one hand, they destroyed her home, but on the other a random human saved her baby!! Again I absolutely LOVED the fic!!! Many kisses to you author xoxo
TY AND YES I CAN IMAGINE IT 😭 neteyams death and how he could’ve & should’ve survived + the endless possibilities for his continued storyline lives rent free in my head UGH
hi hi!! I love your fanfics about Neteyam x reader and i was wondering if you could do a Neteyam x pregnant reader? Obvs if that’s okie with yew!! Thank yewww !! <3
tysm my girl 🫶 ahh I don’t have the time right now bc I’m still trying to finish my first fic and I’m such a slow writer but if I get to it I’ll 100% tag u 💗🙇🏻♀️ pls forgive me and tyy for requesting 🥹
only one fic and you ATE IT UP!! there’s not many great avatar fics but yours is one of the best i’ve read, even if it was short. i loveddd it, if you post a pt2 could you tag me please? :3
omg wow tysm what a compliment 🥹 I’ve been reading and writing fanfics since wattpad days in hs HAAHA 🙈 I’m so glad u enjoyed! I’ll absolutely tag u pookie! ily have a great day & week
