Blurred Fate - savior (part 1)
Pairing: Recom!Miles Quaritch x Mangkwan!Reader
Summary: You save a stranger that fell from the sky, but at what cost?
Wordcount: 2.5k
Warnings/tags: english is not my first language, description of blood, description of injuries, na'vi language, reader is a healer, mention of death, future smut, possible afaa spoilers ❗not proof read❗
[Part1] ★ [Part 2] ★ [Part 3]
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"Spider!"
That was the last thing Quaritch was able to call after his son, before he had to watch him dive into the waves with a heavy heart. One of his eyes was nearly swollen shut and his vision blurry, so he could only see so much of Spider until he was gone.
'He is not your son' General Ardmores words rang in his ears, adding to the burning sensation in his chest. Quaritch leaned heavily on his ikran with a pained croak, defeated, interlinking his kuru before sluggishly dragging himself up the saddle.
His Ikran felt the rattling of his breath, his weak state and his mind that was too delirious to even properly tell her where to go. After a few seconds of trying to sit on her back properly, he managed to get up into the sky, but it was jolty and he was barely holding onto the saddle to steady himself.
He coughed up more water, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, the salty taste mixing with the one of his blood. With every cough, the ache behind his ribs grew stronger.
He looked around himself, trying to locate where he was and which direction he needed to go. Right now, he was over what seemed like a forest. Not that he would know, everything was blurry and out of focus. He shook his head in frustration. He had to get back to Hell's Gate, that much was clear. Well, the clearest thing his head could muster at the moment.
Though, through everything and nothing that was swirling around in his head, Quaritch didn't notice how high he was flying, the air getting thinner and thinner the further he went, his lungs feeling like they were getting surpressed by his tactical vest.
He gasped for air, his ears pinned to his head in panic. He tried to pull at his vest, as if it would help him if he removed it, but his arms felt heavy like lead.
"Sweet girl, we gotta- we.." he wheezed, his head suddenly as dense as a dumbell.
The last thing he heard before his vision went frizzy and he passed out was his Ikran shrieking, almost as if trying to keep him awake, but it was no use.
He went slack on the back of his ikran, his arms falling to his sides, getting caught on his braid and ripping it away, causing the tsaheylu to break off. The sudden yank on his ikrans kuru made her scream and thrash around in the sky, completely loosing her balance and sense of orientation.
The poor thing panicked as her wings weren't able to grasp onto a strong gust of wind to steady herself again. The ground underneath both of them came closer by the second, a sea of lush green tree canopies hopefully feathering their fall...
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You stalked quietly through the forest, your eyes trained on every flower you came across. Varang had asked you to collect some plants since the clans medicine was starting to run out and she only trusted you with indentifying the right flowers and mushrooms.
So far, you hadn't been too lucky, though.
Your woven pouch wasn't even half full, just a few koaktutral stems you had managed to find, but not even enough for a spoon full of the antibiotic salve.
You knelt to pry another root from the ground, not much, but at least something.
You growled annoyed. How long had you been out here again? You had been gathering plants since the first light and you almost didn't find anything yet! Varang would probably put your head on a spike if you came back empty handed.
Most plants you came across so far had been either poisonous or completely rotten to the point you couldn't even safe the leaves for paint pigments.
Out of boredom, you cut through a few ferns in your way and let your fingers wander over some grass that had grown too tall. You took a deep breath, the air still smelling faintly of soot from the catastrophy that had happened years ago, but life crept back anyway, greenery stubbornly pushing through the ash.
You were glad that this part of the forest, which was still mankwan territory, started to grow back. But that also meant useful flowers were sparse and hard to find. You still remembered how it had been like, when everything was a lushious shade of green, smelling of fresh dew and sweet fruits. When your parents would take you on a walk through the forest, your father teaching you how to tell the plants apart that you could use to calm an upset tummy.
All that before you had to watch them get eaten alive by the scorching lava washing through your village, pulling everything and everyone into the flames.
You sighed softly, shaking your head to get the gruesome pictures out if your head. After another thirty minutes, you grew tired of searching further. You halted and looked down at your bag, scoffing at its meager contents.
You were just about to turn around when you spotted something purple out of the corner of your eyes. You turned around and couldn't believe it- three large dapophet plants just blooming behind the bark of a fallen tree. Their top leaves were long and thick and looked perfectly untouched, one of the biggest dapophet leaves you had ever seen! This was your lucky day!
With a skip in your step, you went over to collect the goods. Carefully, you cut away a few of the leaves on the top of the plant without opening them, so the juice inside wouldn’t go to waste. You sat on the mossy floor of the forest, happily humming to yourself. Then you took your bottle made out of a hollowed out direhorse bone that was secured on the satch around your hips, cut open the leaves and watched the sap drip slowly into your bottle.
Once your bottle was full, you packed the empty leaves into you woven bag. When dried, they were perfect for keeping firepits burning for a long time. You wrapped the other leaves you had harvested from the three plants into a soft cloth so they wouldn’t accidentally burst in your bag while transporting.
After you were done packing everything away carefully, you straightened back up and investigated the area around the flowers in hopes you'd find something else to put in your satch.
And to your surpise and awe, you actually found one single scorpion thistle hidden away between some bushes and branches near the dapophets.
You squealed like a little girl as you crouched down next to the rare flower, admiring its beautiful vibrant colours and touching its petals softly. This was your mothers favourite flower and in this moment, you wished she were here to collect it with you.
You were about to cut the stem for its sap when your heart nearly jumped out of your chest, your tail straightening in terror.
Something crashed through the canopy like thunder not too far away from you. Whatever it was, it shrieked, sounding like an ikran. That wasn't possible. An ikran? Here? They were never found in the forest, especially not alone. Unless...
You winced, your ears pinning to your head as you paced left to right, agitated. You knew better than to go and look after whatever it was that just fell from the sky, or who. And for a moment you contemplaited wether to just turn around and leave, so you wouldn’t get into trouble, especially because the only thing you had to defend yourself was a simple stone knife, but...
This was stupid.
So stupid.
Curiousity got the better of you and you slowly crouched in the moss, careful not to make any sound as you stalked towards the scene you heard the ikran shriek from, your knife always by your side.
As you were nestled between tall planes of grass, you saw a distressed ikran cooing to and nudging something on the ground.
You stood up taller to see what it was. Something blue laid on the forest floor, unmoving. Na'vi, you thought quickly, one of the omatikaya if his vibrant deep blue skin was anything to go by. This was the last bit of forest that was still part of mankwan territory, so what was he doing here?
After a few moments, he remained deathly still. Shit, what were you supposed to do? You could still flee, ignore what you saw and just never tell anyone. But...he already seemed kinda dead, it wouldn’t hurt to just take a look, right? Maybe see if he carried anything useful with him, he wouldn’t need it anyway if he in fact didn't survive the fall.
Slowly, as to not startle the ikran, you walked closer, crouching lowly. When you neared, the ikran gave a scream and puffed out her chest. You held up your empty hands, showing the animal that you weren't here to hurt her or her rider.
After you made sure the ikran wasn't about to behead you, you dropped to your knees next to the man, expecting a loincloth, locks adorned with feathers and beaded necklaces, but instead you were met with camouflage pants, a tactical vest and a weapon belt. And as if that wasn't already bad, he had five fingers.
A sky demon, maybe even one of those dreamwalkers you had heard about.
And he was in fact still alive, just passed out, you noticed his chest rise and fall. You gasped, looking him over for any signs that he might wake up. You were sure he'd kill you instantly and you had nothing to defend yourself besides your puny little knife.
You quickly went to scavange his weapons, heart pounding in your chest, but as you were about to fish his gun out of the holster around his hips, you touched something wet.
Your brows furrowed and then it suddenly stung in your nose- the fresh scent of blood. Pealing back his tank, there was a gaping wound in his side, probably caused by his fall, not counting the numerous cuts on his arms and face and his bruised eye.
Blood seeped into the dirt in a spreading, sickening pool. "Txan!" you exclaimed. This was bad. What were you supposed to do? Finish the job? Rob an injured person?
You couldn't just leave, could you? You could and you definitely should while you still had a chance. But if you left him like this, he'd die here, nothing to argue about that.
Why would you even care, it would be better that way! One less of these demons taking and destroying your planet.
But somehow, when you looked at his rested face, his ears twitching softly, your heart seemed to force you to stay. Something pulled you in. You couldn't move a muscle and time was running out. You looked around you, as if anyone was there to help you decide, before you hissed at yourself in frustration "What am I doing?" you asked yourself as your hands seemed to move on their own. You tried to remove his vest in one piece, but you had to cut it open in the end, as well as his tank since the garments got in the way.
The wound was ugly, you couldn't stitch it, but you hopefully could stop the bleeding. You took the wrapped up dapophet leaves out of your pouch, unwrapped them before carelessly snapping them in half to let the cloth soak up their sap.
In this moment, it felt like the cloth took forever to be saturated in the juice. The second you deemed it enough, you went to tightly bind it around his waist, though you quickly realised this didn't apply enough pressure, so you rummaged in your bag while your hands were shaking with nerves and the cries of his distressed ikran did only so little to keep you calm.
You found another bag thag you had packed in case you'd find so many roots and flowers you needed a second pouch to carry it all. You ripped the fabric apart with your bare hands and wrapped it around the gash, pulling it as tight as you could with all your might.
Why were you doing all this? Why did it feel like the worst case scenario if he didn't make it? You didn’t know, something just seemed to tell you he was important.
You examined his body for more severe injuries, luckily you didn't find any. His bones didn't seem to be broken, only his ribs were probably cracked, a deep purple bruise forming under his chest and you found small bleeding cuts that littered his arms. You treated the biggest cuts you saw with the dapophet sap, disinfecting the area and speading up the healing process.
Then you carefully straddled his waist, not putting much of your weight on it, and inspected his face. His eye was swollen shut, the other had a cut underneath. You reached back to your bottle of sap, rubbing the sticky juice between your fingertips before applying it to his face as well.
Quaritchs eyes began to open, just a sliver, his vision frizzy at the edges, cloudy and blurry. He could make out a figure above him, blue, and feel something cold on his skin. He desperately tried to see clearer, to understand what you were muttering under your breath, but it was like your voice was echoing from underwater, so far away and quiet. He felt your weight on him, almost comforting, if it wasn’t for the burning sensation that spread from his side over his abdomen.
He strained his ears to hear you, his hand trying to claw at his waist as if he could remove what was causing him pain, but his arm dropped limp shortly after.
You caught the slight movement of his fingers and heard him groan in pain and stopped touching him with a gasp, retreating a bit further down his body, afraid he'd snap up in a second. You searched his eyes, a piercing yellow colour, his eyebrows furrowed while he tried desperately to get a grip on himself and see who was helping him. But he was too delirious, fading in and out of conciousness, the bloodloss and pain making it hard for him to grasp onto his sanity.
You stared at his face, the way his dark blue stripes curved over his cheekbones, the deep snarl in his nose and how his ears were fluttering. It was impossible to look away, you couldn't describe the feeling in your chest as you watched him with curiousity and...pity.
Only when he managed to turn his head and look directly up at you did you jump off him. You quickly gathered your belongings and packed your bag to leave no trace of your existence. The last thing he saw was how your blurry figure slipped back into the trees in a hurry, looking back at him just a second as if to assure yourself he would make it on his own. Then you were gone- and darkness consumed him again like he was hit in the head by a baseball bat.
This was a mistake.
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i really hoped you liked this first chapter! I have never been good with multi chapter fics because I often just stop writing at one point, so I'll try to give this fic only a few chapters so I will actually finish it😭 please leave a like and comment so I know if this was interesting to read! Im going to bed now byee