bleeding red

general TW:

blood and violence (reader is an assassin affiliated with the fatui), deaths

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ONE /////// TWO /////// THREE /////// FOUR /////// FIVE

SIX /////// SEVEN /////// EIGHT /////// NINE /////// TEN

ELEVEN /////// TWELVE /////// ...

Other Platforms

ao3: blxxding_red /// wattpad: blxxding-red

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The glow of the monitoring screens bathed the room in a pale light. Dottore stood with his hands clasped behind his back, his posture relaxed as he stared at the primary console.

From the shadows near the doorway, a figure stepped forward, the soft rustle of heavy silk and the quiet clink of rings cutting through the low sounds of the machinery. Pantalone adjusted the dark lapels of his coat, a thin and mocking smile playing on his lips.

"And the Prince?" Pantalone asked, his voice smooth, carrying the weight of a man who measured the world in assets and liabilities.

"Definitely curious," Dottore chuckled, a soft, dry sound. "My scouts report he has spent the last two days reviewing the boundary reports. I am quite sure he is eager to figure out our motives."

Dottore turned from the monitors, a cruel and satisfied smile playing behind his mask.

"His birthday ball in Nod Krai will be the perfect stage," he continued, adjusting his gloves. "With the Prince so thoroughly distracted by all of the shining bachelorettes, our agents will have free rein to bypass the palace's inner security."

Pantalone did not join in the Doctor's amusement. He stepped closer, the lenses of his spectacles catching the pale blue glare of the monitors.

"Well, I would not underestimate the target," Pantalone noted, his tone light but pointed. "We are treating this kingdom like a minor variable, yet our scouts report anomalous energy readings near their borders— an undocumented power, I’d assume. If there is an asset hidden in their baseline, our little operational traps will burn to ash, along with my investment."

Dottore tilted his head, a quiet, mocking hum vibrating in his throat. He didn't dismiss the warning; if anything, the prospect seemed to genuinely delight him.

"Oh, I certainly hope so," Dottore murmured, his mask catching the blue light. "How dull it would be if they simply rolled over. If this sudden 'resurgence' has some real teeth left in it, let them burn the stage down. It would make the experiment infinitely more fascinating, don't you think?"

"And a ghost wearing a stolen title," Pantalone countered, his fingers tapping an impatient beat against his cane. "The foreign court calls him Prince, yet his name remains buried in our own archival ledgers. Kyryll Chudomirovich Flins. A remarkably youthful face for a name tied to old Snezhnayan nobility, let alone one that vanished for three blank years. The moment he stepped into the light seven years ago, he began handling foreign diplomacy with the exact statecraft of our own aristocracy. He didn't learn that in a wasteland, Dottore."

"He is an effective proxy, then," Dottore replied, his voice dropping into detachment. "A flawless piece of theater meant to keep us talking about borders and treaties as the real authority recovers from her... sudden departure from the Palace."

Pantalone’s eyes narrowed behind his spectacles. "The Damselette, yes. She has been back on Nod Krai soil for barely a month, and already the energy signatures are spiking. We let her power slip through our fingers, a power that is so absolute it cannot be easily replaced."

"A temporary displacement, indeed," Dottore sighed mockingly. "The natural order of this world is an insult to intellect, Pantalone. We are trapped by the limits of our birth, bound to whatever fragile parameters our bloodlines dictate. True power is left to the absolute whims of a cosmic lottery— reserved only for a rare species, an ancient lineage, or a statistical fluke."

He turned back to the flickering screens, his gloved fingers tracing a glowing data stream. "We are to use the ball to bypass the Prince's little theater entirely. I want the baseline data of that power while it settles. Once the mechanics are fully mapped, we will no longer be beholden to the lottery of birth— we will engineer a way to overcome the very limits of our bloodlines."

"See that you do," Pantalone murmured; he seemed to want to say more— but he held his tongue, gaze drifting across the peripheral displays. "Sandrone is already secure on the border sectors we've claimed from Nod Krai. But what of your little experiment with my old coworker? I noticed you did not fit her with a transmitter before she went out, as previously planned."

Dottore’s chuckle was quiet, intrigued.

"No, I have changed the hypothesis. Why ruin a perfectly good behavioral trial with a crude mechanical leash?" Dottore turned fully, gesturing with a gloved hand. "For years, she has known nothing but utility. So, I introduced a new variable. I treated her as an irreplaceable asset— offering her rest, validating her dedication. When a subject believes they are valued, their psychology shifts in the most amusing ways."

Dottore leaned slightly closer to Pantalone, his tone dripping with mocking amusement.

"She is currently acting out of a profound, desperate desire to protect the Fatui," Dottore noted, his tone entirely detached. "If she crosses paths with the Prince of her own accord, how will she react? Will she play the vulnerable, wounded bird as ordered, or will her training take hold? The sheer authenticity of her panic under those conditions is a variable we cannot wholly simulate."

Pantalone adjusted his glasses, a razor-thin smile returning to his face as he recalled the girl’s defensive posture from their past days in the lower cellars.

"I have watched her run your errands for four years, Dottore," He noted smoothly. "She is a creature of obedience. If you rot her discipline with your psychological meddling and she breaks under the Prince's insistence, you will have ruined one of the most reliable blades in your arsenal."

"Hm… You may look at her and see a tool with a fragile edge, Pantalone. Yet I see a subject who started with nothing," Dottore countered softly. "Like the rest of us, she was born bound to a baseline of human weakness. If she is ever to stand alongside us, a rigid, manufactured discipline is not enough. She must learn to forge a stronger mind entirely on her own."

He turned back to the primary console, the blue light catching the hard edge of his mask. "If this pressure forces her to grow, then she becomes something truly valuable. If she cracks and falls entirely to pieces... well, then she simply met her natural limit. The outcome is not in my hands, nor does it interest me. The true value lies in watching whether a mortal mind can rewrite its own boundaries when pushed to the absolute edge."

Pantalone let out a soft, humorless chuckle, the sound smooth but entirely devoid of warmth. "An expensive gamble. You may speak of potential and boundaries, but a broken blade is simply a deficit. I prefer my investments to remain intact, not shattered on the off-chance they might reform into something grander."

He adjusted his cuffs, his rings catching the terminal's glare one last time. "Let us hope she meets your expectations. Snezhnaya has enough fragile things; we have little use for another pile of discarded porcelain."

As Pantalone stepped away from the monitors, the heavy tension in his shoulders finally slackened, replaced by a familiar, restless craving. He reached into his breast pocket, pulling out a sleek, silver case. With elegant motions, he snapped it open, withdrew a dark cigarette, and struck a match.

The flame flared, illuminating the sharp, tired lines of his face before he inhaled deeply. A thick, sweet-and-bitter cloud of gray smoke bloomed between them, instantly filtering the clean scent of the laboratory.

Dottore didn't look up from his monitors, but a heavy sigh rattled in his chest. "Must you do that in here so shamelessly, Pantalone? I did not perform a flawless thoracic reconstruction and hand you a pair of better lungs just for you to line them with cheap tar."

Pantalone exhaled slowly, watching the smoke drift across the blue glow of the screens. His chest rose and fell smoothly— a perfect example of Dottore's own handiwork. A humorless smile touched the banker's lips.

"Consider it a quality assurance test, Doctor. Your craftsmanship is holding up beautifully." Pantalone tapped the ash onto the pristine metal floor, turned on his heel, and walked out, leaving the sweet scent to slowly dissolve into the dark.

Left alone, Dottore turned back to the screens, the pale blue light illuminating his mask. He stared at the empty, silent borderlands, a soft yet chilling laugh bubbling from his throat.

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The smell of burning cedar was the first thing that drifted through the fog.

She opened her eyes, immediately regretting the motion as a sharp, white-hot needle of pain drove straight through her left temple. She didn't move and mustered the last of her wits to let her training take over: Identify your surroundings, do not show signs of life just yet…

She was lying on a makeshift cot of dry pine boughs, insulated by a heavy, dark traveling cloak— his cloak. The air in the abandoned cabin was cold, but not freezing; a modest, carefully contained fire crackled in the ruined hearth, throwing long, amber shadows against the rotting timber. 

Still, she shivered.

Outside, the wind had risen to a howling roar. The storm had fully descended, plastering the windowpanes with sheets of white ice. 

"Ah. You're awake."

Damn it all.

The Prince was sitting on a three-legged stool near the hearth, peeling a winter apple with a silver pocketknife. The rough peasant’s coat was gone, leaving him in a high-collared, dark tunic that fit his shoulders perfectly. He looked entirely, annoyingly at ease, his posture possessing a quiet grace that didn't belong in a drafty, abandoned cabin.

"Don't sit up too quickly, Little Star," he added, not looking up from his task. "The timber of that doorframe was quite unforgiving, and you managed to hit it with an impressive amount of velocity."

She stared at the back of his head for a long second, letting out a faint, silent breath through her nose.

Well. That settled that.

The small, foolish part of her brain, the part that had tried to give him the benefit of the doubt just because he’d been polite, attentive, and soft-spoken, quietly packed its bags and left. She had known from the second he crossed her path that he was playing her, but his harmless, pleasant demeanor had made it entirely too easy to stay in denial.

Now, hearing that name fall so effortlessly from his lips, she couldn't even pretend anymore. He’d known exactly who— and what— she was from the very start.

The absolute nerve on this man.

For her sake, she ignored him and that pesky little nickname, bracing her palm against the floorboards to push herself up. The cabin tilted violently, the rafters performing a sickening loop. She let out a sharp, involuntary hiss, her hand flying to her temple. A clean linen bandage had been wrapped snugly around her head, smelling faintly of a cooling, herbal salve.

The Prince set the apple and the knife down on a clean cloth. He stood, his steps making barely a sound on the creaking floorboards, and approached her.

"I believe I specifically recommended not doing that," he said softly, kneeling beside her at a respectable distance.

"Well, I don't take recommendations from trespassers," she muttered, her voice raspy and dry. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to force her equilibrium to steady. "Where is my..."

"Your blade is on the table by the door. Entirely out of your reach, unless you plan on crawling there," he said smoothly, crossing his arms. He looked down at her with a mix of mild amusement and concern. "And I was hardly trespassing. Let us say that I was merely conducting a sovereign inspection of a joint trade sector when an overzealous shadow violently tackled me.”

Not again…

"A joint trade sector," she repeated, her tone flat. "In a peasant’s disguise and miles past your own area of the border. Do you think I lack common sense?"

The Prince chuckled gently. "Hardly, no. I would even say you are quite brilliant, which makes your current state of dishevelment all the more fascinating." He leaned a hip against the edge of a sturdy wooden table nearby, looking down at her. "Tell me... do the Fatui always run their assets so thoroughly ragged, or did you simply decide to starve yourself for the aesthetic?"

She stared at him, her brows furrowing beneath the bandage. Brilliant? They ran me ragged? The sheer audacity of the question made her want to laugh, or perhaps throw something at his perfectly composed face. Was he actually trying to gaslight her? After she had chased him through the snow on thirty-six hours of no sleep, he was talking to her as if she were a victim of poor scheduling.

"I am fine," she said, her voice dropping into a rigid, defensive register. "My duties require... discipline."

"Discipline is a polite word for exhaustion," the Prince gently suggested. He picked up a tin cup of hot water from the hearth, dropping a few dried leaves into it, and walked back over. He knelt beside the low cot, offering the cup to her. "Drink, it's only pine needle tea. It will help with the nausea."

She didn't reach for the cup in defiance. She stared at his hand— at the tight wrap of his leather glove on his lithe hand, the subtle, expensive silver rings on his finger.

The silence stretched, cold and heavy, until the pounding in her head reached a crescendo. The room tilted again, a sickening lurch that made her vision blur. Gritting her teeth, she was forced to give in, slowly letting her upper body sink back onto the rough pine boughs of the cot.

As she lay back, she pulled the heavy dark coat tighter around her shoulders to shield herself from the draft. Her fingers brushed the smooth silk of the lining. It was his usual coat— the expensive, tailored one he’d worn under the rough peasant’s garb.

A stray, bitter thought crossed her mind. Layering a highly refined, recognizable uniform beneath a peasant disguise... 

Did he get that idea from me? It was practically her own signature method.

Her hand slid deeper into the wide inner pocket of the coat, searching for anything she could use. Her fingers hit a small, textured scrap of fabric. She pulled it out just enough to glimpse it in the dim firelight.

It was a torn piece of soot-stained dark cloth. The exact fragment ripped from her disguise at the docks two nights ago.

Her jaw slackened in sheer disbelief. He was carrying a piece of her ruined clothes in his inner pocket. He truly is a freak, she thought, shoving the fabric back into the dark recess of the coat.

A quiet, agonizing hour bled by. She didn't sleep, but she kept her eyes closed, listening to the crackle of the wood and the rising howl of the wind outside.

During the quiet, the Prince didn't stay still. He spent the time wandering the perimeter of the small cabin, his soft steps tracing the perimeter of the rotting floorboards. He rummaged through the dusty, collapsed wooden shelves in the corner, his gloved fingers occasionally clinking against old iron and glass.

"The late owner of this cabin was quite the hoarder," the Prince's voice broke the silence, conversational and light, as if they were sitting in a parlor rather than a collapsing shelter. He held up a handful of heavy, oxidized coins, letting them clink together. "These are fascinating. They aren't Snezhnayan, nor do they belong to Nod Krai. They're old traveler's currency from the eastern seas. The man was likely an adventurer. Or a smuggler who retired to the quietest corner of the map."

She opened her eyes, staring blankly at the ceiling. He needs to still his tongue, she thought. The constant, unfortunately (for her) calming cadence of his voice was doing terrible things to her focus.

He set the coins down on the table, picking up the apple he had peeled earlier. He walked over and offered it to her. "You need the sugar. Take it."

She hesitated, her fingers cold as she reached out and took the apple from his hand. She held it, feeling the damp, cool flesh of the fruit, but she didn't take a bite. She watched him closely. He hadn't touched a single slice. He hadn't eaten a thing since she woke. 

Why isn't he eating?

Dottore’s voice echoed in the recesses of her mind, sharp and demanding. Act vulnerable. For a few days, back when she was just a quiet shadow navigating the edges of his vision, looking fragile had been easy. But being caught in this frozen cabin, her head splitting, her body exhausted, and her chest tight with a hot, defensive anger— had her unsure about how to play the part. 

True vulnerability was terrifying; acting it felt like choking on glass.

"Why are you here?" she asked quietly, her eyes locking onto his. "And don't give me the diplomatic script. Why are you really here, at the palace?"

The Prince stood beside the cot, his posture radiating an infuriating grace. He seemed to consider his answer before deciding that whatever he was about to say was something he wasn't hiding. "A prince has a duty to keep his citizens safe, and Snezhnaya is expanding. Your organization is moving pieces across the board, shifting markers in the dark, and I prefer to see the terrain with my own eyes. My people are not bargaining chips for the Tsaritsa's play." 

He looked down at her, his eyes unreadable. "But what of you? Why run yourself to the point of collapse for those that view you as an expendable shadow? Is a lifetime of blood and cold iron really the only thing you want?"

The question poked brutally at the very foundation of her existence. She opened her mouth to snap a sharp, biting retort— something about duty, or her debt— but the words died in her throat. Her hesitation was painful, a physical drag in her chest.

Why was she loyal?

Was it really just because they had given her bread and a roof when she was a starving child in the snow? Did she actually want to spend her entire life killing in the dark? Or was there a buried, pathetic part of her that had looked at the grand, glittering ballrooms of Nod Krai, at the laughter and the warmth, and wanted to know what it felt like to live a life that didn't smell like sulfur and blood?

Deep down, she knew the answer.

But the silence stretched, and the cold reality settled back over her like a shroud. She was too far gone. Her hands were stained. Defecting now wouldn't magically wash her clean or give her a seat at the table of the living. A weapon could change hands, but it was still a weapon.

Her gaze dropped, her fingers tightening around the cold, unfinished apple. Her silence was louder than any defensive lie she could have spoken.

"My reasons are my own," she said finally, her voice flat, devoid of any warmth. "My loyalties are not a subject for your curiosity, Prince."

He didn't push and merely let out a soft, dry hum and reached into the inner pocket of his tunic. He pulled out a small, leather-bound book. The second volume of the deceased man’s journal— the one he had passed to her.

He held it out to her. "I believe you dropped this during our little chase. Though, I must confess... I was surprised to find you still had it. Especially after the note I left inside."

Her heart did a violent, sudden leap.

The memory of that paper burned in her mind. He had written that arrogant, soft reminder, and he knew she had kept it. A wave of intense agitation crashed over her. He thought he understood her, thought he was throwing her a lifeline, when in reality, she hadn't even requested the damn thing— she was under strict orders to secure it. Her own interest in the pages was entirely irrelevant.

"I didn't keep it because of your note, nor do you need to know why I still have it," she snapped, snatching the book from his hand, her fingers carefully avoiding any prolonged contact. "It was an assigned retrieval, and I follow my orders. Of course, you who have been tailing me for the past few days should know that."

The Prince didn't push and simply watched her, his expression unbothered as he slowly folded his silver pocketknife shut with a faint, clean click.

He leaned back against the hearth, resting his chin lightly on his knuckles. The faint glow of the fire caught the pale gold of his eyes, giving him a quiet, unhurried air— like a cat watching a bird exhaust itself against a cage. There was no mockery in his posture, yet he had that infuriating, gentle patience that made her skin prickle.

"Of course," he murmured, a quiet, knowing tilt to his lips that suggested he didn't believe a single word, but was far too polite to say it out loud. He sliced off a clean wedge of the apple and balanced it neatly on the flat edge of the blade, holding it out toward her. "Perish the thought that you might have a mind of your own."

She didn't take the bait. She forced her lungs to take a slow breath, letting the dull throb behind her eyes settle into a manageable pulse.

Careful.

She was on an assigned rest, yet here she was, trapped in a drafty cabin with the sovereign prince of Nod Krai after chasing him through the brush like a rabid hound. Playing the fragile, helpless victim now would be a laughable, obvious lie; he had seen her move, seen her stalk him.

But Dottore’s directive echoed in her mind: Play the vulnerable, wounded asset.

The only vulnerability she could muster now wasn't tears, and it certainly wasn't begging. To a man like the Prince, who wore statecraft like a second skin, forced weakness would look like an obvious trap. Not to mention, she would rather die than play a helpless lamb. If she wanted him to lower his guard, she had to give him a different kind of blood— something that looked like an involuntary confession. 

Perhaps… She had to give him personal truth to protect operational secrets.

"I don't need to eat," she said, keeping her voice distinctly unbothered. "And I certainly don't need a lecture on my autonomy from someone currently hiding in a ditch."

The Prince didn't look offended. If anything, the faint tilt of his lips deepened. He slowly wiped the blade clean against his sleeve, the firelight catching the pale gold of his eyes. "A rather well-appointed ditch," he noted mildly, gesturing with the flat of the knife toward the solid, stone-built hearth. "And the storm outside makes for a convenient host."

"In an unmapped sector past your own boundary markers?" She leaned her head back against the rough timber, letting a flicker of genuine, exhausted irritation slip into her tone. "You travel remarkably light for a Prince."

"One travels faster without a court trailing behind them," he replied smoothly, folding the pocketknife with a soft, metallic click. He leaned back against the hearth, resting his chin on his knuckles. "Though it seems no matter how far I walk, the palace always finds a way to send an escort."

There. 

He was opening the door, nudging her to defend her handlers or reveal why she was on his heels. Instead of taking the bait or spouting doctrine, she let out a short, quiet breath— a sound dangerously close to genuine fatigue. 

Because, in truth, it was fatigue. He was simply unfortunate enough to cross paths with her on one of her rare off-days after years of relentless service.

If anything, he had only himself to blame for her unusually sloppy performance.

"I must confess, I almost miss the girl who spoke so poetically of the sun," he added quietly before she could reply, his tone dripping with soft, royal cadence. "She was considerably warmer company."

Her heart gave a sharp, treacherous pang, losing her train of thought.

He was referring to her earlier facade— the sweet, wide-eyed performance she had put on when they first met, quoting poetic lines about living in the dirt while looking up at the sun. A line she had pulled straight from the foolish, buried part of her soul that used to dream of grand ballrooms, silk gowns, and dancing under crystal chandeliers instead of dripping with blood.

That was her real vulnerability: the pathetic, quiet wish that she had been born someone who could afford to be gentle.

And in that split second, she realized how to weaponize it.

If she tried to fight him with cold soldier's cynicism, he would just keep probing. But if she let him think he had caught her slipping, that her cynicism was just a shield for a tired girl, he would swallow the bait whole.

She leaned her head back against the rough timber.

"Poetry is a luxury for people who don't freeze to death, Your Highness," she murmured, letting her eyes half-close as if the physical toll of the chase was finally catching up to her. "Don't mistake my lack of decorum for malice."

It wasn't a complete admission of yearning, but the subtle, weary drop in her voice gave the Prince exactly what he wanted: the sense that beneath her barbed exterior was someone who had simply been hardened by the frost.

He quieted, and the light, teasing demeanor vanished. He seemed deep in thought.

"They never sent me for you, anyway," she added softly, letting the silence stretch just long enough to make it sound like an involuntary slip. "I was off-duty, and I was supposed to be resting."

It was the absolute truth, devoid of names or motives. Dottore had never actually dispatched her to track the Prince. He had merely ordered her to, in simpler words, rest and adapt— a vague, insidious directive that meant if she encountered the Prince, she was to let him draw close. Chasing him across the snow hadn't been an assignment, and it had been a disastrous, impulse-driven mistake born from seeing a high-value target wander into her line of sight on a moment her guard was down.

The Prince tilted his head in question softly. "Resting," he echoed, testing the weight of the word. "Is that what you call running through a blizzard on a cracked frame?"

"It’s what they call it," she replied softly, adding just enough cold bite to make it sound like a slip of resentment she hadn't meant to share.

It was also true.

To the Prince, that brief admission was probably a goldmine. He didn't see an ideological soldier spouting Fatui dogma and saw an overworked, physically broken agent reaching her limit under an unmerciful hierarchy.

As she expected, he didn't press for names nor did he ask what harbinger she had been assigned under. His noble instincts, the very decency she despised, immediately took over the interaction.

"Then you have miserable masters," the Prince said quietly, setting the small wooden plate with the neatly sliced apple on the crate beside her bed.

"They keep me alive," she sighed, keeping her defense weak on purpose— making it sound like the rationalization of someone who had nowhere else to turn. "Out there, gratitude doesn't buy you bread. However, purpose does."

She had not lied once, yet.

The Prince looked down at her, his expression carrying that troublesome, heavy stillness. "You mistake the cage for the roof, Little Star."

She didn't answer and simply stared at him through the dim firelight, letting the silence stretch between them until it felt like a defeat.

In her head, though, the gears were turning with all she could muster while nursing a concussion.

He thinks I'm drowning, she thought, watching him turn back toward the hearth to stoke the embers. He thinks if he pushes just enough, if he shows enough mercy, he can pull me out.

He was smart, noble, and deeply perceptive— but his greatest vulnerability was his belief that everyone wanted to be saved. And as long as he believed she was a tragic, exhausted creature bound by debt, he would keep offering her lifelines... right up until she used one to tie the knot around his wrist.

Suddenly, a violent shudder passed through the cabin.

The wind outside had risen to a deafening, physical force, slamming a wall of heavy ice and snow against the decaying timber. The door groaned, the wooden latch creaking under immense pressure. Through the cracks in the walls, fine, biting powder began to spray.

The Prince walked quickly to the door, pressing his gloved hand against the wood. "The drift has piled up," he said, his voice turning sharp. "The snow has entirely blocked the doorway. We are sealed in."

She forced herself up, her balance swaying slightly as she walked to the window. It was completely caked in solid ice. She looked up. The only clear opening was a small, narrow window high up near the ceiling, just below the rotting rafters.

They were completely trapped.

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Hours began to stretch, bleeding into a grueling, freezing night. The fire in the hearth dwindled, the wood burning down to ancient, glowing coals that cast long, dying shadows across the rotting timber. 

The temperature inside the cabin plummeted rapidly. She sat back down on the cot, pulling her knees tight against her chest, her body shivering in violent, uncontrollable spasms. Her head was pounding with a sickening rhythm, and the sheer lack of food and water was starting to take its toll; her limbs felt heavy, hollow, and carved from ice.

Across the dim room, the Prince watched her. He didn't offer another useless verbal comfort, and he stood up, his tall frame cutting through the gloom as he walked over to the cot with slow steps.

She felt the cot shift under his weight before she even registered his movement. When his gloved hands reached out, her instinct fired— a clumsy, defensive shove against his chest. But her knuckles barely grazed his tunic before he caught her wrists, ignoring her feeble resistance as he sat down on the very edge of the frame. Without a word, he gathered the heavy folds of his coat, which was still draped over her, and pulled her close, drawing her back against the steady, intense heat of his chest.

"Don't," she muttered, her voice trembling so violently the word barely carried.

"You are minutes from sliding into hypothermia," he said, his voice unyielding as his arms wrapped securely around her waist, anchoring her against him.

He’s warm.

She hated it, how terrifyingly safe she felt cocooned against his chest while the storm raged outside. Yet, if she was playing the exhausted, broken asset, if her angle was to give him genuine glimpses of her physical unraveling to protect operational secrets, then resisting his warmth now was counterproductive. 

No, accepting his shelter wasn't a surrender, and she was simply staying alive to finish the job.

Although she wasn't naive enough to miss the glaring, absurd intimacy of the picture they made. Two enemies, trapped in a snowbound cabin, pressed together in the dark. But soft confessions, secret rendezvous, and quiet affection weren't things she had ever experienced— they were things she had only ever watched from high, shadowed rafters, crouched in silence while a target waited for a secret lover to slip out the side door before she struck. 

As her cheek pressed against his shoulder, the throb behind her eyes began to dull, the lingering fog of her concussion finally clearing enough for logic to flood back in.

Dottore's directive.

She had been so consumed by physical exhaustion and the sheer absurdity of being trapped with the Prince that her operational focus had lagged. Dottore’s order to "rest and adapt" was a test— a loose leash designed to see if she could weaponize whatever circumstance she landed in.

She still had to plant the tracker. 

But how?

Her eyes scanned his silhouette in the gloom with all the stealth she could muster, careful not to make the movement obvious. He was fully clothed for the winter— a high, stiff collar met the very edge of his jaw, his throat was bound in a thick wool scarf, and heavy leather gloves covered his hands. 

Almost no skin was exposed. The only uncovered part of him was his face, but he was a sovereign trained in combat and statecraft; his reflexes were sharp. If she tried to brush her fingers against his cheek or his jaw to apply the necessary pressure, he would feel the physical contact instantly and catch her wrist before she could pull back. The risk of detection was absolute.

She weighed her options, the pressure in her chest tightening.

Then, the memory of Dottore’s voice echoed in her mind: The transmitter is sealed inside a pressure-sensitive outer membrane. It is entirely inert until that outer shell is physically ruptured. It will not dissolve or bond to you as long as the shell remains intact.

The realization was bitter— a desperate, absurd tactical leap. If she couldn't touch his skin with her hands, she would have to use her mouth. She would have to keep the tiny grain dry under her tongue, and then physically crush the membrane with her teeth at the exact moment of contact, forcing the active transmitter past his lips where it would bond to his internal lining. 

And hopefully, what would ensue would distract him enough to not notice it.

It was a last-ditch, high-stakes gamble, but it was the only path left.

What a sickening joke, she thought, her stomach twisting into a cold knot. People believe in fairytales where a prince's kiss brings salvation. They never consider using one as a trap.

She reached down, her hands shaking, and picked up the half-frozen tin cup of pine needle tea on the floor.

"Still stubborn, I see," the Prince murmured, his chin resting near her shoulder as he held her.

She didn't bother to answer and tilted her head away while slipping her hand into her inner pocket, luckily hidden by his coat, as if adjusting her seating position. She extracted the tiny, salt-grain capsule from its casing and hid it behind her fingers. She raised the cup to her lips, using the gesture to mask the movement as she slid the dry capsule into her mouth. She immediately tucked it beneath her tongue, pursing her lips to prevent the water from slipping in and keeping her mouth completely dry to prevent the protective membrane from breaking.

The storm outside began to lull, the howling wind dropping into a low, rumbling hum. The worst of the blizzard had passed.

This was her window.

"Do you think you can save me?" she whispered, turning her head so her face was mere inches from his. The proximity was dizzying, the intense heat radiating from him blurring her thoughts. Her pulse hammered against her throat, loud and frantic.

"I think that leaving an individual to die of hypothermia under my watch is slightly below me, or anyone, for that matter," he hummed, his voice a low murmur that rang against her ear. His eyes traced the line of her jaw, the intensity in his gaze holding her entirely frozen. He didn't move away; if anything, his grip on her waist tightened, a slow squeeze.

"My loyalty is already claimed," she forced out, her breath hitching against the heat of his neck. “You should have left me to rot in the snow.”

"If I wanted you dead, I wouldn't have bothered dragging you out of it," he hummed, his low voice brushing against her ear. "I’ve no desire to bury you. Not when you are so remarkably alive."

Her pulse gave a violent, treacherous leap.

For all her calculated and tactical framing, her composure faltered— just for a fraction of a second. She had spent the entire evening convincing herself that she was the puppeteer, that her softness was a weapon and her weakness a curated lie. 

But sitting in the dark, held against the broad, unyielding heat of his chest, the terrible truth pressed against her ribs: she wasn't acting as much as she pretended to be.

It terrified her. If she let herself sit in that warmth for even a moment longer without an operational objective to anchor her, she was going to drown in it.

Use it, she forced herself to think, dragging her cold, pragmatic logic back over her racing heart like a shroud. If he wants you alive, give him a reason to stay on your trail. Let him think he broke through.

She did not rush. She let both of their words hang between them in the cold air, watching the way his dark eyes narrowed slightly, absorbing her bitterness. She leaned in incrementally, letting the soft tips of her hair brush his cheek, feeling the heavy, steady rise and fall of his chest.

The Prince did not flinch, nor did he pull back. He simply went very still, his posture radiating a quiet, unblinking intensity. It was the calm of a man who knew he was looking at a blade, yet refused to avert his gaze.

She closed the remaining distance, letting her cold lips lightly touch his.

Warm.

It was an agonizingly slow brush of skin— a quiet test of his gravity. She lingered there, feeling the searing contrast of his breath against her freezing skin, waiting for the recoil, waiting for the prince to remember who she was.

He didn't move away. Instead, his gloved hand rose, the thick leather pressing firmly against the small of her back, dragging her body flush against his. He didn't gasp or show surprise; his touch became heavy and entirely consuming. He met the kiss with a quiet, devastating depth, accepting the contact as if he had been waiting for the trap to close all along.

The heat between them flared violently, a sudden, terrifying fire in the middle of the frozen cabin. What was supposed to be a precise maneuver spiraled into something thick and dizzying. His mouth parted hers with a low murmur, his grip on her waist tightening until there wasn't a breath of air left between them. Her mind spun, her senses overwhelmed by the smell of crushed pine and the faded scent of his expensive fragrance, the dark warmth of his breath, and the sheer, intoxicating gravity of how deeply he was kissing her back.

Now.

Beneath her tongue, she forced her spinning thoughts to focus, rolling the tiny crystalline capsule forward between her teeth.

She bit down.

A tiny, sharp crack echoed only in the bone of her jaw.

The shell shattered. The active tracking fluid flooded her mouth, tasteless and cold.

She didn't hesitate. She pressed deeper into him, tangling her fingers into the heavy wool of his scarf to pull him closer, parting his lips with a slow drag of her mouth. She swept the fluid across the seam of his lips and onto his tongue, ensuring the microscopic tracker made direct, undeniable contact with his mouth.

The Prince didn't pull back. If anything, the sudden, fierce intensity of her movement only made him press deeper, anchoring her against his chest as the kiss burned out of control.

Then, the reality of what she had done crashed over her with the force of a tidal wave.

The tracker was gone. The assignment was complete. But his hands were still on her spine, his mouth was still warm against hers, and for three horrifying seconds, she had just been a girl being held in the dark by a man who made the cold go away.

She had let her guard down against herself.

A sudden, suffocating panic took hold. The lines were completely destroyed. The cage felt too much like an embrace, and if she stayed here for one more minute, she would lose her grip entirely.

With a surge of pure, adrenaline-fueled strength, she tore her mouth away from his. She scrambled backward off the cot, her boots hitting the floorboards with a harsh thud as her chest heaved, gasping for the freezing air of the room to burn the lingering taste of him from her mouth.

"I have to go," she whispered, her breathing frantic, her hands shaking violently.

The Prince rose slowly from the cot. His usual diplomatic poise was entirely gone, replaced by a dangerous focus as he took a heavy step toward her. He didn't speak, but his eyes were wide, searching her face with a quiet, demanding gravity that made her heart ache with a physical, dull throb.

She couldn't look at him. If she looked at him, she would stall.

Her eyes swept the dim room, locking onto the table by the door where her stiletto lay. 

Yet she pulled herself back, leaving the weapon lying cold and silent on the dark wood. 

Let him keep it. 

Yes, let him hold the iron in his hand and wonder if the kiss was a weapon, an invitation, or a breakdown.

She grabbed the sturdy wooden ladder resting against the wall and slammed it against the high, narrow window near the ceiling.

She climbed with frantic, desperate speed, her boots slipping on the frozen rungs as her heart battered against her ribs like a trapped bird. She shattered the frosted glass of the window with her bare elbow, completely ignoring the sharp bites of the shards tearing through her skin, and dragged herself through the narrow opening.

She tumbled out into the blinding white night.

The freezing Snezhnayan wind hit her like a physical blow, stealing the breath right out of her lungs. It was agonizing. The cold was a heavy, sharp weight, biting into her open cuts and freezing the tears she hadn't realized were stinging her eyes.

Run, her mind screamed over the howl of the storm. Run before you turn around.

She plunged into the knee-deep drifts, running on borrowed time and pure terror. 

The prince wasn't the one who had trapped her; no, she had trapped herself. She had given him the tracker, but in doing so, she had left a piece of her own resolve lying on that dark wooden table beside her blade.

She ran through the biting whiteout, her vision swimming, her body screaming in protest. The memory of his mouth, his warmth, and the heavy weight of his hand against her spine burned like dry ice against her skin.

She ran until her legs finally gave out, her knees buckling as she tumbled over a frozen ridge and slid down into a small, shelter-blinded valley.

Through the driving snow and the spots dancing in her eyes, the faint, flickering amber lanterns of a quiet town appeared through the mist.

Nod Krai.

7230 words.

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send a message or an ask (with anon off, i wont post it) to be added to the taglist!

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first part is for world-building purposes! to be clear about the setting:

as stated in the first part with dottore and pantalone:

the powers we know as "visions" in the canonical universe manifests through either bloodline or anomalies in an individual's birth. so, instead of dottore's canon motives were to push human cognitive and physical boundaries to match or surpass the gods, and fight against mortality, then his motives here have something to do with fate being bound to bloodline,, sorry its the only plotline i could muster for this fantasy genshin au💔 i immensly enjoyed dottore's arcs so i would hate to somehow skew the way his ideologies were very amazingly written and portrayed in canon

the canon timeline is immensely compressed into around 2 decades worth of stories💔 this was a pain to figure out

contrary to canon, nod krai and snezhnaya are connected to each other through land, but the border is a wasteland, so people still typically travel through boat

yes, they know flins is someone from the previous snezhnayan court (although he was young), they just dont know much about his time there

speaking of dottore and pantalone, a certain artifact set's lore just came out and ive been screaming ever since...

ok now that we're done with that…

AJHSHGDBAJDBJAHBDJHABSJHBDHJJAHAHAHSJ sorry i had to let that out. ive been so deprived from writing proper romance since i shackled myself to slow burn but ohyes THIS fic doesnt have that tag so im FREEEE, master has given dobby a SOCK

also, i love how i can see the names of reading lists this fic is added to on wattpad… i just got a funny one around 3 hours ago (if you know who you are) and it had me tickled in laughter so im posting this chapter earlier than planned HAHAHAH.

i LOVE the way flins talks💔 hes been my main ever since he released hehe. once i found out that hes actually a little shit who enjoys being misread as scary, i was LOCKED IN. was the kiss random? well, its cinderella, source material suggests that the pacing is a-ok!!! (i just really wanted to put tension)

is the first chapter starting to make sense now? :)

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The sun was a pale, sickly disc when the summons arrived.

Dottore was in the Observation Suite, a room defined by the sound of pressurized glass tanks and the erratic flicker of monitors. He didn't even bother to turn when she entered, simply pointing at a pile of papers. 

"The merchant was intercepted at the border," Dottore said, his voice smooth, carrying the lethal chill of a frozen lake. "He was surprisingly eager to talk. He spoke of a girl in a soot-stained cloak who chose to let him live."

He turned then, the light from the monitors reducing his mask to a glowing, featureless void.

"Tell me, little bird," he said, stepping closer until the heavy scent of chemicals crowded out the cold air. "Was it a tactical decision? Or have you started to believe the fairy tales the Prince is whispering into your ears?"

She kept her breathing perfectly even. Any shift in her pulse became data for Dottore to harvest. She kept her gaze fixed on the glowing void of his mask, her posture reflecting the hollow discipline of a soldier.

Show nothing. I cannot panic.

"The Prince’s presence made a clean kill impossible without exposing our involvement," she said. Her voice was cold, stripped of the jagged emotion that had haunted her at the docks. "His carriage appeared fifty paces away, My Lord. A struggle or a scream would have brought the royal guard directly to the scene. I prioritized the security of our operations at the moment. However, I neglected to foresee this outcome."

Dottore tilted his head, a bird-like, inquisitive twitch. He paced a slow circle around her, the soft click of his boots against the metal floor echoing in the sterile space.

"Security," he repeated, the word sounding ridiculous in his mouth. "A noble sentiment. Luckily, your uniform lacks Fatui motifs due to your work. Yet the merchant is now in the hands of the Nod Krai border authorities, and the Prince is in possession of a piece of your clothing."

“Indeed, you avoided a scream, but you left a trail of crumbs that put the whole operation under suspicion.” He stopped directly in front of her, leaning in until she could see her own pale, tired reflection in the polished surface of his mask. 

"However," he continued, his tone shifting into something more thoughtful, "your failure has created a fascinating byproduct. The Prince did not report you, nor did he hand that scrap of fabric to the guards. Instead, he kept it. He is protecting the very shadow that was sent to kill his interests."

He straightened up, tapping a gloved finger against her chin. "His obsession with you is reaching a point of instability. He is beginning to view you as a project— perhaps even a salvation against the Fatui. A man who wants to save something is a man who can be easily distracted."

A heavy dread settled deep in her stomach. Dottore saw the Prince's fixation as a disposable asset. He was going to use her as live bait.

The realization felt like a slow-tightening noose. If she became the focal point of the Prince's naive crusade, she would be dragged directly into the crosshairs of both empires. 

Did she want that? To be the lamb led to the slaughter?

No. But her deep-seated loyalty to the Fatui and her acceptance of her role as their weapon made the Prince's assumptions feel like a far more personal insult.

"You will not be punished for the merchant," Dottore said, his voice taking on an unusually light, almost indulgent quality. "In fact, you have been remarkably diligent. For years, your service to me had been flawless, well, before tonight. But I suppose we can excuse that since your performance of late has been exemplary. Take a short rest— an off day or two. You deserve a respite. Perhaps that is why you had an inevitable blunder."

She blinked, momentarily thrown by the uncharacteristic leniency. The sudden warmth of his approval struck her like a physical blow, dismantling the rigid guard she had kept up since entering the room.

A rush of intense, desperate gratitude flooded her chest.

"Thank you, My Lord," she said, her voice dropping its stiffness and replaced by an earnest devotion. She bowed her head deeply. "To know that my efforts have pleased you... It is everything. I will use this time to ensure I am even more prepared to serve."

It was a feeling of profound validation for her— for someone whose entire existence had been defined by a desperate struggle to mean something, no matter how small, to not be cast aside like trash.

Those words were a lifeline to her. She was becoming an irreplaceable asset and was finally worth keeping.

Dottore tilted his head, a suspiciously satisfied smile playing underneath the edge of his mask. "But," he added, his tone sharpening slightly, "if you happen to run into our royal friend during your break... You will lean into this 'error.' If he thinks you are a girl in trouble, let him. Do not correct his illusions. I want to see how far his savior complex will carry him. After all, you are the only connection they can trace to the Fatui."

Of course…

The words tasted like bile, yet she forced herself to keep her head bowed.

"I will play the part perfectly, My Lord," she murmured, her voice steady with compliance. "I will not fail you again."

Dottore reached into his coat and produced a tiny, silver-capped glass vial. Inside, suspended in a droplet of clear, viscous fluid, was a single, microscopic gel capsule— no larger than a grain of salt. He held it up to the pale light of the monitors.

"Before you go, take this," Dottore murmured. "My latest toy. A micro-synthetic transmitter. It is incredibly versatile— it can bond instantly to skin or fabric upon a simple press, but it is also completely ingestible, bonding permanently to the internal mucosal lining of a target."

She stared at the tiny capsule, her mind considering the high-risk utility of such a device. "And the transfer, My Lord?" she asked quietly.

"A simple application of pressure," Dottore replied, his voice humming with satisfaction. "The transmitter is sealed inside a pressure-sensitive outer membrane. It is entirely inert and safe to handle until that outer shell is physically ruptured. If you press it onto his collar, his skin— or even if it is somehow swallowed— it will only activate once the membrane is crushed. Until then, it is a harmless, silent seed. Once broken, the active agent bonds to the nearest organic tissue within seconds."

"Understood, My Lord," she said, taking the cold glass vial with extreme care. She tucked it safely into an inner pocket of her tunic, ensuring the fragile capsule would remain entirely protected.

Dottore waved a hand in dismissal. "Go. Enjoy your rest. Rest secure in the knowledge that your dedication is highly valued."

“Thank you, My Lord.”

She walked out of the Observation Suite, the heavy, pressurized door hissing shut behind her.

Only when she was deep in the corridor, far from the reach of the sensors, did she let her shoulders drop. She leaned her back against the cold stone wall, her heart hammering against her ribs as she turned his words over in her mind.

He praised me.

The validation was intoxicating, a sweet poison she had been trained to crave from the moment she became an operative. He had called her diligent, and he had called her service flawless. The relief was so immense it made her feel lightheaded, peeling back layers of the exhaustion that had been dragging her down for thirty-six hours.

Nothing, even a single night as a fancy noble in a ballroom, could ever top this feeling— because she worked so hard for this.

However, a nagging feeling was tearing at her subconscious.

What if My Lord Dottore only said that to keep me loyal to him? 

That is not possible; he would have no reason to— I would never betray him…

Her thoughts raced with both gratitude and suspicion, but as she began to walk toward her quarters, the cold Snezhnayan drafts whispering through the high arches, an abrupt realization began to crystallize beneath the happiness.

He had turned her failure into a weapon. By granting her rest, by telling her she was highly valued, he wasn’t being merciful— of course not— he was testing her value. 

If you think you are valuable, you will fight harder to keep that. He wanted her loyal, but more than that, he wanted her eager.

Yes, this was the explanation that made the most sense.

And then there was the directive itself. A girl in trouble.

The anger flared beneath her loyalty, sudden and hot. She wanted the Prince dead for looking at her like some broken thing to be repaired. The Fatui demanded her obedience, shaping her into a weapon to be wielded in the dark— a reality she had long accepted as her purpose, a purpose she was deeply grateful to fulfill for her Lord Dottore. But the Prince wanted to rewrite that existence. He wanted to mold her into a fragile damsel, a tragic project to satisfy his own savior complex.

Her teeth ground together at the sheer insult of it. Her Lord Dottore asked her to act frail for the sake of the mission, but to stay deadly. The Prince actually wanted her to be helpless. To be reduced for his salvation felt infinitely more degrading than remaining the lethal edge of her Lord Dottore’s ambition.

She didn't go back to her room immediately. The mandate to rest, combined with the swirling pressure of Dottore's praise and the insult of the Prince's pity, made the walls of the corridor feel too close. Instead, she went down to the armory to return her tactical gear for her scheduled leave.

The armory of the Northern Palace was a cavernous space of cold iron and the smell of whetstones and oil. It was here she saw a porcelain mask hanging on the wall, a reminder of Pierro’s ultimate authority. Under his gaze, the Fatui were nothing but actors in a play they didn't write.

Returning to her room as the lamps were being lit, she stared at the grey broth and hard bread on her desk, but she couldn't bring herself to eat. The exhaustion was a physical weight by now, pressing down on her collarbones. Thirty-six hours without sleep, coupled with the endless physical strain of the perimeter sweeps and the psychological pressure of Dottore’s room, had drained her entirely. Her head throbbed with a dull, persistent ache, and every breath felt heavy.

Her eyes drifted to the second volume of the journal on her desk. Dottore had tossed it back to her after his brief skim, dismissed as the "ramblings of a failing mind."

When she finished reading, she turned to the very last page. There, in a different ink, was a final entry:

“A bird with broken wings can still sing a song that haunts the house long after it is gone.”

She stared at the tiny vial containing the transmitter, resting securely on her table. If she planted this on the Prince, she would be executing Dottore's design perfectly, turning the Prince's pathetic savior complex into his own undoing. But the sheer agitation of the past few days boiled over. Something in her chest simply snapped— a jagged, white-hot refusal to be the instrument of anyone’s game for tonight.

Her Lord was right; she needed a break.

She carefully slipped the vial back into her inner pocket. She couldn't stay in the room. The air felt like wool in her lungs. She needed the cold; she needed the sting of the Snezhnayan wind to remind her she was still solid, even if her bones ached with exhaustion.

She left the room, moving through the halls with the practiced ease of a shadow. The guards didn't look twice; they were used to her late-night prowls, her dedication to the perimeter. Tonight, she bypassed her usual perimeter duties entirely, driven by a desperate need to escape the suffocating weight of the palace.

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Her path took her past the palace’s private, dimly lit lounges in the upper wing. The heavy oak doors of one of the suites were slightly ajar, casting a warm, amber slice of candlelight across the dark stone corridor.

She froze, pressing herself into the deep shadow of an arched pillar, her heart rate spiking as voices drifted into the hallway. Inside, the air was thick with the rich, heavy scent of Pantalone’s imported tobacco.

The man in question was standing by a massive marble fireplace, staring coldly into the dying embers with his arms crossed over his velvet lapels. His spectacles caught the firelight, flashing with a sterile gleam. He looked distinctly annoyed.

Tilted back in a plush leather armchair opposite him was Tartaglia. The Eleventh Harbinger looked entirely out of place in the formal, quiet luxury of the lounge. He wore a loose, dark traveling coat, the collar dusted with melting snow, and he was restlessly tossing a dull copper coin into the air, catching it with a sharp, leather-gloved clack.

The tension between them was palpable— a mutual dislike that always hovered whenever specific Harbingers clashed.

"I'm just saying, Regrator, I go on one excursion to the outer territories, and I come back to find this place is an absolute ghost town," Tartaglia scoffed, catching the coin and squeezing it in his fist. His voice was laced with a restless, mocking edge. 

"First Signora gets herself killed, then…” His voice lowered in sadness “…Capitano... and now I get back only to find out that The Damselette has gone missing too? We're down to what, six active Harbingers? It's pathetic. Who’s left to actually have any fun around here?"

Pantalone let out a soft, freezing sigh, not even turning his head to look at him. "Your concern for our headcount is touching, Tartaglia, if entirely unprompted. Snezhnaya's affairs do not halt merely because you find the palace dull. Her absence is being managed. And the Jester has no intention of letting the empty seats diminish our influence."

"Yeah, well, we'll see how much influence we actually have when the music starts," Tartaglia muttered, pocketing the coin with a low grunt as he stood up, stretching his shoulders like a caged predator. "Just don't expect me to sit around playing the polite diplomat for your foreign guests. I'm not here to play nice while the rest of you plan your little curtain calls."

"No one expects diplomacy from you of all people, Tartaglia," Pantalone replied smoothly, his tone cutting. "Now, if you are finished complaining about your lack of playmates, leave. I have a treasury report to finalize before the morning."

She retreated silently into the darkness, her boots making absolutely no sound on the stone.

The names and the empty seats felt like heavy stones dropped into a deep well. The Palace was fracturing, hollowed out from the inside, yet they were tightening their grip with a desperate energy. The Fatui backed a far more dangerous scheme for the ball, and while she didn't know what role they had planned for her, she knew the stage was being set.

Move. Now.

She didn't breathe until she had slipped through the side exit and felt the biting cold of the Snezhnayan night hit her face.

She leaned against the exterior wall of the Northern Palace, her heart a frantic bird hitting the cage of her ribs. 

I shouldn't have listened. Curiosity is a terminal illness. I just felt the first symptom.

Her vision swam slightly as the wind whipped snow across her face. The exhaustion was settling deep into her muscles, making her limbs feel heavy and her reactions sluggish. She had a few hours of rest left, but she couldn't go back yet.

She began to walk, avoiding the main thoroughfares. She had no destination in mind, but she definitely needed to move until the pressure in her skull stopped echoing. She drifted past the limits of the upper city, her boots crunching on the packed ice of the lower market, before crossing the threshold into the gray, semi-industrial zone that marked the border of the Fatui's direct territory.

The warehouses here were looming monoliths, their metal roofs groaning under the weight of the snow.

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After half an hour of just… watching, a movement caught her eye.

A shadow detached itself from the side of a rusted boiler tank.

She stopped instantly, her body locking up in the darkness. The figure was tall, wrapped in a coarse, dark coat with a heavy hood pulled low. They were moving with amazing stealth, something she would have admired if not for the current chase— too quiet and too fast for a common thief. They were actively dodging the light of the sparse streetlamps, slipping from one pocket of pitch black to the next.

Her instincts, already wired to a frantic pitch by her sheer exhaustion and the political secrets she had just overheard, flared violently. 

An intruder… a spy?. 

She didn't bother calling out, nor did she even hesitate. She drew her stiletto, keeping the blade pressed flat against her forearm, and slipped into the shadow of the boiler tank.

So much for bypassing perimeter duties.

The cloaked figure took a sharp turn down a narrow alleyway between two loud warehouses.

She followed, but the moment her shadow crossed the threshold of the brick wall, the intruder's head snapped around. Even in the dark, she felt the sudden, electric shock of their attention locking onto her.

They didn't even try to fight her and just bolted.

The chase was silent, stretching into an agonizing test of endurance. Her legs felt like lead, each stride requiring a massive effort of will as the hours of sleeplessness clawed at her stamina.

She was highly, painfully aware of her surroundings. She knew these streets perfectly. She knew exactly when the Snezhnayan garrison guards changed shifts, which alleys to avoid to keep from being spotted by the perimeter watch, and how to navigate the black ice. 

Clearly, this intruder knew those too.

She kept her movement entirely fluid— her training prevented her from stumbling or faltering— but her muscles were screaming, and her lungs burned with the freezing air.

And the intruder was fast. Unbelievably fast.

They were navigating the obstacle-laden terrain with effortless, defying grace, sliding beneath low steam pipes and weaving through towering salt crates without losing a single beat of momentum.

As she pursued them, she caught strange, brief anomalies. A sudden, impossible flash of violet-gold light would spark against the frost when they turned a corner. For a fraction of a second, the heavy, dark worker’s coat seemed to drape over a silhouette that was too light, almost weightless. At one point, as they slipped through a pitch-black underpass, she caught the distinct, haunting glow of a vintage purple lantern clutched in their hand— its light casting long, alien shadows that seemed to bend away from the sparse streetlamps.

Then, the light vanished, swallowed by the Snezhnayan dark.

Her head spun with a nauseating lack of oxygen. An illusion? She wasn’t a stranger to strange devices as Dottore’s direct subordinate.

Or perhaps someone who hails from a rare bloodline of power?

She was pushing her body to its absolute limits, running a perfect, flawless path, but she wasn't gaining a single inch. If she kept trying to play this by the book— trying to outrun them in a straight pursuit— they were going to slip away. They were too good, and she was too depleted to sustain this pace.

As they neared the edge of the industrial zone, the looming, dark silhouette of an old, abandoned woodcutter's cabin appeared against the frozen tree line. They made a sharp turn toward it.

She had one window. Realizing she could not operate with her usual grace against an opponent of this caliber while running on fumes. So she abandoned her usual pacing and overrode her training, relying entirely on reckless, desperate momentum to bridge the gap his superior speed had created. 

She threw herself forward in a high-speed, violent lunge.

The intruder spun, their back hitting the decaying timber of the cabin. Their hand whipped out from beneath their coat, pulling a short, silver-hilted dagger to parry her strike.

But she was already entirely off-balance from the sheer force of her reckless dive. Her foot caught hard on a thick, frozen tree root hidden beneath the fresh snow.

She lost her footing completely. She tried to twist to save herself, but her momentum carried her headlong into the sharp, frozen corner of a rusted iron hinge on the cabin's shattered door.

Crack.

The world exploded in a brilliant flash of white pain. Her hood flew back as she went down, her stiletto slipping from her fingers and clattering into the dark.

She didn't hit the stone, but the intruder dropped their guard. The silver dagger slipped from their hand, clattering against the ice, and a pair of strong, gloved hands caught her by the shoulders, absorbing the brunt of her weight. The momentum carried them both backward, crashing heavily against the dilapidated wooden door, which gave way and sent them spilling onto the drafty, frozen floorboards of the abandoned cabin.

The impact knocked the wind from her lungs, but the real damage was already done.

A heavy, sickening warmth pooled on the side of her head. Her vision swam, the dark rafters of the cabin tilting ninety degrees and spinning like a carousel.

Assess, her mind demanded, the voice of her training persisting even through the static in her skull. Impact on the left skull, it might be cracked. Moderate to intense concussion. Fight the vertigo. Focus on breathing.

But there was nothing left to fuel the fight. Still, as she lay tangled in the heavy material of their coat, the scent of dust and iron instantly gave way to something entirely impossible.

That uncanny scent that only someone well-off could have.

One that has been plaguing her mind and sinuses for the past few days.

Her heart did a slow, sluggish roll. Shaking off the heavy lethargy, she forced her hands to move. She grabbed his collar, her fingers digging into the expensive fabric underneath his rough coat, using her fading strength to pin him back against the floorboards as she straddled his waist to keep him in place. His hood fell back, and she stared down at the face of the intruder.

The heavy scarf had slipped down. Strands of neat, dark hair were plastered to his forehead with sweat, but as his wide, startled eyes locked onto hers, the panic in them vanished, replaced almost instantly by a practiced mask of indifference.

It was the Prince.

He remained perfectly still beneath her, his breathing leveling within a single heartbeat despite the sudden weight of her knees framing his hips. His fingers slid smoothly off her shoulders, withdrawing with the effortless etiquette of a royal.

"A rather aggressive welcome, even for the borderlands," the Prince said, his voice dropping into that perfectly composed octave. He sat up slightly, propping himself on his elbows beneath her weight, which brought his chest inches from hers as he brushed the loose snow off his dark wool sleeves with care, as if he hadn't just been running for his life.

"Are you... out of your mind?" She forced the words out, her head spinning as the motion of his shifting weight sent a wave of nausea through her.

Her Lord Dottore had ordered her to act vulnerable, to play the damsel in distress. But looking at him now, the sheer, burning rejection of that role flared within her. She refused to let him see her break. She would not be his tragic project. She would not act like the helpless, vulnerable agent she had commanded her to play.

She had just caught The Prince red-handed.

She stayed on her knees above him, her thighs tensed to anchor herself over his lap, her hand hovering near the empty space where her stiletto had fallen while she barely managed to stay upright.

"This is Snezhnayan territory," she hissed, her voice dropping to a low whisper as she kept her grip tight on his collar, refusing to show her weakness. "You are miles past the Nod Krai border. If a patrol... if they find you here..."

"A neighboring sovereign is permitted to take an interest in the geopolitical climate of the border, isn't he?" the Prince interrupted smoothly.

He leaned back against the decaying wood of the cabin wall, tilting his head up to look at her with an annoyingly calm gaze from beneath her shadow. "The Crown of Nod Krai has a vested interest in the regional stability of these outer sectors. I merely wished to conduct a personal survey of the joint trade routes without the exhausting theater of a diplomatic convoy. Our borders are so close, after all; a minor drift of the snow, and one might easily lose their bearings."

It was a blatant, polished lie. He is spying, she thought, the realization ringing like a dull bell in her ears. He is mapping our blind spots.

She braced herself, pushing through the nauseating wave of vertigo to lean down closer to his face, her knees squeezing his waist instinctively to steady her swaying posture. Her voice dropped to a low, dangerous whisper. "A prince doesn’t lose his bearings. Not miles deep into our industrial zone at six in the morning. Not in a peasant's disguise without guards. And not with..." She paused, her mind struggling to find the word for the purple light. "...with parlor tricks."

"Well, clearly, I am a prince that does so," the Prince countered.

He leaned slightly closer, closing the remaining distance between their faces. A subtle smile touched the corner of his mouth— but it faltered.

A thin sliver of moonlight sliced down through the shattered roof of the abandoned cabin, cutting directly across her face.

The Prince went still as the smooth, rehearsed retort on his tongue died. Her pupils were unevenly dilated, struggling to adjust to the light. They weren't tracking his face like they usually were; her gaze was glassy, dull, and slightly drifted toward the rotting floorboards behind his shoulder.

The weight on his shoulders dropped, though his expression remained a shield of perfect, quiet control. Without a word, he closed the distance between them, his gloved hand reaching up from where he lay beneath her. His fingers brushed her jaw carefully, his thumb gently catching her chin to tilt her face back into the light.

"Oh dear," he murmured. The theatrical, mocking pitch of his voice dropped, though he managed to keep the quiet cadence of his station. "That is... not good at all."

His fingers steadied her jaw, preventing her head from tilting. "Where exactly are you looking?"

Determined to maintain control and reject his pity, she tried to slap his hand away, her fingers brushing the leather of his glove with as much force as she could muster— but all she did was slump over his body.

Her strength evaporated, her upper body collapsing forward so her chest pressed directly against his. Deny the symptom, her training whispered. Reclaim the high ground. 

"I was hunting... an intruder," she said, her voice rigid, but the breath beneath it was too shallow, too rapid— he could feel it patter warmly against his cheek. "My duty is to eliminate threats to the perimeter. You are a threat."

"Then why haven’t you retrieved your weapon?" the Prince asked softly, his gaze flickering down to where she lay heavy and weak against him. He gestured with his free hand to the empty snow outside the doorway where her stiletto lay.

As she tried to focus on the weapon, the world did another violent, sickening spin. Her hips slid off his lap as she listed slightly to the side, her balance completely failing her. The freezing draft of the abandoned cabin whistled through the gaps in the timber, making her shiver violently against him.

The Prince’s hand moved instantly. His grip tightened on her shoulder, bracing her weight against his chest before she could slide onto the freezing floorboards, while his other hand slid behind her neck, his fingers supporting the base of her skull with a gentle pressure that kept her anchored to his warmth.

Even through the fog, she felt the sheer hypocrisy of his touch. He was holding her steady, yet his silver tongue was still spinning its web.

"If I am a threat to your borders, you’ve had three distinct opportunities to silence me tonight," he said, his voice a low murmur right near her ear, his breath stirring her loose hair. "Instead, you chased me away from the main thoroughfare— away from the exact path the Snezhnayan garrison patrols."

The Prince was twisting it— no, she did not intentionally chase him through a safe route…

He was the one who knew that route; clearly, he had already figured it out beforehand.

He was taking her inability to catch up to him, whom she had no idea was the literal person she wanted to avoid, and turning it into treason. If she reported his presence now, she would have to explain her own silence at the docks. She would have to explain why she had chased him persistently instead of raising the alarm as she should have— it didn’t even cross her tired mind. He was cornering her, placing her in a cage of his own making.

She wanted to pull away. She wanted to draw her backup blade and prove to him that she was still a weapon, not some fragile thing to be managed. She managed to bring her hand up, pressing her palm weakly against his chest to push him back, but her limbs felt like lead, and the bitter cold of the cabin was beginning to feel strangely warm.

The transmitter vial remained safe, untouched in her inner pocket.

"It seems we both have a habit of hiding things we shouldn't," the Prince said, looking down at her, his expression a shield of perfect, unreadable poise as he held her securely against his chest. "But if you intend to report my little survey to your superiors now, I suggest you find a better excuse for why you let a foreign prince walk out of your hands a second time. It might begin to look like treason to your own organization."

She opened her mouth to speak, to find the one sharp, logical counter-argument that would shatter his composure. But her mind finally hit the wall. The gears locked.

"I didn't..." she whispered.

The silhouette of his face dissolved into a blur of violet and black with a hint of gold. Her head became far too heavy, and she collapsed forward, her forehead slipping against his shoulder as her consciousness went entirely dark.

The Prince caught her easily, his arms wrapping around her waist to keep her from sliding onto the freezing floorboards. He sat in the dark and drafty cabin, holding the shadow against his chest, his eyes fixed on the dark blood staining his glove.

He didn't even bother to make an aimless comment yet and pulled her closer against the warmth of his coat, shielding her from the biting wind howling through the abandoned timber, before looking up at the shattered roof.

A faint sigh escaped him.

Now, he thought, staring at the unconscious agent currently draped over him like a sack of exceptionally dangerous flour, what, exactly, is the protocol for a concussed operative of the enemy kingdom?

It certainly hadn't been on the diplomatic itinerary. If he left her here, she’d freeze; if he brought her back to his quarters, he'd be harboring the Fatui operative that had been their first tail in months— and he could not risk her superiors cutting her off and losing that. It was an administrative nightmare in the making, yet he couldn't help the small, wry curve of his mouth. 

"Oh my, you seem to have a habit of making things difficult for yourself," he murmured to the quiet space of the cabin.

He carefully adjusted his grip, slid one arm beneath her knees, and lifted her into his arms.

5437 words.

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send a message or an ask (with anon off, i wont post it) to be added to the taglist!

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turned into ms giggleshitter while writing that scene i cannot even jest with you all,, mmm close-quarter tension😍

sometimes i think the pacing is too slow, and then i remember that they only met like 3 days ago😭 honestly im just free-forming this atp because the cinderella pacing is VERY fast and i refuse to write love at first sight…

i was crashing out over the tracker because its uh… important for specific reasons… and i could not figure out a way to explain it in a way it made sense…? well if it still doesnt rn, lets just chalk it down to "dottore is smart" mmyes.

if you feel like the reader is thinking too much, yes. theres just so many misunderstandings going on because, one, we have dottore lmao (self-explanatory). two, we have an enemy prince who has his own duties. and three, we have a suppressed and confused "dreamer" (chapter 1, anachronism)

The afternoon bruised the sky until the shadows bled from a sickly yellow into the darkness of midnight. 

She spent the final hours of the day submerged in the grunt work of the secondary warehouse, where each crate of volatile salts felt heavier than the last. The damp wood stayed slick with harbor salt and grime, and beneath the heavy lids, the contents occasionally jolted with an unstable, low-frequency energy that constantly set her teeth on edge. 

She does not want to know what Dottore needed these for.

It was always easier when she could reduce herself to a mere set of lungs and a pair of shoulders, moving mechanically from one task to the next because refusing to let her mind wander was the only way to keep the crushing weight of her obligations from pulling her under. 

If she allowed herself to consider the length of her sentence, or the sheer volume of Mora that bound her to this freezing harbor, her limbs would freeze up entirely. It was better to exist as a collection of muscle and breath, letting the freezing Snezhnayan air hollow her out until she was nothing but an instrument of labor.

Yet, loyalty remained the only currency she had. The Northern Palace had claimed her when the world offered nothing but a shallow, unmarked grave, providing the bread that kept her heart beating and the steel that kept it protected. In return, she became the friction in their machinery, acting as the hand that moved whenever the Harbingers pointed.

A scuffle suddenly broke out near the loading bay between two local dockworkers who had seen too much and lacked the wisdom to look away. They hadn't meant any harm, but in her world, curiosity functioned as a terminal illness. 

She often wondered why people couldn't simply keep their heads down, since staying alive was never truly difficult if a person could just master the art of pretending the rest of the world was empty. The fools always thought they could slip away with a handful of stolen truth, never realizing that the Northern Palace owned the very air they breathed.

She handled the situation with a detachment that had long since become her second skin. She didn't feel the heat of anger or the sting of pity, operating simply as a tool performing its function. 

When it was over, she spent an hour tying heavy iron weights to the ankles of the quieted men before watching the dark water of the bay swallow them completely. The ripples smoothed over as if the world had already forgotten their names, leaving her with no malice and only the crushing weight of a transaction completed. 

The harbor never judged, and neither did she, since it was just another day of ensuring the Palace’s secrets remained submerged.

She viewed herself as the necessary price of their progress while using a rough rag to wipe a smear of dark red from her knuckle, knowing this house was the only roof that didn't leak and that leaving meant becoming just another nameless body for the water to hide. If her blood had to mix with the salt of the pier to buy another day of shelter, she would pay it without a word, because the alternative was a void far colder than the ocean.

She should have returned immediately, but instead, she chose an off-road path that twisted as a jagged trail through the pines where the city’s light couldn't follow. She eventually sat under a flickering, salt-crusted lantern at a crossroads, where the air smelled heavily of pine needles and damp earth. The silence of the woods wrapped around her like a thick blanket, completely muffling the distant sounds of the industry she served.

Slowly, she pulled the second volume of the journal from her cloak. She didn't look up at the sun as she’d hoped, letting the stuttering orange glow of the lantern illuminate the scientist’s frantic script instead. The entries revealed a clear descent into madness, filled with notes on how the human soul could be distilled and the way it clung to the body like a bird trapped in a cage of bone.

“The subject continues to resist the extraction of memory. It seems the heart keeps records that the mind has already burned. We found that even under extreme duress, the subject would only speak of the color of the sky on the day they were free. Curiosity is not an intellectual trait; it is the soul’s desperate attempt to find a door.”

She closed the book as her fingers grew cold, feeling the weight of the words like a mirror. The phrasing made her wonder if she was merely another subject whose loyalty was just a memory her mind had burned away, while her heart quietly kept a different record. She wondered what color her own sky had been before the Northern Palace painted it grey, and if the absolute obedience she performed every day was just a protective layer over a truth she was too terrified to remember. 

The very concept of a door felt incredibly dangerous, because while a door could let things out, it also possessed the terrifying potential to let things in, and she had spent too long reinforcing her locks to allow a single crack in the wood.

By the time she reached the lab, the clock in the foyer struck midnight, confirming she was late. The laboratory loomed as a cathedral of glass and shadow, where Dottore didn't even look up from his workbench. He was busy adjusting a flow of viscous, dark fluid through a series of tubes, watching the liquid pulse like a slow, artificial vein while the rhythmic, wet thrumming filled the sterile room.

"The clock is an absolute, little bird," Dottore remarked, his voice carrying a low rasp that vibrated directly in the floorboards. "To disregard it is to suggest that your time is more valuable than my research, which is a dangerous assumption for a tool."

"My apologies, My Lord," she said, keeping her voice as a flat, perfect instrument. She placed the book on the table, where the gold-leafed binding looked entirely alien against the sterile steel.

He turned around, letting the artificial light catch the curve of his mask as he flipped through the journal with a speed that suggested he already knew the secrets within. "And the Prince? Did he deliver the prize with the grace of a true romantic?"

"He did. He claimed the story was half-finished and was seen with the Grand Master."

Dottore let out a thin, sharp hiss that could have been a laugh if there were any warmth in it. "He thinks he is the author, but he doesn't realize he is merely a subject in a very long, very painful study. Tell me— did he leave anything else? A word? A sign?"

The note on the inside cover burned brightly in her mind, offering poetry about the stars only being visible because the darkness allowed them to be. 

It was a bit cliché, to say the least, sounding like the kind of thing written by someone who had never actually lived in the dirt and viewed the struggle of survival as a poetic backdrop for their own benevolence. 

The Prince spoke of sunlight and darkness as if they were simple choices, completely oblivious to the fact that some people were born in the dark, where the sun was nothing more than a blinding light that burned their eyes. She despised how easily he spun his grand metaphors, as if the darkness she inhabited were merely a theatrical stage instead of a suffocating cage.

Although the thought of it still struck a sharp chord in her throat, she kept her composure. "No, my Lord," she said, the lie settling like a jagged stone in her throat. For the first time, she had stolen a piece of a mission for herself, keeping the light even if it was just a few words on paper. 

It was a dangerous game, holding onto a secret that belonged to a target, but the sheer irritation of the Prince's perspective made her want to dissect it in private, to prove to herself that his light was nothing but an illusion.

Dottore watched her in a silence that stretched until she could hear the rhythmic thump-thump of the machinery. "Go back," he said finally. "The merchant arrives at the docks at three. He has been inconsistent with his tributes, so ensure he is corrected. You have just enough time to reach the pier if you do not linger again."

He paused, a faint, mocking tilt to his masked head as he looked at her soot-stained cloak. "But before you depart for the harbor again, take the ledger on the side desk up to the treasury wing. Pantalone requested the financial data before the night shift concludes. And do try to ensure he isn't smoking by the time you reach him; we wouldn't want to damage him to continue damaging his precious sensibilities."

The transition from the laboratory to the treasury wing was marked by a sudden shift from the smell of antiseptic to the heavy aroma of expensive spice, velvet, and a distinct, fragrant haze of tobacco. She walked through the grand archway holding the heavy leather ledger against her chest, her boots clicking softly on the polished floorboards.

Through the double doors of the private office, she found Pantalone standing near the frosted glass window, a silver case in one hand and a freshly lit cigarette in the other. The rich smoke swirled in the lamplight, catching the gleam of the silver rings on his fingers. 

Years ago, before the grand titles and the absolute control of Snezhnaya’s wealth, they had walked the same damp corridors as low-ranking subordinates within the Doctor's shadow. He had climbed out of the dirt, while she had remained in it with steel and blood, but the history between them remained an unspoken, jagged edge.

She stopped at a formal distance, her posture rigid, though the scent of the smoke immediately put her on high alert. "Lord Regrator. My Lord Dottore requested I deliver the financial ledger."

Pantalone turned, his elegant spectacles reflecting the low golden light of the desk lamps. When he spoke, his tone carried an easy, fluid warmth that was far too familiar, a friendly veneer that made the skin at the back of her neck prickle with tension.

"Still bowing so low?" Pantalone smiled, gesturing with his cigarette for her to set the book down. "You know, you needn't treat me with such exhausting formality when Dottore isn't looking. We both remember the grease in the lower cellars well enough. How is he treating you these days? Still running you ragged through the warehouses?"

The comment made her jaw tighten slightly, though her expression remained flat and defensive. He loved to project this casual, good-natured camaraderie, but she knew better than to relax around a man who traded lives like currency. They were on good terms, and he spoke of Dottore with the comfortable familiarity of an equal peer, but the sheer casualness of it only amplified her urge to keep her hand close to her blade.

Her eyes darted to the glowing amber tip of the cigarette, the Doctor's mocking parting words echoing sharply in her ears. And do try to ensure he isn't smoking by the time you reach him...

The subtle realization that she had already failed that minor, spiteful test sent a fresh spike of tension through her shoulders. She remained exactly where she was, her gaze cutting back to Pantalone's smooth, unbothered expression, acutely aware of the delicate and dangerous line she had to walk between the two Harbingers.

"The protocol of the Palace requires the proper respect, My Lord," she replied smoothly, keeping her distance as she placed the ledger on the edge of the mahogany desk. "And the work is as it always is."

"Protocol is for those who lack the leverage to rewrite it," Pantalone murmured, taking a slow drag, the sweet, heavy smoke drifting between them. He gave a quiet, light laugh, completely unbothered by her stiff demeanor. "Dottore always speaks highly of your efficiency, you know. He appreciates a tool that doesn't break under pressure, and I must admit, I value the return on investment. We are on excellent terms regarding this project, so you can afford to breathe a little easier in this room."

She kept her eyes fixed on his silver lapel pin, refusing to let him see the irritation and deep-seated caution bubbling beneath her skin. He wasn't her direct commander, yet he spoke with the easy confidence of a partner who shared the Doctor's grand vision, blending friendliness with an underlying, suffocating pressure. "My focus is entirely on the mission, Lord Regrator."

"I certainly hope so," Pantalone smiled, offering a dismissive wave of his hand as he turned back toward the window to watch the snow fall. "It would be such a pity if your value plummeted before the grand event. Do try to keep your footing on the ice."

She knew she should have left it at that, but the Doctor's petty directive hung like a lead weight in her chest. If she didn't relay it, and Dottore asked, the omission would look like a choice.

"I will, My Lord," she said, her voice remaining flat, a perfect veneer of obedience as she took a half-step toward the door. She paused just before the threshold, her gaze fixing on the curling gray ribbon drifting from his hand. "Furthermore... My Lord Dottore requested that I remind you to abstain from smoking. He expressed concern for your sensibilities."

Pantalone didn't turn back around, but she caught the slight, amused tightening of his jaw in the window’s reflection. He let out a soft, dry chuckle, entirely unbothered by the thinly veiled barb. "Did he? How typical of him to fret over things he cannot control. Thank you for the delivery. You are dismissed."

"Have a pleasant evening, Lord Regrator."

She backed out of the room, her fingers curling tightly into her palms the moment the heavy mahogany door clicked shut. He thinks he escaped the cage just because his bars are made of solid gold, she thought, her pulse still racing from the forced proximity.

He plays the friend, he speaks of Dottore like a brother in arms, but he's still just an accountant for the Jester's war, no matter how warm his smile is.

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Hours later, the night fog at the pier clung tightly to her skin like a damp shroud. She moved with the practiced grace of someone who had spent more of her life in the dark than the light, keeping her stiletto ready as a natural extension of her arm. The merchant stood exactly where the reports placed him, his frantic gestures toward a crate of contraband marking him as a man with too much to lose and too little courage to keep it.

In any other circumstance, he would already be a memory drifting toward the harbor mouth while she checked her next objective, but the scientist’s journal had left a persistent stain on her thoughts. She found herself questioning whether sparing a man who deserved to die was her own attempt to find a door, or if she was simply growing soft. It angered her that a dead man's notes could introduce doubt into a hand that had never trembled before.

She lunged forward, but the wood beneath her boot was slick with sea spray, causing a slight scuff of her heel that served as a catastrophic error. The merchant spun around with wide, watery eyes, opening his mouth to release a sound that would ruin the silence.

Then, the world turned violet.

Prince Flins stood at the end of the pier, his traveling cloak heavy with the night’s moisture as he spoke with an officer. The moment the merchant gasped, his head snapped directly toward the sound. She froze instantly, knowing the distance was short enough that a single strike would be completely visible. If she ended the man now, she would be carving her true nature into the Prince’s mind, revealing the Little Star as a butcher in a soot-stained hood.

The panic of being seen as a monster sparked a frantic, jagged sense of self-preservation that overrode her orders. 

She realized with a surge of dread that she cared more about his perception of her than the Doctor's wrath, a realization that felt like a sudden drop into freezing water.

Why does it matter what a pampered royal thinks of a weapon? He’s the target. He’s the project. If he sees me, I’m dead anyway— Dottore will ensure it. But… The thought fractured her focus into a thousand scattered shards.

She grabbed the merchant by the collar and slammed him against the lumber with enough force to rattle his teeth, cutting off his half-formed shriek. "Get on a ship," she hissed, her voice cutting like a serrated edge, her mind racing to map Flins’ line of sight through the parting mist. "If you are still in these lands by sunrise, the water will be your only home. Run."

The man didn't wait, scrambling blindly into the fog and leaving her alone with the encroaching, heavy sound of royal boots. She retreated into the narrow, freezing hollows between the towering cargo crates, pulling her cloak tight, pressing her back against the rough wood until the splinters bit through her shirt. Her heart hammered a frantic, deafening rhythm against her ribs as the Prince stepped into the amber glow of the lantern.

Move. I need to move. 

The fog is thinning. If he walks five paces to the left, the angle exposes me completely. My boots— did I wipe the harbor salt off the heels? If I drop a smoke pellet, the noise will draw the officer…

Flins didn't call for the guards. Instead, he stooped to the wet wood of the pier, his gloved fingers closing around a torn scrap of black velvet— a piece of fabric she had lost in the brief scuffle.

"I know you're there," he said. His voice wasn't loud, yet it cut through the damp air with the terrifying clarity of a blade. "I can hear your breath."

He’s bluffing. He has to be bluffing. The wind is blowing from the east; it’s masking the sound. 

Or is it? 

He didn't sound like a storybook hero anymore. He sounded like a man who had caught the tail end of a secret and had absolutely no intention of letting it go. He held the scrap of her cloak as if it were a piece of damning evidence, his sharp eyes searching the heavy darkness right where she crouched.

"This is a dangerous place to play at being invisible," he murmured, his eyes scanning the silhouette of the crates, lingering just inches from her hiding spot. "And you aren't doing it very well."

His perception felt like a violation, providing a relentless, suffocating pressure instead of the polite concern she expected. He was encroaching on her space, stripping away the safety of her anonymity. It irritated her deeply— no, it terrified her. 

Visibility in her line of work was an absolute death sentence, and his clumsy attempts at playing the savior felt less like an extended hand and more like he was casually building her gallows.

He thinks this is a game. He thinks he’s in a theater, discovering a tragic figure in the wings. 

Fool.

The irritation in her temples flared into a sharp, white-hot heat because he thought he was being kind. Every word he spoke felt like a nail in the coffin of her career, a direct threat wrapped in a soft cadence. He was a Prince who could afford the luxury of curiosity, while she was a weapon who could only afford the safety of being forgotten.

Go away. Just turn around. Look at the water, look at the ship, look anywhere else. If you don't leave, I will have to draw the steel, and I... You’re going to get yourself killed trying to be a hero for someone who doesn’t want to be saved.

She gripped a stone ledge, her knuckles white. Don't look, she pleaded silently. Don't find me.

"Go home," Flins said, his voice dropping an octave, losing its softness and taking on the weight of command. "Before someone less patient than I finds what you've left behind."

The officer called out to him from the carriage, a sharp shout about the tide and the schedule. Flins paused, his head tilting toward the sound, before turning away with a final, searching look directly into the gloom where she stood paralyzed. 

As the heavy click of his boots faded into the rattle of the iron-shod wheels and the sudden splash of a horse's hoof against a puddle, she remained frozen in the mist. Her hands were shaking violently, a volatile cocktail of adrenaline, survival panic, and pure, unadulterated rage pulsing through her veins.

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The journey back to the Northern Palace (for the second time within a few hours) was a slow descent back into reality, where the smell of damp laundry and old grease quickly replaced the salt air as she used the servants' entrance. 

It was breathing now, filled with the low hum of the morning shift and the distant clatter of the kitchens. She reached her room and leaned against the locked door, letting the silence of the walls press in on her while the golden coin sat on her desk like a mocking eye in the grey light of dawn.

A receipt. That’s all it is. A currency I can’t spend.

She picked it up to trace the royal crest, realizing the warmth it had once offered was entirely gone, replaced by the chill of her failure. For a few hours, the coin had felt like a promise, but now it felt like a receipt. She was a tool of the Fatui who relied on them for a bed, bread, and purpose, meaning she owed them a death she had failed to deliver.

"I'm not your star," she whispered, her voice cracking slightly in the quiet room as she realized she had become a broken tool that Dottore would never allow himself to keep. If the Palace discovered that her blade had hesitated, they would ensure she became an example for the next generation of recruits.

She tucked the coin into the hidden compartment, burying it beneath the whetstones and the vials of toxin. Later, she would have to face Dottore to explain why a merchant was still breathing and why a Prince was holding a piece of her cloak. 

She sat in the dark with the faint memory of a waltz playing in her head, realizing the melody was just the sound of a trap closing shut.

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The iron-shod wheels of the carriage groaned against the wet cobblestones, a jarring crunch that did nothing to quiet the noise in his head. Outside, the night was an impenetrable wall of grey, but inside the cramped carriage, the weak amber glow of the oil lantern flickered over the plush velvet seats, casting long, distorted shadows across his lap.

He didn't look out the window at the passing silhouettes of the harbor warehouses. Instead, his eyes were fixed entirely on his own hand.

Between his gloved fingers, the scrap of dark velvet felt heavy, damp with sea spray and stiff with grime. It was a casualty of a midnight scuffle on a slick pier, but to him, it was a piece of a much larger, uglier puzzle. The weave was coarse, the edges frayed violently where it had been torn away, and it carried the faint, unmistakable sting of soot and cheap warehouse oil.

She was right there.

A cold spike of adrenaline hit him, sharper than the damp chill seeping through the carriage floorboards. He leaned his head back against the leather cushion, closing his eyes as the carriage lurched over a deep rut. In the dark of his own mind, the silhouette of the pier replayed with agonizing clarity. He had known she was there. He had felt the precise moment the air in the harbor had changed into something… worse.

“This is a dangerous place to play at being invisible,” he had spoken into the darkness. Recalling the echo of his own voice now made his jaw tighten with a trace of bitter irritation. He had played the part of the noble, patient protector, spinning grand prose to fill the silence— but it hadn't been an act of mercy. 

It was, by all means, an interrogation.

He opened his eyes, staring down at the velvet scrap again. He traced the torn edge with the tip of his thumb.

The crown must not destroy a tool that valuable; any other leader would try to break her, squeeze her for information, and lock her away until they found a use for her. But Flins couldn't afford to let her fall into the hands of the usual interrogators either.

The weight of the new kingdom felt heavier on his shoulders tonight than ever before. Everywhere he went, the citizens looked at him with those desperate, hollow eyes, silently pleading for him to protect them from the creeping frost of the Fatui's influence. The Harbingers were tightening their grip on Nod Krai, their operations growing increasingly brazen, increasingly suspicious. It was hard to keep them away when Snezhnaya and Nod Krai shared some territory.

The people needed a shield, and they had chosen him to be it. After all, he was the only one who knew how to handle a court.

But a prince couldn't fight a war in the shadows with grand court proclamations. He needed leverage. 

And tonight, he had seen exactly how the Fatui superiors operated. She hadn't been sent to the pier just to handle a rogue merchant; it was obvious that she had been used as bait. Their leaders knew his morals— they knew the Prince could never look away from someone in danger, that he would always step in to protect a citizen. They had deliberately engineered a scenario to draw him out, using her as the lure.

What is it about her that makes them use her so effectively? What allows her to be the only lead we can follow? Flins wondered, his eyes narrowing in the dim lantern light. 

What hold do they have over her that she allows herself to be thrown into the teeth of danger just to test my reactions? There had to be a vulnerability there— a specific trait, a desperation, or a debt that the superiors were ruthlessly exploiting.

And if she was vulnerable, she could be changed.

A radical, dangerous thought took root in his mind. If he could find that characteristic, if he could understand the leverage the Fatui held over her, he might be able to offer her something better. If he could convert her, turn her allegiance, and bring her to their side, the crown would gain an invaluable weapon. A defector from the inner circle of the Northern Palace would be the ultimate shield for his people.

"My Lord?" the officer's voice called out from the small partition, cutting through the steady rattle of the carriage. "The Grand Master’s guard has already secured the perimeter at the estate. Shall we proceed directly to the secondary courtyard, or do you require a detour to the ministry?"

Flins didn't answer immediately. His fingers tightened around the fabric, crushing it into his palm until the silver signet ring on his finger bit into his skin. Sparing her tonight wasn't a romantic whim, no. It was the first step in a calculated recruitment. He had to keep her existence hidden from his own guards until he could break the Fatui's hold on her himself.

"No detours," Flins said, his voice dropping into that quiet, steady octave he used when the court expected him to be a prince. "The estate. Directly."

"Understood, My Lord."

The carriage swerved, the horses picking up pace as they left the salt air of the harbor behind, moving toward the grand, manicured avenues of the upper city.

Flins slowly uncurled his fingers. The velvet scrap remained wrinkled in his palm— a piece of evidence, a potential hook, and a reminder of the shadow he intended to bring into the light.

He slipped the fabric into the interior pocket of his heavy traveling cloak, tucking it deep beside his vest, right against his chest where the warmth of his skin could dry the harbor dampness out of the threads.

If I can find the crack in your armor, I will give you a real reason to fight.

4822 words.

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send a message or an ask (with anon off, i wont post it) to be added to the taglist!

════════════════

hi im back, i mixed a bunch of drafted chapters together to make a full one🥹

Law’s fingers hesitated over the keyboard for a millisecond, long enough for the virtual patient's heart rate to dip slightly before he stabilized the incision. It was exactly 4:15 PM in her time zone. He didn't keep a log, but because his own medical schedule kept him at home all week while she had regular school days, he knew her routine. She was never online before four on a weekday, and they only ever caught each other two to three times a week when the servers weren't completely deserted or whenever they both felt like playing.

He didn't reply immediately. He focused on the screen, locking the final digital suture into place. The green [S-RANK] banner flashed across his screen, cementing another flawless run, but he barely glanced at the statistics page before pulling up the chat window.

> QUEENHEART [ONLINE]

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[QueenHeart]

hey scrubs 

are you in a match

[SURGEON_OF_DEATH_1]

Finishing a simulation. You're later than usual.

[QueenHeart]

wow, the art of noticing lmao

ace forgot he ate his own beef jerky and tried to blame luffy

i had to threaten him with a plastic chair

[SURGEON_OF_DEATH_1]

A standard domestic crisis. 

Why is your ping high?

[QueenHeart]

the router is dying i think

anyway vc?

[SURGEON_OF_DEATH_1]

Join the channel.

════════════════

Law clicked the voice toggle. In the background of his room, the clicking and hissing of his own medical equipment stayed quiet, hidden just out of range of the high-gain microphone.

Across the room, crammed onto the small sofa near the door, Shachi, Penguin, and Bepo were huddled around a single shared console screen that Rosinante moved (with many setbacks) from Law’s usual setup, their low murmurs blending as they ran cooperative baseline drills. They didn't have their own setups here; whenever they wanted to play, they had to crowd into Law's room, sharing controllers and taking turns on the secondary display as usual.

"Why did it take so long for you to load in?" Law questioned aloud as her neon-pink icon shifted from the text chat into the voice lobby.

"Yo surgeon, chill," her voice crackled through. "The internet up here is ancient. It’s been a whole two months of this game, and I still think half my inputs are dropping because a bird sat and shit on the satellite dish. Wait, why is the lobby locked?"

Law ignored the "Surgeon" moniker she usually threw around. She’d shortened it from his full gamertag, SURGEON_OF_DEATH_1, which she claimed was entirely too edgy for someone who spent forty minutes explaining the specifics of a proper incision. 

He was thoroughly insulted by that, by the way.

She usually preferred calling him "Scrubs"— a jab she coined after he spent their entire first week of playing acting like an elite chief of surgery, only for her to point out that he was just a kid in a video game lobby. 

Even to a ten-year-old who also knew what he was talking about, no matter how much medical jargon he rattled off to sound like an expert, he was still just another kid wearing a digital uniform.

The real-life experience is vastly different.

"My crew is here," Law said, gesturing slightly toward the couch even though she couldn't see him. "They're using the secondary console. I'm bringing them into the voice link."

He hit the invite button. Three local profiles loaded into the party: [KILLERWHALEAURA], [PENGUINSHAVEMOREAURA], and [MINK_UTAFAN_1].

"Ouu! It’s the girl! She actually exists!" Shachi’s voice boomed directly from the couch and through the microphone simultaneously, causing Law to wince. On screen, his character— decked out in oversized scrubs— began performing a rapid hype emote while jumping in place.

“‘The girl?’”— He could vaguely hear her whisper in confusion, and he was glad the conversation moved on before she could embarrass him by asking about it. 

"Hello. Sorry for our intrusion," Bepo called out toward Law's desk, his voice small and slightly hesitant, matching his avatar, which bowed politely toward her model.

"Is this her?" Penguin added, leaning forward from the sofa to squint at the shared monitor, his avatar standing with crossed arms before sending a quick, animated wave toward the pink avatar. "The one you said has 'acceptable' suture speed?"

"Acceptable?" QueenHeart scoffed, a dramatic sigh rushing through the line. "Scrubs, I literally cleared the pediatric bypass stage without a single error. You’re just mad I beat your time."

Law twirled his pen, a small, involuntary smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth at how defensive she got. "A fluke. Let's see if you can actually hold a clamp straight when the pressure drops. Stop jumping around, Whale. Mink, keep an eye on the blood pressure monitor."

The mission immediately descended into high-stakes chaos. On screen, Shachi's character accidentally tripped over a rolling virtual stool, causing a tray of instruments to scatter with a loud metallic clatter.

"KillerWhaleAura, get out of the way, I can't see the incision line," QueenHeart said, her keyboard clicking rapidly as she repositioned her camera angle. "PenguinsHaveMoreAura, pick up the lap sponges. We’re losing the field."

"On it," Penguin muttered, adjusting his avatar’s stance to cover the left side of the table.

Law stayed quiet, his hands moving with practiced, steady ease to correct Penguin's minor placement errors. He found himself leaning closer to the monitor, entirely absorbed by the noise. Her sharp wit was the perfect counter to his crew’s frantic energy; she took charge of the digital room, completely unfazed by Shachi's loud antics or Bepo’s quiet check-ins.

"Wait, why are you using our full tags?" Shachi asked, laughing over the headset as his character recovered its footing. "It takes a whole second just to say it."

"Man, I don't know, I don't want to just give you guys a random nickname you hate," QueenHeart shot back over the click of her keys. "Sick IGNs anyway. Besides, what else am I supposed to call you?"

From the couch, Shachi and Penguin both opened their mouths, eager to shout their real names into the room mic and explain their witty usernames.

Law didn't say a word. He simply turned his head, casting a sharp, icy glare back over his shoulder. The pure warning in his eyes froze the two of them instantly. Shachi choked on his own breath, snapping his jaw shut, while Penguin suddenly found the secondary console screen intensely interesting. Even Bepo looked down at his controller, offering a tiny, apologetic murmur to the floor.

"Don't worry about it," Law said smoothly into the headset, his voice dropping back into its usual professional chill. "Just focus on the incision."

Suddenly, a loud, crashing sound that caused a lot of feedback from the microphones (on opposite sides of the wall to prevent this exact scenario but failed) echoed directly from Law’s own microphone. 

Rosinante had leaned in too far to watch the screen from the doorway, his elbow catching a stack of heavy reference books on the shelf. They cascaded to the floor with a series of dull thuds.

"Oh, dear," Rosinante murmured. He scrambled to gather them, his breathing coming through the high-gain mic as he accidentally leaned his chin right against the headset wire. "Hello there! Is this the young lady?"

Law winced, pulling one side of his headset away from his ear. "Cora-san, back up. You're right against the mic receiver."

"Ah, apologies, apologies," Rosinante said, his voice dropping to a gentle, rumbled chuckle that still carried clearly through the audio. He spoke warmly into the open air near the desk. "Hello, Miss Queen. I hope our Surgeon isn't being too terribly strict with you today. He tends to forget his manners when he’s looking at data charts. Are you having fun?"

"Hi, Mr. Cora," QueenHeart said, her tone shifting to something much softer, already somewhat aware of Law’s guardian, who often made himself known through the unusual chaos that the microphone picked up, especially since Law was a very quiet person. "He’s a total nerd, but I'm managing since I understand his whimsy!"

As the digital clamps locked into place on screen, a sudden rendering glitch caused the simulated hepatic artery to rupture, spraying a hyper-realistic, dark crimson arterial spray across the lens.

Rosinante blinked at the monitor, his smile faltering slightly. Why are kids even allowed on this game? he thought, a wave of adult skepticism hitting him as he watched the digital blood pooling with incredible accuracy on the screen until it melted into him being impressed at the graphics. 

Isn't there an age limit for this kind of graphic quality? Oh well...

Law’s face burned at her comment as he grumbled back at Queen about the use of the word “whimsy” and how that meant she was also a nerd. He glanced up at Rosinante, who quickly recovered his smile and gave the monitor a warm look. Then, the man’s large, clumsy hand came down onto Law’s head, slowly ruffling his dark hair.

As he did, Rosinante’s expression shifted— just for a fraction of a second. His eyes grew serious, giving Law a quiet, heavy look. It was a silent reminder they both understood without words: Keep the boundaries up. Don't let anything slip. They were surviving in the spaces between shadows, and safety depended on anonymity. This meant no real names, no locations, and no identifying details.

Law gave a single, accepting nod, feeling the comforting weight of his guardian's hand before Rosinante stepped back into the dimmer corner of the room.

"Goodbye, Miss Queen," Rosinante called out quietly from the back of the room. "Have a good game."

"Bye, Mr. Cora," her voice came through, small but clear.

"Check the vitals," Law said, his voice dropping back into its professional, detached chill. "Let's finish the secondary incision."

════════════════

After Shachi, Penguin, and Bepo piled out of the room to go find food downstairs, the server room cleared out, leaving only the two of them in the empty digital lobby. 

Law didn't close the client. He told himself he was just double-checking the ping, analyzing why her connection dropped three packets during the third stage of the resection. She was the most efficient player he'd found on the network; keeping her around was purely a matter of guaranteeing a good teammate for runs.

"Hey, Scrubs," her voice came through the headset, conversational and relaxed now that the high-stakes ticking of the simulation timer was gone. "What's the weirdest thing you've ever eaten?"

Law's fingers froze over the mechanical keyboard. He stared at the glowing pink icon. Why is she asking this? he thought, his brow furrowing. It has nothing to do with the operation mechanics.

"I don't waste time on irrelevant questions," Law replied smoothly, trying to sound completely detached.

"Oh, come on, don't be a robot," she huffed, the sound of her shifting her weight against her chair clear through the mic. "We just spent an hour rebuilding a digital liver. You can answer a simple question. Mine is an alligator. Ace, Sabo, and Luffy actually caught a huge one in the river a week ago. They beat it up, dragged it back, and we grilled it. It tasted like weird, tough chicken."

Law leaned back, his eyes tracking the cold drip of the IV fluid into his left arm. His own diet was strictly monitored, measured down to the calorie and the nutrient count by the doctors. "Why would you choose to consume a reptile?" he asked before he could stop himself.

He immediately felt a small prick of regret— why was he showing curiosity about her personal life?

"Wait, you're not even gonna address the alligator in the room?" QueenHeart giggled, a loud snort coming through the mic. "Get it? Like the elephant in the room, but an alligator? Haha..."

Law blinked at the monitor. The joke was terrible, but the real issue was that he hadn't even processed the most absurd part of her story. He hadn't questioned the fact that three young boys had physically fought a massive apex predator because somewhere over the last month, the chaotic background screams of Ace, Sabo, and Luffy had just become a normal, accepted metric in his head. 

A sudden wave of panic hit him. Why was he acting like he actually knew these people? They were supposed to be anonymous profiles on a dead server list. He shouldn't feel this familiar with a bunch of random strangers.

He cleared his throat quickly, trying to force his internal boundaries back into place. "Onigiri," he added, keeping his voice strictly tied to flat facts. "Just rice. Anything else usually complicates my digestion."

"Complicates your digestion?" she echoed, her voice jumping into a classic, childish tease. "Bro, what, are you lactose? Do you get tummy aches from milk?"

"No, how did you even bring milk into this?" Law shot back instantly, his face warming with sudden defensiveness. He clamped his jaw shut before he could say more. He couldn't exactly explain the heavy reality— that his body was still fragile and recovering from the toxic buildup of Amber Lead disease, a truth she didn't need to know.

"I am not lactose intolerant," he muttered sharply, quickly steering the topic away from his health. "I simply avoid bread. It's dry, stale garbage. It's completely inedible."

"Bread? Inedible?" she laughed, a genuine, high-pitched kid laugh. "How do you even hate bread? It's literally just flour and water. You're so weird, Scrubs."

Law's mind drifted back to the small, hidden stash of wrapped sweets Rosinante occasionally slipped under his pillow when the medical staff wasn't looking. He forced his thoughts back to the screen, adjusting his headset. "Why aren't you practicing your clamp placements? Your reaction time on the secondary portal vein was lagging by twelve milliseconds."

"Because the game is over and practicing is boring, Mr. Serious Surgeon," she whined, the sound of her tapping her fingernails against her desk echoing through the line. "Normal people talk about random stuff when they're done playing. You just want to be a bossy pants."

Law twirled his pen between his fingers, his eyes fixed on the green dot, silently letting her ramble about the bad school lunch she'd had that morning, pretending to himself that he was only listening to monitor her microphone's audio quality.

Then, a muffled roar erupted from the background of her microphone.

Thud. Thud. Crash.

The line went quiet on her end for a brief second as she hit a local mute toggle. Law watched her status icon shift from green to a dull, dead grey within a few minutes.

He couldn't bring himself to question it. After all, he's disappeared more abruptly before. 

Law pulled the headset down, letting it rest around his neck as he exhaled a slow, tired breath that caught slightly in his chest.

But as the heavy quiet settled back into his bones, he found himself looking at the digital clock in the corner of his taskbar, already measuring the exact distance until tomorrow afternoon.

════════════════

As she yapped on about the most random things, knowing he was still listening, she leaned back in her plastic chair, watching her character stand idle in the dead server lobby. She was genuinely having fun. It was an immense relief to talk to someone completely disconnected from the mountain post, someone who didn't exist in the sphere of her brothers. 

She loved Ace, Sabo, and Luffy with everything she had, but their world was a storm of split knuckles, dirt-stained collars, and relentless competition. She simply wasn't built for that life.

Her thoughts drifted back to Scrubs. Over the past month, they had developed a strange understanding. Sometimes, he would vanish entirely for two or three days without a word. When he finally logged back on, his text responses would be stiff, or he'd apologize for being later than their usual time slot, but he never actually explained where he went. 

She had wanted to ask so many times— wondering if he was sick or if something was wrong— but she always held back. It was personal. He never pushed into her life, and she didn't push into his. 

She just stayed patient, content with the quiet space they shared.

The sudden, violent rattle of her door frame shattered the thought.

Garp stood in the doorway, his massive shoulders completely cutting off the light from the hall. Behind him, Dadan stayed three paces back, looking at the floor, while Sabo kept his head down and Luffy tried to peer around the old man’s coat.

"That's enough," Garp said. His voice carried the heavy, unyielding rumble of someone who spent his life preparing for the worst. "Wasting daylight on a glass box. Get up."

She pulled the headset down to her collar, her face tightening. "I finished the district curriculum for the week, Grandpa. I have forty minutes left."

"I don't care about the timer," Garp strode in, the floorboards groaning under his weight as he reached down and tapped the top of her monitor with a thick, calloused index finger. "Ace has been out on the post since three o'clock. You're sitting here staring at shapes. The world out there is going to be incredibly cruel to you, and you're wasting time playing games."

For a second, Garp looked almost sorry— a fleeting, heavy look in his old eyes that suggested the history he couldn't talk about— but it vanished instantly beneath his stern brow. 

He didn't understand the complex surgical charts or the medical textbooks she hid under her mattress, and only saw a ten-year-old child hiding behind a screen, completely vulnerable to whatever dangers lay beyond their mountain.

"I don't want to be what you want me to be," she said, her voice dropping into a flat, steady line. "I told you that on Tuesday. And Monday."

Garp’s jaw tightened. "You think you get to choose to be weak just because it's easier? Look at these brats. Look at what happens when you let your guard down."

In the doorway, Ace appeared. His shirt was torn at the shoulder, and his face was smeared with dark dirt from the yard. He didn't look at Garp, and he didn't look at her. He just walked into the room, crossed his arms, and planted his heels directly between Garp’s boots and the edge of the desk— a silent, stubborn wall.

"Move, Ace," Garp rumbled.

"No," Ace said, his voice dropping into a low, defensive gravel. He stared straight into Garp's chest. "She's done with her schoolwork. Leave her alone. You're always hounding her about this stuff."

Garp’s hand moved faster than the eye could track, a heavy fist coming down right onto the top of Ace's head. The impact cracked loudly through the small bedroom, sending Ace hard against the edge of the wooden desk.

"Don't speak to your grandfather like that!" Garp barked.

Ace didn't cry out. He came up immediately, his teeth bared, throwing his entire weight forward to tackle Garp around the waist. It was like a dog hitting a brick wall. Garp didn't even shift his stance, simply grabbing Ace by the back of his collar, dangling him in the air.

"You think you're strong enough to talk back to me?" Garp growled, leaning down. "You're soft! You're all soft!"

"Shut up!" Luffy suddenly shrieked from the doorway. His face was pale, and tears were already streaming down his cheeks from pure terror, but he sprinted forward anyway, swinging his small fists wildly. He grabbed onto Garp’s left leg, biting down hard through the thick fabric of the old man's trousers.

"Mr. Garp, stop it!" Dadan yelled, frantically grabbing at Garp's shoulder, trying to haul him backward before the house fell apart.

A heavy, numbed paralysis took over her limbs. She sat perfectly still in her plastic chair, her fingers resting lightly against the edge of her desk as the room dissolved into noise and violence around her. 

Every impact on the floorboards vibrated right through her sneakers. Sabo stood frozen near the desk, his hands twisting the fabric of his vest. 

As Ace and Garp went down, Sabo didn't speak; he just shuffled sideways, his small frame cutting off her view of the floor as he positioned himself to block her from any stray furniture or swinging limbs. He had only been living with them for a short time and barely knew the old man, but Sabo was sure as hell frightened of him too.

His face was tense, his mouth opening and closing as he tried to find words that wouldn't make the situation worse. "Mr. Garp... sir—" he stammered.

She watched Ace’s shoulder clip the small plastic table beside the desk where the house router sat. There was a sharp, brittle crack as the plastic casing hit the floor, followed by a heavy stomp from Garp's boot as he tried to pin Ace down. The small green indicators on the front of the modem instantly flickered, turned solid red, and went completely dark.

The screen in front of her went dead.

Garp finally stopped, holding Ace off by the forehead with one massive palm while Luffy kicked uselessly against his shin. He looked at her small, rigid form, then down at the three boys. He let out a massive, dry huff that sounded more like a growl, dropped his hands, and turned on his heel, striding out into the hallway. "Brats," he muttered as he went. "The whole lot of you."

Dadan hurried after him, shouting about the broken floorboards.

The silence that followed was heavy, broken only by Luffy's shaky breathing as he sat on the edge of the bed, wiping his nose on his sleeve. Sabo immediately dropped to his knees, his hands trembling slightly as he reached under the desk to pick up the broken plastic pieces scattered near his shoes.

"Hey," Ace muttered, his voice rough as he wiped a smear of blood from his lip. He stood up slowly, his shoulders rigid, staring down at the cracked router casing in Sabo's hands. He didn't look at her directly, but his knuckles were white where he gripped his own elbows. "We'll... we'll fix it. Or I'll get another one from town. Don't worry about it."

Luffy looked up from the bed, his big eyes wide and shining with unshed tears. "Yeah! I'll help Ace carry a new one! We're sorry..."

She didn't answer them. A toxic mixture of boiling anger and deep, hollow dejection settled heavily in her chest. She wasn't just mad at Garp for his endless, suffocating pressure, or at her brothers for turning her bedroom into a battleground— she was dejected by the sheer predictability of it all.

She looked at Sabo’s quiet, careful movements, at the dark bruise already forming on Ace's temple, and an unpleasant weight crashed down on her. 

Why was she even using the simulator? Was she just a sicko who enjoyed the graphic, digital blood spilling across the lens, pretending she was fixing something that was already broken? 

Was it just in her blood to look at violence, to dissect it, to find comfort in the cutting open of things?

Ace felt that same dark curse every single day— that constant, burning need to throw himself against walls, to train until his hands bled, just to prove his existence didn't belong to the ghost of a monster. She did it too, in her own way, burying her face in dense medical texts and escaping into operating rooms just to find a space where the noise of their lineage couldn't reach her. 

But seeing her brothers thrown across the floorboards just to protect her right to sit in front of a glass box made the illusion shatter. Maybe Garp was right to try and fix them. They were only ten years old, and already they were so full of damage, searching for escapes because reality felt entirely too heavy to carry.

And then, like a quiet puncture wound, the thought of Scrubs surfaced. He was an afterthought in the wake of the domestic storm, but the realization hit her with a sudden, sharp panic. They had just spent a month building this bizarre, fragile friendship. 

Now, with the router completely shattered, her connection to the digital world was entirely cut off. It would take weeks to get a replacement out to the mountain post. What if he thought she just abandoned the game? 

What if he hated her for disappearing, thought she was unreliable, and simply removed her from his friends list? She had been so patient with his sudden absences and silent dropouts; she could only hope, with a sinking heart, that he would extend that same grace to her dead status icon.

Without a word, she stood up, grabbed her light jacket from the back of the chair, reached over the keyboard, and pulled the power cord straight out of the port

Ace took a half-step forward, his mouth opening as if to say something else, but he stopped when he saw the look on her face. Sabo held the broken plastic pieces tight against his chest, watching her quietly as she walked past them.

Out on the porch, the evening air was cool and smelled of dry grass. The sunset over the treeline was a deep, bruised violet. She sat on the top step, pulling her knees tight against her chest, her sneakers pressing into the weathered wood.

The router was completely smashed. She could walk down to the nearby town to catch a cell signal on her phone tomorrow, but she won't be able to open the game to send a quick message.

Behind her, through the screen door, she could already hear the heavy thuds of Ace taking his frustration out on the training post in the yard, swinging with everything he had left before the light completely died, while Luffy and Sabo stood by the edge of the porch, silently keeping watch over her shadow.

4433 words.

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send a message or an ask (with anon off, i wont post it) to be added to the taglist!

taglist:

@officialkatzline @/huhu i saw someone message but now i cant find it??🥹

════════════════

hi its been months

man, the world building is slightly hell since its technically follows the canonical one piece world map but with a modern-ish au </3. im still not sure of the full concept so ill keep it as vague as possible in the upcoming chapters...

anyway, remember to never give out your real names or any personal info on the internet, kids

[The story itself is in narrative/novel form of a One Piece modern/gaming au with 5k+ words each chapter. This ("version") only serves as a divider for time-skips]

[LOGGED IN AS: SURGEON_OF_DEATH_1]

The cursor blinked in the empty chat box for three minutes before a message finally appeared.

OPERATION OR DIE INBOX > QUEENHEART [IN THE LOBBY]

════════════════

[QueenHeart] 

so r u going to join the vc 

or just stare at the lobby screen all night

[SURGEON_OF_DEATH_1]

I am waiting for the server lag to stabilize.

Be patient.

[QueenHeart]

whatever hurry up

acespade is literally trying to kick my door down

he thinks i have his hidden stash of jerky

[SURGEON_OF_DEATH_1]

Then deal with your house and come back.

I’m not starting a high-difficulty run- 

-just to have you go AFK because of a snack dispute.

[QueenHeart]

no way 

i’m not losing my spot 

just join vc and start

[SURGEON_OF_DEATH_1]

Fine. 

Don't complain when we fail because- 

-you're being hunted by a roommate over dried meat.

════════════════

[NEW CHARACTERS]

SURGEON_OF_DEATH_1

> Trafalgar D. Water Law

ACESPADE

Portgas D. Ace <

SA_D_BO

> Sabo

MEATLOVER

Monkey D. Luffy <

CAPTAINKID67

> Eustass Kid

KILLERMACHINE67

Killer <

CORA-SAN

> Donquixote Rosinante

BEPO

SHACHI

PENGUIN

DADAN

════════════════

[PATCH NOTES]

1.1: This S-Rank is a Lie and Everyone is Annoying {2026-05-02}

[QUEENHEART: (1 Pending Request)]

5441 words.

1.2: At Least the Bear Won't Ghost You {2026-05-03}

[SURGEON_OF_DEATH_1 has accepted your friend request]

5168 words.

1.3: A Closed Loop of Competence in a Room Full of Idiots {2026-05-05}

OPERATION OR DIE INBOX > QUEENHEART [ONLINE]

════════════════

[QueenHeart] 

oh look who's alive 

i thought u died of boredom or something

3 days? Really?

[SURGEON_OF_DEATH_1]

I was occupied with my crew.

[QueenHeart] 

a 'crew'? lol okay captain

listen, meatlover is singing and acespade-

-is trying to 'cauterize' a sandwich

i need a distraction before i commit a real crime

hop in vc

════════════════

5396 words.

════════════════

send a message or an ask (with anon off, i wont post it) to be added to the taglist!

════════════════

He clicked.

The response was instantaneous, and he raised an eyebrow.

OPERATION OR DIE INBOX > QUEENHEART [ONLINE]

════════════════

[QueenHeart]

oh look who's alive 

i thought u died of boredom or something

3 days? really?

════════════════

Law’s mouth thinned. He wasn’t used to people keeping track of his absences (although he knew his crew did), let alone calling him out on them with such casual audacity. He leaned into the light of the monitor, his fingers hovering over the mechanical keyboard.

> QUEENHEART [ONLINE]

════════════════

[SURGEON_OF_DEATH_1]

I was occupied with my crew.

[QueenHeart]

a 'crew'? lol okay captain

listen, meatlover is singing and acespade-

-is trying to 'cauterize' a sandwich

i need a distraction before i commit a real crime

hop on vc

════════════════

Well, she sent a lot of messages that could have been in a single one.

Law hesitated. Voice chat, even before joining the game itself, was a bridge too far for most strangers; it invited a level of intimacy— or at least noise— that he preferred to keep at arm's length. But the thought of a "cauterized sandwich" sparked a grim curiosity, and the silence of his own room was beginning to feel a bit too much.

He clicked the invite.

A sudden, jarring burst of static and high-pitched laughter nearly threw him out of his seat.

"I told you! I’m cauterizing it so that it’s going to be like a pizza pocket!" a distant voice roared through the mic.

Law recoiled, his hand flying to his headset. He scrambled to his second monitor, heart hammering against his ribs. He should have remembered to tone down his volume before interacting with her group. With a few frantic clicks, he slid her input down to 50%. 

The blue-tinted shadows of his room felt less oppressive with their voices filling the space, even if she was currently grumbling about the "sanctity of aesthetic mods" to a group of people he couldn't see.

Across his lap, the thin tube of his IV line shifted as he moved his arm. He glanced at the site, ensuring the needle hadn't migrated before reaching up to tighten the flow regulator slightly.

“Oh, hi Surgeon_of_Death_1! Took you long enough. I was planning to start a liver transplant run before you accepted,” she gasped once she noticed that he had joined the call. The notification for it was drowned out by the mess in her house.

"I accepted to see if your luck finally runs out on a greater difficulty," Law replied, his voice flat. He was telling the truth, but it wasn’t necessarily the full truth. "I’ve seen your replays. You rely on frame-skip glitches to bypass the tension checks. Let’s see you do it without the shortcuts."

"Is that a challenge for you or for me?" she shot back, and he could practically hear her grinning. "Because I’ve got the disco-light mod enabled and I’m not afraid to use it against you."

Law didn't even blink. "That’s client-side, QueenHeart. Unless you’ve somehow managed to inject a script into my local files, I’ll be operating in a perfectly standard environment. You’ll be the only one struggling with discolored organs, arteries, and veins."

There was a sudden, heavy silence on the other end of the line.

"Wait," she said, her voice dropping an octave. "Wait, wait, wait. You mean the strobe effect doesn't... You don’t see it right now?"

"No." Law delivered the word with a dry finality, the sound of someone watching a train wreck from a safe, quiet distance. It completely masked the smile his lips stretched into as their conversation progressed. He could almost feel her brain short-circuiting through the fiber-optic cables.

"Oh, shit, no wonder you didn’t say anything," she muttered. He heard the frantic clicking of a mechanical keyboard. "Wait, stop, don't start the lobby yet! I have to disable the 'Blood is Glitter' pack too, or I’m going to be the only one blinded by the light reflections. Man, I thought I was going to be able to force you to vibe!"

"We are not here to 'vibe,'" Law corrected, though the tightness in his chest had eased. "Lobby’s open. Don't take all day."

He watched the empty slot in the surgical suite. The background noise on her end was still there— a distant door slamming and the faint, muffled sound of someone laughing— but it felt slightly further away now, like she had retreated into a corner of her room to focus.

"You're taking your time," Law remarked as her name finally appeared in the queue.

"I told you, I was fixing the mods! You try navigating a settings menu when your screen is literally sparkling," she huffed.

Law adjusted his screen brightness, his eyes scanning the technical specs of the level. "Your friends that we played with before," he said, keeping his tone carefully neutral. "The ones cauterizing sandwiches right now. Are they joining the session, or are they just there to provide the soundtrack?"

"Mmm, no," she said, her voice dropping into a quieter, more distant register. "They’re... around, obviously. Doing their own thing. Meat is now trying to see if he can fit a whole watermelon in the fridge without taking anything else out. I’m hiding in here so I don't get recruited into the madness."

She sounded small. 

Law noticed, but he didn't ask. He heard the slight dip in her tone and the way she’d stopped clicking for a second too long. A normal person might have asked if she was okay or if she was lonely in that big, noisy-sounding house. 

But Law wasn't looking for a heart-to-heart; he was looking for a partner who could hold a steady suture.

"I won't be lagging even a bit today," she added, her tone regaining some of its usual bite. "Nobody’s hogging the bandwidth. I’ve got the whole satellite link to myself since the idiots are out making a mess of the kitchen."

Law didn't offer a platitude, watching the loading bar. "Then you have no excuses for a drop in APM."

The screen flickered, and the lobby environment loaded. Queenheart’s avatar was already there, having swapped her gear at the last second to a neon-pink scrub set that stood out like a bruise against the white tiles. She was currently making her character crouch and stand in a rapid, jittery motion near the instrument tray, spamming the "Agree" emote so the character nodded its head with insane speed.

"Look at this frame rate, Surgeon_of_Death_1! It’s like butter!" she laughed loudly, her voice bouncing in his headset.

"Whatever you say, Queenheart," Law muttered. His own avatar stood motionless, brooding in his new charcoal scrubs. "But if you’re so confident in your connection, try a run where you don't use glitches or shortcuts. Actually follow the procedural steps for once."

"Aww, but the shortcuts are half the fun!" she whined. Her avatar performed a "Slump" emote, the digital shoulders dropping in exaggerated disappointment, before she suddenly started sprinting in tight, dizzying figure-eights around him. "Fine, fine. I'll do it the boring way. Just don't get mad when I still beat your precision score."

Law noticed a soft creak at his bedroom door. He didn't turn, but he saw a tall, clumsy shadow spill across his rug. Rosinante leaned against the doorframe, the faint smell of tobacco following him in. 

Law held back a sigh. He had definitely smoked again. He just hoped his guardian hadn’t managed to set his coat on fire while he was occupied.

Rosinante stayed silent, knowing the rules of Law’s gaming time, but he reached out to nudge a fresh glass of water on Law’s nightstand closer to his hand. He took a quick sip, feeling the heavy, warm pressure of a hand land on his head— a clumsy, silent pat that ruffled his hair and lingered for a second before the shadow finally retreated.

As the shadow turned to retreat, there was a sudden, violent crash.

Rosinante had caught his elbow on a shelf, sending a heavy medical textbook and a decorative lamp tumbling to the floor with a deafening thud.

"What was that?" QueenHeart’s voice jumped in his ear. On screen, her avatar stopped dead in its tracks, its head snapping toward the lobby entrance as if it could actually hear the chaos through the digital divide. "Did your house just collapse?"

Law winced, closing his eyes briefly as he heard Rosinante let out a muffled, embarrassed apology while scrambling to pick up the debris.

"My... guardian," Law muttered, his voice tight with a mix of affection and irritation as Rosinante shot him a large smile and a peace sign before disappearing. "He’s just exceptionally bad at navigating doorframes."

"Wait, so you're not the only one there?" she asked, a curious lilt returning to her voice. Her avatar trotted back over to his, standing uncomfortably close in the virtual space and triggering a "Curious" emote that tilted the character's head to the side. "I pictured you living in like... a fully submerged submarine. Or a very quiet cave."

Before Law could reply to her stupid imagination, three notification pings shrieked in his ear.

[CAPTAINKID67], [KILLERMACHINE67], and [SILENT_S] materialized as the lobby got filled in. The atmosphere was immediately trashed.

"Oi, Killer! Look at the physics on this rib-spreader!" CAPTAINKID67 shouted, his character swinging a virtual retracting tool around like a mace, narrowly missing the patient’s head. "If I jam this into the liver, does the blood spray the camera? I bet it does. Killer, watch this!"

"Kid, don't break the lobby before we even start. We can do that while it's ongoing," KILLERMACHINE67’s voice came through, muffled by the sound of him crunching on something. He was currently busy trying to see if he could stack surgical bowls on the patient's face to see if they’d roll off.

"Wait, don't do that," QueenHeart said. Her voice was surprisingly level, the kind of tone you use with a toddler about to eat a battery because looking concerned would encourage them to eat it faster. She was clearly used to the brand of chaos that came with living in a house full of energetic idiots. Her avatar, meanwhile, began running in tiny, frantic circles around a rolling stool, a mindless jitter that suggested her fingers were twitching with annoyance.

"And why the hell not?" CaptainKid67 barked a laugh; his character also jumped onto the rolling stool and spun in circles with her. "Listen, bro, it’s a video game."

"Because that's the hepatic artery," she answered, her voice genuinely answering. Her avatar moved away to jump onto the surgical table and then back off again, a mindless loop of movement while she spoke, before she stopped to reply to the greeting emote sent by SILENT_S. "If you nick that, the pressure will spray the virtual camera, sure, but the drop in systemic volume will trigger the fail-state in about eight seconds. You won't even get to see the cool part."

Law’s hand paused on his mouse. Most people would have snapped back with an insult, but she gave him a proper reason. 

So, she really did know what she was doing. Hearing her explain the mechanics with that weary patience felt strangely familiar— it was the same tone he used when he was the only one in a room who had actually read the manual and probably other books.

It was a weirdly grounding realization.

"Who let the textbook in here?" CaptainKid67 snorted, though he stopped spinning. "Just do the cutting and let us handle the heavy lifting. We don't need the anatomy lesson."

Law heard a soft, audible pout— a frustrated, sharp huff of breath from QueenHeart that sounded genuinely stung. She went quiet, her avatar standing still as the duo began playing bumper cars with the cabinets in a corner.

Was she used to being listened to when she talked? Well, it made sense, since her group seemed to know what Law and Queenheart were talking about during their run.

But he didn’t like the way she was insulted when she just answered the question the random shot at her.

"She’s right," Law said, his voice dropping into that coldness. "She’s technically correct about the tension. The fact that you’re treating a high-fidelity simulator like a sandbox is why your precision rating is in the single digits."

"Shut up, Death guy," CaptainKid67 sneered, his avatar jumping onto another random chair and spamming a "Flex" emote.

Law’s eye twitched. Chaos he could endure, but he had zero patience for incompetence masquerading as confidence. He ignored the taunt and looked at the glowing blue surgical field. "Lobby's locked. Let’s begin."

It was a disaster regardless. Within five minutes, the O.R. was a circus.

"Get your hands off the hilum!" Law snapped, his voice a low, vibrating growl as CaptainKid67 began hacking at the connective tissue with the subtlety of a lumberjack.

On the screen, CaptainKid67’s avatar was a blur of jerky, uncoordinated movements, its elbows clipping through the patient’s torso as he swung a blunt dissector like a pickaxe. "CaptainKid, if you pull that retractor one more centimeter to the left, you’re going to avulse the splenic vein, and we’re all going to be swimming in red pixels. Stop moving!"

"I'm making space, and what the fuck are you talking about?!" CaptainKid67 yelled back. His voice reached a pitch that made the audio clip into harsh, staticky squares. His avatar jittered with high-latency lag as he collided with a stand, sending a tray of hemostats clattering across the floor in a symphony of metallic pings.

CaptainKid67’s character began crouch-spamming rapidly over the spilled tools. "You're too slow and talk too much, Death guy! Watch this! Killer, move the light, I can't see where I'm digging!"

Law could hear QueenHeart mumbling about how “Death guy” and “Killer” were arguably the same thing, and wonder why these kids wanted such edgy nicknames.

He decides to ignore it.

"I'm trying, but the collision physics on this stand are absolute garbage," KillerMachine67 said, his voice muffled over the sound of a heavy, wet crunching noise. His character model was currently vibrating against a wall-mounted monitor, clipping halfway through the environment so only his legs were visible, kicking uselessly in the air. "I think I just clipped the light into the patient’s ribs. Does that count as a light source or a blunt trauma penalty?"

QueenHeart sighed into her mic, her avatar looking down at the kicking legs. "Well, it's definitely lighting up the body since you’re holding one, that's for sure."

Law’s jaw was locked so tight it ached. His eyes tracked the mess of pixels, his brain already calculating the fail-state probability. "KillerMachine67, why did you put six suction tips in the wound? You’re obstructing the entire field of view with your legs; get out!"

"Kid told me the fluid buildup causes lag," KillerMachine67 replied, unfazed by the exclamation. "I'm just optimizing the frame rate by removing the blood."

"Bro, you aren’t optimizing shit? Stop nicking the pancreas!" QueenHeart groaned at his lack of knowledge of the game's technicalities. On screen, her avatar was desperately trying to shove Killer’s character out of the way, their shoulders clipping together in a mess of flickering lab coat textures as she fought for a pixel of visual space. "Surgeon_of_Death_1, the BP is tanking! Silent_S, get one of the suctions and remove the rest— no, wait, not there! You're suctioning the irrigation fluid instead of the blood!"

"God, you two talk too much, I got it!" CaptainKid67 yelled. Law watched Kid's cursor flail wildly across the UI, accidentally opening and closing the settings menu three times. "I’ll just cauterize the whole area! Where’s the sparky-tool? Killer, find it, it's gotta be on one of those trays you knocked over!"

"I think it's under the liver," KillerMachine67 muttered. Law heard QueenHeart let out a strangled, high-pitched noise of disbelief. "Wait, no. I'm currently holding a… Bone saw? Do we need this?"

"No! Do not cauterize the—" QueenHeart’s voice hitched in genuine horror, and then her composure snapped completely. "If you touch that bovie to the biliary tract, I am going to… Agh! KillerMachine67, the liver is NOT a bone, and stop stacking the gauze on the incision like it's a game of Jenga; you're obscuring the field!” 

In the background of QueenHeart's mic, a door slammed open with a bang that shook her headset. “I'm going to actually lose my mind. I can't see anything but pixels and blood! Move!"

Law winced, hearing the distant, chaotic energy of a house that was clearly too small for the people in it. "Damn, you're usually not that agitated!" Ace’s voice roared. A faint thud followed— the sound of someone throwing a pillow. "Need a snack or something? You’re turning purple…"

"Ace, shut up! I can’t see shit on my screen!" she screamed back. “And what does that have to do with me talki—” he replied before getting shot down.

Law could hear another voice in the distance, telling them to keep it down before “Dadan” complained again (not that it would work).

At first, Law was just annoyed, his pulse thrumming with a familiar irritation; he couldn’t even talk because of the number of people already talking. But as the screen was cluttered with gauze and useless suction tips, he noticed something. She wasn't bothered by just the noise, but by the fact that they were obstructing the view. 

Her friends back home clearly messed around, but they usually didn't do it on the patient, at least until the end, where AceSpade used a defibrillator on an open patient. Being unable to see was clearly the one thing she couldn't tolerate.

He went quiet, his focus sharpening. He watched her avatar move— not with the erratic lunges of the other two, but with a desperate precision. She was doing exactly what he usually did while everyone else treated the O.R. like a mosh pit.

"This is for the soak-up, isn't it?" KillerMachine67 questioned, and you can almost see the way he narrowed his eyes in confusion as his avatar did the pointing emote at the mess. "If the gauze turns red, it means it's working. I'm just waiting for the stack to hit the ceiling."

"It is an obstruction!" QueenHeart groaned. Her avatar suddenly jerked to the left to face Law as if someone had physically bumped her arm in real life. "Surgeon_of_Death_1, the portal vein is right there, and CaptainKid67 is currently poking it with a blunt dissector! Do something!"

Law’s jaw tightened. He watched CaptainKid67's avatar start jumping on top of the patient's legs, the character model’s feet clipping through the surgical drapes in repetitive thuds. It was the most brain-dead thing he had ever seen in a high-fidelity simulator. But hearing her spiral into the same rage he felt actually leveled him out.

"Fine," Law snapped, his voice cutting through the noise like a scalpel. "QueenHeart— forget the protocol. We’re doing a two-man carry. Silents, just stay on the vitals monitor and ping if the heart rate hits 140. You two," he aimed this at the other duo, "hold the light and stay in the corner. QueenHeart, you handle the vascular sutures and the anastomosis. I’ll do the resection. We're doing the work of two people each."

"Wait— the whole thing?" she asked, her voice cracking with a sudden, jagged spike of adrenaline as they both ignored CaptainKid67’s exclamations of them not being allowed to order him around. "Oh, for real? You’re actually letting me do my technical stuff?"

"Show me why you hold a world record," Law challenged, finally letting his cursor sync with hers. "Follow my lead."

The dynamic flipped. Law and QueenHeart moved in a synchronized blur. While CaptainKid67 yelled about "metal physics" and Silent_S diligently pinged the monitor every time the patient breathed too hard, the two of them became a closed loop. Law found himself leaning into his monitor, his own breathing slowing down. 

For the first time in a while, he didn't have to explain the "why"— she was already there, placing clamps with sub-pixel precision and with a bunch of glitches he didn’t bother to point out for the sake of his and her sanity.

When the [MISSION SUCCESS] screen finally flashed in brilliant gold, the stats showed Law and QueenHeart had contributed 95% of the precision.

"Hah! See?" CaptainKid67’s voice returned, smug. "Told you we’d win. See, Killer? My plan worked perfectly. We barely did anything, and the bar filled up."

"I think we technically got carried, Kid," KillerMachine67 noted. "The stat for us is literally a zero. I didn't even know that was possible."

Law leaned back, exhaling a long breath, the tension finally bleeding out of his shoulders as the hum of his PC fans filled the silence of his room. He watched the "MVP" badge flicker between his name and hers, the gold light reflecting off his tired eyes. He’d spent months carrying dead weight in these lobbies, bracing himself for the inevitable moment a teammate would sever a major artery or clip through the floor, but she pushed through even when her screen was a graveyard of gauze and pixelated blood.

There was a strange rhythm to her movements that he hadn't expected to find in someone who didn’t seem to be playing for the medical experience— a shared language of sutures and clamps that didn't need to be spoken. It was rare to find someone who actually respected the anatomy instead of only trying to "win" the game.

"You actually know your terms," Law stated quietly.

"I told you," she replied, a tired, triumphant hum in her voice. "It’s because I wasn't lagging,” but then she sighed into the mic. “Shit, I almost had a heart attack. My hands are literally shaking. Surgeon_of_Death_1, please, let’s move to a different lobby. I can’t with these randos anymore."

"Who are you calling a rando, you nerd?" CaptainKid67 barked. His avatar began spamming the punch animation toward her character's head, the virtual fist making a dull thwack sound against the air. "You're just mad 'cause I’m better at this and you’re just a walking textbook, bro. Nobody cares about your boring anatomy facts, go back to school!"

"You're not better at anything; you have the brain of a goldfish!" she shot back, her avatar whipping back to look at the boy. "You almost nuked the biliary tract, and your stats are the worst I've ever seen! You're trash! Go play with a coloring book and drag yourself to a rage room!"

CaptainKid67 began to sputter, his voice dissolving into a mess of frustrated, inaudible noises. It sounded like he was trying to scream and choke on his own spit at the same time, the audio cutting in and out as he hit his desk. "I— you— you’re just—" he stammered, his mic peaking into a screech of pure, unrefined prepubescent rage. "You’re a loser! Killer, tell her she’s a nerd! Tell her she’s a geeky loser!"

"I think she’s kind of right about the billy tract or whatever it was, Kid," Killer muttered. Law heard a soda can open in the background.

"Shut up! You're both losers!" CaptainKid67 screamed. His avatar began running in tight, glitched circles around QueenHeart, his character model twitching as he hit the sprint key repeatedly.

Suddenly, a surprised squeak, a bunch of inaudible words, and another crash echoed through QueenHeart's mic. "Waaaaah! Waaaaah! Is the little baby crying?" AceSpace’s voice exploded into the feed, dripping with mockery. Law winced, pulling his headset an inch away from his ear as the sheer volume threatened to blow his speakers. "I can hear you from the kitchen, you absolute loser! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!"

Law could hear the physical struggle as SpaceAce seemingly tried to snatch the headset away. "CaptainKid, you’re dogwater! You’re sewage! I’ve talked to monkeys with better depth perception than you! Go cry to your mom! Get out of the lobby before I find your IP and send you a glittery fart bomb!"

Law decided that he didn’t want to know if “talked to monkeys” was literal or figurative.

"Hey! Give it back!" QueenHeart’s muffled voice came through the background, sounding like she was physically wrestling for her equipment. Her avatar on screen jerked wildly, spinning in a circle before running face-first into a wall and staying there.

"No! They’re annoying!" AceSpade bellowed, his voice vibrating with immature glee. "Yo, Surgeon guy! Run! Get her out of here before these clowns infect her brain! Peace out, losers!"

Law stared at the screen, his temple throbbing. He should have been annoyed by the additional layer of noise, but the mindless, domestic bickering on the other end was almost grounding. The way this AceSpade jumped into fighting her battles— however immaturely— suggested a dynamic that was as chaotic as the surgery they had just survived.

Yes, survived.

He felt a rare, microscopic tug of relatability. Law wasn't one for loud-mouthed screaming matches, but he knew the instinct. If someone was talking this much trash to his own crew, he’d probably be just as quick to shut them down, though with a lot more biting sarcasm and fewer mentions of "fart bombs." There was a genuine, lived-in warmth to their insults that made the game feel a little less lonely.

There was something so genuinely pathetic about Kid’s screaming that he found himself letting out a short, huffed laugh. "Agreed," Law muttered, reaching for the 'Leave Lobby' button. "Let's go."

════════════════

She could hear Ace in the kitchen as he talked to the other two, his voice carrying over the sizzle of a pan as he mocked her with relentless, brotherly glee.

"I'm just saying," Ace called out, "three days of total radio silence, and the second his name pops up on your screen, you’re diving into his DMs like the house is on fire. You were practically vibrating the moment he accepted the invite."

She didn't even give him the satisfaction of a glance. Her eyes remained locked on the monitor, her fingers dancing over the keys to finalize her loadout. She tuned him out completely, the familiar drone of his teasing becoming nothing more than background noise, like the sound of her PC fans. She had more important things to focus on— specifically, not letting her frame rate tank the moment the simulation began.

The operation itself had been a total fever dream. Playing with CaptainKid67 and KillerMachine67 was like trying to perform a concerto while two toddlers beat on the piano keys with hammers. She was used to the noise, the lag, and the inevitable moment where she had to perform a digital lobotomy on her own expectations just to finish a level.

But working with SURGEON_OF_DEATH_1 had been different, as expected. It felt like finally finding the missing gear in a broken watch. She hadn't needed to type out instructions or scream into the mic for him to move his light because he was just there. Every time she reached for a virtual clamp, he was already retracting the tissue. Every time the blood pressure dipped, he was already calling for the suture.

It was exhilarating— and a little terrifying— to finally have a partner who moved at her speed. She felt a rare sense of weightlessness. 

As the [MISSION SUCCESS] screen finally flashed in brilliant gold, she suddenly went quiet. The adrenaline that had been propping her up began to drain away, leaving a hollow, shaky exhaustion in its wake. She leaned back, her hands actually trembling as the "MVP" badge flickered between their names.

Ace, who had been mid-sentence about a watermelon-related incident in the kitchen, stopped. He leaned against the doorframe, his brow furrowed as he watched her. She wasn't celebrating; she was just staring at the screen, her shoulders slumped. 

This silence was different, and it usually meant she was over-leveraged and about to crash.

He walked over, dropping a charred sandwich onto a napkin on her desk. "Hey. You okay? You look like you just ran a marathon in a hurricane."

"I'm fine," she whispered, pulling the headset down so it rested around her neck. "Just… that was a lot."

He could hear the grumpy guy talk, to which she replied, “...Shit, I almost had a heart attack. My hands are literally shaking. Surgeon_of_Death_1, please, let’s move to a different lobby. I can’t with these randos anymore."

Ace reached out to ruffle her hair and drag the headset back down, his expression softening, but then a sharp, shrill voice cut through the quiet. Her headset was still active, and because she’d lowered the volume earlier, the screeching from the earcups was just loud enough for Ace to hear.

"...just a walking textbook! Nobody cares about your boring anatomy facts, go back to school!"

She stiffened. The exhaustion was still there, but the sting of the insult forced her back into the fray. She grabbed the headset, pulling it back over her ears and adjusting the frame with a sharp, decisive click.

"You're not better at anything; you have the brain of a goldfish!" she shot back, her avatar whipping back to look at the boy. "You almost nuked the biliary tract, and your stats are the worst I've ever seen! You're trash! Go play with a coloring book and drag yourself to a rage room!"

Ace’s hand froze mid-air. His eyes snapped from her face to the headset as the screeching response erupted from the speakers when she muted again.

"I— you— you’re just—" Kid’s voice stammered, peaking into a screech of pure rage. "You’re a loser! Killer, tell her she’s a nerd! Tell her she’s a geeky loser!"

The atmosphere in the room shifted instantly. At that point, Ace looked like he was ready to physically pull the person through the screen. 

He didn't wait for her permission. He lunged forward, snatching the headset off her shoulders with predatory speed.

"Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me," Ace hissed, his thumb hovering over the mic-unmute button.

"Ace, don't—" she squeaked in surprise, nearly falling off her chair.

"No," he growled, his voice dropping into that dangerous, low register he saved for people who messed with his family. "I’m not letting some prepubescent brat with a God complex talk to my sister like that."

“...You’re also a prepubescent brat…? With a complex of some sort…?” She attempted to drag his arm away, but to no avail.

He jammed the headset on, his eyes narrowed as he watched CaptainKid67’s avatar jumping in glitched circles on the screen.

"Waaaaah! Waaaaah! Is the little baby crying?" Ace’s voice exploded into the mic. "I can hear you from the kitchen, you absolute loser! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!"

She tried to grab the cord, but Ace blocked her with his arm, his face twisted in a grin of pure, immature malice. He was in his element now— the (current) king of their mountain defending his own.

"CaptainKid, you’re dogwater! You’re sewage!" he bellowed. "I’ve talked to monkeys with better depth perception than you! Go cry to your mom! Get out of the lobby before I find your IP and send you a glittery fart bomb!"

"Ace! Give it back!" she yelled, finally getting a grip on his arm and wrestling for the headset.

He laughed, dodging her reach, before finally shoving the headset back into her hands with a wink. "Yo, Surgeon guy! Run! Get her out of here before these clowns infect her brain! Peace out, losers!"

As he stepped back, breathing hard and looking far too proud of himself, he looked at her. "There. Now, are we going to eat this burnt offering or what?"

Her heart swelled with appreciation, and she hoped it didn’t show. “...If I get reported and banned, I’m going to kill you too.”

5362 words.

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send a message or an ask (with anon off, i wont post it) to be added to the taglist!

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the reason why this chapter took so long is because all the videos i found with a liver transplant procedure barely explained it so i didnt know how to make it funny😭 oh well

i have a disease called "overexplain everything" because of an overactive imagination (like i end up trying to imagine every single detail of a scene [ingame actions, how they talk, what theyre doing, whats going on around them, etc...]) and high wpm because im used to typing fast (programming, writing for years) so even if i want this to be a silly side project, its still reaching 5k words per chapter regardless😓 

and yes, 67. i dont find it that funny but like its highkey my fanfic and i can do what i want (which is something i need to keep doing because i keep overthinking every single possibly-ooc thing). i dont know how to characterize children kid and killer so i hope i dont get murdered for this

Law had been awake for hours— his bones always felt heaviest in the pre-dawn dampness of Swallow Island, a dull ache that made sleep feel like a chore. He’d spent the morning in a state of agitation, analyzing the new art style with the intensity of a pathologist. When Rosinante stumbled into the room, smelling of burnt toast and looking like he’d slept in a wind tunnel, Law didn't even give him a chance to say good morning.

"Cora-san, look at this. The Robotic General’s new 'V-3 Thruster' assembly is a structural disaster," Law announced, thrusting his tablet so close to Rosinante’s face that the man had to lean back to avoid going cross-eyed. "The artist clearly doesn't understand the load-bearing capacity of a reinforced titanium ankle joint. If the General tries to land a kick in this issue, his entire lower chassis should technically implode."

Rosinante blinked, his eyes slowly coming into focus as he leaned over the fourteen-year-old’s shoulder. He didn't pull away or dismiss the rant; instead, he rested a heavy, warm hand on Law’s head, his expression softening into something quietly fond. He looked at the vibrant comic panels, then back at the boy who looked so much smaller than the cyborg on the screen.

"Maybe he has a hidden support beam, Law? Magic science?" Rosinante suggested softly, reaching out to snag a stray piece of lint off Law’s sleeve.

“It’s Germa engineering, so it’s not magic! And it should be consistent!" Law snapped, though he leaned almost imperceptibly into the touch on his head. His eyes were bright, the most life Rosinante had seen in them all week. "If the lore says they use pressurized steam-hydraulics, you can't just switch to electric-servo motors without an explanation. It’s an insult to the readers."

Rosinante just grinned, a slow, gentle thing that reached his eyes. He reached out to adjust the collar of Law's pajamas, his fingers lingering for a second as if checking for a fever without making it obvious. "I’m sure the General will figure it out, kid. He’s got heart. Just like you."

"He has a combustion engine, Cora-san. Keep up," Law muttered, though he finally set the tablet down and allowed his shoulders to relax.

The high of the update carried him through Wednesday, which was mostly swallowed by a grueling series of infusions and the slow wheeze of his air purifier. He spent most of the afternoon horizontal, watching the clear liquid from the IV bag drip with a detached fascination.

Every time his eyes drifted toward the dark monitor on his desk, the ghost of that notification bubble nagged at him.

He couldn’t understand her. To Law, surgery, even in-game, was a ritual— every movement had to be efficient, and every second accounted for. But QueenHeart had treated the operating theater like an arcade. He kept picturing the way she’d wasted precious seconds during the tension of the procedure to custom-brand the surgical drapes with heart icons. 

Yes, it was a blatant disrespect for the "professional" atmosphere of the simulator, and yet, she hadn’t missed a single vital check. Even more irritating was the fact that he’d looked up the leaderboards during a bout of insomnia. Her username sat near the top of the global "Cardiac Speedrun" rankings— a record she had probably achieved by exploiting the game’s engine, clipping the surgical tray through the patient’s bed to shave off milliseconds of movement.

She was clearly a speedrunner. She knew the game’s physics well enough to break it, yet she chose to use those hard-earned, saved seconds to mess around. She would glitch an arterial clamp through a ribcage just to buy herself enough time to adjust a digital lamp so the "lighting looked better." It was a contradiction of brilliance and sheer, unserious vanity that he couldn't stop thinking about.

And then there was the request itself. Usually, when the game ended, the lobby emptied and the silence returned. But she had gone out of her way to find his username in the recent players list. She had clicked 'Add.' 

She had signaled, quite clearly, that she wanted to do it again.

He wasn't used to people wanting to return to his orbit, especially not after he’d spent an hour being a "grumpy kid" to them. Most people in Pleasure Town kept a polite, fearful distance from the boy who knew too much about death. But she had reached out into the void, seemingly indifferent to his attitude, as if the only thing that mattered was that they had somehow worked together in that mess of blue light and digital blood.

Of course, save for Bepo, Shachi, and Penguin… And this friendship of theirs was actually the reason why he refused to delete the friend request.

He’d reached out once, his fingers brushing the cool plastic of the mouse, but a sudden, sharp spike of fatigue had pinned him back to the pillows. The effort of sitting upright felt like a marathon he wasn't ready to run.

Tomorrow, he told himself, closing his eyes against the blue-tinted shadows of the room. I'll see if her luck holds up for a round tomorrow.

════════════════

On the other side of the world, in a house that smelled of cedar smoke and overcooked meat, the girl known online as QUEENHEART was currently trying to glare a hole through her monitor.

She was ten years old, a week younger than Ace— the result of Delayed Interval Delivery, a medical miracle born of her mother’s desperate, agonizing will even after 20 months of carrying them. While Ace had been born screaming into the world, she had been the silent second half, arriving seven days later into a room where their mother’s life was already fading. 

She did not want to think about the reason why Portgas D. Rouge needed to carry them for so long.

"He’s still not on," she grumbled, resting her chin on her palm. She was staring at the "Offline" status of SURGEON_OF_DEATH_1, her face pulled into a massive pout.

"Who? That 'Doctor' guy?" Ace asked, leaning against the doorframe. He was tossing a baseball up and down, his movements sharp and restless. They shared the same blood— the blood Ace hated so much that he looked like he wanted to jump out of his own skin. He lived for the physical world— for the hunt, the fight, and the desperate need to prove he deserved to breathe. "He probably realized you’re a loser after you carved hearts on surgical drapes and blocked you. You’re weak, and real pros don't have time for your sparkly gauze."

"I am not a loser!" she snapped, spinning her chair around. The motion was defensive, a sharp pivot away from the bitterness that always seemed to leak out of her twin when he was bored. 

Sabo walked past, carrying a stack of laundry. He wasn't her brother by blood, but he was the one who usually brought reason to the house. He paused, looking at her with that calm(er) glint in his eyes. "Ace, leave her alone. She’s just frustrated because she finally found someone who can keep up with her APM. It’s hard to find a good partner when the game is trending and swamped by engagement-farmers." 

He offered her a small, encouraging smile as she kept pouting at him sadly. "Maybe he’s just busy. Not everyone spends their Wednesday afternoon arguing with online gamers."

"I'm hungry!" Luffy yelled from the kitchen, the seven-year-old’s voice echoing through the floorboards. "Hey! Come eat! Dadan made the big meat stew!"

"I'm not hungry," she called back, her voice barely a whisper.

The three boys exchanged a look. For a girl who usually fought Ace (just Ace) for his last scrap of meat just to prove she was just as tough as he was, her lack of appetite was a red flag. 

She was genuinely sulking over a digital ghoster.

"Suit yourself," Ace teased, though he lingered for a second longer than usual, his eyes softening just a fraction before he turned away. "More for us. Come on, Sabo, Luffy— let's go hit some tires. If she wants to stay inside and wait for a guy who probably thinks 'clipping' is something you do to hedges, let her."

The boys were now out in the woods, their shouts fading into the mountain air. She had stayed behind to do chores— a trade-off for being allowed to stay on the computer.

She wasn't the adventurous type like her twin and the other two. Ace was the heir to a wild, physical fire, but she had apparently inherited their mother’s personality. She’d always found school easy— manageable, but mind-numbing. That boredom was what had driven her to the simulator. At first, she’d just wanted to see how fast she could "break" it, using speedrun glitches to clip medical equipment through walls to save on travel time.

But then, she’d hit the wall. Some of the levels required actual knowledge. To beat the world record, she couldn't just click fast; she had to understand why a heart behaved the way it did. So, she had researched. While other kids her age were learning basic division, she was reading PDFs on the thoracic cavity and the precise tension required for a vascular suture. Now, she knew more about human anatomy than she did about math.

And she liked it.

…But it did make her feel lonely.

She opened the game, the familiar blue glow reflecting in her eyes.

[SURGEON_OF_DEATH_1: OFFLINE]

"Fine," she petulantly whispered to the empty room. She leaned in closer to the screen, the blue light catching the stubborn set of her jaw as she pulled up their last replay.

She watched the playback with the critical eye of a technician. She hadn't actually unfazed him— she could see the micro-delays in his movements every time she did something ridiculous. He’d pause for a fraction of a second when she branded a heart onto a drape, his cursor flickering with what she could only describe as disbelief. 

He was clearly fazed, probably even annoyed, but he hadn't quit.

That was the thing that kept her looping the footage. Despite his "grumpy doctor" persona, he had pivoted. He hadn't fought her chaos and instead used it.

Halfway through the recording, she watched the moment the dynamic flipped. She had been the one leading the charge, dragging him through her glitched shortcuts and erratic pace, but then a massive arterial bleed had triggered— a scripted disaster meant to end a run. She’d hesitated, her cursor wavering as she watched the frame drop.

In that split second, he had taken over.

His movements became a blur of terrifying efficiency. He began calling for clamps before the vessels even burst, his cursor snapping to the exact pixel required with a confidence that made her chest tighten. Suddenly, she wasn't the one setting the tempo, and was the one scrambling to keep up, her fingers flying across the keys just to stay in his orbit. 

He was the first person she’d met online who didn't think her knowledge was "creepy" or "weird," or try to one-up her (imagine a bunch of older teenagers trying to fight a ten-year-old over the difference between the kidney and the liver, and then being wrong). He just proceeded to show her exactly how much better he was.

"Tomorrow," she muttered, her eyes narrowing with a sudden, fierce determination as she gripped her mouse. "If he’s on tomorrow, I’m making him do a liver transplant with the disco-light mod enabled. See how good he is when the liver is neon purple."

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By Thursday, the isolation of Pleasure Town was shattered by the wet thwack of a snowball hitting his window, followed by a muffled "Captain! Open up!"

Bepo, Shachi, and Penguin didn't even wait for an invite. They burst in with a chaotic energy that immediately made the room feel three sizes too small. Penguin, being sixteen, led the charge, while fifteen-year-old Shachi immediately began an impromptu wrestling match with a decorative pillow. Ten-year-old Bepo trailed behind, clutching a bag of takoyaki to his chest with the grim determination of a soldier protecting a wounded comrade.

"We brought the 'goods' from Takoyaki 8, Captain!" Shachi announced, clearing a space on Law's desk with a sweeping gesture that nearly knocked over a pencil cup. He let out a loud, obnoxious whistle as he inspected the medical tape sitting on the side table. "Hey, watch this!"

Shachi proceeded to pull a long strip of tape and wrap it around his own head, pulling his nose upward until he looked like a pig. Penguin snorted, doubled over with laughter, and immediately grabbed a roll of gauze to create a makeshift mummy arm.

"You’re not supposed to be here," Law rasped, but he was already sitting up, a reluctant tug of amusement pulling at the corner of his mouth. "And you’re definitely not supposed to be wasting surgical-grade adhesive on your face, Shachi."

Penguin laughed loudly, hopping onto the edge of Law’s bed. He reached out and playfully nudged Law's shoulder with his elbow. "Bepo did some biology diagrams for his science class, and it was picked to be displayed at the next science fair— they're actually beautiful. The old man also helped. Anyway, we came to see if you were still breathing or if you'd finally turned into a mecha yourself."

"I'm sorry," Bepo whispered, even as he began meticulously lining up the takoyaki on a clean napkin before Law gave him a short pat on the head as congratulations. "We wanted to see the game. The one where you’re the boss of everyone."

The preparation for the game was a spectacle of uncoordinated enthusiasm. They pulled out their own controllers— scuffed, third-party (Wolf made them; somehow they work) things with peeling stickers— and began a frantic debate about who got to use the "good" USB port. Law watched with a critical eye, his heart feeling a little lighter as Penguin double-checked the seat of the cables and Bepo moved with extreme caution to avoid snagging any of Law's actual medical lines.

"Okay, Law, show us," Shachi said, his voice dropping into a rare moment of serious focus as he adjusted his grip on the plastic controller. "Show us how the 'Surgeon of Death' actually operates. I bet I can suction faster than you."

"Don’t just suction randomly to prove that, Shachi," Law retorted, his fingers flying across his own keyboard with a grace they didn't possess on particularly bad days.

It was frantic. Law sat in the middle, his pale face flushed with genuine excitement as he directed them. Even though Penguin and Shachi were older, they deferred to Law the moment the screen flickered to life; in this world, Law was the only authority that mattered.

"Penguin, the incision is drifting. Correct your angle by fifteen degrees," Law instructed, his eyes locked on the monitor, a sharp, steady beeping over the sound of their heavy breathing and the clicking of plastic buttons.

"Got it! Shachi, move that thingy, I can't see the valve!" Penguin shouted, his entire body tilting to the left in his seat as if he were trying to physically push the digital scalpel.

"Uhh, okay! I’ve got this retractor thing steady, Bepo, check the gas!" Shachi’s thumbs moved in a blur, his brow furrowed in deep concentration. He was trying to match Law’s rhythm, jaw set as he tried to be the assistant Law deserved.

"Sedative is at eighty percent," Bepo murmured. Despite being the youngest, his hands were surprisingly light on the keyboard. He looked up at Law for approval, his small chest puffing out when Law gave a sharp, appreciative nod. "Heart rate is stabilizing. I'm doing it, Captain! I'm helping!"

"Don't lose focus, Bepo, just watch the pressure," Law said, his voice softening just a fraction. For a moment, the room was a symphony of chaos— the older boys hissing through their teeth when a needle slipped, and the youngest holding the line. 

When they successfully managed to bypass a digital artery, Penguin let out a triumphant "Yes!" and tried to high-five Shachi, nearly dropping his controller in the process.

"Focus!" Law barked, but he was grinning now, a rare, toothy expression that made Rosinante lean against the doorframe in silent relief.

They didn't fail immediately, but the [PATIENT EXPIRED] screen eventually flickered to life after a tense twenty minutes when Shachi accidentally sneezed and retracted a bit too hard. The room went silent. Shachi and Penguin just exhaled in unison and slumped against each other on Law’s rug, looking absolutely spent.

"Man... how do you do that for hours?" Shachi panted, wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. "The focus you need because it just dies at the smallest thing... It's insane, Law. My brain feels like it’s vibrating."

"It's just the discipline," Law said, though he didn't mention that his own hands were shaking slightly. He reached out and snagged a takoyaki, the warmth of the food and the rowdy presence of his friends making the cold Pleasure Town wind outside feel a million miles away.

Rosinante watched them from the doorway, his quiet look of pride masked by the shadows. He saw the way the older boys checked the color of Law’s face the moment the game ended, and the way little Bepo quietly moved to sit by Law's feet, leaning his head against his Captain's knee. He didn't interrupt and just stayed there, a silent guardian over the mess of boys and grease.

By the time the sun began to dip and Rosinante finally ushered the boys out back into the snowy streets to go back to Wolf’s house, which was far from town— reminding them that Law needed his rest— the room felt incredibly, deafeningly quiet. The scent of the takoyaki lingered, a human reminder of the day he’d spent being a "Captain.”

Law turned back to his desk. He felt the familiar exhaustion, but his eyes drifted to the bottom corner of the screen.

[QUEENHEART: (1 PENDING REQUEST)]

He thought about Sora and his robot companion, and then his own crew— how they were a patchwork of steel and scrap, functional only because they refused to let each other fall apart. His gaze drifted to the empty spot on his rug where Penguin and Shachi had been wrestling just an hour ago, the fibers still flattened and messy. He could still feel the lingering warmth of Bepo’s gentle hands against his knee, a small, grounding pressure that he knew calmed the younger boy.

And himself.

The silence now felt heavy, pressing against his eardrums. He stared at the glowing orange notification from QUEENHEART, the cursor blinking with indifference. 

Seventy-two hours ago.

He found himself questioning why the notification even mattered. He told himself it was purely a matter of technical interest. He wondered if her knowledge of the procedures was actually grounded in reality, or if she was just a savant of the glitches, someone who had memorized the game’s physics without understanding the weight of the anatomy it represented. 

Was she actually capable of a high-fidelity transplant without the shortcuts?

The curiosity was an annoying, persistent hum in the back of his mind. He didn't usually care about these gamers, but she had reached out first. She had breached the professional barrier he kept around his digital life, and that alone made her a variable he hadn't accounted for. It wouldn't hurt to check— after all, a secondary opinion, even a digital one, was better than the sterile quiet of his own thoughts.

He already thought this through yesterday, and, really, he already knew what he wanted to do.

The blue light of the screen washed over his face, highlighting the dark circles under his eyes. 

He didn't want the silence of Swallow Island, but he wasn't exactly looking for another round of supervising his own crew, either. He loved them, and he never minded having to correct the difference between an artery and a vein for the nth time or Bepo’s soft apologies. But the memory of the girl’s precision was a persistent, nagging itch. He found himself genuinely curious about a stranger who didn't need a lecture on anatomy— someone who had moved in such perfect, unspoken sync with him that it felt less like training and more like a real operation.

If he had to be honest, he just wanted a clean run.

…Why was he overthinking about this anyway?

════════════════

By Thursday morning, the silence of the house felt less like peace and more like a personal insult.

The girl known as QueenHeart sat hunched over her keyboard, her small frame swallowed by an oversized hoodie that probably belonged to Sabo. She was staring at the screen with the kind of focused intensity she usually reserved for studying the circulatory system of a lung.

[SURGEON_OF_DEATH_1: ONLINE]

"You absolute jerk," she whispered, her thumb digging into the side of her mouse. He was there. He had been there for twenty minutes. And yet, the pending request sat untouched, a little orange blotch on her UI that felt like a mockery of her existence.

She felt a hot, prickly sensation behind her eyes. It wasn't just that he hadn't clicked 'Accept.' It was that she could see his status shifting. He was active. He was doing something.

"Still staring at the ghost?"

Ace’s voice preceded him as he thudded into the room, smelling of woodsmoke. He leaned over the back of her chair, his shadow falling across her monitor. He just looked at the way her jaw was set instead of the stats or the replay like he was posed up for. 

"He’s playing," she muttered, her eyes narrowing as she saw his status change to IN-GAME (4/4 PLAYERS). "He’s in a full lobby. He’s… Ignoring me."

"Ouch," Ace let out a sharp, jagged laugh, though he didn't move away. He reached down and flicked the back of her ear, a gesture that was half-annoyance, half-check-in. "Maybe he finally realized you’re a loser and found a real group. Is that it? You got a crush on the grumpy doctor?"

"I do not have a crush on him!" she shrieked, spinning her chair so fast she nearly took out Ace’s shins. Her face was flushed, a hot, radiating pink that clashed with the blue light of the room. "I just— he’s the only one who doesn't play like a toddler! I want to play with him, Ace."

"Like a toddler," Ace mimicked, his voice dropping into a mocking tone. He tossed his baseball up, catching it with a thwack of leather against his palm. "You're ten. You’re a nerd who reads textbooks for fun when normal kids play outside. You play 'don't let the digital man bleed out.'"

He looked down at her, and for a second, the teasing faded as he caught a glimpse of her watery eyes. He saw the way her fingers were twitching over the keys— the same restless energy he got in his legs when he felt trapped inside the house. She was seeking company. 

Among the four of them, she was always the one who seemed to have her head in the clouds and her heart in a library, but right now, she just looked like a kid who had been left off the playground.

Sabo appeared in the doorway, a bucket of water in one hand and a rag in the other. He stopped, his gaze shifting from the glowing screen to the girl’s slumped shoulders. Unlike Ace, who met every problem with a fire, Sabo was the one who listened to the subtext.

"He’s in a full lobby, huh?" Sabo asked softly. He walked over, resting a hand on her shoulder. His palm was calloused but steady, a grounding weight that usually stopped her from spiraling. "Maybe he's got a regular group. A lot of those high-level players don't like bringing in wildcards until they know they can trust them."

"I saved his run!" she burst out, her voice cracking with a sudden, jagged spike of emotion. 

"He was failing the resection, and I held the line. I’m not a wildcard. I’m the best assistant he’s ever going to find, and he’s... He’s playing with three people who probably don't even know where the spleen is!" She huffed immaturely, trying to make sense of why she was getting rejected when her stats were so high, and she was clearly a good asset.

“...What the hell is a spleen?” Ace’s eyes narrowed, turning to look at Sabo, who shrugged.

She turned back to the screen, watching the 'In-Game' status with a hollow feeling in her chest. She thought about the replay she’d watched a dozen times. She’d spent her whole life surrounded by a bunch of idiotic monsters fond of scaling up and down the mountain, by brothers who solved everything with a punch or a pipe. Surgeon_of_Death_1 was the first person who seemed to value the same thing she did and seemed to be around the same age.

Even if she messed around a lot.

…Even if she only talked to him once.

Ace was right. Why was she so upset?

She felt a strange, nagging sense of rejection. It shouldn't have mattered— it was just a game— just a random person on the internet, but she felt like she had finally found someone who spoke her specific, weird language…

…And he was ignoring her

A sudden, heavy weight hit the floor next to her. Luffy had wandered in, his face smeared with grease from the meat stew. He didn't say a word. He just sat down on the floor next to her chair, pulled a giant bone of meat out of his pocket— she stopped questioning how it fit— and began to eat with a loud, wet tearing sound.

He didn't offer her a bite. He didn't even look at her. But he stayed. He sat in the silence, his presence a warm, meat-scented anchor at her feet. It was his way of saying I’m here, even if he didn't understand why a name on a screen made his sister look like she was about to cry.

"Look at her," Ace muttered to Sabo, his voice low enough that she wasn't supposed to hear. "She’s actually sulking over a guy named 'Surgeon of Death 1.' We really need to drag her out more."

Her brother was basically calling her a hermit, and she didn’t even have the energy to retort.

"She’s fine, Ace," Sabo replied, his eyes never leaving the back of her head. "She just found someone who can keep up with her. Imagine if you found someone who could actually outrun you. You’d be just as obsessed."

Ace scoffed, but he didn't leave. He sat on the edge of the desk, blocking a portion of her view of the "Offline" friends list, and landing a warm hand on her head. "Fine. If the grumpy guy doesn't add you back by tonight, I’m taking your mouse away, and we’re going to go hunt a bear. At least the bear won't ghost you."

"I'm not obsessed," she petulantly whispered to the screen, though she reached down and rested her hand on the top of Luffy’s messy hair.

She looked at the digital world, then back at the three idiots in her house. They were her life— the fire, the reason, and unfortunately, the hunger. But out there, in the blue light, was another person who had looked past her chaos and actually had the same knowledge she had before deciding to work around her regardless. 

She didn’t like the feeling of being an afterthought. Usually, she was one of the anchors— the one who kept the boys (mainly Ace and Luffy, but Sabo had his moments) from floating away into their own reckless impulses. But here, she was the one drifting. She hated that she was waiting for a permission slip from a stranger just to do what she was best at.

"We’re staying in," Ace announced suddenly, dropping onto the rug with a heavy thud, his back against her bedframe.

She blinked, finally tearing her eyes away from the monitor. "What? Weren’t you guys literally just talking about hitting the new tires you hung up in the woods?"

"Tires are boring today; we already did that yesterday," Ace muttered, though his restless hands were already busy dismantling a stray piece of rope. He didn't mention that he’d caught the way her shoulders had slumped every time the 'Pending' notification failed to disappear.

Sabo walked back in, dumping a stack of old medical journals— discarded things he’d found in the nearest town— next to her desk. "We decided the mountain is too muddy," he lied easily, his voice a calm, grounding melody. He sat down on the floor, leaning his head back and closing his eyes. "Besides, someone needs to make sure Luffy doesn't eat the mousepad."

Luffy was already a ball of chaos on the floor, currently engaged in a high-stakes wrestling match with a pillow while humming a tuneless, loud song about meat. He wasn't paying attention to the screen, but his presence made the room feel crowded in a way that pushed the digital loneliness out.

"Fine," she whispered, turning back to her screen.

An hour passed in a haze of domestic noise. Luffy’s humming had turned into a full-scale vocal performance. Ace had somehow managed to get a lighter out and was currently trying to "cauterize," like in the game, a ham sandwich he’d brought from the kitchen, the smell of slightly burnt bread filling the room.

Then, it happened.

A sharp, digital ping echoed through her headset.

[SURGEON_OF_DEATH_1 HAS ACCEPTED YOUR FRIEND REQUEST.]

Her heart gave a sudden, jagged spike. She didn't hesitate. Her fingers, which had been cold and stiff just a moment ago, flew across the keys with a familiar, frantic speed. She didn't want to give him a chance to change his mind or log off. She pulled up the chat box, her jaw set with a stubborn, triumphant flare.

OPERATION OR DIE INBOX > SURGEON_OF_DEATH_1 [ONLINE]

════════════════

[QueenHeart]

oh look who's alive

i thought u died of boredom or something

3 days? really?

════════════════

Behind her, Ace let out a yelp as a piece of the ham caught fire, and Sabo’s calm(er) voice rose to handle the disaster. She didn't even turn around, instead leaning in closer, the blue light of the monitor washing over her face, highlighting the small, fierce smile she couldn't quite hide.

5172 words.

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send a message or an ask (with anon off, i wont post it) to be added to the taglist!

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bear with me, im trying to match the vibe and narration of the "law's story" novel but i might be butchering the narrative here and there but honestly im just here to have fun with writing... 

...well sort of? i know i said i wanted to write an unserious fic but i cant help but slip into old habits because i genuinely cant bring myself to write a "this happened, this happened, this happened, i like this guy now" type of style without describing every detail (which is now a bit of a problem because im reading too many medical research journals for someone who wont even go med just to write this fic) so its probably gonna end up slow burn anyway, whoops

1. these are like, 9-15 year olds, be patient with their stupidity and immaturity HAHAHAH. i hope i can explain law and readers personalities well, im pretty sure i got law's well enough (tldr: he wont seek people out, but wont push them away if they willingly follow him). they WILL feel and think things they wont understand because they are children and will act as such

2. my very brief but willingly induced rabbit hole on mecha as a kid kinda got let out here but anyway 

3. you can search up "Delayed Interval Delivery," i had a pretty neat read on it. but "She did not want to think about the reason why Portgas D. Rouge needed to carry them for so long." means "the author doesnt have an answer to that in the modern context yet" hahaha and i hope this decision doesnt bite me in the ass in the future

4. also, i actually wanted to go med but due to a bunch of circumstances, i had to go compsci. my grade 12 genbio case study and having a fat ass crush on law awakened something in me because i went down a HORRIBLE rabbit hole for that research and enjoyed the tumble way too much

He reached out, his fingers pale and slightly trembling, to adjust the sleeve of his oversized black hoodie. The soft, heavy fabric rubbed against the faint, silvered lines of scars on his body— ghostly remnants of the desperate, fever-dream surgeries he’d performed on himself when his world was collapsing into white lead and ash. The toxins were gone now, purged by the tireless, clumsy devotion of the man downstairs, but the recovery was a slow, agonizing crawl. On days like this, his muscles felt as fragile as spun glass, and even the weight of a medical textbook felt like a physical burden.

His mind drifted, as it often did when the silence became too heavy, to the three idiots he’d actually managed to befriend at the local academy before his immune system had decided to stage a coup. He thought of Bepo, the soft-spoken boy with the permanent "I'm sorry" expression, and the day Law had found Shachi and Penguin cornering him behind the gym.

That friendship had been forged in blood and stupidity. A week after that confrontation, Shachi and Penguin had decided to see if they could both fit on a single, rusted-out scooter while going down the steepest hill in the district. 

They hadn't. 

Law had found them in the park, skin shredded, and a leg bent at an angle that made most people lose their lunch. In that moment, he hadn't felt like a sick kid and had felt like an actual doctor instead. With his father's old medical kits and a surgical focus, he’d stabilized them before the ambulance even arrived. He’d even had help from Wolf, the grumpy local handyman who’d seen the crash and stayed to hold the flashlight and bark orders to keep the other kids back while Law worked. 

Wolf had been the one to tell him, in a gruff voice that brooked no argument, that he had "good hands for a brat."

Law had felt so strong then, so capable. Of course, the exertion and the exposure to the elements had sent his bonkers immune system into a tailspin, landing him back in this bed for months, but at least he was healing now. 

Slowly.

He reached for his headset. It was a heavy, professional-grade piece of tech, a gift from Rosinante after Law had accidentally snapped his old one in half during a particularly violent tremor. He settled the cushions over his ears, a clicking sound filling the silence as he logged into his account. The monitor flared, casting a familiar, cool blue glow that highlighted a small, worn-out sticker on the corner of his screen: a stylized seagull from the Sora, Warrior of the Sea comic series. He sometimes imagined himself to be Sora, a fighter for justice.

[LOGGED IN AS: SURGEON_OF_DEATH_1]

His eyes lingered on the '1' at the end of the handle. He hated it. It was a constant, nagging reminder of the account he’d lost— the one tied to a life that had burned to the ground four years ago. It felt like a placeholder for a ghost. But the name served its purpose. It was a warning to anyone who entered his lobby: he wasn't here to play.

At least, that’s what his edgy-kid side wanted to think it meant.

A muffled thud vibrated through the floorboards from the kitchen below, followed by the frantic, uneven clack-clack-clack of Rosinante’s shoes as he hurried across the linoleum.

"Law! I’m putting the kettle on!" Rosinante’s voice boomed through the vents, vibrating with an earnest, clumsy energy that seemed to rattle the very foundations of the house. He sounded like he was currently fighting a losing battle with a tea towel. "I found those biscuits you like— the ones that don't taste like cardboard!"

Law didn't turn his head, his eyes fixed on the monitor as he adjusted the DPI on his mouse with a series of precise, micro-movements. "Make sure the stove is actually off when you’re done, Cora-san," he called back, his voice dry and level, though his eyes softened for a fraction of a second. "I don't want to be evacuated for the third time this month."

"That was a one-time thing, the toaster was sentient!" Rosinante shouted back, followed by the sound of something metallic— likely a spoon— hitting the floor and skittering away into the abyss of the kitchen cabinets.

Law let out a huff of air that was almost a laugh, a sandpaper-dry sound that barely disturbed the silence of the room. He pulled the headset tighter, drowning out the domestic chaos and replacing it with the sharp, crisp audio of Operate or Die.

He didn't play for fun. He played for the discipline of it all. This game used to be the internet's best-kept secret— a niche haven for med students and surgery nerds who wanted to practice anatomy without a cadaver. 

But as he looked at the server count, his stomach dropped. The "Lobby Capacity" bar was flashing a violent, urgent red, the pixels bleeding into the black background.

Tourists…?

The game had clearly hit the mainstream. Probably some streamer with a neon chair had made a "Funny Moments" compilation, and now the gates were flooded with people who thought a 'scalpel' was just a fancy pizza cutter. He queued for a 5-man "Mass Casualty" event. It was the hardest mode in the game, requiring a lead surgeon, a tech, two assistants, and an anesthesiologist.

The lobby was filled with a series of aggressive pings that sounded like hammer strikes against his eardrums.

[MEATLOVER], [ACESPADE], [SA_D_BO], and [QUEENHEART] joined the lobby.

Law stared at the list, his lip curling in a faint sneer. It looked like a circus poster.

"Okay, who invited the high-ranking guy with the edgy name?" A voice crackled through the comms— bright, loud, and vibrating with an energy that Law felt in his teeth.

"Meat, be nice. He’s probably been playing this since the beta," a more level-headed voice replied— SA_D_BO. Law watched as the Sa_D_Bo character model, a standard male avatar in green scrubs, began methodically checking the virtual equipment lockers. "Sorry about him, Surgeon-guy. He’s excited because the character model for the patient looks like a giant ham."

"It does look like ham, Sabo! Look at the texture!" MEATLOVER’s voice boomed through the headset, a loud, uninhibited sound that made Law reach instinctively to dial back the master volume. The MeatLover avatar began sprinting in tight circles around the operating table, his character's cape— a cosmetic item that had no business being in a surgery sim— flapping wildly in the digital wind.

"It’s a human torso, you moron," another voice joined in— ACESPADE. Law could hear the distinct sound of something crunchy— likely chips— being chewed directly into the microphone. On screen, the AceSpade avatar was repeatedly crouching and standing over a tray of forceps in a classic 'teabagging' motion. "Hey, Death. You the lead? Queen says you have high stats, but you probably take this way too seriously."

Law’s grip tightened on his mouse, his knuckles turning a stark, bloodless white. His palms were slightly damp, a nervous tic he couldn't quite shake. "I am the lead," he said, his voice dropping into a low, menacing rasp. "And I take it seriously because it’s a medical simulator. Why are the four of you even in this lobby? This is a Level 9 Abdominal Reconstruction. Go play a platformer."

"Bro, it’s trending!" AceSpade snorted, his character model now trying to climb the anesthesia machine by jumping repeatedly against the wall. "Haven't you seen the clips? Everyone is playing this. Are you actually here because you wanna be a real surgeon or something? That’s kind of nerdy, man."

"You're just too dumb to understand a proper grind, AceSpade," Sa_D_Bo shot back. His character model finally stood still, positioned with a calm posture as he tinkered with the equipment screen. His movements were annoyingly methodical as he purposefully locked AceSpade out of the high-level inventory slots just to be petty.

"Besides," Sa_D_Bo added, his voice dropping into a smooth, conversational tone that carried a hint of a smirk, "it's not 'nerdy' to have a hobby that doesn't involve trying to fight the monkeys in the forest. Some of us actually enjoy having all our teeth."

"Hey! Shut up!" AceSpade barked back. "And don't talk to me about teeth when you’re whistling every time you say the word 'surgery,' Sabo. I saw that gap this morning. You look like a jack-o'-lantern."

"It’s a natural process of development, you idiot," Sa_D_Bo countered, though Law could regrettably hear the faint, unmistakable whistle through the mic. "It popped out because of the steak Dadan made last night. It was like chewing on a tractor tire."

"Excuses! You lost a fight to a piece of meat!" AceSpade cackled.

Law sat frozen in his chair, his hand hovering over the 'Start Operation' button. His eyes were wide, darting between the character models of the two idiots currently debating dental hygiene and primate combat tactics. 

He felt a vein throb in his temple.

Monkeys? Gaps in teeth? Whistling?

"What are you people talking about?" Law finally rasped, his voice dripping with sheer, unadulterated confusion.

The lobby chat pinged aggressively as the final player— QUEENHEART— finally materialized in the center of the room. Her character model glitched violently for a second, flickering in and out of existence as the connection stabilized.

"Ugh, finally! If someone doesn't stop hogging the bandwidth for their 'homework,' I'm going to pull the plug on the whole house," her voice cut through the chaos, sharp and vibrating with annoyance. She didn't wait for an answer before turning her attention to the crouching avatar in the corner. "AceSpade, get up. You’re embarrassing the profession."

"Ugh, stop calling me that! I want my name to be FireFist!" AceSpade suddenly grumbled, his character model slumping into a scripted 'bored' animation with its chin in its hands. "But somebody made me do matching usernames when we were eight, and now the game won't let me change it without paying two thousand berries."

"Shut up, Ace, it's cute!" she hissed at him. Her avatar jumped on top of the anesthesia machine, spinning her camera so fast that the character model's head looked like a blur of pixels. 

"And hey, don't mind him, Surgeon_of_Death_1," she continued. Her voice was a sharp contrast to the others’ squeaky prepubescent tones— laced with a biting, sarcastic edge. On screen, her character performed a quick, precise 'salute' emote directed straight at Law’s avatar. "He’s just grumpy because he keeps failing the sterilization tutorial. I’m your tech. I’ve got the world record for suture speed on this map, you know. So, how about you stop brooding and start the timer?"

Did she really just say his full username?

Law watched as the QueenHeart character hopped down from the machine with a frame-perfect landing, her character's head tilting up to look directly into his avatar's eyes. She stood perfectly still, a rarity in this lobby.

"Fine," Law muttered, his fingers flying over the keys to calibrate the monitor, his own character model nodding in a stiff, programmed movement. "We’re going in. QueenHeart, you’re on primary suction. Sadbo, stay on the vitals. AceSpade, MeatLover... stay by the door and don't move unless I tell you to. If I see a single emoji over the incision site, I’m disconnecting."

"So many demands… You’re in for a treat with those two, Surgeon_of_Death_1." Her voice carried a dry, sharp wit that felt like a physical challenge. On screen, her character pulled out a virtual scalpel and began spinning it in a specialized idle animation, the blade catching the digital light.

…She really was saying his full username. 

The screen faded to a heavy, pressurized black, and the simulation began.

The operating room materialized— a masterpiece of digital lighting. The harsh fluorescent glow reflected off the stainless steel trays in long, distorted streaks, and the beep... beep... beep... of the EKG filled the audio channel. Law felt his focus narrow until the world outside his headset ceased to exist.

"Patient is a 45-year-old male, blunt force trauma to the chest," Law said, his voice dropping into a clinical cadence that mirrored his character's precise movements toward the table.

“We know, we can read.” AceSpade huffed. His model began crouching up and down with such frantic, glitchy speed that the game’s physics engine couldn’t keep up; his legs jittered through the floor in a flurry of broken frames, snapping back and forth like a strobe light.

“Bro, let the guy have his standard surgery room procedure immersion.” QueenHeart’s model stopped moving right as she picked up a suture. Just as the words left her mouth, Law heard a sharp, wet smack echo through the headset, followed immediately by a startled yelp of pain from AceSpade.

The sound was bizarrely layered— first, a clear, direct shout through AceSpade’s own mic, and then a split-second later, a muffled version of the same cry picked up by QueenHeart’s microphone across the room.

Law froze for a heartbeat, his eyes narrowing as he processed the synchronized audio. The realization hit him like a cold snap: they weren't just a random group of friends. They were in the same room. The chaos was a physical riot happening somewhere on the other side of a fiber-optic cable.

But he didn't have time to dwell on their proximity. The EKG monitor on his second screen began to wail, the steady rhythm breaking into a frantic, high-pitched staccato. Law’s fingers snapped back into position, the focus taking over as he pushed the meta-revelation to the back of his mind.

"Sadbo, vitals," Law commanded, his voice dropping into that razor-sharp tone he’d perfected while helping Wolf back at the park.

"BP is 90 over 60 and dropping! He’s… crashing?!" Sa_D_Bo called out as if unsure of the right term. His character model leaned deep over the virtual monitor, his hands moving across the interface with a surprising, practiced competence that suggested he was the only one truly listening to the lead surgeon.

"Meat, grab the oxygen mask! No, the mask, not the fire extinguisher!" AceSpade yelled, his character model frantically spinning in place as he cycled through his inventory.

“Oh, we’re cooked.” QueenHeart sighed, the sound of her mouse clicking rapidly as she started up the suction tool.

Law watched in sheer, unadulterated horror as the MeatLover avatar began frantically cycling through the equipment rack. Instead of the clear plastic mask, the character pulled out a bright red canister and began waving it around the patient’s open chest cavity. Law’s character model’s head snapped toward the intruder, his POV camera shaking with the intensity of his grip on the mouse.

"Put the canister down, MeatLover!" Law barked, his pulse thrumming in his ears. "If you discharge that in the OR, I am blacklisting your IP!"

"I got it! I’m helping!" MeatLover’s avatar ignored him, sprinting across the room until his character's physics-defying cape snagged on a virtual IV pole. He tripped, the character model performing a dramatic ragdoll physics tumble that sent a tray of scalpels clattering across the floor with a deafening, metallic clang.

"Sadbo! Get him away from the tray!" Law snapped, his heart rate spiking as he watched the digital blood pressure monitor dip into the red. He could feel the familiar thrum of adrenaline in his chest. "QueenHeart, I’m making the primary incision. Give me a clear visualization. Now."

"On it, Surgeon_of_Death_1."

Law watched her move. She was fast— terrifyingly so. As Law’s character dragged the scalpel in a perfect, straight line down the patient's sternum, her character followed the blade with the suction tool with pixel-perfect accuracy, never lagging, never overshooting. 

But then, she started doing something... weird.

"Wait, why are you using the cauterizer tool on the surgical drapes?" Law hissed, his eyes darting to the orange sparks flying off the green fabric.

"I’m making a design! Look, it’s a little heart!" QueenHeart broke into a fit of heaving laughs that crackled in his ears. "It’s for morale, you feel?"

"Or a fire hazard! You’re going to clip the oxygen sensor and blow us all up!" Law shouted, his hand gripping the mouse so hard his knuckles turned white.

"Whoa, look at the blood! It looks like strawberry jam!" MeatLover was now jumping on a stool in the corner, his laughter echoing through the room.

"AceSpade, stop him from throwing the gauze!" Sa_D_Bo shouted, trying to maneuver his character to block the projectiles.

"I’m trying! Meat, get down! You’re gonna clip through the wall and fall into the void!" AceSpade started body slamming his model on MeatLover’s to move him where he needed to be.

Law’s head was spinning, his eyes darting between the surgical field and the chaos in the corner. "Ignore them, Surgeon_of_Death_1," she said, her voice a calm, sarcastic anchor in the storm. She was currently using a pair of forceps to try and "juggle" a stray cotton swab while simultaneously swapping out the suction canisters. "I’ve got the bleeder clamped. Look at the artery. If you don't suture that in the next five seconds, we’re gonna have a very messy floor."

Despite her "designing" the drapes, Law looked and realized she had located a secondary tear that he hadn't even noticed yet.

"I see it," Law said, his fingers dancing across the keys with the mechanical precision of a Sora the warrior himself (he imagines). The sutures moved with lightning speed. Click-click-snap. Click-click-snap.

"Mr. Death-Guy! Look! I found a mop! I’m cleaning!" MeatLover’s avatar was now performing a bizarre, repetitive animation in the corner of the room, aggressively mopping the same three floor tiles while the surgery progressed.

"You look so stupid, Meat," the girl scoffed. On screen, her character performed a quick 'shrug' emote while simultaneously catching a piece of gauze Law had dropped using a high-level physics-grab. "Hey, Surgeon_of_Death_1! If I catch this in mid-air, does it count as a 'Flawless' rating?"

"Focus on the patient!" Law yelled, his voice echoing in the small, sterile confines of his bedroom.

In the hallway, the door creaked open. Rosinante stood there, his tall frame awkwardly hunched, a plate of biscuits balanced precariously in one hand. He saw Law hunched over the glowing screen, shouting at a bunch of pixels with more passion than he’d shown in weeks.

Rosinante froze, a single bead of sweat rolling down his forehead as he took in Law’s manic expression. He wore a look of pure bewilderment, as if he’d just stumbled upon a rare and dangerous animal in the wild. Slowly, with agonizing care, he gripped the doorknob and pulled the door shut, disappearing back into the hallway without a sound.

"We’re entering the final phase. Sa_D_Bo, keep those vitals steady! AceSpade, if you touch that defibrillator without my command, I will find you and I will—" Law would have been clutching at his hair if not for the fact that he needed to keep his hands steady inside the patient’s body.

"Relax, Doc! I’m just looking at the buttons! This one says 'Shock,' is that good?" AceSpade’s avatar was standing directly over the patient’s head, his hand hovering over the yellow 'Charge' button.

"AceSpade, no!" Law screamed, his body lunging forward in his chair until his forehead nearly touched the monitor.

A loud, synthesized zap echoed through the headset, followed by the screen flashing a blinding, violent white as the patient’s model physically bucked on the table, the physics engine struggling to calculate the sudden jolt.

"He jumped! The patient jumped!" MeatLover let out a roar of amusement that peaked the audio, the sound distorted and raw.

Law sat in his room, his lungs feeling tight, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs. The blue light of the monitor reflected in his wide, unblinking eyes. He was furious, but beneath the anger, there was a strange, electric spark of life. 

He reached out, his character’s hand hovering over the incision site, his head-tracking making the avatar look slowly toward QueenHeart.

"QueenHeart," Law rasped into the mic, his voice a low, dangerous thread.

"Yeah?" Her character didn't move, but her head tilted back just a fraction, her character model's neck craning to look up as the crown sticker on her mask caught the virtual light.

"If we fail this... I’m going to block your companions." Law took a sharp, jagged breath, his fingers twitching over the 'suture' key.

The girl let out a short, sharp breath of amusement that crackled in his ears. "Get in line, man! Now finish those stitches before the 'Ham Man' dies!" On screen, her character performed a quick 'pointing' gesture toward the open chest cavity, her movements urgent despite the joke.

Law clicked the mouse. The virtual needle moved. Click-click-snap. And in the quiet of his bedroom, the Surgeon of Death finally felt like he was breathing.

He sat there for a moment, the only sound the mechanical whir of his cooling fans and the faint beep of the digital recovery monitor. The intensity of the last twenty minutes had acted like a physical purge, clearing the stagnant air of his sickroom and replacing it with the sharp, electric hum of focus. He wasn't thinking about the lead toxins in his marrow or the fragile state of his lungs, not right now.

The victory screen flashed across the monitor— a gold-plated 'S' rank that shimmered with artificial prestige. It felt entirely unearned given that MeatLover was currently performing a 'dance' emote over a digital cloth that had clipped through the patient’s lung, and the operating room floor was more mop-water than sterile surface.

"S-rank! S-rank! We’re the best doctors in the world!" MeatLover’s voice was a joyous, unrefined shout. "AceSpade, did you see that? I mopped the ghost out of him!"

Law leaned back in his chair, his chest heaving as he let out a long, shaky sigh. His room felt too quiet now, the silence of the walls pressing in after the auditory riot. He looked down at his hands; they were steady, the tremors suppressed by the sheer focus of the last ten minutes.

"Hey, Surgeon_of_Death_1? You still there?" QueenHeart’s voice cut through the lull. Her character model was now standing on the operating table, her head tilting left and right as if searching for him.

"I’m here," Law muttered, rubbing his eyes with the heel of his hand. "I’m just trying to figure out why I haven't blocked all of you yet."

"Because we’re the only ones who can keep up with your APM. You’re fast, Surgeon of Death 1. Like, 'I-actually-read-the-manual' fast." On screen, her character performed a 'thumbs up' emote.

"I told you, it’s a simulator. The manual is the entire point," Law countered, his character performing a 'facepalm' animation that he’d mapped to a hotkey.

"Bo-ring!" AceSpade’s voice cut in, the sound of a chair scraping back audible through his mic. "Hey, Queen, I’m hungry. Is Dadan home yet? I saw Dogra and Magra hauling a massive crate of meat up the trail earlier, and they looked like they were trying to hide it."

"She's in the back office," she replied, her character finally hopping off the table and walking toward the exit door. "Probably trying to figure out how to pay the electric bill without selling the house. Go ahead. I’ll catch up in a second."

The voices of the others faded as they moved away from their mics, leaving only the soft, ambient sound of the game’s lobby music. Law stared at her avatar— she had stopped right by the door, her character turning back to look at his one last time.

"You're actually pretty good," she said, her tone switching to a more casual, dry observation. "For a guy who sounds like he lives in a library. I sent you a friend request, Surgeon_of_Death_1. Don't leave me hanging, I need someone to tell me which line not to cut next time."

[FRIEND REQUEST RECEIVED FROM: QUEENHEART]

Law stared at the notification, his cursor hovering over the 'Accept' button, but he didn't click. His character stood motionless in the center of the empty OR.

"Law! The biscuits are ready! And I only dropped two of them!" Rosinante’s voice boomed from the hallway. There was a sudden, violent crash, followed by the sound of a ceramic plate shattering against the hardwood. "Oof! Law, don't come out here! The floor is lava and ceramic shards!" He sounded panicked but weirdly cheerful, as if breaking things was simply a necessary part of his afternoon routine.

Law let out a quiet sigh, his shoulders slumping as he realized he’d have to be the one to do the cleaning. "Coming, Cora-san," he called back.

He looked at the request one last time, his jaw tightening. He didn't accept. He wasn't ready to invite that much noise back into his world yet. He reached out and clicked the 'Power' icon. The monitor blinked out, and his room returned to its quiet, antiseptic reality, the scent of chamomile tea beginning to drift through the door.

════════════════

"Ace, what the fuck! Get your foot off the router!"

In the chaotic heart of the house on a mountain, the girl known as QUEENHEART was currently leaning back in a worn-out gaming chair, her headset pushed lopsided over one ear. She glared at the tangle of limbs on the sofa next to her, where her brothers, Ace and Luffy, were currently wrestling over a single controller.

"I’m trying to find my phone!" Ace barked, his face turning red as he shoved a sofa cushion into Luffy’s face. "I think Luffy dropped it in the bean dip!"

"I didn't drop it! I was using it as a plate!" Luffy shouted, his voice muffled by the cushion.

She turned her attention back to the monitor. The 'Surgeon of Death 1' hadn't accepted the request. His status changed from In-Lobby to Offline.

"Oh, he’s playing hard to get," she whispered, a small, knowing smirk tugging at her lips as she tapped her fingers against the armrest.

"Hey! Luffy is trying to fry the chips!" Ace screamed from the kitchen.

"I'm coming! Don't touch the oil!" she shrieked, her voice bouncing off the high, wooden ceilings of the house. She ripped her headset off and bolted for the kitchen, her socks sliding on the hardwood floor as she nearly collided with Sabo.

Sabo was calmly leaning against the counter, a newspaper in one hand and a cup of black coffee in the other. "Dadan is in a mood," he noted, nodding toward the back office where the sound of an angry woman shouting at a calculator was clearly audible. "Apparently, Dogra and Magra accidentally 'liberated' a crate of premium beef that belonged to the local mayor. She's currently deciding whether to return it or hide the evidence by eating it all in one sitting."

"She’ll eat it," she said, her eyes already scanning the kitchen for the air fryer. She pulled her phone from her pocket— still no notification. "The Surgeon guy is a hardcore Operation or Die player, for sure. He doesn't know any of the streamer memes. When Luffy started talking about the 'Ham Man,' I thought the guy was going to have a literal stroke."

"He sounded like he wanted to murder us," Luffy chirped, popping up from behind the counter with a handful of raw fries. "I liked him! Do you think he’ll play with us again?"

"Maybe," she said, a thoughtful look crossing her face as she remembered the way his avatar had looked at hers in the OR. "If we don't annoy him to death first."

════════════════

Back in the quiet house, Rosinante was navigating the minefield of Law's rug, successfully placing a new, much sturdier tea tray on the corner of the desk. He had managed to change into a fresh shirt, though there was already a suspicious smudge of jam on the collar.

"You were shouting a lot, Law," Rosinante noted, his voice warm and resonant, vibrating with a gentle concern. He sat on the edge of the bed, the springs letting out a familiar, rhythmic groan that seemed to signal the end of the day's stress. "I haven't heard you raise your voice at a screen since you tried to explain the circulatory system to the TV weatherman. I thought maybe a ghost had broken into your computer."

Law didn't answer immediately. He began the meticulous process of wiping down his desk with an antiseptic wipe— slow, circular motions that seemed to soothe the lingering tension in his frame. "I was playing with idiots, Cora-san. One of them tried to restart a heart with a defibrillator while the patient was still open."

"Idiots, huh?" Rosinante leaned over, his tall frame casting a long shadow over the desk as he squinted at the dark screen, his large hands resting on his knees. "They must be special idiots if you didn't just leave the lobby. You usually have zero patience for people who don't know their sternum from their elbow."

Law paused, the wipe hovering over his mouse. He thought of the way the QueenHeart avatar had caught that gauze— a movement that required a level of skill he hadn't expected from someone with a crown sticker on their mask. "One of them was... good. In a very annoying, distracting way."

Rosinante’s expression softened into that goofy, lopsided smile Law had come to rely on, his eyes crinkling at the corners. He reached out, his large, clumsy hand gently ruffling Law’s hair and knocking his beanie askew. Law huffed and batted the hand away, but there was no real venom in the movement.

"It’s good to hear you making noise, kid," Rosinante said softly, his voice dropping an octave as he looked at Law with unmasked pride. "The silence in this house gets a bit too heavy sometimes. I’m glad you found someone who can make the Surgeon of Death lose his cool. Even if they are an idiot."

"I'm always ‘cool,’" Law muttered, finally taking a sip of the tea. It was over-steeped and bitter, exactly the way he liked it.

"By the way, they're finally reopening that old museum with a human anatomy section on the hill," Rosinante said, his hands moving excitedly as he described the telescope, nearly knocking a stack of books over. "I was thinking, once your levels are steady and the weather stays clear, we could drive up there. You could tell me all the things I don’t know about the human body. I looked it up, and there used to be a diagram of the entire circulatory system."

Law looked out his window at the darkening sky, the stars just beginning to prick through the indigo haze like tiny, surgical lights. "You pointed at a liver and said that it’s a single lung, Cora-san. Everything you know about anatomy is wrong."

"Exactly! I need an expert," Rosinante laughed, the sound bright and wheezing, filling the room with a sense of warmth that antiseptic couldn't provide. He stood up, his coat fluttering dangerously near the tea tray as he moved toward the door. He paused at the threshold, looking back at Law with a loud devotion and an even louder grin. "I love you, kid."

Law froze with a biscuit halfway to his mouth, the sugar coating dusting his fingers. His pale face flushed a faint, dusty pink, and he focused very hard on the steam rising from his cup.

"Yeah, yeah," Law muttered, his voice dropping into an embarrassed mumble as he intentionally looked away. "Go check the stove, Cora-san. I can smell something burning from here, and if you set the kitchen on fire again, I'm moving into the garage."

Law sat in the quiet again, the only sound the soft hum of the radiator. He looked at his desk, then finally reached out and tapped the power button on his monitor. The screen flickered to life, the blue light washing over the room. He navigated to the social tab with a series of slow, deliberate clicks.

[QUEENHEART: (1 PENDING REQUEST)]

He stared at it for a long, silent minute, the cursor hovering over the 'Accept' button. Then, with a sharp exhale that was part frustration and part curiosity, he closed the window without clicking. He’d think about it tomorrow. Or the day after. 

Or never.

5477 words.

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send a message or an ask (with anon off, i wont post it) to be added to the taglist!

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definitely not my usual fic where its full of angst and a million narrative paragraphs... anyway this is my im-trying-to-get-out-of-my-writing-burnout fic because i SERIOUSLY needed an unserious fic

i read the "law's story" novel because it was in my regular bookstore and it jumpscared me so i HADD to buy it. and oh wow it seriously motivated me to write a silly fic for such a nonchalant but silly boy (and hot man but yk thats for the future of the fic)

just to be clear, im not a med student and i only did a bunch of research for this so uhhh bear with it for a while. there will be actual procedures that i know because of a research case study i had for my grade 12 biology class thats still fresh on my mind (which is a patient with hypertensive heart disease AND diabetes mellitus), but thatll be for way later. the game is also made-up and only for the sake of the fic

also, this is my take on law's health and recovery in the context of a modern au where rosinante lives. he doesnt have the ope-ope fruit, BUT he now has modern medicine (which isnt necessarily a miracle cure of some sort like his devil fruit but a cure nonetheless) and papa!

i made up the usernames on a whim HAHAHHA. sabo's is Sa_D_Bo but its pronounced as sadbo to avoid complications. i wanted to add more slang and shit (being around teenage boys with that humor everyday forces you to pick up some stuff) but ughh those things die and what if someone reads this like 100 years later and doesnt understand it idk

i love law btw

ONE /////// TWO /////// THREE /////// FOUR /////// FIVE

SIX /////// SEVEN /////// EIGHT /////// NINE /////// TEN

ELEVEN /////// TWELVE /////// ...

Other Platforms

The air underneath the trees was thick with the scent of roasted meat, fermented fruit, and the heavy, humid heat of a hundred bodies pressed together under the woven canopy. Neteyam was at the center of it, alongside the other warriors who passed the Iknimaya. He sat on a raised mat, the firelight licking at the obsidian paint on his face, turning the soot into a mask of jagged shadows.

He responded to the elders with the exact cadence of respect his mother had raised him with, nodding at the right moments, his voice steady and resonant as he recounted the dive with the animatedness he had learned from the years of seeking out his father’s stories. 

He was a part of the circle.

"The wind was breaking from the east," he told his father’s old contemporaries, his hands moving to trace the flight path in the air. "I had to bank hard to keep the sun behind my crest."

They loved it. 

He didn’t know what was so exceptional about what he had just said.

They slapped his back, their large, calloused hands leaving heavy impressions on his skin. He felt like a trophy being passed around. Every time he tried to take a breath, someone else was there— a warrior asking about his Ikran's temperament, a mother offering him a bowl of stew he didn't want but was grateful for, nonetheless, and a group of girls whose laughter felt like high-pitched static against his ears. 

He caught the way they looked at the new marks on his chest— not with the worry of a healer, but with the hunger of someone looking at a prize. It made his skin crawl.

He should get this treated— and he knew exactly where.

"You’ll soon have the frame of your father," one elder remarked, his voice like grinding stone. The man gestured vaguely to the other four who had succeeded, now scattered among the various fires. "Strength is a gift, but it is a temporary one. A warrior is only as good as the lineage he secures."

Neteyam felt his smile stiffen. The conversation shifted with a practiced, predatory ease. They spoke of the new riders as if they were livestock being prepared for a different kind of ceremony.

"They are too young for the Choosing," another added, leaning back as he watched a group of younger girls perform a rhythmic dance near the central blaze. "They are warriors of the sky now, but they are still children of the ground. The Dream Hunt will test their spirit tomorrow, and even after that, they must wait. A leader’s mate must be more than just a weaver; she must be the spine of the clan."

The elder’s gaze drifted toward a few girls standing nearby— daughters of prominent hunters, girls who had been groomed to stand beside a future Olo'eyktan, despite the known tsakarem. They began introducing them one by one, their names blurring into a background noise of expectations. 

They spoke as if the seat beside him was an empty throne, conveniently forgetting the girl who had spent every eclipse of the last week with her fingers bleeding for his sake.

Of course, they would not know about him and Ayeren— they always found each other when there was nobody else to witness it.

What he meant by “him and Ayeren” was still lost to him.

To them, Ayeren didn't exist in this context. There had been no official ceremony, no public declaration. In the eyes of the clan, she was the orphan in the shadows of the healing marui— an apprentice who was useful for bandages, but invisible in the light of the fire. 

But the strongest candidate, nonetheless.

The only one he accepts.

Was that was she was to him? A candidate?

Neteyam’s hand tightened around his bowl. He wanted to tell them that the "spine" of his world was currently sitting in a dark supply tent, likely covered in herb dust and worry. He wanted to tell them that he had already chosen, but the mask of the leader required him to be polite. He gave them a sharp, cool nod, his eyes reflecting the embers of the fire.

Was it because it was the obvious choice?

"My focus is on the Dream Hunt," he said, his voice dropping into a register that signaled the end of the topic. "The Great Mother has not spoken to me of mates. She has spoken to me of the wind."

Had he chosen?

"Of course," the elder chuckled, seemingly undeterred. "But the wind eventually dies down, Neteyam. You will need a place to land."

"Whoa, easy there," Jake intervened, stepping into the circle with a lopsided grin and a heavy hand on Neteyam’s shoulder. 

He held a bowl of fermented broth in his other hand, looking at the elders with a glint of humor that didn't quite hide the protective edge underneath. "Let the kid breathe, fellas. He just got his wings; let’s not have him building a nest before he’s even finished his first flight. He’s got plenty of time for all that."

The elders laughed, the tension breaking under Jake's casual authority, but the underlying message was clear. Neteyam felt the weight of his father’s hand— a grounding force, yet a reminder of the path already paved for him. “Thank you, sir.”

He is too young for this.

Neteyam looked past them in disbelief. He saw the two who had failed being led away toward the secondary marui, their heads bowed in a shame that felt like a physical weight.

They go to her, he thought. They get the quiet, and I am stuck with the noise.

He was smiling, but it was a practiced movement of the jaw.

Across the fire, Lo'ak was holding court with Spider, reenacting Neteyam’s landing with exaggerated limb movements. His parents were glowing, his father’s hand leaving his shoulder to then rest on his mother’s shoulder as they watched their eldest son take his place in the hierarchy. It was everything he was supposed to want. 

It was the "big picture.”

But under the noise, Neteyam was counting heartbeats. He felt the silver-grass charm on his bicep like a hot wire. Every time he shifted, the coarse fibers bit into his skin— a private, stinging reminder of the marui and the girl who wasn't in this circle. 

He scanned the edges of the light, his eyes darting past the dancing and the drums, looking for a flash of a smaller frame or the specific, quiet way she held her shoulders.

She wasn't there.

The realization made the feast feel suddenly, violently loud. The drums weren't a rhythm anymore; they were a headache. The smell of the crowd was cloying. He felt like he was still a thousand feet up, the air too thin to actually reach his lungs.

He was nodding at an elder’s joke, his lips pulled back in a grin, while his mind was tracing the path back to the medicinal supply marui.

He was thinking about the branch he’d hidden under his mat. He was thinking about the quiet.

"You are quiet, my son," Neytiri murmured, leaning in, her eyes sharp enough to see through the mask, touching his face fondly.

"Just tired, Mother," he lied, the words tasting like ash. "The climb was long. I think... I am too injured for dancing tonight. My ribs are stiff."

He looked toward his father, expecting a lecture on endurance, but Jake just studied him for a long moment, his eyes softening with a rare, unspoken understanding. He knew the look of a man who needed to disappear.

"Go," Jake said, his voice low enough to stay between them. "Rest. You’ve done enough for the clan today. I’ll make your excuses to the elders."

Neytiri didn't say a word, but her knowing glance toward Jake was a silent acknowledgment that their son had already physically returned, but his spirit was still searching for its landing.

Neteyam didn't wait for them to change their minds. He waited for the exact moment the elders turned to debate a hunting territory. He waited for the drums to hit a crescendo that drew everyone’s eyes to the center of the floor. 

And then, with the same predatory silence he’d used to sneak up on his prey, Neteyam slid backward into the shadows.

He became a ghost at their party, stepping over the woven boundaries and into the cool, damp dark of the walkways. The further he got from the fire, the more the "warrior" fell away, leaving only the boy whose hands were shaking from the adrenaline crash.

It wasn’t that he was too uncomfortable about the responsibility that came with his name, no— he was proud of himself, proud of the way he made his parents proud; it was just that the same responsibility both implied and left behind things that he didn't agree with.

He didn't stop until he reached the supply marui. He didn't knock. He just pushed through the hanging vines, the smell of moss and old roots hitting him like a physical relief.

════════════════

The secondary healing marui was a sanctuary of shadows and the sharp, clean scent of crushed herbs and river water. Ayeren began setting out bone needles and fiber bandages, her movements mechanical as she tried to settle her shaking hands. 

The silence was a relief, but it was a heavy one; she knew five had passed the test, but seven had gone up.

The mountain was never kind.

She was alone for only a few minutes before the first of the failed returned.

The curtain was thrown back with a violent snap. A prominent warrior entered, carrying his daughter. She had been one of the top trainees in Neteyam’s circle, always the first to climb, the first to strike.

Now, she was a wreck. 

Her right hand was wrapped in makeshift leather, but blood was already seeping through the grain in dark, rhythmic blooms. Her face was distorted with a burning, humiliated rage— not at the sky, but at her own hands.

"Set her here," Ayeren said, her voice dropping into the professional coldness Mo’at demanded. She reached for a bowl of antiseptic solution, her eyes fixed on the girl's trembling fingers.

"She was not focused," the father spat. He didn't look at his daughter with pity, but with a shame that felt like smoke in the small room.

"The Ikran sensed her heart was divided. She had the beast, and she let it go. She broke the bond before it could even set." He stood with his arms crossed, his gaze hard. "She has no song today."

"I did not see it coming!" the girl hissed. She flinched as Ayeren began to unwrap the leather, the sound of the blood-dried hide peeling away from skin making a wet, sticky sound. "It moved like the wind, Father! My hands... they would not obey."

"The mountain does not lie," her father countered, his voice a low, disappointed rumble. "You lacked the stillness. You had the chance to lead, and you threw it into the dirt."

As the girl shrieked and blamed the speed of the beast, Ayeren felt a cold, clinical clarity. If you have the breath to scream at me, Ayeren thought, then you had not properly used your breath for the heights. 

She reached for a small vial of blue-leaf extract. To lead an Ikran required a stillness of the soul that this girl had clearly lacked. She had the muscle, but her spirit was a jagged thing, too busy fighting itself to ever truly see the animal.

Ayeren felt a flicker of pity. She closed her eyes for a brief second, offering a silent, wordless prayer to the Great Mother— not for the girl’s hand, but for her pride.

Let her find the path back to the earth, Ayeren whispered internally. Let the shame not rot her heart as the wound might rot her flesh.

"This will sting," Ayeren murmured. She uncorked the vial and began pouring the spirits.

The girl screamed, a raw, ugly sound that tore through the marui. "Watch what you are doing! Do you even know what you're doing, or are you just playing with water?"

Clearly, they needed to be harsher with this one. A part of the training was learning how to handle wounds and the healing salves that will not hold back its bite for anyone.

You didn’t hear that from her, though.

"I am saving your hand from rot," Ayeren replied. She didn't look up, her voice cold and steady as she used bits of tied wood to pull a splinter of bone from the girl’s palm.

"Please keep her still, or I might damage the muscle, and you will never hold a bow again." She looked the girl in the eye, her voice dropping an octave. "You want to hunt, don't you? Then let me work."

The warrior pinned his daughter’s shoulders. The girl’s eyes were fixed on the entrance. Every time she heard a footstep outside, she winced, terrified that a successful rider— or worse, Neteyam— would see her like this.

In the corner, the boy who had frozen on the ascent watched them with hollow eyes. He hadn't been bitten; his skin was perfect. 

That was his curse. 

His parents had left him at the door without a word, a silence worse than any scolding.

Ayeren reached out, sliding a bowl of cooling water toward him with her foot.

"Drink," she said softly. She didn't stop her work on the girl's hand. "The shock is a poison of its own."

He didn't move at first, then his hand trembled as he reached for the bowl. "I couldn't jump," he whispered, his voice cracking. "I saw the clouds... and I just couldn't."

"The mountain didn't want you today," Ayeren replied, her voice gentler now as she began to wrap the girl's hand in clean fiber. "That is not the same as being unwanted by the People."

Maybe it was the same.

Mo’at’s teachings always emphasized that a healer’s work began where the skin ended. As Ayeren watched the boy’s trembling hands, she reached out, resting a palm briefly on the woven floor to ground herself before murmuring a breath of a prayer, low enough that only the shadows of the marui could hear.

Ma Eywa, look upon this son of the forest. The wind has turned him back to the earth, not in anger, but to keep him safe in the hollow of Your hand.

Let him not see the dirt as a cage, but as a place to root. 

Suddenly, the atmosphere of the room shifted. It wasn't a sound, but a change in the very pressure of the air. The smell of herbs was drowned out by the heavy, metallic scent of blood and the raw, electric heat of someone who had just touched the sun.

Or, she could be imagining the last part.

Ayeren’s breath hitched. She didn't have to look up to know. Her skin prickled, her tail twitching as if a storm had just walked into the tent.

Neteyam stood in the entrance.

The light from the evening fires silhouetted him, casting a long, imposing shadow that stretched across the floor until it touched Ayeren's knees. He was covered in a bit of grime, a thin layer of blood streaking his ribs, and the soot of the warrior’s mask was smeared into his skin.

Ayeren felt a sudden, dizzying wave of heat. Her hands, which had been so steady while cleaning a mangled finger, suddenly felt clumsy. She just watched the way the light caught the gold in his eyes— eyes that were no longer searching, but settled.

The warrior father immediately stood up, his posture shifting into profound respect. "Neteyam. A great day for your family. JakeSuli must be very proud."

She smiled at the pronunciation.

Neteyam gave a stiff, formal nod. "Thank you, sir." His voice was lower, raspier from the thin air of the peaks and the hour of recounting stories to an audience. "I am sorry for her struggle. May Eywa grant her a swift recovery."

He didn't look at the girl. He didn't even look at the boy in the corner. His entire being was focused on the small patch of floor where Ayeren sat.

The girl on the mat looked up, her face a mask of agony and longing."I... I almost had the blue one. The yellow-crest. You saw it, didn't you?"

Neteyam finally turned his head. His gaze was cool and distant, like the peaks themselves. "I saw the wind, sister." He paused, his shadow shifting as he took a step into the room. "I didn't see anything else."

It was a kindness wrapped in a dismissal. The girl’s face fell, the reality of her failure finally sinking in as the warrior father gathered her to leave. As the boy in the corner scurried out after them, sensing the quiet, absolute claim in Neteyam's eyes, the marui fell into a heavy silence.

Neteyam didn't speak. He walked toward her, his movements slow and weighted. He sat on the mat beside her— with her. His thigh pressed firmly against hers. Ayeren could feel the heat of his body radiating through her skin, a fierce contrast to the cool evening air.

"I have scrapes," he said. He didn't look at her; instead, he gestured at his ribs, where the dried blood was. It was a low vibration she felt in her own chest.

Ayeren reached for a fresh cloth. Her fingers finally found their rhythm as she dipped them into the cooling water. "You have more than just scrapes, Neteyam. You have a village waiting to chant your name. Go back. You should be resting for tomorrow."

"I'm not hiding," he murmured, ignoring her suggestion as he leaned into her space. He was closer than usual, his shoulder heavy against hers, as if he were trying to merge his shadow with hers. "I'm exactly where I want to be."

Ayeren cleans the wound with agonizing slowness. She reached for a small jar of yellow salve, dipping her fingers in and beginning to rub it over the raked skin of his ribs. She could feel the lingering adrenaline humming beneath his skin, the frantic beat of his heart slowing as it synced with hers.

"I spent the whole day staring at the peaks," she confessed. She focused on the task, rubbing the salve in small, circular motions. "I couldn't see you. I just saw the clouds and heard the screaming of the Ikrans." She paused, her voice trembling. "I didn't know if you were falling or flying."

Neteyam reached out. His fingers caught a stray lock of her hair, twining it slowly around his finger. "I was flying." He leaned his forehead closer to hers, the scent of the sky clinging to him.

He tugged gently on the lock of hair, forcing her to look up. "Besides, I had to test if your weaving was as strong as you said it was. It would have been embarrassing if it snapped in front of my father."

"And?" Ayeren asked, her heart hammering against her ribs. "Did it fail you?"

"It held," he said. His voice dropped an octave, private and thick, while he shifted, his tail sliding across the floor. 

He need not say any more.

The tuft of his tail brushed against hers, a bold, rhythmic claim. Ayeren’s own tail twitched in response, beginning to loosely coil around the end of his.

The crushing fear that he would return from the sky an untouchable stranger— someone who would barely see her through the glare of his own new glory— was beginning to fade, softened by the lingering heat of his shoulder against hers.

Yet a cold sliver of doubt remained anchored in her chest. The dream hunt was still to come, a spiritual trial that would change him in ways a simple flight could not, and this quiet night was a stolen breath before the real weight of leadership descended.

She knew that once the sun rose, the clan would reclaim him, and the gaps between his duties might grow wider than the canyons he had just conquered.

There was no doubt about it… Was there?

"Neteyam," she breathed. She tried to pull back, to maintain the distance Mo'at had taught her, but the marui suddenly felt too small, the air between them thick with things unsaid. "The elders... they expect so much of you now. You’re a rider."

She looked toward the curtain, her voice a whisper, her mind racing with the warnings of her mentor. She was an apprentice who was both acknowledged and ignored all the same due to it being unofficial; she understood that, and he was the future of the clan. 

The lines were now drawn in stone, yet he was currently blurring them with every breath. "You shouldn't be here with me. It’s not... It’s not what they want for you. Jake will know exactly where you are. Go to your marui. Sleep."

"I already let him know," he said, his voice stubborn. He moved even closer, his touch possessive as he took her wrist, his thumb tracing the scabs from the silver-grass weaving with a reverent pressure. "I told my father I was too injured to dance. I don’t think he believed me, but he let me go."

He was too close. Ayeren felt a spark of heat that had nothing to do with the healing fires. She looked at his hand on her wrist; it was a warrior's hand now, has been for a while now, larger and scarred, but the way he held her was soft— too soft for just a friend. 

It was an intensity she hadn't seen before he went up the mountain.

What had changed?

He pulled her hand toward his chest, holding it over the steady thrum of his heart. "I felt the weight of it on my arm. I’m not leaving just because a title says I should."

Ayeren’s breath hitched. 

Does he know? she wondered, her heart hammering against her own ribs. Does he feel the way the air changes when we are alone? 

She looked into his gold eyes, searching for the boy she knew, but she found a boy becoming closer to a man who was looking at her like she was the only fixed point in a spinning world. She didn't know if she felt the same, or if she was simply caught in the gravity of his new, fierce presence.

…

What the fuck?

He reached into his satchel and pulled out the dark, heavy branch. It was thick, gnarled wood, smelling of high-altitude frost and ancient sap. He set it between them on the medicinal mat, the weight of it thudding against the floor.

"We carve the beads tonight. Together," he said. It wasn't a question; it was a stubborn fact. "I want the first thing I make as a man to be with the person who kept me on the mountain."

Ayeren looked at the wood, then at his soot-streaked face. The realization was beginning to settle in her stomach— this wasn't just a favor between playmates anymore. This was a claim.

Was it? 

She let out a soft, huffed breath, though the corner of her mouth twitched. "You are stupid, Neteyam," she whispered. "This was supposed to be a gift for me, and now you’re making me do the work? You can barely keep your eyes open."

Neteyam let out a low, tired chuckle that vibrated against her shoulder as he leaned his weight into her. "I have a hole in my ribs, I have the dream hunt tomorrow, and I just fought an ikran, Ayeren. You’re lucky I’m not making you carry the wood, too."

He shifted, his tail giving hers a playful, insistent flick before coiling loosely around the end of it. The contact sent a jolt through her; Na'vi did not coil tails like that unless there was a deep, soul-level comfort— or something much more intimate. Ayeren’s mind flashed to the stories the older girls told, and her skin flushed warm.

He looked down at the dark grain of the branch, then back at her with a glint of mischief that the warrior-paint couldn't hide, remembering the morning when he found out that she had been teaching Lo’ak and Spider. "Besides... maybe you could teach me? How to make a proper bead?"

Ayeren pulled back just enough to give him a flat, unimpressed look, trying to ignore the way her heart skipped. "I already did that. Years ago.”

Neteyam didn't blink. He just leaned closer, his voice dropping into a teasing hum that resonated in the small space. "Did you? I must have forgotten. The wind is very loud up there, Ayeren. It blows things right out of your head."

"Forgot," she repeated, her voice dripping with skepticism. She reached for a carving stone, pressing it into his palm with a bit more force than necessary. "Skxawng."

"Maybe," he agreed. He didn't look at her, just let his head rest heavily against her shoulder, his weight a solid, grounding presence. He was acting as if he belonged right here, tucked away in the healer's shadows. "But if I’m such a skxawng, you better make sure I don't ruin the wood. Start carving, Ayeren. I'm too tired to lead the way."

Ayeren stiffened, her eyes narrowing as she looked at the back of his soot-covered head. She was a healer. She had spent years under Mo’at’s tutelage learning that a patient’s body was a temple, that she was to bring no more harm to those who were already suffering.

She successfully ignored every bit of that training.

She reached up and gave the back of his head a sharp, stinging thwack with the palm of her hand.

"Ow!" Neteyam barked, his eyes snapping open as he lurched forward. "I have a hole in my ribs, Ayeren! You are supposed to be a healer!"

"I am healing your ego. There is no ‘hole’ in your ribs, and you are being dramatic," Ayeren replied calmly, already picking up the carving stone and testing the edge against the dark wood. "The rules say I must not bring more harm to a patient, but I have been successfully baited into it, Neteyam. Now hold the branch still, or I’ll hit you again."

Neteyam grumbled, rubbing the back of his head, but his tail didn’t uncoil from hers. He shifted, steadying the heavy wood for her first strike. The warrior was gone; there was only the boy, who was more than happy to let her win.

The moment of levity broke as quickly as it had arrived. As Neteyam settled his weight against her, his head lolling toward her shoulder again, Ayeren felt the true extent of his exhaustion. The adrenaline that had carried him through the feast was gone, leaving behind a boy who was practically vibrating with fatigue.

She looked down at the wood, then at his hands— the same hands that had wrestled a predator into submission just hours ago. They were twitching, a faint tremor in the fingers that told her he was pushing past his limit just to stay in her presence. It was a terrifying realization: he wasn't just here because he wanted to be; he was here because he needed to be.

"No," Ayeren said softly, her voice firming as she set the carving stone down on the mat. "We are not doing this tonight."

Neteyam blinked, his eyelids heavy. "We are. I brought the wood. I said—"

"I don't care what you said, Neteyam." She shifted, gently but decisively disengaging her tail from his, though the loss of the contact felt like a cold breeze against her skin.

She stood up, reaching down to grab his forearms. "Look at you. You are swaying where you sit. Your heart is beating like a sturmbeest’s stampede. If you try to carve this tonight, you will slip and take off a finger, and then I really will have a patient to worry about."

"I'm fine, Ayeren," he protested, though the words were slurred, his voice thick with the need for sleep. He tried to pull her back down toward the mat, his grip weak. "Just one bead. One for luck tomorrow."

"You already have luck," she countered, gesturing to the silver-grass armband and his brother’s beads. "You have Eywa’s favor and a mother who will skin you alive if you show up to the Dream Hunt with eyelids as red as the berries used for numbing. Go."

She pulled him toward the entrance of the marui. Neteyam stumbled slightly, his coordination frayed. He looked back at the wood branch lying on the floor— the physical proof of his effort to stay grounded with her— and then back at her face. 

He looked almost wounded by her rejection, a raw vulnerability peeking through the smeared soot.

"You're throwing me out," he murmured, a half-smile tugging at his lips despite his tiredness. "A new warrior of the Omatikaya kicked out into the dirt."

"The warrior needs to be able to stand upright to walk home," Ayeren teased, though her chest ached with the need to keep him there. She pressed her palms against his chest, feeling the solid, rhythmic thrum of him through his skin. 

Was it possible for her own heart to beat this fast just from a touch? She didn't know. "Go to your family’s marui. Sleep. If you are still alive after the Dream Hunt, then—and only then—will I let you touch this wood."

Neteyam sighed, a long, defeated sound that ended in a yawn. He reached out, his thumb grazing the side of her neck for a fleeting second—a touch so brief but so heavy with intent that it made her knees weak. It was both a promise and a goodbye for the night.

"The wood stays here?" he asked, his voice a low hum.

"It stays here," she promised. "Under my mat. No one will touch it."

He nodded, finally turning toward the curtain. He paused at the threshold, the light from the distant bonfire catching the sharp line of his jaw. "Don't let the fire go out, Ayeren." He repeated his words from that morning.

"I won't," she whispered.

She watched him disappear into the shadows of the walkway, his silhouette tall and slightly unsteady as he headed toward the Sully marui. Only when his footsteps had faded completely did Ayeren turn back to the empty room.

The silence rushed back in, heavy and suffocating. She walked over to the frost-wood branch, picking it up. It was cold, carrying the lingering chill of the mountain peaks, a reminder of the world that was currently claiming him. She tucked it carefully beneath her sleeping mat, her fingers lingering on the rough bark.

Tomorrow, he would go into the mind-space of the Great Mother. He would see things she couldn't follow him into. She sat back on her heels, looking at her stained fingertips, the blue and silver dyes finally beginning to fade, and wondered for the first time if being "just a friend" had ever really been enough for either of them.

Did he understand the implications of how he treated her?

…

No, seriously, what is he playing at?

5280 words.

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A/N:

typing out this chapter with the propensity of a slow burn-bound writer making use of her self-imposed liberty to write fluff and silliness as whatever higher force intended; a "giggleshitter" incapable of holding back her joy, if you will

well, as much fluff and silliness as i would personally allow, OBVIOUSLY ill be sprinkling in a few things (questions) to break that immersion, oh yes. remember that this girl was also raised by jake alongside the three musketeers of english curse words

and ooohhh? lack of proper neteyam pov? i wonder if he really does like her that way or if hes gravitating towards her "in that way" because of duty? oo

Light— pale, ghostly, and cooling— seemed to bleed directly from Ayeren's thoughts into the horizon. 

Dawn over the Omatikaya didn’t arrive with a sudden break of the sun; instead, the world simply exhaled. The atmosphere shifted from a deep, bruised purple to a luminous, misty teal, making the floating mountains in the distance look like giant, sleeping beasts suspended in water.

The color was a perfect, haunting match for the pigments still clinging to Ayeren's stained fingertips. She looked down at her hands, the dyes from the berries still caught under her nails. They were the remnants of the prayers she had whispered into the dark— the night she had finished the armband.

She wondered when they would fade away.

She remembered the way the silver-grass had felt in her hands at every eclipse of the week prior. It had been sharp enough to draw blood, stubborn and wild, resisting the shape she tried to force upon it. With every loop of the braid, she had pressed a thought into the fibers, her voice barely a hum against the wind that rattled the marui:

"Ma Eywa, look upon him. Not as the son of a leader, but as the boy who laughs at the sound of the forest."

Loop. Pull. Tighten.

"Give his fingers the grip of the vine. Give his heart the stillness of the deep forest."

As the teal light hit the secondary supply marui, Ayeren felt the phantom ache of that night’s work. She had stayed awake alone until the eclipse, her thumbs raw from the friction of the grass. 

Every loop of the silver-grass had been a silent plea, a ritual performed in the heavy silence that followed their time by the fire. He hadn't seen her weave it— that was for her and Eywa— but he had given her the reason to. 

She had not realized the significance of her prayer then, until he had opened up just hours earlier. 

She could still hear the low, uncertain timbre of his voice when the flames had died down to embers, and he had finally let the mask slip. He had spoken of the weight of the sky, of the fear that the wind might recognize him as a stranger and refuse to let him in. He had opened up his thoughts to her like a map of uncharted territory.

"Let the wind be a path, not a wall," she had whispered as she tied the final knot, dye staining her palms like a permanent oath.

Now, standing at the precipice of his departure, those prayers felt dangerously small. The Hallelujah Mountains looked indifferent to the color on her fingers, or the silver-grass now buckled around Neteyam’s arm.

They were ancient stone; they didn't care about the girl who stayed below, weaving luck out of weeds.

Especially not for someone who rejected it in its entirety.

The air clung to the back of her throat, tasting of damp moss and the cloying, fermented aroma of over-ripe fruit rising from the lower canopy. But sharper than the forest was the smell of the ritual itself: the metallic, biting tang of the pigments Neytiri was grinding after Ayeren had gathered and dropped them off for her. Each rhythmic scrape-thud of the stone pestle against the mortar felt like a countdown, a steady, grinding pulse that marked the final moments before the heights claimed him.

Inside the Sully marui, the usual morning chaos— Tuk’s giggling, Lo’ak’s loud complaining— had been replaced by a focused, electric readiness. Ayeren stood just inside the entrance, her back against the woven support pillar. 

The rough fibers of the wood pressed into her shoulder blades, a grounding sensation she desperately needed. She felt like a ghost haunting the edges of a masterpiece, watching the family she had grown to love prepare for Neteyam’s moment, the first of many.

Neteyam sat cross-legged in the center of the floor. His spine was as straight as a warrior’s spear. He looked older than thirteen; the boy who had leaned his head on Ayeren’s shoulder just hours ago was buried beneath the skin of a warrior.

Neytiri leaned forward, her fingers dipped in soot and crushed orange berries. She traced the lines across his forehead— a pattern reminiscent of a rider’s mask. Her touch was feather-light, yet Ayeren could see the slight tremor in the mother’s hand.

"Stay still, my son," Neytiri murmured, her voice a low hum that vibrated through the small space. She caught Neteyam’s chin, tilting his head up. "The sky must recognize you before you even leave the ground. Do not give the Great Mother a reason to look past you."

"I am still, Mom," Neteyam replied, though his tail gave a singular, betraying twitch against the floor. He let his gaze drift toward the door, finding Ayeren. It was a quick, searing look— one that asked 'Are you still there?' without saying a word. 

Ayeren held his gaze until Neytiri’s fingers moved to his cheek, drawing his attention back.

Kiri sat directly across from him, her legs tucked under her chin. She wasn't helping with the paint; she was simply watching him. Her yellow eyes were unblinking, tracking the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest. She reached out, her fingers hovering just inches from his knee.

"You’re vibrating, Neteyam," Kiri whispered, her voice like the rustle of dry leaves. "The woods-sprites are agitated because of you. Even the moss feels your heart beating. It's too loud. You're giving me a headache."

Neteyam didn't look away from his mother, but his jaw tightened, the muscles ticking as he tried to reach out and pinch Kiri’s arm. His hand stopped halfway; he was maintaining the posture of a man. "It’s just the wind, Kiri. Don't start with that today. I need to focus."

She stuck her tongue out at his defiance before plopping beside Lo’ak with a loud thud.

"Focus on what? Falling?" Lo’ak piped up, though his voice lacked its usual bite. He was practically vibrating himself, his tail lashing the woven floor with an envious, restless energy. He was pacing in a small circle near the cooking hearth, his eyes darting from Neteyam’s paint to the banshee catcher leaning against the wall.

"If I fall, Lo'ak, I'll make sure to land right on your head," Neteyam retorted.

"You'd have to hit the target first," Lo'ak shot back, but he stopped pacing, moving to stand beside Spider. 

Ayeren smiled at the banter, making eye contact with Neytiri, who only listened fondly.

Spider leaned against a support beam, his mask reflecting the dim bioluminescence of the home. The plastic of his pack glinted, making him look uncharacteristically small and fragile amidst the blue giants.

"Don't listen to him, Neteyam," Spider said, his muffled voice echoing. "He’s just mad he has to wait another year to get pecked at by a banshee."

"I'm not mad!" Lo'ak snapped, then immediately lowered his voice when Neytiri cast a sharp look his way.

"Enough," Neytiri said, her voice soft but final. She finished the last stroke on Neteyam’s temple and sat back, her hands resting on her knees. She looked at him— really looked at him— not as a commander, but as a mother who knew the price of the sky. "You are ready. Do not let the Ikran see your fear. Show it only the wind."

Lo’ak stepped forward then, thrusting a cord of beads toward his brother. They were truly… something— some seed-husks were carved so deeply they looked like they might snap, while others were barely scratched. "Here. For luck. So the Ikran doesn't look at you and think you’re boring. It took me all week, so don't lose it in a tree."

Spider nodded fervently. "We used the stone tool Ayeren showed us. It's... rugged. Like a traveler’s charm. It’s meant to take a beating."

Neteyam took the gift, his eyes softening as he ran a thumb over the uneven grain. He looked up at them, the warrior’s mask slipping for a moment to reveal the brother who held deep fondness for everyone in the room. "Where did you two learn to carve like this? You almost found the center of the strong wood. Only almost."

He glanced toward the entrance again, his gaze locking onto Ayeren’s with a sudden, intense gravity. "I should have known. No one else has the patience to keep your fingers from falling off while you work."

Ayeren offered a small, fleeting smile, her fingers curling into her palms to hide the tiny cuts from the silver-grass. She didn't speak. She felt as though if she opened her mouth, the sheer weight of her anxiety would spill out and dampen the fire he needed for the climb. 

He looks like a warrior already, she thought, a realization that chilled her even as it made her heart swell. And I am just the girl who holds the bandages.

Again, her own fault.

Tuk pushed past the boys then, her bottom lip out in a massive, trembling pout. "It's not fair! I want to make a bead! Why am I too little for the luck-work? I helped Ayeren pick the berries for the dye!"

Neteyam reached out, snagging her by the waist and pulling her into a sudden, fierce hug. "Because you're the most important part, Tuk-tuk. You have to stay here and keep the fire warm, so I know which way is home. If you're busy carving, who’s going to watch the horizon for me? Who’s going to be the first one to shout when they see my wings?"

Tuk sniffled, burying her face in his neck for a second before nodding solemnly. "I'll watch. I won't even blink."

Jake stepped into the circle then. The atmosphere shifted instantly. The father disappeared, replaced by the Olo'eyktan. He didn't offer a charm like the rest; he offered a hand, pulling Neteyam up from the floor. He looked at his son— at the man he was soon to become.

He pulled Neteyam into a sudden, crushing hug. Neteyam’s head rested briefly against his father’s chest, a silent surrender to the gravity of what was coming.

"Ready, son?" 

"Ready, sir."

They filed out into the cool morning air, the family walking him to the edge of the camp where the path turned toward the heights. They stood there for a long moment, a tight-knit circle chattering with a nervous, high-frequency energy. Tuk was still clinging to Neteyam's leg until Neytiri gently peeled her away, her expression unreadable behind the ceremonial paint.

"I must go," Ayeren whispered, catching Neteyam's eye one last time. "Tsahik is waiting for me to prepare the feast for the evening."

"Go," Neteyam said. His voice was steady, but his eyes lingered on the silver armband she had given him— the one he proudly displayed on his bicep. "I'll see you when I land, Ayeren. Don't let the fire go out."

Ayeren nodded and turned, Kiri falling into step beside her. As they walked toward the ritual site, the silence between them was heavy.

I’ll see you. That was the only thing she held on to as she held back the urge to look back.

Ayeren thought about her years as Mo'at's apprentice— learning the duties of the Tsakarem, the weight of the clan's spiritual health. She saw Kiri touching the ferns as they passed, her fingers trailing over the leaves as if she were reading a map to a world Ayeren couldn't see.

That thought— the one she had tried to quell again and again over the last few days— rose back up like a persistent tide. She had spent weeks trying to convince herself that his ascension wouldn't change the geography between them, but the sight of the warrior-paint on his face made the lie impossible to maintain.

════════════════

As the hunting party disappeared into the mist, the village fell into a state of suspended animation. It was a peculiar, heavy quiet that always descended on their settlement during the Iknimaya. The usual industry of the clan slowed to a crawl; the weavers worked without speaking, and the children were kept close to the maruis, as if a loud noise might somehow upset the balance of the wind thousands of feet above.

Ayeren sat with Mo’at, the rhythmic thumps of sorting medicinal roots the only sound. Mo’at was a presence like a mountain— immovable and silent. She didn't offer reassurances, but the way she watched Ayeren’s clumsy movements suggested she knew exactly where the girl’s mind was.

Every time Ayeren reached for a root, the tiny, hair-thin scabs on her fingers caught on the fibers. They stung— a sharp, physical reminder of the silver-grass she had woven, even until now. 

The pain was grounding, but it wasn't enough to stop her mind from racing. 

Is he on the first shelf? Is the mist too thick to see the handholds? Has the wind picked up? 

She thought of the way his skin had felt against hers on the ledge just hours ago— the living, pulsing warmth of him— and the cold terror that the mountain might take that warmth and replace it with the stillness of stone.

"The mountain is singing today," Kiri whispered from the doorway.

More riddles…

She wasn't looking at Ayeren; she was staring at the Hallelujah Mountains, her head tilted at an impossible angle, her eyes fixed on a point far beyond the clouds. "It’s a very loud song, Ayeren. The wind is trying to tell them a secret, but I think they are too busy climbing to hear it."

"What kind of secret, Kiri?" Ayeren asked, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. She preferred Kiri’s strange insights to the crushing silence of the roots, especially after they had silently made amends with each other as they grew up.

"...Dunno," Kiri replied with a soft snort, finally looking down. Her expression was distant, almost melancholy. 

She sat beside Ayeren, her hands moving over the herbs with grace. "About how it doesn't have any paths until you make them."

Ayeren couldn't sit still any longer. The air in the marui felt recycled, thin, and suffocating. She stood up, excusing herself to gather more cooling moss from the damp crevices of the walkways.

Outside, the mist was rolling through the camp in thick, wet ribbons. She walked onto the high walkways, where the wind was sharper. 

She found Spider sitting on a jagged outcropping, his legs dangling over a five-hundred-foot drop. He looked like a small, strange bird perched on the edge of the world, his yellow-tinted exopack mask glinting in the dim light.

"You can't see them from here," Ayeren said softly, sitting beside him. She kept a hand on the rock, needing the solidness of it.

She could see the mountains in the distance, but that’s all.

Spider didn't look up. He was hunched over, his shoulders tense. "I know. But I can hear the Ikran, you know, for when they come back."

He looked at his small, human hands, then at Ayeren. The glass of his mask was fogged slightly from his breathing. "He’s going to be different when he comes back, isn't he? He’s not gonna want to crawl through the scrub-brush looking for hexapedes anymore."

He’s going to be busy.

Ayeren looked at the distant peaks, shrouded in white. "He has to be, Spider. The sky doesn't let you stay a child. It demands too much."

She wasted too much time in her life moping about problems that have already come to pass. 

Spider kicked his feet, the sound of his soles hitting the rock echoing in the silence. "Everyone’s moving. Lo'ak is already trying to be him. Kiri is... somewhere else. And Neteyam is literally leaving the ground." 

He looked at her with a raw, sudden vulnerability. "What happens to us? The ones who stay down here?"

Ayeren’s throat tightened. She thought about her parents— how they had gone into a different kind of fire, a war that had consumed the world she knew, and never come back. She had survived that fire, but she had been scorched by the change it left behind.

But…

So what if her parents were gone? 

She had Kiri, Lo’ak, Neteyam— and she still irrationally spent years of her life avoiding them. 

And now, the thought was biting her in the ass.

She realized then that her fear wasn't just that Neteyam would die. That was a clean, sharp fear. The deeper, duller ache was the fear that he would survive— that he would become someone so great, so legendary, that the girl who wove him grass charms and knew the exact frequency of his nervous laugh would no longer fit in his world. 

Becoming a hunter meant his life would now be measured in verticality and distance. He would be expected to see the "big picture" of the clan’s survival, while her life was dedicated to the microscopic: the pulse of a patient, the grain of a medicinal root, the specific placement of a ceremonial coal.

He was ascending into the clouds to protect the people, and she was being pulled deeper into the dirt to sustain them.

She found herself wondering if they were both growing into roles that were designed to never meet in the middle again, just as them. 

He was the future Olo'eyktan— she was the future Tsahìk. 

Their lives were already being carved into a specific, rigid shape by the expectations of the Omatikaya. 

When they did truly "meet" after their duties, would it be because the clan required a leader and a spiritual guide to stand together for the sake of the people?

Or would it be because, despite the weight of those titles, the space between them was still, stubbornly, their own?

"We keep the fire warm, Spider," she said, though the words felt hollow in her own ears. "Like he told Tuk. We make sure there's somewhere for them to land."

"Yeah," Spider muttered, leaning his head back against the stone. "But what if the place they land isn't the same place they left?"

Perhaps, they were thinking of things that would be answered someday.

But regardless, they will always be thoughts that will haunt her for its possibility.

════════════════

The ascent was a test of bone and lung. The higher they climbed, the more the air seemed to thin into a sharp, cold ether that burned the back of the throat. 

Neteyam moved with a fluid prowess that felt ancestral, his body moving by instinct before his mind could even register the next hold. Every finger-hold was precise— every lunge was calculated. 

Below him, the world fell away into a dizzying swirl of green and mist, but he didn't look down. He felt the eyes of the elders and the warriors on his back— they weren't wishing him luck; they were measuring him against his father, looking for the ghost of Toruk Makto in the swing of his shoulders.

He stood at the very front of the group as they reached the final nesting shelf, a jagged lip of stone that seemed to vibrate with the sheer power of the mountain. The wind was a physical weight here, a screaming beast that tore through the stone arches and whipped his braids against his skin. He held his banshee catcher tightly in his fist. The rough, braided texture grounded him, the only solid thing in a world of chaotic air.

There was a girl to his left, her eyes wide, her breathing shallow and ragged. She had been training alongside him for years, her spear-work often rivaling his own in the training pits. She was strong, a daughter of an influential warrior, born for this moment. But here, in the thin air, her eyes were wide and shallow, darting toward the edge with a flicker of raw survival instinct. 

She tried to say something to him, perhaps a plea or a shared moment of terror, but the wind swallowed her words before they could leave her lips. Neteyam didn't look at her. He couldn't afford to see her fear. He was staring at the ledge, his vision narrowing until the world was nothing but grey stone and the screaming sky.

Make him proud. Don't hesitate— you are the son of Toruk Makto.

He stepped to the edge. The world turned into a chaotic swirl of leathery wings and deafening shrieks as the colony reacted to their presence. 

He waited. 

He didn't go for the first one that landed, nor the second. He waited through the frantic flapping and the smaller, skittish males. He waited for the one that looked at him like it wanted to eat his soul— the one that saw him not as a rider, but as prey to be broken.

Then he saw it. A forest-green hunter with a yellow crest that stood out like a flame against the mist. It landed with a bone-jarring thud, the stone groaning under its weight. It hissed, its four wings fanning out like sails of emerald silk, blocking out the sun. It lunged, a strike as fast as a viper.

Neteyam didn't flinch. He ran straight at it, meeting the violence with his own.

The struggle was brutal. 

The Ikran snapped its beak, the sound like a cracking branch inches from his face. Neteyam dived beneath the first strike, the wind of the beast's wings nearly knocking him flat. 

As he rolled, a stray talon raked across his ribs, tearing through the skin. The pain was a distant, white heat that only sharpened his focus, turning his vision into a crystalline map of movement. 

He scrambled up its neck, the beast thrashing and trying to throw him into the abyss.

He threw the rope. The cord hissed through the air, wrapping perfectly around the Ikran’s snout. The beast let out a muffled shriek of rage, rearing back on its hind talons. Neteyam jumped, launching himself with every ounce of strength in his legs, locking them around its thick neck as they tumbled together toward the edge of the cliff.

He grabbed the queue.

As he slammed his queue into the Ikran’s, the silver armband on his bicep caught the light, a flash of Ayeren’s handiwork amidst the blood and grime. 

The bond snapped into place like a lightning strike. 

The world expanded. He wasn't just in his own body anymore; he could feel the beat of the Ikran’s heart, the tension in its wing membranes, the way the air flowed over its crest. Colors became sharper; the wind became a language he had known his entire life but was only now hearing.

He didn't wait for his father’s command. He didn't wait for the warriors to cheer or for the girl beside him to find her footing. He simply threw himself and the beast into the abyss.

It was bliss. Pure, soaring happiness that had him ignoring everything else.

The Hallelujah Mountains became a playground of floating islands and cascading waterfalls. He dived through the mist, the cold air rushing over his skin, soothing the stings on his chest. He felt the wind not as an obstacle, but as an extension of his own wings. 

For a fleeting second, he thought of Ayeren— the anchor holding him to the earth even as he conquered the sky. 

He heard his mother’s warrior cry echoing across the canyon, a sound of pure triumph. Neytiri dived alongside him, her face radiant with a joy that looked like fire, her own Ikran banking in perfect synchronization with his. 

Jake followed, a grin splitting his face, his eyes fixed on his son with a terrifyingly proud intensity that Neteyam had chased his entire life.

Neteyam landed much later on a high, secluded landmass, far above the camp. He was breathing hard, his heart racing in a dual rhythm with the beast's. He looked down at the unpolished beads Lo’ak and Spider had made, feeling the weight of their clumsy love, then at the silver armband still clinging to his arm.

"What are you doing, son?" Jake asked as they landed behind him, the heavy thud of their Ikrans echoing.

Neteyam walked toward a freshly fallen branch of dark, dense wood, its surface weathered by the high-altitude winds. It was the girth of his own thigh, heavy and ancient.

"I promised them gifts," Neteyam said, his voice thick with the remnants of the sky's adrenaline. "I am going to carve beads for everyone from this. Something that lived where the Ikrans sleep."

Neytiri stepped forward, her hand trembling— a rare sight— as she touched his face. Her thumb brushed the blood on his ribs, her expression a mix of relief and pure happiness. "My son," she whispered, her voice cracking.

Jake didn't say a word; he didn't need to. 

He just reached out and pulled Neteyam into his chest, letting the boy’s head rest against his torso. They stood there at the edge of the world, three shadows against the vast, golden light of the afternoon, the silence finally replacing the scream of the wind.

════════════════

The return to the camp was signaled long before they touched down. 

The village had been deep in the rhythmic, trance-like preparation for the Uniltaron, but the sound of the Ikrans screeching in tight formation brought the camp to a violent, joyous standstill. 

That was the sound they had been waiting for— the cry of the successful. The signal came not from the eyes, but from a low, thrumming frequency in the soles of Ayeren's feet as the heavy wings beat against the air overhead.

Five new Ikrans. The counting was a silent prayer in the back of everyone’s mind.

Ayeren ran. She pushed through the crowds of gathering Na'vi, her smaller frame ducking under the elbows of warriors and weaving through the gaps of chanting elders. 

As she reached the landing platform, the heat hit her first— the musky warmth radiating from the heaving lungs of the banshees.

And then she saw him.

Neteyam was sliding off the neck of an ikran with a fluid grace that looked almost dangerous. He looked all the parts of a hunter— the orange soot smeared into a warrior’s mask making his golden eyes look like burning embers against the darkening teal of the sky. 

He stood taller than he had that morning, his hand resting casually on the snout of the beast that had definitely tried to kill him. 

Ayeren moved forward, her heart leaping, but a wall of blue skin surged between them before she could get within ten paces. Warriors slammed their hands against his shoulders with enough force to bruise, shouting his name with a rough, masculine pride. A group of girls swarmed him, their chatter melodic and overwhelming, their tails twitching with a flirtatious energy that made Ayeren’s stomach drop.

She was shoved backward by a hunter rushing to congratulate Jake, the force nearly knocking her off the platform. She caught herself against a woven support pillar, her fingers digging into the rough wood. 

Spider appeared beside her, his mask glinting as he craned his neck to see. She stood at the very back of the crowd, watching Neteyam through the shifting wall of blue skin. She stopped trying to get closer. The distance between the landing ledge and the crowd felt small, but the social distance felt final.

Through the gaps in the crowd, Neteyam’s head suddenly whipped around. He wasn't listening to the warriors or the girls— he was searching, his gaze frantic and sharp.

He saw her— just for a second— and the change was instantaneous. The hard, untouchable mask of the warrior crumbled into raw, boyish relief. He took a half-step toward her, his hand reaching out instinctively as if to pull her through the chaos and back to his side.

"Neteyam!"

The moment was severed. An elder gripped his arm, his fingers digging into the very spot where Ayeren’s silver-grass charm lay hidden. The elder began leading him toward the central fire, his voice booming for the whole clan to hear: "The feast waits! The ceremony for our new riders begins!"

Neteyam was swept away by the current of the tribe’s expectations. Ayeren stayed behind, the cold mountain wind suddenly feeling much sharper now that his heat was gone. She felt a sharp, bitter pang of reality— he was a rider now, the son of the leader, the hero of the day. 

She was just the apprentice, the girl meant to stay in the shadows of the healing marui.

Even if she was being trained for a duty that meant she would one day stand by him.

"I have a job to do," she whispered to the empty air, her voice sounding small even to herself. She turned away from the fire, away from the cheers, and walked back toward the dark silence of the medicinal supplies.

So if she wanted to keep that title, she would have to work for it.

4856 words.

════════════════

A/N:

aaa this was supposed to be a lot longer with more neteyam! but i found myself lacking the time to finish writing it to the point where im satisfied (especially with this blasted writing style thats both a blessing and a curse) so i cut the chapter to here.

is it clear that im getting antsy over writing slow burn? my other fic has been a wip for years and UGH does it genuinely hurt me to write it now?? (this fic is very spontaneous actually, and i spent a good whole week writing up to chapter 11 before i started doing my chapter touch ups and posting [my initial drafts always lack detail and immersion, i usually only add those once i think that the outlines are ready and make sense based on what ive already written])

but the character building aaaa the timeline ive been given to build up their relationship from where it is now to what it will be in the future...

High above the level of the maruis, tucked into a jagged fold of the cliffs, was a place of vertical shadows and constant, clinging damp. The waterfall’s spray turned into a permanent, silver shroud. Here, the air lacked the scent of cooking fires or crushed medicine; it smelled of wet stone, ancient moss, and the sharp tang of falling water.

Ayeren climbed this higher elevation with a focused intensity, her fingers finding purchase in the slick fissures of the rock. Her muscles burned, a dull throb that she welcomed— it was a physical distraction from the hollow anxiety that had settled in her stomach since the morning started. 

She felt queasy at the thought of looking down.

She was looking for a silver river-grass— a plant that thrived only in the constant cold of the spray. It was a beautiful, cruel material. Its blades shimmered like the stars, but their edges were lined with microscopic teeth that could lace a thumb with a dozen tiny cuts before the weaver even felt the sting.

As she harvested, pulling the stubborn stalks from the crevices, she looked above the trees that were made short by the elevation. On a flat shelf of rock jutting out from the opposite area, she saw a flash of blue.

Neteyam was surrounded by three older warriors. Of course, they weren’t coddling him, but they were drilling him. Even from this distance, Ayeren could see the repetitive motion of his arms as he practiced the lunging strike used to pin an Ikran’s head. Between the combat drills, he sat cross-legged, hunched over a thick length of sturmbeest leather and razor palm leaves. 

Yes, she was in an area that she was not supposed to be in right now.

He was weaving his own bandshee catcher, the heavy-duty harness he would need to keep a wild Ikran's jaws shut during the Tsaheylu. While Ayeren wove for luck, Neteyam was weaving for survival. The sight of him, so small against the backdrop of massive trees, made her breath hitch.

"You're going to lose your grip if you keep staring at the clouds."

The voice was quiet, nearly swallowed by the roar of the falls. Ayeren jerked her head around, her heart hammering against her ribs. Kiri was perched on a moss-covered outcropping ten feet above her. She looked less like a girl and more like a part of the higher elevation, her yellow eyes fixed on her brother’s distant silhouette with an intensity that mirrored Ayeren's own.

And she wasn't supposed to be here, either.

"Kiri," Ayeren breathed, centering her weight against the slick stone. "I didn't hear you."

"Well, I wasn’t moving, and the waterfall is loud," Kiri replied vaguely, her voice drifting like the mist. She hopped down, landing with an effortless grace that made Ayeren feel clumsy in comparison. 

She looked at the bundle of silvered grass, then at Ayeren’s hands, already beginning to show the first red lines of irritation. "That's a lot of sharp grass for one person to carry. I don’t think Grandma would ever ask for you to gather that."

Ayeren didn't try to hide the grass. There was a strange transparency to Kiri that made lying feel like a waste of breath. "It isn't for the Tsahik. It's for a gift."

Kiri’s expression shifted, the distant, glazed look in her eyes sharpening into something grounded. "For Neteyam?"

"He needs an anchor," Ayeren said, her voice steady despite the height. "Something to remind him that the ground is still there when he is lost in the wind."

Kiri went quiet after a brief nod, the spray from the waterfall clinging to her eyelashes like tiny stars. "He's scared," she whispered suddenly. It was a simple observation of a sister who felt her brother’s heartbeat across the canyon. "He acts like he’s made of stone because of Dad. He wants so badly to be the warrior everyone sees. But look at his hands."

Ayeren looked. Even from across the expanse, she could see the frantic, jerky pace at which Neteyam was working the leather. It was like he wasn't just crafting; he was also fighting the material, trying to force his will upon it.

"I know," Ayeren said softly. "That is why the weave must be tight. It has to be stronger than his fear."

Kiri reached into the bundle and pulled out a single blade of grass. She didn't wince as the sharp edge nicked her palm; instead, she closed her eyes, letting a tiny bead of her blood smear against the silver surface.

She handed the blade back, a silent blessing that felt more official than any prayer Ayeren had learned in the marui. "Don't let Grandma see your fingers," Kiri warned with a knowing, almost mischievous smirk. "She’ll think you're losing your touch if she sees the cuts."

════════════════

By the third day, the labor had moved from the higher grounds to the quiet, dappled shadows of the settlement. Ayeren sat in the shade of a massive root-buttress, her bundle of silver-grass hidden beneath a layer of palm fronds. She was forced to take breaks— a frustration that gnawed at her. 

The thick, viscous sap-resin she used to fuse the river-grass to the delicate sea-fern needed time to cure. If she moved too quickly, the "stick" would fail, and the whole structure would unravel.

From her vantage point, she watched the chaos of the younger children. Kiri, Lo’ak, and Spider were in the middle of a high-stakes game of tag near the water troughs, their voices a messy, rhythmic blend of Na’vi and English that always made the village elders shake their heads.

"I touched you! You're it, bro!" Lo'ak yelled, his tail lashing with excitement as he scrambled up a carved stone pillar with reckless abandon.

"In your dreams, skxawng!" Spider fired back, his voice muffled by his mask but full of defiant spirit. He dove under a bamboo walkway, narrowly avoiding Lo’ak’s grasping hand.

"You're both so slow and stupid,” Kiri sang out from a high vine, watching them with a superior glint in her eyes. "It's like watching two worms try to dance near a splashing waterfall."

"Oh, shut up, penis-face!" Lo'ak barked, grinning toothily at her before he started jolting the vine she was hanging from back and forth, causing her to start cursing him at every movement.

Ayeren suppressed a laugh, a rare warmth spreading through her chest. She remembered clearly how Jake had nearly lost his mind when he first heard them using that particular human insult a few years ago. 

He’d given them a legendary, stern reprimand about "respectful language" and demanded to know how they learned it. They never breathed the insult within a mile of him now— but the moment his back was turned, it was their favorite weapon.

“Lo’ak! Kiri! Come!” Neytiri’s voice rang out from the central fire, sharp and unmistakable.

The two Na'vi children froze, then groaned in unison, their tails drooping as they peeled away from the game. "But Mom—!" Lo'ak started, but one sharp look from Neytiri had them peeling away.

Spider stopped mid-stride. He didn't follow. He stayed by the troughs, looking incredibly small and out of place in the fading light. Even though he was older than them, he lacked the height, the bioluminescence, and the blue skin that acted as a silent identity in the family’s inner circle.

He sat on a log, kicking at the dirt with his small human feet. Ayeren felt a familiar, sharp pang in her chest. For a long time, she had felt like an outsider too, though she had the honesty to acknowledge that her isolation was often a fortress of her own making— a wall built out of grief for the parents she had lost. 

Spider’s walls were different; they were built by Neytiri’s deep-seated distrust. Ayeren couldn't find it in her heart to hate Neytiri for it— the woman had raised her like an aunt, and her fear was a scar from a war that had taken everything— but she understood the hollow, quiet look in Spider’s eyes.

Ayeren kept watching him for a moment, then shifted her grass aside and walked over, sitting a respectful distance away.

“The game ended early?” she asked softly.

Spider looked up, startled. “They have to do family stuff. Lessons or whatever. I’m supposed to go back to Hell's Gate for my check-up soon anyway.”

He sounded like he was trying to convince himself it didn't matter. Ayeren saw the way he looked at the central marui with a quiet, hollow longing to belong to something that wasn't a laboratory.

“Neteyam is working on his gear,” Ayeren said, nodding toward the high shelves. “He’s nervous.”

Spider snorted, a little grin returning to his face. “He’s terrifyingly focused, bro. I tried to talk to him yesterday, and he just stared at a piece of leather like he wanted to fight it. He’s so going to be the best rider they’ve seen in years.”

Spider looked down at his own small hands, then back at her. “I bet you’re making something for him, too.”

“I am,” Ayeren admitted. “Something for luck.”

“Luck is good,” Spider murmured, his gaze drifting back to the Sully marui. “Sometimes it’s all you have when you don’t quite fit the mold.”

They sat in silence for a while. Ayeren thought of her own parents, lost to the smoke and the fire, and how she had been scooped up by the Sullys. She was lucky, yes. But sitting next to Spider, she realized that both of them were weaving their own places into a tapestry that hadn't originally been meant for them.

She thought about asking him to help with the armband. She could use a second set of hands to hold the tension. But she pulled the thought back. 

No. This is mine. She felt a flicker of guilt, telling herself she was being selfish, but this gift was her secret tether to Neteyam. 

It had to be hers alone.

Instead, she reached into her bag and pulled out a handful of spare materials. “Spider,” she called softly. “I have a bunch of extra thread. And some seed-husks. Do you want to carve?”

Spider looked up, his eyes brightening behind the glass of his mask. “Carve what?”

“Beads. For a small traveler’s charm. Here,” she said, handing him a short, sharpened stone tool. She moved closer, showing him the grain of the husk. “Hold it like this. Don't push with your shoulder; use your wrist. If you force it, the husk will split, and you'll have to start over.”

As they sat together, Lo’ak suddenly reappeared, having escaped whatever chore Neytiri had set for him once she left. He saw them and jogged over, his ears perked. “Wait, I wanna do that too! I bet mine will be better than Spider’s. Ayeren, teach me, I’m faster!”

“Patience, Lo’ak,” Ayeren chided gently, though she was smiling. “Speed will only give you a crooked bead. Follow Spider’s lead; he’s already found the center of the wood. Keep your thumb at the base of the thread so the bead doesn't slide while you work.”

Soon, the two of them were in a heated, whispering competition, trying to see who could make the most intricate pattern. Ayeren went back to her own weaving, the noise of their bickering and the scratching of their tools acting like a protective blanket. She was used to Neteyam’s quiet, steady presence, but she realized she had missed this— the messy, overlapping noise of the younger ones. 

It made the world feel less like a waiting room for a warrior's trial and more like a home.

════════════════ 

Night brought the real work. Tucked away in the shadows of the secondary supply marui, where the smell of drying seed-pods and bitter herbs masked her scent, Ayeren began the next agonizing stages of the weave.

The silvered grass was a nightmare. It was stiff and springy, resisting the curve of the wrist. Every time she pulled a strand taut, the microscopic teeth of the grass sawed into the pads of her fingers. She used her own legs to tension the warp-threads, her body becoming a living loom.

As her hands bled and healed, her mind wandered back through her own history. Imagined her parents' faces that she had never even known, like reflections in a disturbed pool. 

She imagined how much blood warriors shed, and how this was nothing compared to that.

She wondered if they would be proud of who she was now— this girl who refused to follow their path and spent her nights weaving charms for a boy who wasn't her kin.

Probably not.

She thought of the Sullys. Jake, with his heavy-handed, almost desperate protection of his children; Neytiri, with her fierce, sharp love that burned like a white flame.

And Neteyam. She thought of how they had grown together— from the awkward silence of her first month in their home to the way they could now sit for hours in a tree blind without saying a word, perfectly understood. He was the one who had taught her, slowly but surely, that she didn't have to forget the dead to live for the ones who were still standing beside her.

The fern had to be "nested" into the center of the braid. This was the most delicate part; if she bruised the leaves, the oil would leak, and the light would die. She worked with the breath-holding focus of a healer closing a chest wound, her heart skipping a beat every time the grass resisted the curve.

"Ayeren?"

The voice was sudden, cutting through the silence of the supply marui. Ayeren jumped, nearly snapping the tension on the silver-grass. She scrambled to shove the weaving under a pile of heavy sturmbeest hides just as Neteyam ducked through the entrance.

Oh, her heart was close to jumping out of her throat.

He looked exhausted. His skin was smudged with dust and sweat, but there were no visible wounds, to her relief. He stopped in the center of the room, looking around until his eyes landed on her.

"You've been hiding," he said. It wasn't a question, and there was a faint, weary frown on his face. "I haven't seen you at the communal fires for two nights. Grandma said you were busy with the warriors that came back, but even Lo’ak didn't know where you’d gone."

"I am here," Ayeren said quickly, her heart hammering— not from the climb this time, but from the proximity. She kept her hands tucked behind her back, the silica cuts stinging like fire. "There is much to prepare. The healers need supplies before the hunters leave again."

Neteyam took a step closer, his eyes narrowing. "You're acting strange. And you're pale." He reached out as if to touch her arm, and Ayeren instinctively flinched back to keep her hands out of sight.

Neteyam froze, his expression hurt. "What is it? Did I do something?"

Never you.

"No! No, Neteyam, it’s not you," she said, her voice soft with regret. "I am just... tired. The work is repetitive."

"Then stop," he said, his voice dropping to that protective, stubborn register he only used with his siblings. "Come to the lower basins. The water is warm, and Lo’ak is trying to catch fish with his bare hands. It’s a disaster. You should see it."

Ayeren felt a painful tug in her chest. She wanted to go. She wanted to sit by the water and laugh at Lo'ak until the sun went down. "Maybe another day, Neteyam."

She didn’t like the dejected look on his face and the sad droop of his tail.

Before he could argue, the heavy curtain of the marui pushed aside. Mo'at entered, her presence instantly commanding the small space. She looked from Ayeren’s flushed face to Neteyam’s stubborn stance.

"The day is over, grandson," Mo'at said, her voice gentle. "And yours was longer than most. Why are you here instead of resting your spirit for the heights?"

"I was looking for—"

"You have found her. Now, you must leave her to finish the count," Mo'at interrupted, not unkindly, but with a finality that left no room for debate. "Sleep, Neteyam. The mountain does not forgive a tired mind."

Neteyam lingered for a second, his gaze searching Ayeren’s one last time. He gave a sharp, frustrated nod and disappeared back into the night. 

Ayeren let out a breath she felt she’d been holding for days.

Mo'at didn't speak immediately. She walked to the berry baskets, sorting through them with practiced ease. 

"Your hands are slow today, Ayeren," Mo'at noted. She reached out, grasping Ayeren's wrist and turning it over. Ayeren held her breath. The sap-paste was holding, but the heat of her skin— inflamed and angry— was unmistakable.

"The work is heavy," Ayeren managed.

"Strength comes from the struggle with the material," Mo'at said, releasing her hand with a firm pat. "Do not let the work break the tool. Soak your hands in the cooling marsh-water tonight. It will keep the inflammation from settling. You will sleep here, in my marui, tonight. I will not have you wandering the forest floor with hands that cannot hold a knife."

Not that she knew how to wield one, either way.

════════════════ 

By the sixth night, the air in the village was electric. The Iknimaya was hours away.

Ayeren sat in a small circle by the secondary hearth, her own project tucked away now that it was nearly complete. Beside her, Spider and Lo’ak were hunched over their bead-carving. What had started as a lesson had devolved into a full-scale war.

"Look at that! It's lopsided!" Lo'ak crowed, pointing at Spider’s seed-husk. "That’s not a luck-bead, that’s a rock."

"It’s a traveler’s charm, skxawng! It’s supposed to look rugged," Spider shot back, his tongue poking out the side of his mouth in concentration. He was trying to carve a depiction of an Ikran wing, but it looked more like a jagged leaf.

"You're both doing it badly," Ayeren interrupted, her voice stern but her eyes dancing. 

She leaned over, tapping Lo'ak's hand. "Lo'ak, I told you— if you race, you will lose the grain. See this? You've splintered the edge. Now it will catch on the thread and snap the whole cord. I don’t think that the way to wish your brother luck is by giving him a charm that breaks."

Lo’ak winced, his ears flattening. "I just wanted it to be... finished. So he could see it before he leaves."

"He will see it," Ayeren said, softening and patting his head. "But I think he would be sad if it broke too easily, especially during the taxing task he will be undertaking."

Kiri appeared then, drifting out of the shadows like a ghost. She sat behind Ayeren, leaning her chin on her shoulder. She didn't say a word, just watched the boys struggle with their tools. Her presence was calming, a silent anchor amidst the boys' frantic energy.

"Spider's is better," Kiri whispered eventually, just loud enough for Lo'ak to hear.

"Hey!" Lo'ak protested.

"It is," Kiri said, her eyes fixed on the carvings. "He's focused on the wood. You're just shouting at it."

Spider beamed, puffing out his chest, while Lo'ak grumbled and went back to work with renewed, careful focus. Ayeren watched them, a lump forming in her throat. They were all doing this for Neteyam in their own way— Lo’ak with his competitive devotion, Spider with his quiet need to be included, and Kiri with her strange, deep knowing.

She reached into her bag, her fingers brushing the waterproof pouch where the silver armband lay finished. It was done after she had dried the river-grass and sanded every single irritant away, even adding a layer of thin but sturdy cloth where the band would meet his skin. 

The teal light was trapped within the weave, waiting for the moment it would meet the mountain air.

"Go to bed, you two," Ayeren said, standing up. "The sun will be up before the beads are finished if you don't move now."

She watched them scramble away, bickering all the way to their marui. Kiri stayed for a moment, looking at Ayeren with a look that was far too old for her years.

"It's beautiful, Ayeren," Kiri said.

Ayeren froze. "How did you—"

"I can hear the sea breathing inside it," Kiri said simply, before turning and vanishing into the darkness.

Ayeren stood alone in the cooling night. Across the settlement, she could see the faint glow of a fire where Neteyam sat alone, checking the tension on his finished banshee catcher one last time.

Tomorrow, he would climb. Tomorrow, he would face the sky.

She tucked the gift into a small, waterproof pouch. She had woven the luck of the river, the blood of the mountain, and a year’s worth of unspoken gratitude into a single circle. Now, she just had to find the courage to hand it to him.

════════════════ 

Ayeren moved through the shadows of High Camp, her footsteps light on the woven walkways. The village had quieted, the usual nightly hum replaced by a heavy, expectant stillness. She found him sitting on the edge of a precipice, the fire beside him reduced to glowing embers. He was silhouetted against the vast, star-dusted sky of Pandora, his shoulders slumped in a way he never allowed when others were watching.

She didn't speak as she approached, only sat beside him. The silence between them wasn't the comfortable one they usually shared; it was brittle, like dry glass.

"I thought you’d be asleep," Neteyam said softly. He didn't look up from the rope in his lap. "Grandma has been keeping you late."

"She let me go early tonight," Ayeren lied gently.

Sorry, Tsahik.

For the past week, they had been like two spirits passing in the mist— brief greetings, a shared walk to the water troughs, their tails brushing briefly in the dark before duty pulled them apart. Now, sitting so close, the distance felt even more palpable. Ayeren looked at his profile— the sharp line of his jaw, the way his ears twitched at the distant call of a wood-sprite.

"You're ready for tomorrow," she murmured, looking at the precision of his work.

Neteyam finally looked at her, and the raw exhaustion in his eyes made her heart ache. "Am I? My father seems to think so. He says I’m ready. He says the People need more hunters, more scouts." 

He let out a short, hollow laugh that didn't reach his eyes. "But sometimes I think he’s just looking past me, seeing the warrior he needs me to be instead of... whatever I am right now."

He turned back to the sky, his voice dropping to a whisper. "He’s been so angry lately, Ayeren. Coming back from those meetings with the elders and even other clans, looking like he wants to fight the wind itself. I think he knows something is coming. Something bad. And I think he’s rushing me because he’s afraid I won't be ready when it gets here."

Ayeren watched him, her heart thudding. She had seen that same look on Jake’s face— the weight of a world he was trying to hold up alone. But seeing it reflected in Neteyam, who was barely thirteen, felt like a cruelty. 

It was in moments like these, when the air was heavy with the burden of leadership, that he seemed to remember what he was truly being readied for. He wasn't just the boy she grew up watching; he was the future Olo'eyktan. 

Every move he made was measured against the weight of a duty he does not yet have.

On a whim, she shifted closer, the heat of his skin radiating against her arm. She leaned her head against his shoulder. It was a simple, innocent gesture, but the moment her head touched him, a strange, electric jolt shot through her. Her heart, which had been racing with anxiety, suddenly skipped a beat and then settled into a deep, heavy thrum.

She thought about her own path— how she was, for all intents and purposes, the Tsakarem. There hadn't been an official ceremony yet, no public presentation to the clan, but everyone knew. They saw her at Mo’at’s side; they smelled the medicinal resins that clung to her skin. She and Neteyam were two halves of a future bridge, and as she leaned into him, she felt the gravity of that connection pull at her soul.

She felt him shudder under her touch before he slowly relaxed, his head leaning back against hers.

"I’m barely thirteen, Ayeren," he confessed, his voice breaking. "What if the Ikran sees through me? What if I’m not the son he thinks I am? People die on the mountain. If I don't come back, who will look after them? Who will stop them from doing something stupid?"

Who will stop you from drifting away again?

Ayeren reached out, her tail instinctively seeking his. It found him in the dark, curling loosely around the base of it. She felt the slight, nervous tremor in his tail, and she tightened her hold.

"You are Neteyam," she said firmly, pulling back just enough to look him in the eye. "You are the one who stays when everyone else runs. You are the one who listens to the forest when it whispers.”

Listens to me.

“Your father is rushing, yes, but not because he doubts you. He’s rushing because you are the best thing he has to offer this world, and he is terrified of the world breaking you." She looked at her own hands, hidden in the shadows. 

Should I tell him? 

Her throat closed up at the thought of admitting it, but she also knew that Neteyam was drowning in the guilt of seeing this opportunity and his father’s trust in a negative light. "I have fears too. Every day I wake up and wonder if I’m just a guest here. I wonder if I’m tarnishing my parents’ legacy by refusing to be a part of the path that led them away from me. I spend my nights weaving because if I stop moving, I might realize how scared I am that none of this— none of us— is permanent."

Neteyam turned his hand over, reaching out to take hers. He intended it to be a gesture of comfort, but the moment his palm met her fingers, he flinched. The rough, scabbed texture of her skin was impossible to ignore.

He pulled her hand into the light of the dying embers, his eyes widening as he saw the criss-crossing red lines and the raw, silica-cut skin.

"Ayeren," he breathed, his voice thick with alarm. "Your hands... what did you do? Is this why you've been hiding?"

"I wasn't hiding from you," she said, her voice a soft flutter. "I was hiding this."

With her other hand, she reached into the waterproof pouch and pulled out the armband. In the dim light, the silver grass shimmered like liquid moonlight. As the cool air hit it, the nested fern within began to pulse— a soft, rhythmic teal glow that mirrored the bioluminescence of the forest below. 

She made sure that the light would only be seen from the inside, accounting for any instance where he didn’t want to be seen.

"It’s for you," she whispered, pressing it into his hand as he stared at her. "The fern we found a week ago is woven into it, and I gathered the other materials myself from the rivers. I wanted you to have something that wasn't made for survival. Something made just for you. For luck."

Neteyam’s eyes left hers to land on the gift, his breath catching. He ran a thumb over the intricate weave, his touch impossibly light, as if he were afraid he would break the light inside. The teal glow flickered against his blue skin, making him look like something out of a dream.

"You bled for this," he said, looking at her with an intensity that made Ayeren feel like she was falling, even though she was sitting on solid rock.

"I would do it again," Ayeren admitted. She felt a heat rising in her cheeks that had nothing to do with the fire. "I wanted you to have an anchor. So when you’re up there, and the wind is trying to take you... You can feel this. And you’ll know that we are waiting for you to come down."

Because you can die.

Neteyam didn't say anything. He couldn't. He simply slid the armband onto his bicep. It fit perfectly, the now-darkened grass stark against his dark blue skin. He looked at her, and the boy who was "trying to be a warrior" vanished, leaving only Neteyam.

He leaned forward, pressing his forehead against hers— a gesture of deep, silent understanding. Ayeren closed her eyes, breathing in the scent of him. In that moment, the mountain didn't seem so high, and the trial didn't seem so certain of death.

"I will come back," he promised against her skin, his voice a low, fierce vow. "I will come back because I have to see you weave the next one. And because I’ll be sure to be strong enough to protect all of you in the future."

She did not doubt that he would keep it.

They sat there, side to side, for a long time, heads pressed together, their tails tangled in the dark, while the first faint, orange light of dawn began to bleed into the horizon.

Long after he had finally stood up to join the other young hunters for preparations, the phantom warmth of his shoulder remained against her arm. 

Ayeren stayed on the ledge, helping Neytiri ready the paints. She thought of his hands— the way they had trembled when he spoke of his father, and the way they had steadied the moment they touched her gift. She thought of the teal light pulsing against his skin, a heartbeat she had crafted with her own blood. 

As the sun began to touch the Hallelujah Mountains, her mind held onto him with a fierce, quiet desperation, praying that the wind would be kind to the boy who carried the light she couldn’t hold for herself into the sky.

The morning in the healer’s marui was thick with the scent of crushed herbs and the humid warmth of the settlement waking up. Ayeren sat hunched over a young hunter who had returned from a minor skirmish with a direhorse. A jagged tear ran across his calf, the edges angry and red from the beast’s hooves after a mishap.

Yeah, she definitely doesn’t want to be a warrior. Although one problem is that she wouldn’t be able to tame an ikran.

She worked with a steady rhythm, her fingers stained green from the poultice she was applying. Mo’at watched from the corner of her eye, her silence acting as both a shadow and a guide. Ayeren began a low, melodic prayer to Eywa, asking for the spirit of the forest to knit the flesh back together. As she prayed, her voice was a grounding hum that pulled the tension out of the room, turning the sharp air of the sickroom into something soft and navigable.

The heavy curtain of the marui shifted, letting in a shaft of golden, dust-mote-filled light. Neteyam stepped in, ducking his head to clear the frame. He remained quiet, respecting the boundary of a healer at work, especially when the prayer was mid-breath, only moving to wave back at the warrior she was healing.

He leaned against a support beam, waiting with a stillness that felt uncharacteristically coiled. Ayeren noticed he was carrying a fresh quiver— his arrows were more numerous today, the fletching sharp and new, a sign of his increasing duties and the weight of expectation his father was placing on him. 

The way his hand rested on the leather strap suggested a readiness for something larger than a simple hunt.

When she finally stood and the warrior waved goodbye, wiping her hands on a damp cloth, she noticed the thin red lines across Neteyam's own forearm.

"You have been in the brambles again," Ayeren said, her voice soft but scolding, her eyes tracking the jagged patterns on his blue skin.

Neteyam looked down at his arm as if seeing the cuts for the first time. "The game was fast today. I didn't have time to mind the thorns."

"Sit," she commanded, her voice not accepting any argument.

He obeyed, a small smirk playing on his lips, though his eyes remained tired. As she applied a cooling salve, he watched her hands with intense curiosity, following the way her slender fingers moved with a precision he usually reserved for his bowstring. "What is that? The one with the bitter smell? I haven’t seen that color before."

He has, he’s just making conversation.

"It is another dried root," she explained, leaning in close, the scent of the damp earth clinging to her. "It's powder, and when mixed with sap, it stops the sting before the body realizes it has been bitten. It tricks the blood into staying calm." She began the prayer again, her eyes closing.

Neteyam went silent, his restless energy vanishing under the gravity of her work. He watched her intently, the way her brow furrowed in concentration, perhaps taking in the fact that her "war" was fought against rot and pain, just as his was fought against true danger.

From across the room, Mo'at watched them. She saw Ayeren’s focus hold steady and the way Neteyam anchored himself under her touch. The Tsahik felt a flicker of satisfaction; Ayeren was finally emerging from the hollow of her grief to find herself tethered to the life of the clan. 

In her mind, she saw a pair— the warrior and the healer— a foundation for the people yet to come. She felt a quiet relief at seeing Ayeren venture out more, finding a pace that suited her, and weaving herself back into the tapestry of the Omatikaya.

════════════════

The walk toward the river was a slow transition from the bustling settlement into the deep, shaded silence of the forest. Neteyam led the way, his stride easy and practiced. Every so often, his hand would drift back, catching Ayeren’s hand to help her over a slick root or a sudden drop. It had become a natural, wordless habit; their palms lingered against one another in the humid air long after the ground leveled out.

They teased each other about the morning’s work, their laughter light against the heavy, buzzing hum of the insects. Ayeren noticed the way the sunlight caught the sheen of his skin, and the way his ears twitched at the distant snap of a branch or the call of a creature she couldn’t see.

"Why are we going so far?" Ayeren asked, shielding her eyes from a stray beam of sunlight. "The usual pools are back there."

"The usual pools are for children," Neteyam teased, casting a playful glance over his shoulder. He adjusted his new quiver, the fletching rustling. "The fish are smarter there. We’re going to the bigger areas. It’s still within our allowed distance, I promise."

"We are children, Neteyam. Does your father know you're dragging me to the rapids?" Ayeren asked, a bit of skepticism creeping into her voice. "Do we even have permission to be in this specific branch?"

Neteyam laughed, a bright, confident sound that echoed through the trees. "He trusts me to keep you safe, Ayeren. And I trust you to keep me from bleeding out if I trip."

The air changed before the landscape did. 

As they trekked further down-canyon, the sweet, heavy scent of blooming pitcher plants and damp loam began to thin, replaced by something sharper, more revitalizing. It was a metallic tang that bit at the back of the throat, a hint of salt carried up from the very distant coast by the river’s deep, rhythmic lungs.

Neteyam moved with a new kind of intent today. He bypassed the mossy banks where the water hummed a sleepy tune and led Ayeren toward a place where the ancient stone ribs of the earth squeezed the river into a narrow, frothing vein. Here, the water didn't flow; it lunged, white and hungry.

“We aren't staying on the rocks today,” Neteyam said, his voice raised to compete with the low growl of the rapids.

…Why would she even try to catch fish from flowing water?

Ayeren looked at the white-capped water, then back at him. The usual problem for the past year had been about the lie of the light; today was about the truth of the weight. Before she could offer a healer’s protest, Neteyam reached out, his hand locking firmly around her forearm. The invitation was absolute, his grip steady and grounding.

Stepping into the stream was like walking into a living muscle. The current hit Ayeren’s shins with a force that nearly swept her feet from the slick riverbed. She gasped, her fingers digging into Neteyam’s shoulder as she fought to keep her balance.

She held back from letting out a few of the English curse words she had learned from the three misfits.

“Use your legs, Ayeren!” he shouted over the roar. “The same way you stand over the mortar. Drive your weight down, not back.”

Good grief, Neteyam. 

She gritted her teeth, centering herself. The dense muscles in her thighs— hardened by years of standing or squatting for hours to grind thick, fibrous roots— burned as they locked against the pressure of the rushing water. It was a different kind of endurance, a static battle against a world that wanted her to move.

Neteyam moved behind her, his chest a solid warmth against her back as the water rose to their waists, the cold spray drenching them both. “Your tail,” he urged, his voice closer to her ear now, vibrating through her. “Do not let it float; it will get dragged with the current; you can wrap it to anchor yourself.”

She really wanted to slap her tail against him in protest.

Following his lead, Ayeren felt for the submerged, petrified roots of the trees that lined the bank. She curled her tail around a thick, gnarled branch beneath the surface, the extra limb acting like a mooring line. The stability it provided was instant.

“Better,” Neteyam murmured. He reached around her, his hands finding the curve of her waist, holding her steady so she could lean her torso forward into the spray without fear of being swept away by the river's violence.

In this position, held fast by him and the roots alike, Ayeren looked down. She ignored the movement of the fish, seeing instead the way the water carried life from places she had never seen— shreds of sea-kelp, smoothed bits of shell, and the nutrient-rich silt that fed the forest. 

To her, the river was a vein of the Great Mother, bringing the breath of the ocean into the heart of the wood.

“There,” Neteyam whispered, his grip on her waist tightening as a flash of silver darted through the churn. “Don't think. Just feel the shadow.”

The hunt was exhausting, a blur of cold spray and burning muscles, but as the sun began to tilt, the water seemed to settle into a rhythmic pulse. They had caught two fish— enough to justify the trek, if not enough for a feast.

Ayeren was wading back toward the shallower shelf when her foot brushed against something that lacked the jagged bite of a rock or the slimy give of a rotted log. It was slick, firm, and vibrating with the frequency of the current. She reached down, her arm plunging into the cold dark beneath a stone overhang. 

Suddenly, her foot slipped.

Fu—

The current seized her. For a terrifying heartbeat, she was underwater, the roar of the river filling her ears. But in that blue-grey chaos, she saw it: a pale teal glow clinging to the rocks. She grabbed it just as a hand slammed into her shoulder.

Neteyam hauled her up, his face pale with horror, his eyes wide with a fear she had never seen in him. He pulled her to a calm eddy, his hands trembling on her arms. “I’m sorry! I shouldn't have dragged you in there. I forgot... I forgot you aren't experienced with the pull. I was reckless.”

She was going to sprout a few choice curses at him, but decided that the sudden grief on his face was too genuine to get mad at.

He looked at her with the fear of a leader who had almost lost someone. He thought of Tuk, Kiri, and Lo'ak, siblings who certainly wouldn't be able to match his strength just yet. He was learning the difference between his own capacity and those he led— a silent lesson, a weight added to his shoulders, the first true burden of command.

Ayeren coughed, shaking water from her hair, her lungs burning, and patting his back to calm him down. She held up the teal fronds, which pulsed with a soft light in her palm. “Mawey, it’s forgiven, Neteyam. It ended well anyway. But you must be more mindful. It was an honest mistake.”

He frowned, but said nothing else. The only acknowledgement that he heard her words was a short squeeze of her hand around the bow before holding it himself. She curled her tail around his in encouragement.

Clinging to her fingers was a cluster of teal-colored fronds, glowing with a soft, internal light that resisted the dimming afternoon.

“Look,” she breathed, holding the dripping plant out.

He waded to her front, his eyes widening as he took in the rare sight. “That’s… that’s not from here... Did it flow from the coast? How did it get this far up?”

“The tides,” Ayeren said, her thumb tracing the bioluminescent veins of the leaf. “The river brought it here. Tsahik says these grow in saltwater, so she hasn't had a fresh one in seasons— she uses the dried powder for deep wounds, and the live oils are also useful, although I do not know if they are stronger or not. They are dangerous if the plant is still 'wild' from the sea.”

Neteyam looked from the plant to Ayeren’s face. He had spent the entire afternoon looking for movement, for the strike, for the kill. He had looked at the water and seen a challenge to be conquered. He was genuinely impressed. He’d spent his life being trained to see the world as a series of targets, swimming through this stream a hundred times without seeing the treasures within it.

He realized then that while he saw the river as a path for the hunter, she saw it as a vein of life. He’d walked past a rarity a dozen times, yet she had found a gift hidden in plain sight.

“I’ve swam through this place too many times to count,” Neteyam admitted, a genuine note of respect softening his voice. “I never saw it. I thought this part of the river was empty of anything of note other than the fish.”

“Nothing is ever empty, Neteyam,” she retorted softly. “You just have to know what you’re tracking.”

He laughed then, a short, bright sound. “A healer’s track. I suppose I should have expected nothing less.”

They spent the next few minutes carefully packing the fern into a pouch lined with wet river moss. Neteyam handled the plant with a surprising delicacy, his larger, warrior-trained hands moving with the care Ayeren usually reserved for her most fragile tinctures. They treated the moss-wrap with the same reverence as a successful kill. 

For a moment, their roles bled into one another, leaving only two people standing in the middle of a river, marveling at a small piece of the world that had traveled a long way just to be found.

════════════════

The roar of the waterfall was a constant, vibrating presence, but in the small fold of the cliff where they sat to rest, the air felt strangely still.

“Your hair is coming loose, Ayeren,” Neteyam said, his voice barely rising above the spray.

He was looking at her, but his eyes seemed to be seeing something much further away. He looked exhausted, the weight of the morning’s drills still hanging off his frame like heavy armor. 

He had been the one to suggest it— a rare moment of stillness before the descent. “I need to braid mine back tight,” he had murmured so she couldn’t hear, “so it is not a hassle when the wind takes me in a week.”

But instead of working on his own, he had moved behind her.

From Neteyam’s perspective, the world narrowed down to the rhythmic movement of his fingers and the soft, earthy scent of the forest floor that always clung to Ayeren. He felt a strange, heavy calm settling over him as he unraveled her messy braid. He was quiet— quieter than usual— his thoughts swirling like the ozone-heavy mist of the grotto.

He knew she noticed his silence; he could feel the way she stilled under his touch, her ears tilted back, waiting for a word that wouldn't come. He didn't tell her that every time he touched a strand of her hair, he felt a proprietary pull that both grounded and terrified him.

“Kiri hasn’t let us touch her hair in months,” Neteyam said, finally breaking the silence, though his hands never stopped their careful work. “She keeps it so short now. Says the long braids feel like… I don’t know. Like they’re too heavy. It’s hard to style a sister who wants to be a part of the moss.”

Ayeren gave a small, soft huff of a laugh. “She is listening to things we cannot hear, Neteyam.”

“I suppose,” he whispered.

As he crossed the silvered strands, the thought he usually kept locked in the back of his mind began to surface. He was the future Olo’eyktan. It was a fact as unchangeable as the sky. 

And Ayeren… everyone knew she was the Tsakarem in all but name. She was the one Mo’at spent her sunsets with; she was the one learning the songs that kept the clan’s soul alive.

She was, for all intents and purposes, his promised Tsahik.

He was grateful his parents and Mo'at never spoke of it. They didn’t force the "betrothal" or remind him of his duty to her, but the weight was there regardless— a golden thread tied to his wrist that he hadn't asked for. As he looked down at the back of her head, at the delicate curve of her neck where her bioluminescent freckles began to glow in the shadows of the trees, a cold, sharp question pierced his calm.

Do I feel this pull toward her because I want to? He wondered, his fingers faltering for a split second against her skin. 

Or is it just because I’m making sure she never drifts away? 

Am I only holding onto her because she is another responsibility I was born to carry?

He didn’t like the thought. It felt like a betrayal of the girl sitting in front of him, yet he couldn't shake the fear that his heart was simply following the path the Great Mother had already laid out for him.

“There,” he said softly, tucking the end of the braid. “It will stay now.”

He didn't wait for her to thank him. He stood up, turning his gaze back toward the jagged peaks of the Iknimaya, his expression hardening back into the mask of the warrior. He was ready to go back, but the question remained, echoing in his mind louder than the waterfall.

“Now you,” Ayeren said, her voice a gentle command that cut through his spiraling thoughts, hand wrapping around his forearm to drag him back down.

Where are you right now, Neteyam?

She wondered if this was how Kiri felt, back then, and possibly still even now.

Neteyam hesitated, his hand going to the back of his neck, but then he sat. He dropped onto the damp moss in front of her, his back to her chest. He felt exposed without the task of weaving to distract him.

It felt a lot less like when they were younger, although he couldn’t explain why.

Ayeren’s fingers were cool and steady as she unraveled the leather tie at the base of his queue. She worked with the same meticulous care she gave her medicinal herbs— each movement purposeful, each section of hair smoothed with a reverence that made Neteyam’s breath hitch. He closed his eyes, letting his head tilt back slightly into her space.

I am a future Olo’eyktan, he reminded himself, trying to summon the iron-clad resolve his father expected. 

I am meant to be the strength of the people. But as her fingers brushed against the sensitive skin of his scalp, that resolve felt increasingly fragile. He thought of her as his Tsahik— the one who would one day stand beside him at the councils, interpreting the will of Eywa while he led the hunters. He wondered if she felt the weight of it, too. 

Did she look at him and see a boy she liked, or did she see a duty she had to fulfill?

He stayed silent, his ears twitching as he felt her move closer to reach the crown of his head. She was so close now that he could feel the slight vibration of her chest as she breathed.

"You're thinking too much again," Ayeren whispered. She didn't stop braiding, her fingers dancing through his hair.

She was, by all means, a hypocrite for saying that.

Neteyam let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. He wanted to tell her about the fear— not just of the fall, but of the life that came after the climb. The life where he was no longer just Neteyam, but a symbol.

If I am only holding her because of duty, he thought, feeling the gentle tug of her hands, why does the idea of her drifting away feel like losing my own shadow?

He realized then that he wasn't just making sure she stayed because of the clan's future. He was making sure she stayed because, in a world that was quickly becoming a series of expectations and battlefield drills, she was the only thing that felt like his own.

“Finished,” she murmured, her hands lingering on his shoulders for a heartbeat longer than necessary.

Neteyam reached up, feeling the tight, perfect rows she had woven. He felt prepared— armored, in a way. He turned to look at her, the questions still heavy in his eyes, but the noise of the stream swallowed them before he could speak.

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The trek back toward the settlement was quieter than the journey out, the weight of the day settling into their bones. The shadows of the canopy lengthened, stretching like long, dark fingers across the path, and the first hints of the forest's night-bioluminescence began to flicker to life. 

The moss beneath their feet pulsed with a faint violet light as they stepped on it, and the trees overhead seemed to hum with a secret, electric vitality.

They teased each other— Neteyam mimicking the angry face she had earlier, and Ayeren poking fun at his frightened face as she submerged— but he was walking faster than usual, his tail twitching with a frantic, rhythmic energy. He looked like a bowstring pulled to its limit, vibrating with a tension that was born of a joy so large he was struggling to contain it.

"You are going to trip," Ayeren noted, watching his feet catch on a protruding root for the third time, watching his face carefully.

What is on your mind, Neteyam?

Neteyam stopped. He turned to her, his face illuminated by the first faint pulses of the forest’s night-light. He looked younger in this light— he was not the disciplined soldier-in-training, but a boy of twelve who had just been handed the world.

"Dad said it's time," he whispered. The words were small, but they carried the weight of a mountain.

Ayeren didn’t understand at first, then she felt her heart give a strange, heavy thump. "The Iknimaya?"

"The trials begin in a week," he said, his voice breaking into a wide, breathless grin. He stepped closer, his hands gesturing toward the unseen peaks of the Hallelujah Mountains. "He said my spirit is ready. He said I’ve proven I can lead, not just follow."

Although after today, he wasn’t so sure.

He began to talk— fast, rambling, his words tumbling over one another. He talked about the Banshee slopes, the sheer vertical climb, and the fear of the first bond. He was younger than most who attempted the rite, a testament to Jake’s belief in his eldest son’s skill, but the excitement in his eyes was tempered by a raw, naked terror that he only showed to her.

In his mind, all he could think about was the mistakes he could make and had made.

"I’m going to fly, Ayeren," he said, his voice dropping to a reverent hush. "I’m going to see the world from the top of the clouds. I’ll bring you back something," he promised, his eyes bright. "I’ll try to find something from the high peaks that doesn't grow down here. A souvenir for you, Lo'ak, Kiri, Tuk, and Spider."

Ayeren offered a smile, but it felt tight on her face. A "hand’s width" of distance suddenly felt like a vast, yawning horizon. Passing the succeeding trials meant he would finally be recognized as a man. He would be a warrior of the Omatikaya, bound to the sky if it were his path. 

She felt a spike of pride, but also the terrifying realization that he would soon have responsibilities that took him far from the forest floor.

Far from her.

"I’m sure you’ll be the best of them," she said, and she meant it. "The Great Mother will see your heart, Neteyam. She already knows it."

He reached out, his hand squeezing her shoulder— a firm, grounding pressure that left her feeling both safe and incredibly lonely.

════════════════

By the time they reached the settlement, the cooking fires were high. Ayeren headed straight for the water troughs near the edge of the central clearing, the sea-fern heavy in her pouch. She needed to clean the brackish silt from its fronds before presenting it to Mo’at.

She found Kiri there.

The younger girl was sitting on the edge of the carved stone trough, her feet dangling in the water. She looked still in a way that was not the distant, humming stillness of the fight and was more like a quiet, tired sort of peace. It had been a few months since their major fallout, and things were finally starting to get "better," though the air between them still held a fragile tension.

Ayeren moved to the opposite end of the long trough. She pulled the teal fern from its moss and lowered it into the water. Kiri watched the plant, her head tilted. They worked in silence for a long time; the only sound was the gentle slosh of the water as Ayeren rinsed the leaves.

"That's from the big water," Kiri said finally. Her voice was simple, lacking the sharp, cryptic edge it held towards her. "It’s weird that it’s here, where it’s so far from the apparently salty water."

"The river brought it," Ayeren replied, keeping her head down. "It's for the Tsahik, usually for deep wounds."

Kiri slid down the length of the trough until she was sitting just a foot away. She reached out, her long, slender fingers dipping into the water.

"It smells like a different world," Kiri murmured. "Not like the trees. Like... blue light and cold air."

She reached for a stubborn strand of river-weed that was tangled in the fern’s core and gently unwove it. Ayeren watched her hands. They were steady and kind. For a few minutes, they were just two girls doing chores at the end of a long day.

"Neteyam told you?" Kiri asked, not looking up.

"About the Iknimaya? Yes." She was surprised that Kiri was making conversation with her because, although she was quiet with Ayeren, she had been very loud around Lo’ak and Spider, often throwing around inappropriate “English” words.

Kiri let out a small, huffing breath. "He’s been acting like a kicked stinging-fly all morning. Dad shouldn't have told him until he was actually on the mountain. He won't sleep for a week."

It was a normal sister’s complaint, and it sparked a sudden, sharp warmth in Ayeren's chest. The truce was unspoken— a quiet shared task that required no grand gestures.

════════════════

Once the fern was cleaned and the last of the river-silt was gone, Ayeren dried her hands and took it to Mo'at's marui. The Tsahik was kneeling by her supplies, her eyes sharp as she looked up.

Ayeren presented the plant with both hands. "I found this at the part of the stream that Neteyam brought me to, Tsahik. The flows likely brought it from the coast."

Mo’at reached out, her fingers tracing the glowing veins. A rare, brief nod of approval followed— a silent acknowledgment that Ayeren had seen what others had missed. But then, Mo'at's expression flattened into its usual mask of disciplined wisdom.

"You have a good eye, Ayeren," Mo’at said, her voice resonant. "But do not be in a hurry. We cannot use this yet. The oil is powerful, but in its raw state, it is as wild as the distant waters. It is filled with the salt of the deep and the grit of the tides; to use it now would be to poison the blood, not save it."

Mo’at became more open to the idea of using other plants for healing when travelling clans passed by and offered their knowledge once they settled as guests.

She gestured to the high shelf, but then pointed toward the stone troughs where the spring water flowed. "It must be submerged in the moving fresh water, and the water changed until it runs completely clear. Only then, when the impurities are purged, can it be crushed or dehydrated into a powder. To rush it is to invite the rot into a wound. Place it in the flow, Ayeren. Time is the final ingredient in any medicine."

Ayeren nodded, her excitement tempered by the lesson. "I understand, Tsahik."

Nearby, Jake and Neytiri were speaking in hushed, proud tones. When they saw Ayeren, they stopped, and the looks they gave her were filled with a genuine, newfound warmth. They were happy to see her out of the shadows and contributing to the clan’s survival.

Neytiri even reached out, briefly touching Ayeren's cheek as she passed— a silent welcome into the family's circle. 

Tuk came running up shortly after, looking taller than she had been a few months ago, her energy boundless as she babbled about the dinner they were about to have and the "giant birds" Neteyam would soon ride.

The evening meal was a golden, glowing affair. The news of Neteyam’s trial had spread through the family like wildfire. Tuk was bouncing on her mat, asking a thousand questions about Ikran, while Lo’ak watched his brother with a mixture of intense envy and genuine awe.

Jake and Neytiri sat at the center, their eyes constantly finding Neteyam. There was a "noticing" in their gaze today— a look that acknowledged his height, his broad shoulders, and the way he carried himself. He stood a little taller, his chest out, the weight of his father’s pride acting like a mantle.

Ayeren sat on the periphery, her mind drifting. She looked past the mechanics of the mountain and the glory of the flight. She saw the day— the quiet of the marui, the weight of the river, and the way Neteyam had looked when he thought he had lost her to the current.

She realized that while he prepared to fly away, she was the one finding the things that kept him tied to the earth. She was the one who would have the medicine ready when he fell.

He needed something for luck— something for the protection of an adult Omatikaya. Her mind cycled through possibilities. A riding shawl? No, the weavers were already making him one. A bead for his songcord? Too small for a trial so large. An accessory, perhaps?

She considered a rider’s mask, but dismissed it almost as quickly. The heavy leathers and specialized resins were the work of master crafters; she lacked the materials and the technical knowledge to forge such a thing. A clumsy first attempt was beneath the warrior he was becoming.

Her fingers went to the pouch at her side, where a few leftover scraps of the fern remained. The teal glow was faint, but steady. It was a plant of the transition— where salt met fresh, where the earth met the sea.

She looked at Neteyam across the fire. He was laughing at something Jake said, his gold eyes bright with the reflection of the flames. He looked as if he were already halfway to the sky. He was moving into a future of duty and blood; he needed a reminder of the quiet, healing things.

Something he would always remember was from her?

She decided on an armband woven with the live oils of the fern. It could be a source of calm, keeping his skin cool and his spirit steady, and not just serve as decoration. She would weave the sea-fern into a band of fine, silvered river-grass, hiding the glowing fronds within the weave so only he would know they were there.

She stood outside the inner circle, songless and still, but as Neteyam caught her eye and gave her a small, private smile, Ayeren felt her purpose solidify.

She had a week.

Seven days to weave the memory of the river— their memory— into something he could carry to the sky.

5353 words.

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A/N:

if its obvious, im taking LOTS of creative liberties here... the children's personalities AS CHILDREN OUTSIDE THE CANON TIMELINE (also the timeline itself, there are many interpretations for when neteyam finished his iknimaya, but oh well), then the tinctures/herbs/roots/whatever Ayeren uses for healing (at best, i can describe/make up certain functions but i cannot give proper na'vi names to them), thenn the geography (theres a LONG river that goes through the forest and goes right into the sea and ocean whether you guys like it or not🙂‍↕️).