♡ Spirit realm and the real world ♡

From your peripheral vision, you could see Neteyam walking toward you two, but as soon as you’d freed him, Nevan immediately scrambled down, his little feet pattering furiously across the ground as he ran toward his father. Neteyam dropped to his knees, his massive arms catching the boy, lifting him high into the air, making Nevan let out a high-pitched, joyful screech.

You watched Neteyam press his forehead against his son’s, closing his eyes as a fierce, protective rumble vibrated in his chest. But even as he held the boy, his eyes flew up, looking past Nevan’s shoulder, his gaze locking onto yours with a look that is so heavy, suffocatingly dense with a longing so profound it felt like a physical weight in the air between you. It was the look of a starving man staring at a feast he wasn't allowed to touch.

His eyes traced the curve of your jaw and the softness of your features, desperate to find even just a sliver of hint that you’re feeling what he’s feeling. But you didn't give him one. Carefully, you looked away, focusing instead on your son’s little kicking legs and on the way Neteyam’s large hands held him safely. You chose to see him only as a father, completely shutting out the man who used to hold you the exact same way.

It hadn't always been like this. That was the cruelest part.

Your marriage hadn't been a political arrangement or a hasty union, it had been a lifetime in the making. Your parents were part of Jake and Neytiri’s inner circle since before the first war against the sky people. Through the many times your parents would bring you to visit the Omatikaya, you had witnessed Neteyam grow from a lanky boy into the man he is now.

And he had known you were for him since you were children. Neteyam was never one to waste time or play games, so he had always stake a claim on you, and the moment you both came of age, he courted you with a fierce, unwavering devotion that made even your parents sigh. You were sweethearts as teenagers, inseparable and fiercely protective of one another. When he mated with you before his and your people, his eyes had held nothing but a future filled with you.

And, your pregnancy had been a dream. Neteyam was a doting, almost ridiculously attentive husband. He would spend hours rubbing soothing oils on your aching back, pressing his ear to your growing belly to whisper stories of the forest and your childhood escapades to his unborn child. He never left your side. You had no doubt, not a single one, that you were the center of his universe.

Then, the sky people returned.

And the man you loved was swallowed whole by the war. Suddenly, he wasn't just Neteyam. He was the firstborn of the resistance leaders, the commander, and one of the unyielding pillars that kept the people from being completely overcome by the RDA. He began leaving before the first light of dawn and returning long after you and the baby had fallen asleep.

For over a year, you lived as a ghost in your own home. You sat alone in the dark, rocking a crying infant, praying to the Great Mother that the next body brought back on a stretcher wouldn’t be his. You begged him, you cried, you pleaded for just one evening. “Just for a day, Neteyam. Stay. Be with me, be with our son...”

But his face would harden, that stubborn, unyielding Jake-Sully look taking over. “I am doing this for our future, my love. If I do not fight, our children will have no world to inherit.”

And then it all just crumbled on your son’s first birthday.

It was a simple thing, really. You had spent days gathering sweet fruits, weaving small toys, hoping against hope that Neteyam would remember. You waited until midnight. When he finally walked into the kelku, covered in war paint and soot, he didn't even look at the small, untouched feast on the woven mat. He just muttered about a successful raid on an RDA supply train and collapsed into sleep.

He had completely forgotten.

And you were hit with the realization that the man you loved was dead, replaced by a warrior who had no room left in his heart for anything but strategy and casualties. You had cried all your tears by then. The well was dry. You were just so profoundly, deeply tired. So, you talked to him about going back home, citing the safety your clan’s territory could provide for you and Nevan to make him agree.

“Baby, this is your home now...” he had told you then, his arms tight around you as he fit his head in the crook of your neck.

“I know, Neteyam. But the explosion was too close yesterday. I am afraid for Nevan. This is not a place where he can safely run around and... be a child. I do not want to lose him, too...”

“Too?” he had asked, his hands maneuvering you so you’d face him but you didn’t budge. “Baby, you didn’t lose me—”

“All evidence to the contrary, Neteyam. I haven’t shared a meal with you in so long, you weren’t there when Nevan first laughed or when Nevan first uttered the word Papa, you weren’t there when he took his first steps. I am a ghost in this home. It would make no difference if we are away, because you had been acting like you had no family to come home to.”

His arms tightened around you, his nose burying in your neck. “It would make all the difference. I am coming home to my wife and child safe and sound, and that was my solace—”

You struggled to remove his arms around you, but his arms were iron tight. Your heart throbbed with pain but you couldn’t even cry. “So, then let me go home. Nevan and I will be completely safe there, if that’s what you truly care about.”

“I can’t be away from you, yawne, you’re practically asking me to stop breathing. I cannot not see you and Nevan—”

“When was the last time you’d seen your son, Neteyam? You leave before he wakes up and comes back long after he’d fallen asleep. I think you can, Neteyam, you can stand not seeing us. As I said, it would make no difference if we were here, or we were back home.”

That was that beginning of you leaving him to his war. He hadn’t known it would be a full-blown separation... But he had long before set that distance between himself and you. You’d just gotten the memo late.

“Watch, Mama! My big splash!”

Nevan’s high-pitched voice snapped you back to the present. You sat on a smooth, sun-warmed rock by the riverbank, your hand propped on the soft woven mat laid beautifully on the grass. Around you were various food, pies, and fruits Neteyam had prepared. You could barely eat it without your throat closing at the grief of this not being a permanent thing.

You’d told him Nevan wanted to celebrate his birthday here, that he misses Jake and Neytiri, and he promised you it would be different this time. You told him not to promise you anything, and just show it to his son. So far, he had kept his promise. He had cleared his entire day, which is probably an unthinkable feat for the commander of the resistance. He had brought a mountain of gifts for his boy. Beautifully carved wooden toys that he probably spent the past moons making, a small bow, and a woven arm band.

Now, he was knee-deep in the crystal-clear water, his loincloth soaked, laughing as Nevan furiously slapped the water, sending a pathetic little wave toward his father’s shins. Neteyam exaggerated his reaction, falling backward into the water with a loud splash, making Nevan howl with glee.

For a moment, the illusion was perfect. You looked like a little family. Neteyam would look up at you from the water, a soft, hopeful smile playing on his lips, trying to pull you into the warmth of the moment. You would smile back politely, a distant curve of your lips that never reached your eyes. You were here for Nevan. Only Nevan.

Nevan waddled out of the water, dripping wet, and proudly held up a crudely constructed object from the pack you brought from home. It was a woven sheath of colorful leaves, bound tightly with vines, holding a cluster of bright purple orchids. You shook your head with a smile as you fixed the pack, wiping the puddle of water he left behind.

“Look, Papa!” Nevan beamed, shoving the wet flowers directly into Neteyam’s face. “A flower sheath! Uncle Maytel taught me how... how to twist the vines. They don't break!”

You searched for a dry towel in your pack, smiling as you watched your son speak, his little body trembling in excitement.

“Uncle... Maytel?” Neteyam echoed. The playful, warm tone in his voice vanished instantly, replaced by a low, measured cadence.

You blinked, your eyes snapping to him. Suddenly, you had become aware of how ugly that sounded in the ears of people who didn’t know. You froze for a moment, the air in your lungs suddenly feeling like liquid lead as you watched Neteyam momentarily narrow his eyes, the look of a formidable hunter spotting a prey. Or a predator sensing blood might be the better description.

“Yes!” Nevan replied excitedly, entirely oblivious to the sudden, deadly shift in the atmosphere. He had just opened a cage containing a predator, and he thought he was playing with a puppy. “Uncle Maytel... He makes the best ones! He is Mama’s friend... They talk all the time. See... This is pretty. Right, Papa? Look at Mama's hair. See? I can make that, too, Papa. I will teach you!”

Nevan pointed a chubby finger at you. You had indeed used a beautiful hair decoration to pin back your hair in a half ponytail, letting the rest of your wavy locks flow loose behind you, having no idea at all how the sight of you earlier today literally stole the breath from Neteyam’s lungs. You are so beautiful, always have been, but it hits him particularly hard now that he doesn't see you as often.

He has never been used to being away from you for so long. This is probably the longest he has gone without you, such that every time he sees you now, his heart starts doing the thing it did when he first realized he loved you: flipping inside his chest and then melting into a puddle.

You kept your face as blank as stone, waiting for Neteyam to look at youjust as his son instructed. Neteyam was standing up now, but he wasn't looking at the decorations on your hair. He was staring directly at you, and the look he gave you almost choked the air right out of your throat. He didn’t look mad, it also wasn’t the detached look of a commander. It was that intensely familiar, deeply possessive, primal look he used to give you when another hunter talked to you for a second too long during his youth. His eyes darkened, his lips tightening into a straight line as his gaze finally dropped to the decorations in your hair before snapping back to your eyes immediately.

“Is that so, my boy?” Neteyam said softly, his voice dropping an octave, his eyes never leaving yours.

“Yes! He says Mama is... is very beautiful!” Nevan cheered, completely ruining any chance of a graceful exit.

So for the rest of the afternoon, you made it your absolute mission in life to never, ever be left alone with Neteyam.

When you returned to the camp, you practically shadowed Jake and Neytiri. When Neytiri pulled Nevan onto her lap to feed him sweet fruit, you sat right beside her, suddenly intensely interested in what she has to say. When Jake took Nevan to show him the ikran roost, you walked right behind them, using your son as a shield as Neteyam followed like a shadow.

He stayed a respectful distance though, answering his son's hundred questions about the beasts, even the imaginary ones, coming up with the perfect answers for it. For a moment, you were back to being a teenager, annoying the golden heir of Toruk Makto with your silly questions and having him answer you with complete seriousness, as though he really thought about your silly questions like they were points for further research.

His eyes were a constant, burning pressure on your skin the entire time, and every time you glanced up with a neutral expression, he was watching you. Eventually, the sun dipped below the horizon, painting the sky in bruised purple. Neytiri, seeing how exhausted the toddler was, scooped Nevan up.

“He will sleep with us tonight,” Neytiri said softly, giving you a knowing, gentle look that made your stomach twist. She thought she was doing you a favor, giving you and Neteyam a night of privacy. “Go. Rest.”

“Oh, I can take him—” you started quickly, reaching for your son.

“No, no,” Jake chuckled, clapping a heavy hand on Neteyam’s shoulder. “Let his grandparents spoil him for one night. Go on.”

You stood there, watching Neytiri walked away, your son already fast asleep against her shoulder. Oh, boy. You watched the rest of the camp clear out as the rest of the people retreated to their homes. You didn’t turn to Neteyam, turning instead toward the guest tents, your pace brisk, but you didn't even make it halfway before a large hand gently but firmly gripped your forearm.

It wasn’t a harsh pull,  but his grip was unyielding. “Our home’s here,” he reminded you.

You glared at him through your lashes. “I haven’t forgotten,” you said in a clipped tone, walking straight into the shadows of your old home, and seeing that nothing much had changed, only that he’d put up photos on the wall.

And from where you were standing, you’ve seen one from his unilatron many years ago. With him painted in swirling marks of white and you, standing beside him with a huge smile. Another, at your mating ceremony, and another, a photo of you heavily pregnant. The last one was a photo of the three of you, with Nevan as a newborn, cradled in your arm, both of your faces adorned with brilliant smiles.

Grief seized your heart and you had to physical turn away from it, your hands balling into fist.

“You've been avoiding me all day,” Neteyam stated, standing between you and the flap entrance, his large frame casting a long shadow over you.

“I was spending time with our son's grandparents, Neteyam. It's his birthday,” you replied, keeping your voice entirely light and normal. You walked over to the sleeping mats, untying your travel pack and organizing your things with practiced nonchalance.

“Who is Maytel?”

The question was sharp and direct, like always. Neteyam had never liked beating around the bush. You took a deep breath, turning around with a calm, casual smile. “A childhood friend from my clan,” you said.

“A childhood friend,” Neteyam repeated, his voice low, a dangerous rumble vibrating in his throat. He took a slow step toward you, his tail twitching rhythmically behind him. “Never heard of him before.”

“I have many friends back home, Neteyam,” you said. “There was no reason to bring him up. He's just a friend. He helps at home, and he’s good with Nevan. My friends have all been a huge help to me since I moved back.”

Neteyam stopped just inches from you. He was so close you could smell the familiar mint-y scent of him. All your senses were melting. It knew the smell so well, had even associated it with home and safety, and it tore at your chest, a cruel reminder of the husband you had lost. He leaned down slightly, and though he didn’t touch you, you were forced to look into his heavy, shadowed eyes. The possessive fire in them hadn't died down, if anything, it was burning hotter, fueled by the agonizing restraint he was forcing upon himself.

“He makes ornaments for your hair,” Neteyam murmured, his eyes dropping to the flowers on your soft hair. His hand twitched, as if he wanted to reach out and rip it from your hair, but he kept his fist clenched at his side. “He talks to you all the time—”

“To help. All my friends help me, Neteyam, you’ve seen Laika and Nira helping me last time," you countered smoothly, your eyes locking onto his, refusing to back down. “I am a single mother raising a little boy. I needed all the help I can get. Nothing more.”

His head reared back a little as if you’d hit him. The words single mother hit him squarely like a slap and you saw the visible flinch in his jaw, the way his chest heaved as he swallowed the bitter taste of his own failures.

He stared at you for a long, suffocating moment. He knew you were telling the truth about Maytel being just a friend. He knows you, he knows the woman he married, he knows that you would never violate the bonds of marriage, even a broken one. But that didn't stop the sickening, agonizing jealousy from clawing at his throat. Another man was filling his space. Another man was teaching his son how to weave. Another man was making his wife smile.

“You are not single. I am still very much here,” he said.

“I don’t want to argue about what here actually means,” you replied, tearing your eyes away and removing the decorations on your hair to free it from its bounds.

He watched you, choosing not to press further, but as he stepped back, his eyes remained devastatingly heavy on you. “He is a friend,” he whispered, his voice thick with an unspoken, desperate plea. “But he is not my son’s father. And he is not your husband.”

As he uttered those words, the reality of his hypocrisy came crashing back down on him. Maytel, indeed, was not Nevan’s father, nor was he your husband... But could he honestly say he was both of those things to you and Nevan? He visited the two of you as much as he was capable, but that didn’t mean anything. He was an absent father, and an even more absent husband, and he wondered completely how his son still held excitement and affection for him instead of distance.

And how the boy knew everything he was doing for the people. He knew that, even in your current indifference, you had thoroughly made the boy understand that his father had sacrifices to make for the benefit of Eywa’eveng. He watched you lay down on the sleeping mat, pulling a woven blanket up to your shoulders and turning your back to him. He sat down on the opposite side of the yurt.

He wouldn’t lie down, and you had noticed he never did once the two of you were alone in a space. Whenever he visited back home, he would do the same thing, sitting down far away from you, his heavy, burning gaze fixed on your back, mourning a home he had lost to a war he was still fighting.

The morning arrived with a crisp chill you hadn't felt in so long. The altitude of the floating mountain made the sun feel unreal. You shared a meal with Neytiri and Jake. Your son, having already bathed, wore a new loincloth with fine weaving, and you put a hand over your mouth as you laughing at him proudly showing it to everyone.

“Grandma made this, Mama!” he told you, munching on a sweet fruit as his little body leaned into Neteyam.

Neteyam held his wrist gently, kissing the side of his head. “No sweet fruit yet without a real meal, little boy...” Neteyam mumbled, replacing the fruit with a bite-sized piece of meat.

“Okay, Papa... But Grandpa said I can eat? I don’t eat this at home... Right, Mama?“ Your son turned to you, now munching on the meat Neteyam had given him.

You smiled softly. “I try not to let him eat too many sweets unless necessary to regulate his body,” you explained. “But Papa is right, Nevan. You must eat your food first before the sweet fruit.”

Neteyam glanced at you, his soft eyes smiling even as he tried to look serious for Nevan who nodded without a fight, even picking some vegetables off his leaf and eating happily.

Neytiri smiled at you. “He is a good child, Y/N. You are doing such a great job with him,“ she said, her eyes a little misty.

You smiled, caressing your son’s head. “Neteyam is, too, Mother. Despite the grueling demands of the war, he makes sure to find time for Nevan,” you said. You couldn't possibly leave him out, not when you knew he was trying his best.

After the meal, the peace you were feeling had dissolved and was replaced by the reality that you had a hazardous flight ahead of you. Outside the yurt, the camp was already buzzing with the low, mechanical drone of the resistance. You stood beside your ikran, adjusting the heavy leather straps of the riding harness, checking every buckle with meticulous care. Nevan was already strapped securely to your body in his woven wrap. He was heavy, but his warmth was comforting, his little hands clutching a newly carved wooden ikran that Neteyam had given him.

A shadow fell over you and you didn't need to look up to know it was Neteyam. He double-checked your ikran’s saddle, his movements deliberate and sharp, before he checked the saddle of his own mount, preparing to take flight alongside you. You stopped tightening the cinch of your saddle, your hand resting flat against the leather. You swallowed the dryness in your throat and turned your head toward him.

“Neteyam,” you called out, your voice quiet but steady. He paused instantly, his ears twitching forward as he turned his head to look at you, his golden eyes wide and alert, catching every syllable. “I think... It wouldn’t be safe if you come with us.”

A subtle, pained stillness took over his features. His chest expanded with a sharp breath, his fingers tightening against his mount's reins. “The skies are not safe, yawne. The gunships have shifted their patrol grids closer to the western border. I am accompanying you home.”

“Neteyam, I would like that, too.” you said, stepping closer so your voice wouldn't carry to where Jake and Neytiri were standing a few paces away. You gestured faintly to the sky, then down to the boy against your chest. “But the tension with the sky people is worse this moon. They know your ikran, Neteyam. They know you. You are the commander of the vanguard; your presence draws the kind of attention I cannot risk when I have our son with me.“

The words seemed to render him weak. Neteyam looked at you with eyes so deeply pained, so utterly crushed, it felt like a blow to the chest. He looked down at his own hands, then at his son's chubby legs dangling from the wrap, as if he couldn't fully comprehend the reality that his very existence, the fierce, formidable identity he had built to protect his people, was now a liability to the safety of his own family.

Nevan, completely unaware of the reason of the heavy silence, looked up at his father with wide eyes. He held up his wooden toy, making a little whistling sound through his teeth. “He’ll fly with us, Papa!”

Neteyam’s heart tightened so visibly you could see the muscle in his jaw clench as he forced a small, strained smile for the boy. He reached out, his large thumb gently tracing Nevan’s round cheek, but his eyes kept flickering back to you, searching your expression for any sign of hesitation. There was none.

Behind him, Jake and Neytiri exchanged a quiet, heavy look. Jake stepped forward, his hand coming down firmly on his eldest son's shoulder.

“She’s right, son,” Jake said softly. “The RDA has scout ships tracking your specific signature. If they spot you flying with your wife and child, we don’t know what they could do.”

Neteyam’s shoulders sank, the breath leaving him in a low, defeated hiss. He knew the logic was flawless. He knew it was the right tactical decision. But the soldier in him was currently losing a brutal war against the husband and father who desperately wanted to prolong his hold on both of you.

“I will send two warriors,” Neteyam muttered, his voice thick as he stepped back from his mount. "They will fly low behind you, out of sight. They will ensure you reach home safely.”

You nodded. “Thank you,” you said softly, genuinely relieved.

Neteyam stepped closer to the side of your ikran, his large body aching to simply reach out, to wrap his iron-strong arms around both of you and never let go. He leaned in, pressing a tender, lingering kiss to the top of Nevan’s head, his eyes closing as he inhaled the scent of his son one last time.

As he began to pull away, Nevan’s small fingers suddenly shot out, grabbing Neteyam’s long braids with a stubborn, toddler grip. He yanked, preventing his father from moving back.

“Papa kiss Mama!” Nevan ordered with a bright, demanding grin, his tail swishing behind him in a mischievous flick. “Good bye!”

Neteyam froze, his head tilted downward by the boy's grip. Slowly, his eyes lifted from Nevan’s face to yours. They were completely stripped of the commander's armor, now earnest, dark, and filled with a raw longing that made your breath hitch in your throat. He waited, silently asking for permission.

You looked at his lips, then at the desperate hope in his eyes, and felt the old, stubborn walls in your chest crack just a fraction. Slowly, you tilted your chin up, offering your lips to him.

The tension in Neteyam’s shoulders died instantly. A soft, ragged sigh escaped his nose just before his large, warm hand came up to cup your neck, his thumb on your jaw. He leaned down and closed the distance. You were expecting a brief, polite kiss of departure, but you should have known by the way he held you that it wouldn’t be like that.

The moment his lips touched yours, he held you there with the fierce, unyielding eagerness of a man who had been starving for a year. His lips were warm, firm, and thoroughly possessive, parting slightly as he kissed you, reminding your body of exactly who he was to you. A sudden, stupid heat flared in your stomach, your pulse spiking as your lips instinctively softened against his, responding to the familiar, intoxicating rhythm of his kiss.

He groaned softly against your mouth, his thumb caressing your jaw, pulling you just a fraction closer, trying to collapse the entire year of separation into a breathless second. But a sharp, high-pitched giggle broke the air. Nevan was squirming between you, his small hands clapping.

The sound snapped you back to reality. You pulled away, your breath coming a little faster, your cheeks flushed dark with a sudden surge of heat. Neteyam’s hand lingered on your jaw for a second too long, a low, deep rumble of impatience vibrating in his chest at the interruption, his eyes dark and heavy as he stared at your parted lips.

“Fly safely, baby,” he whispered, his voice rough.

You couldn't even form words. You simply nodded, mounted your ikran, and took to the sky, your mind in an absolute daze as the wind rushed past your face.

The flight back home felt like a blur. Even after you had safely landed on the soft, mossy platforms of your home clan and unbuckled an exhausted Nevan from the wrap, your lips still felt strangely warm, tingling with the ghost of Neteyam's mouth.

“My bestest friend in the world! You are back!”

The cheerful voice of Maytel broke your reverie as he walked down the wooden ramp, followed closely by Laika and Nira. The three of them had been your lifeline this past moons, always ready to help with the daily chores and Nevan.

Maytel practically bounded over to you, his face painted with a mischievous, gossiping energy. He didn't even wait for you to greet them before he leaned in, his voice a conspiratorial whisper. “Tell me everything! How was the High Camp? My weekend went just as good! Do you remember that hunter from the clan nearby that I was eyeing? The one with the long arms? I swear, yesterday, we were together—”

“Maytel!” you hissed, your eyes widening significantly as you pointed them sharply down at your son who was rubbing his eyes but listening intently.

Nevan was an incredibly smart boy and his ears picked up on village gossip faster than a direhorse on the run.

Maytel immediately clamped his hands over his mouth, grinning apologetically. “Oh! Right. Hello there, little Neteyam. How was your visit to your Papa?”

Nevan’s ears instantly perked up, his fatigue temporarily forgotten as his eyes lit up with excitement. “We played a lot!” he chirped before holding his small arms out as wide as they could go. “Papa made big splash in the river! And gave me many toys! You’ll see, Uncle!”

Nevan eagerly held up the wooden ikran, bouncing on his heels as he babbled to Nira and Laika about the sweet fruits, the big mountain camp, and how his Grandpa let him touch a real ikran's snout. The three of them doted on him, laughing at his wild gestures until the boy's eyelids grew too heavy to fight.

You carried him down on his soft, woven cot, watching him with a doting smile as his tail curled peacefully. Even in sleep, his small forehead furrowed slightly in a way that looked identical to his father. It was a constant wonder to you how your boy could look so much like Neteyam, even with his soft baby features.

When you walked back out to the main platform, Maytel was sitting on a woven mat, repairing a fishing net. He looked up, a theatrical sigh escaping his lips.

“Now,” Maytel smirked, leaning forward on his elbows. “What happened with the dear husband?”

You rolled your eyes, sitting down across from him and pulling a basket of fibers towards you to clean. “Nothing.”

Maytel groaned loudly, tossing a piece of twine into the air. “I do not know how you could do it, syulang! How you can resist all of... that! The last time he came to visit you here, oh, I couldn't even come near the house even if I tried. The air was so heavy! He is so large... taller than all the men in our village! And so handsome, too... Ah, those thighs... One could only imagine the beast he has inside that loincloth—”

“Maytel!” you shouted, your face burning as a sudden, vivid image of Neteyam’s muscular frame hovering over you flashed unbidden into your mind. Your stomach did a treacherous little flip. Oh, indeed, it was a beast. You cleared your throat quickly, trying to suppress the heat in your neck. “Perhaps you should have visited when he was here. Just yesterday by the river, Nevan mentioned your name to him, and it sounded so terrible. Neteyam thought you were my boytoy.”

Maytel’s eyes widened to the size of stones, his hands dropping the net completely. “What?!”

You rolled your eyes at his dramatic reaction. “Yeah. I should introduce you sometime, just so he stops looking like he wants to hunt something down.”

A slow, terribly mischievous smile spread across Maytel’s face. His amber eyes danced with glee. “Was he jealous, syulang?”

You shrugged, trying to appear completely indifferent. “Neteyam has always been very possessive. It is just his nature.”

“Of course he is!” Maytel grinned, leaning in close, his voice dripping with dramatic flair. “The way that man looks at you... Oh, he looks like a predator completely ready to pounce! Only that you’ve put him inside a cage.” He shivered, rubbing his arms. “We should rattle the cage, syulang.”

Your eyes narrowed instantly into a dangerous glare. “What are you talking about?”

He smirked, waving a hand dismissively. “I mean, let’s see what happens if he keeps thinking I actually want you. You know? A little competition...'”

“No,” you said firmly, your voice dropping into a serious, unyielding tone that left no room for argument. “We will not play with my husband like that. He is currently in the vanguard, fighting a war for all of us. He has enough weight on his shoulders without us playing petty games with his mind.”

Maytel pouted, rolling his eyes as he picked his fishing net back up. “You are such a killjoy!”

When night finally came, the village fell into a quiet rhythm, the bioluminescent flora providing light in brilliant shades of cyan and deep magenta.

Inside your quiet hut, the small tablet you used for long-range communication emitted a low chime. Neteyam called almost every day when he wasn't able to visit, a routine he had stubbornly kept since the day you left.

You picked up the device, pressing the connect button and Neteyam’s face appeared on the small screen, the blue light of the monitor reflecting his sharp features, sitting in the dark of your yurt, looking exhausted.

“Papa!” Nevan’s voice cut through the quiet as the boy scrambled from his cot, his small hands immediately snatching the tablet from you.

You let him take it, stepping back. The memory of the kiss from this morning was still burning in your chest, and the ridiculous things Maytel had said earlier kept echoing in your mind. Hearing the deep, gravelly texture of Neteyam’s voice through the speaker seemed to tickle something deep within you, sending a slow, persistent heat crawling up your neck.

You watched from a distance as Nevan babbled to the screen, showing his father the toy again, telling him about the fish he saw in the river. Neteyam listened with an intensity that made your heart ache, his expression soft and full of a quiet, reverence for the boy.

“Go to sleep now, son,” Neteyam’s voice softened as Nevan yawned heavily, his little eyes fluttering shut as he rested his head against the mat, the tablet propped up beside him. “Good night, Nevan.”

“Night, Papa...” the boy murmured, completely out.

The screen shifted slightly as Neteyam adjusted his hold on his end. He knew you were still in the room. Even though he couldn't see you in the dim light of the hut, his voice dropped into a low, intimate frequency that felt like a warm hand sliding up your spine.

“Good night, my love,” he whispered into the quiet. “I love you so much.”

The line went dead with a soft beep.

You stood there in the dark for a long time, the silence of the room suddenly feeling incredibly loud. Your skin felt hypersensitive, your heart drumming a strange rhythm against your ribs as you carried the tablet back to the shelf and finally lay down on your own sleeping mat beside your son.

When sleep finally took you, it didn't bring the peaceful, dreamless rest.

It was a dream that seemed familiar to you. It was real... More like a memory haunting you. You were under a canopy in a forest that was so green and vibrantly alive. Your vision focused and you saw Neteyam in fromt of you. He looked so young, entirely devoid of the rigid exhaustion the war brought. He was grinning, a look that made your heart jump.

He had you pinned against the smooth bark of a giant root, his large hands mapping the curves of your body with a desperate fervor. You were both shivering, caught in the reckless, consuming heat of youthful desire. His fingers were knuckles-deep inside you, the slick, wet heat of you coating him as he moved frantically in and out, stretching you beyond relief. It was a tight, intense friction, but even in the haze of the dream, you found yourself thinking that it was a far gentler stretch than the thick, heavy length of his cock, which your hands were currently fisted around. You pumped him in tandem with his rhythm, his weight leaning heavily into you as a ragged groan escaped his throat.

“I missed you, my baby...” he mumbled against your skin, his lips trailing a path of burning kisses from your collarbone up to your jaw before crashing onto your mouth, tasting of pure adoration. His fingers moved faster, driving you closer and closer to a cliff you wanted to fall off of.

You let out a soft, breathless chuckle against his lips, your fingers tightening around his length. “Missed me? We are always together, ‘teyam...”

But the moment the words left your mouth, you watched his face fall, a profound sadness washing over his golden eyes. “Not really, no...” he whispered, his voice cracking with a vulnerability that made your chest ache. “You are so far away from me right now...”

Panic seized your heart, sharp and sudden like an arrow to the ribs. “What...?” you gasped, reaching for his face, but his image was already dissolving like smoke in the wind. “Neteyam—”

You woke up with a violent gasp, your eyes flying open to the quiet, dark interior of your hut.

Your heart was hammering a frantic, echoing rhythm against your ribs, and your breath came in ragged bursts. The cool night air swept over your bare skin. Between your thighs, the phantom ache of his fingers was still vividly there, a throbbing warmth that slowly turned cold as the reality settled in. You pressed the heels of your hands against your eyes, trying to force the image of his younger, unburdened smile back into the dark.

You missed him so much.

This wasn't the first time. You had dreamed of him many times in the past moons. But they were never dreams that hasn’t happened, they were always memories, beautifully cruel and vibrant, haunting you even in your sleep. Your dreams weren’t showing you what could be, it was torturing you with what used to be, a reminder that while you had successfully run away from the war, you had never truly managed to run away from him.

The lingering mix of heat and longing from the dream stayed with you for days, but lately, only the heat seemed to have stuck. And it’s annoying. You were glad you didn’t have to see him for the time being, because it often happens every time you see him. Fortunately, you somehow at least manage to overcome the trials and tribulations of being a woman who chose to separate from the man she loves so much.

By midday, you were sitting on the main platform of your hut, the basket of fibers in your lap serving as a distraction while Maytel sat cross-legged opposite you. He was at it again, his fingers weaving river-grass and glossy feather-like fibers into an intricate hair crown. It wasn't for you this time, because Maytel has always been the unofficial beautifier of the clan's young women, and right now, he was carefully crafting a piece for a girl from the lower terraces.

“I am telling you, syulang, he nearly fell out of his hammock when I walked past,” Maytel was wheezing, his tail thrashing with dramatic delight as he recounted his latest encounter with his long-armed hunter. “He tried to act so smooth, but the poor thing was blushing so hard his stripes almost turned purple!”

You let out a loud, genuine laugh, shaking your head as you tossed a cleaned fiber at him. “You are terrible, Maytel. Leave the poor man alone before you break his spirit entirely.”

“Never! A little torment keeps the blood pumping,” he grinned, his fingers flying through the weaving.

“Mama! Mama!”

Nevan’s high-pitched voice shattered the lighthearted bubble. You blinked, looking toward the main walkway, expecting to see Nira or Laika chasing after your hyperactive son.

Instead, your breath caught squarely in your throat.

Walking just a step behind Nevan, his massive frame practically shadowing over your son, was Neteyam.

He was in his full warrior gear, wearing his cummerbund, his chest knife sheat, and his heavy longbow strapped to his back, looking thoroughly prepared in case he gets attacked on his way here. He looked terrifyingly formidable, and a little out of place, too. Everyone in your clan knows of his reputation as a warrior leading the resistance with his parents, and they have always treated that as something to celebrate.

Your eyes snapped straight to his face after a quick sweep of his gear, your heart jumping to your throat at the sight of his eyes narrowed into slits. To anyone else, he just looked like the stoic, fierce commander of the Omatikaya, carrying himself with his usual rigid authority. But you? You had known him since you were children. You had held him in the dark. You knew every subtle twitch of his ears, every micro-expression of his jaw.

There's your angry man.

He was staring directly at Maytel, his eyes tracking the way Maytel was sitting so comfortably close to you, sizing up his competition with a cold, calculating precision.

“Oh, Great Mother,” Maytel muttered through entirely gritted teeth, his smile freezing in place as he deliberately kept his lips from moving. “Is this your view every day? If yes, how dare you leave him, syulang? If I had one of that at home, I would never think of this clan again.”

You threw Maytel a furious, warning glare. Those seem like the perfect digs, because this isn’t your view at all, you barely even see him. You also didn’t have one of that at home... Literally, because the man was rarely home. You stood up, looking at Neteyam with look of genuine confusion. Before Maytel could even speak again, Nevan reached the steps leading to the platform, throwing his little body against your legs before turning around and pointing proudly at his father.

“Papa surprised me at the ledge, Mama!”

Neteyam stepped onto the platform, the wood creaking slightly under his weight. Without a word, he bent down and effortlessly scooped Nevan up into one massive arm, propping the boy against his hip. His jaw was clenched so tightly a muscle jumped in his cheek as he looked down at you.

“Neteyam,” you said, your voice tilting up. “You... you weren't due to visit until next week. The patrol schedules on the tablet said you were in the western valleys... You should have sent word, I haven’t prepared anything.”

His brows raised slightly, his tail twitching in an agitated flick behind him. He adjusted his grip on Nevan, his voice dropping into a deep, gravelly tone. “A word to visit my wife and my son? Do I need that now, my love?”

You blinked, completely caught off guard by the sheer pettiness dripping from the commander of the Omatikaya vanguard. A tiny, involuntary rise twitched on your brows. “N...no, of course you don’t,” you stammered slightly, trying very hard to keep your face neutral. “But what brought you here? Are the people alright?”

“The people are perfectly fine,” he answered, his eyes darting back to Maytel who was currently staring up at him with wide, completely unbothered eyes. In fact, Maytel looked like he was watching a theatrical performance, his gaze tracking Neteyam’s shoulders and the broad sweep of his chest with shameless appreciation.

You pursed yourself to stop a chuckle from escaping you at the realization that Neteyam had absolutely no idea what Maytel's true self was. To Neteyam, this was simply the man who was staying way too long talking to you, helping you, and weaving flowers into your hair.

“Neteyam,” you cleared your throat, stepping between them to cut off Neteyam's death stare before he accidentally declared a one-man war on your village. “This is Maytel. The one Nevan was telling you about.”

Neteyam shifted Nevan to his other hip, his posture locking into an intensely rigid, formal stance. He looked down at Maytel as if he were interrogating a prisoner of war. “I see,” Neteyam rumbled, his voice dripping with an absurd amount of authority. “I hear you have been a great assistance to my family, Maytel. I couldn’t thank you enough.”

Maytel blinked, a slow, highly amused smirk tugging at his lips. He stood a full head shorter than Neteyam, but showing absolutely zero fear. Instead, he let his eyes lazily trail down Neteyam's torso, before going back up to his face.

“It is no trouble at all,” Maytel purred, his voice smooth. “Your wife is my absolute favorite person to spend my days with and little Nevan here is just a joy to watch grow. You can’t take your eyes off of kids these days, they grow up so fast!”

You gritted your teeth, widening your eyes at Maytel, and having him glance at you with that confident I-can-handle-this look.

Neteyam’s ears threatened to flatten against his head. His nostrils flared as he looked at Maytel, his jaw locking hard as he absorbed the thinly veiled barb about being an absent husband and father, but the aggressive tension in his shoulder dissolved as quickly as it came. In its place emerged the smooth grin of a boy you had grown up with. Neteyam has never been one to take a slight seriously.

“Is that right?” Neteyam asked, his grin widening into something effortlessly dangerous. He patted Nevan’s back, his tail flicking behind him in slow, rhythmic moves. “Well, I can’t blame you. My wife is an excellent company, and my boy is easily the best part of anyone's day. I appreciate you keeping them entertained while I was away.”

Your lips twisted at how easily Neteyam was able to ride over that wave. Meanwhile, Maytel glanced like you, his eyes communicating ooh, the man can bite and you rolled your eyes. Neteyam caught the way Maytel glanced at you and your dear friend immediately tore his eyes off.

His plan to rattle the cage? Forget that. Neteyam looked physically capable of tossing him off the platform like a sack of dried grass, and as much as he would love to support you to the ends of the world, with the way your husband was sizing him up like a tactical competition, he decided he valued his life. It was time for a very graceful, very immediate exit.

“Oh, don't mention it. Taking care of Y/N and Nevan is the least I can do to contribute to the war efforts... Since you are too busy in it," Maytel said. You closed your eyes, shaking your head with how that once again landed like another dig!

Fortunately, a voice called out to Maytel several yards away and you saw how relieved he looked to have an excuse to get out of here. Your ears perked up, too, ready to send him away so you can finally deal with your husband.

“Oh, as much as I would like to stay...” Maytel sighed, “I think I shall leave you three to your... family time.”

“Right. Thanks, Maytel...” You said, widening your eyes at him when he sneaked in another once-over on your husband’s body.

With a theatrical swish of his tail, Maytel sauntered down the wooden ramp. Neteyam didn’t break his stare from the walkway until Maytel’s silhouette vanished into the lower terraces, but the moment he was gone, Neteyam’s golden eyes snapped down to the corner of the platform. His gaze locked onto a bundle of fibers that Maytel had carelessly left behind, a habit born from being used to coming here whenever he pleased.

“He leaves his things here,” Neteyam muttered, his tone dropping into a low growl. “Like he knows he can just walk back here anytime he pleases.”

“Maytel is harmless, Neteyam... if you’d only open your eyes to see,” you told him.You couldn’t possibly tell him what Maytel really was for that wasn't your secret to share, so you felt conflicted. You didn’t want Neteyam to think you were just allowing random men into your home.

“He is my friend. He can come back. He helps here, so he’s here almost every day.”

You saw Neteyam’s jaw tighten at the words every day and you almost groaned out loud at how you seemed to be cursed with the exact same syndrome Maytel just had: pissing off Neteyam with your choice of words.

“But that is not the point,” you quickly followed, cutting off his impending tirade before he could even start. You stepped closer, looking at the sheer exhaustion hidden beneath his rigid posture. “What’s the reason for this sudden visit?”

Neteyam looked down at Nevan, who was currently occupied with chewing on one of his father’s arm bands. Slowly, deliberately, Neteyam set the boy down on the woven mat. “Will you go inside and play for a while, son? Papa needs to speak with Mama.”

“Okay!” Nevan chirped, completely oblivious to the tension between his parents.

Once the boy was out of sight, Neteyam turned to you. The rigid, unyielding commander of the Omatikaya resistance seemed to slowly fracture, his shoulders dropping. He didn't look like he was preparing to leave. In fact, he had unbuckled his heavy longbow, setting it carefully against the weapon rack by the door, a gesture of permanence that made your heart skip a beat.

“It’s not a visit,”  Neteyam said softly, his golden eyes locking onto yours with an intensity that made your breath hitch. “I am staying.”

You blinked, a sudden wave of confusion washing over you. “What do you mean, you are staying? For how long? A week? Neteyam, the raids in the west—”

“I have handed the command of the western vanguard over to Lo'ak and Rey’to,” he interrupted, his voice steady. He took a step toward you, his large hand reaching out as if to touch you, before he caught himself and let it drop to his side. “I am staying here. With you. With our son. For as long as you are here. Even if it takes years.”

Your breath hitched. You stared at him, your mind frantically trying to process the words. The golden heir of Toruk Makto, the boy who had been groomed since birth to carry the weight of his people, the commander who had chosen the war over his own family... had walked away from the vanguard.

“What... What about the resistance?” you whispered.

“I left it,” he whispered, his eyes heavy on you, but for the first time in years, he looked so unburdened. “I don’t expect a pie for it, baby. I know I have a lot of things to make up for. To you, to Nevan, and to our family. There is nothing more important to me in this world but you—”

“Neteyam, y-you cannot do that. Your father, the people, they... need you. You are one of the pillars keeping the people from falling to the demons—”

“And who is keeping us from falling?” he uttered, his voice filled of a raw, desperate emotion breaking through his warrior’s facade. He stepped closer, completely invading your space, his familiar scent clouding your senses. “I spent the entire flight here realizing the hypocrisy of my own words. I told you that Maytel was not Nevan's father, and that he was not your husband... but Eywa help me, I haven't been either of those things to you in years.”

He looked at you with eyes so heavy with longing it made your throat close up with grief.

“My father told me that a leader makes sacrifices for the future,” Neteyam murmured, his hand finally defying the distance, his long, warm fingers gently cupping the side of your neck, his thumb resting against your jaw. “But if the future means I have to stand in an empty home, realizing that the woman I love, have loved my whole life, looks at me like a stranger... then the war has already taken everything worth fighting for. I am choosing you, and I didn’t think it could be that easy. Baby, I cannot lose you...”

You held his eyes as his words hung in the air, your throat working silently as your eyes mapped the familiar contours of his face. The rigid, hyper-vigilant set of his shoulders was still there, and perhaps it always will be there, but the desperate, raw vulnerability in his eyes sent an ache in your chest. The thumb on your jaw trembled just slightly, a rare display of fear from the Omatikaya’s most formidable young commander.

He was giving you everything you had spent a year aching for. He was giving up the vanguard. He was setting down his bow. He was choosing to be a husband and a father over being a war legend.

Yet, as you looked at the set of his jaw and the sharp knife strapped to his chest, a sudden grounded clarity washed over you. You couldn't help but peek past his shoulder toward the lower terraces where Maytel had just vanished. Your eyes narrowed as you stifled a knowing smile, cutting through the heavy emotional fog.

“You are a very foolish man, Neteyam,” you whispered, your voice dropping into a soft cadence that made his ears twitch in surprise. “You fly all the way across the forest, hand over your lifelong duty to your brother, and declare an end to your warrior days... and a significant part of it is because your son said something about some guy making hair decorations for me.”

Neteyam’s posture stiffened instantly. His nostrils flared, a faint, dark flush creeping beneath his cheeks. He tried to maintain his solemn, deeply romantic expression, but the telltale twitch of his ears betrayed him.

“That’s not—I did not leave the vanguard because of that,” he muttered with a defensive, stubborn scowl that reminded you of your son, melting away at your icy defenses.

“No?” You tilted your chin up, your eyes dancing with a quiet, knowing light. “You didn't look at Maytel like you wanted to feed him to your ikran? This wasn’t prompted by the thought that someone else was here, helping me with everything and teaching your son stuff while you were away in the trenches?”

Neteyam closed his eyes for a brief second, letting out a long, defeated hiss through his teeth. When he opened them again, the fierce commander was entirely gone, replaced by the intensely possessive, fiercely protective man you know very well.

He sighed. “I hate imagining and seeing him here... seeing another man's things in our space, knowing he gets to hear our son’s first morning words while I am decoding scout reports... I hate it, yawne. It made me realize that while I have been busy holding up the sky for everyone else, my own world was moving on without me. I am a warrior, yes. But I am your man long before I became one. I am Nevan's father. If I have to crawl to get your forgiveness, I will. Please, just do not tell me to leave.”

The sheer honesty of his words struck deep within your chest, like a lightning bolt cracking at the frost that had settled over your heart during the year of separation. You love him very much, and you knew he could easily get you back if he showed you how regretful he was, but you didn’t want to make it completely effortless for him.

You tilted your head before slowly moving away to let his hand drop from you. Neteyam’s fingers flexed against the empty air, a pained, searching look crossing his features as he watched you move a pace away.

“You can stay, Neteyam,” you said softly, your expression turning serious. “You can stay and be a father to our son. You have a lot of lost time to make up for.”

Neteyam’s chest expanded with a deep, profound breath of relief. You didn’t mention anything about how your relationship will go from here, but that only made a determined, unyielding fire lit up in his eyes. He will work hard to earn you, to replace the time he wasted letting you carry the burden of his absence alone with the reminder that he is still very much here, and that he will never leave again.

“I will earn it back,” he promised, his voice thick with emotion. “Every single day.”

And surprisingly, Neteyam kept his word with a relentless, quiet devotion that left no room for doubt.

For the first few weeks, you remained intentionally wary. You kept your distance. You expected the long-range communication tablet on the shelf to chime at any moment, expecting Jake’s stern voice or Neytiri’s desperate call to summon him back to the battlefield. You expected Neteyam to pace the platforms at night, staring longingly toward the mountains like a caged predator.

But the summons never came, and Neteyam never looked back.

While he still kept a strict routine of waking up before dawn to check his longbow and spending an hour on his tablet giving quiet, tactical advice to Lo'ak or coordinate defensive tactics with his father, the moment the sun broke over the mountains, he belonged entirely to his family.

Nevan, unlike you, required absolutely zero groveling. To your son, having his father home every day was a miracle straight from Eywa. The little boy practically attached himself to Neteyam’s hip from the moment he opened his eyes.

“Look, Mama! Papa taught me how to make the ikran call!” Nevan chirped one bright morning, running into the hut with his arms spread wide, letting out a surprisingly accurate, high-pitched screech that made you laugh.

Neteyam walked in right behind him, carrying a massive basket of freshly gathered jungle fruits and roots for pie. He had stripped off his heavy war gear weeks ago, now wearing only his daily clothes. His long braids were freely dancing, and his skin lacked the harsh black soot of the vanguard. He looked exactly like the boy from your dreams... unburdened and happy.

“He is an apt hunter, yawne,” Neteyam smiled, setting the heavy basket down near your cooking hearth. He paused, his golden eyes locking onto yours, admiring the way you look in the morning with that steady, intense warmth that always made your pulse quicken. “Though he still needs to work on his stealth. He gasps too much when he spots a prey.”

“I don’t, Papa!” Nevan protested, throwing his little body against Neteyam’s sturdy thigh. “I am silent like the wind! Right, Mama?”

You couldn't help the soft, genuine laugh that bubbled up from your throat. “I supposed you are, my little breeze. Now go wash your hands before breakfast.”

As Nevan scrambled toward the water basin, Neteyam stepped closer to you. He was never an impatient lover. Even when you two were younger, he had always made sure you were comfortable with the pace he was taking. It was actually you who was impatient, pushing him to his limits and challenging the rules he set for himself.

Now, he didn't exactly invade your space aggressively, but he came close enough that you could feel the heat radiating from his body. He reached into the basket and pulled out a single, perfectly bloomed night-glory flower, its petals glowing a vibrant, brilliant shade of blue. Without a word, he gently tucked the stem behind your ear, his knuckles brushing against your cheek just a second longer than necessary.

“Your son said this matches the pattern of your stripes,” he murmured, his voice low and gravelly, meant only for your ears. “He seems to have memorized your patterns like I have when I was a boy... I think every part of me loves you, baby. That includes Nevan, because he’s a part of me.”

Your face burned a sudden, dark shade of violet. You batted his hand away with a playful, frustrated sigh, though your fingers instinctively came up to touch the cool petals. “Neteyam... You are supposed to be helping with breakfast, not picking flowers and uttering pick up lines like a flustered young hunter trying to win his intended mate.”

Neteyam’s lips curved into a slow, utterly devastating grin, the exact same cocky, confident smile that had stolen your heart when you were teenagers. “Who says I am not? I am courting you, yawne. I told you I would earn my way back.”

“You are ridiculous,” you muttered, turning back to the hearth to hide the massive smile breaking across your face.

As the moons bled into one another, Neteyam’s quiet crusade to win back your heart took on a life of its own. He stayed and showed no interest in going back at all, integrating himself so deeply into your daily life that the memories of your lonely year apart began to fade like mist under the scorching sun.

Every single day seemed like an adventure with Neteyam and Nevan always making sure you were at the center of it, but today, your son had miraculously stayed behind when Neteyam went out to hunt. Both of you shared a laugh at the fact that the boy was obviously having a lazy day.

Nevan was sitting cross-legged in front of you, his tiny tail curling in a calm concentration. You had a shallow clay bowl filled with crushed, vibrant purple berries between your knees, using the thick juice as a makeshift paint.

“Like this,” you murmured softly, dipping the tip of your finger into the dark juice. You gently pulled his small hand into yours, guiding his index finger into the bowl. “Gently, my boy. We do not want to drown the wood.”

Nevan let out a soft, eager chirp, his ears pinning back in focus as you helped him press his finger onto a flat piece of smooth wood. Together, you dragged his finger down, leaving a thick streak that was meant to represent the neck of a direhorse. The moment you lifted his hand, Nevan gasped, his golden eyes going wide as a bright, toothy smile split his face.

“Pretty, Mama! Look!" he squealed, his little tail swishing frantically against your thigh.

You couldn't help the soft chuckle that escaped your lips, leaning forward to press a sweet, lingering kiss right to the tip of his nose. “Aren’t you just Mama’s little artist?”

Nevan giggled, squirming happily against your legs before leaning his small head completely against your chest. He was getting bigger every day, but in moments like this, when he curled up against you and let out those tiny purring sounds, he was still just your little baby. You wrapped your arms securely around his small frame, resting your chin on the top of his head, gently rocking him side to side as you hummed a soft, ancient lullaby, your hands continuously working on the paint.

Unbeknownst to you, Neteyam was standing completely still in the threshold. He had just returned from his hunt, his muscles aching and his heart still filled with the adrenaline of it. He had been prepared to strip off his boundary gear and weapons, but the moment he stepped onto the platform and saw the two of you, the breath completely caught in his throat.

He couldn’t move, he couldn't possibly break the absolute sanctity of the scene before him. His eyes, usually so sharp and vigilant on the battlefield, softened until they were thick with a profound reverence. He watched the way your long hair fell over your shoulder, framing the gentle, fierce love on your face as you cradled his son. He watched how comfortably Nevan fit against your chest, completely protected from the harsh, violent world outside these walls.

He thought about all the days he missed, the quiet days you and Nevan spent together just like this, and a wave of emotion hit him squarely in the chest, so overwhelming and pure it made his throat tighten. Suddenly, his whole world shrank down to just this sight of you humming in the golden light, with his son safe in your arms, and a fierce, blinding clarity washed over him.

Nevan shifted, his little ear twitching as he caught the faint rustle of Neteyam’s movements. The boy's head snapped toward the entrance, his eyes lighting up. “Papa!”

You blinked, breaking out of your peaceful daze, and turned your head to see him just standing there.

Neteyam offered you a soft, utterly devastating smile, the last remnants of his exhaustion melting completely off his features. He stepped into the alcove, immediately welcomed by Nevan’s insistent chirping.

“Papa! Papa, look!” Nevan babbled, squirming in your grip so he could proudly point his purple-stained finger at the piece of wood. “Mama and me made... a pa'li! A big, big one! See the long neck? Like a real one? It eats through the big trees!”

Neteyam let out a low, rumbling chuckle before leaning back to press a kiss on Nevan’s head before his large hand came down to cup it, his thumb gently smoothing back the boy's twitching ear. “Wow, doesn’t this look fiercer than Agre, Mama? Papa has an own pa’li back in the forest... Mama and I loved going for a ride. One day soon, we’ll go see him,” he told Nevan, the little boy’s eyes perpetually twinkling. “Tell me more about this masterpiece.” Neteyam comfortably sat down near you.

“I— I... I didn't drown the wood!” Nevan continued eagerly, his hands gesturing wildly, completely unbothered by the purple juice drying on his skin. “Mama said do it gently. Like a hunter when you hunt the big yerik, Papa!”

As Nevan kept rambling, acting out the hunt with tiny, dramatic lunges of his hands, Neteyam’s gaze slowly drifted up from your son to meet yours. His hand slid from Nevan's head to rest against your jaw, his thumb caressing your cheekbone with a tender, heavy pressure. He was looking at you as if you had personally handed him the stars and the silence between you filled with a shared devotion for the beautiful, bubbly life you had created together.

You leaned into his palm, tilting your head up to press a soft kiss into the center of his hand. Neteyam’s smile widened, his heart hammering a heavy rhythm against his chest. You are his whole world. The little hands holding his braids right now holds his entire world. And he couldn’t believe he lost sight of that.

                                                         ₊˚ ✧ ━━━━⊱⋆⊰━━━━ ✧ ₊˚

“Please come! The river is very big today, Mama!” Nevan pleaded one afternoon, tugging furiously at your hand while Neteyam stood by the doorway, holding a woven utility basket.

“I have to finish mending these, Nevan,” you replied gently, gesturing to the tangled fibers in your lap.

Before you could even protest further, Neteyam walked over and effortlessly scooped you up from the floor, basket and all, setting you firmly on your feet. He took the fibers from your hands and tossed it onto the shelf.

“These can wait,” Neteyam said, his golden eyes dancing with a mischievous spark. “The commander orders a family excursion to the falls. No exceptions.”

Your lips parted for a moment, curling into a smile of disbelief. “You cannot use your commander voice on me, Neteyam te Suli. I do not report to your vanguard.”

“No,” he whispered, leaning down so his warm breath brushed against the shell of your ear, sending a sudden, electric shiver straight down your spine. “You are the only one I report to.”

You rolled your eyes, still smiling as you let your shrieking son drag you out of the hut, but your eyes lingered on Neteyam as you walked past, glinting with a mischievous light he hasn’t seen in over a year, but it vanished as quickly as it appeared that he decided he had just conjured it.

At the river, you waded in the shallow waters, watching Neteyam teach Nevan how to float on his back, the air cool and misted with the spray of the waterfalls cascading down the upper terraces. Your son splashed his little feet wildly, creating cute splashes that made Neteyam chuckle.

“You need to calm down, son. Make your body light... Think you can remain unmoving for a few seconds?” Neteyam asked, and you watched your son look up at his father with twinkling eyes.

“I can! Watch, Mama!” Nevan said proudly.

Neteyam slipped his large hands under Nevan’s small back, gently lifting him until the boy lay flat on the water's surface. “Relax your shoulders, Nevan. Look up at the sky, not at your feet,” Neteyam instructed, his voice low and soothing.

Nevan stiffened at first, his tail twitching underwater, causing him to sink immediately with a loud gasp and a splash. Neteyam caught him instantly, pulling him up with a warm laugh.

“Again, son. You must trust the water... and Papa. I won’t let you go.”

It took a few more tries. On the second attempt, Nevan held his breath too hard and tipped sideways. On the third, a stray splash hit his nose, making him sneeze and sink. But by the fourth try, you saw a quiet determination take over your son’s eyes, much like the one you often see in Neteyam’s eyes, as he took a deep breath and relaxed his tiny frame, letting the river hold him. Neteyam slowly lowered his hands away. Nevan was floating all on his own, his ears twitching in delight.

“I'm doing it? Mama, look!” Nevan squealed, the sudden movement breaking his balance and sending him plunging back into the water.

Your eyes widened, but he surfaced sputtering and giggling, and you couldn't help but laugh, too. Neteyam caught him, knowing he couldn’t really swim on his own yet. You waded closer to them and Nevan reached for you, his little arms wrapping around your neck. Neteyam grinned at you, his large hand cradling his son’s head.

“Let’s see you do it again, boy,” you grinned at him and Nevan splashed his hand in the water excitedly. You laughed, peering up at Neteyam, “He’s like one of those Terran toys Norm used to show us before.”

He tilted his head, “Robots?”

You chuckled, “No? Those stuff with a string you pull... And then it does something,” you said, helping your son lay flat on the water.

“Pull string toy? That one that talks?” he asked, already laughing.

You nodded, laughing with him as you turned to your son who is now relaxing his little body and letting the water carry him. You slowly let go of him, allowing him to float on his on.

“Calm down, Nevan... Mama will do it, too,” you mumbled, slowly letting yourself fall backward into the cool water, perfectly buoyant.

Neteyam grinned, dropping down right beside Nevan, his long limbs stretching out effortlessly. The three of you drifted together in the shallow waters, staring up at the canopy. Nevan let out a bright, bubbling laugh at the ticklish sensation of the water rushing past his ears, and the sound was so infectious that you and Neteyam burst out laughing too, your voices echoing alongside the waterfalls

The river soon became the site for your family’s almost daily bondings.

Nevan learned to swim in no time, but you still cautioned him against going to the river to swim on his own. Your son might be bigger than average kids his age, but he was still only two, and you worried he would run off to the river unsupervised.

Nevan splashed wildly in the shallow pools divided by smooth stones from the body of the river, chasing after the tiny, bioluminescent fish that darted beneath the surface. You sat on a smooth rock at the edge, watching him with a soft, content smile as you prepared the food for lunch. Nearby, Neteyam moved through the water with a fluid grace that vividly reminded you of his younger self, when he worked so hard to master his stealth as a hunter.

He was a good hunter, and an even better warrior.

He had been so skilled back then that he was grouped with older, more experienced warriors because he always seemed to know what to do. His parents took pride in how he outdid Jake in everything at an even younger age; there was no doubt at all that he would make a great Olo’eyktan. He was the golden heir who had bent his back to the crushing weight of his people’s expectations, carrying it all without a word of complaint.

And he had exceeded all of it, right up until the day he decided to leave everything behind to show you that he’s choosing you.

The thought settled heavily in your chest. You love him so much. Not once, even during the bitterest moons of your separation when you felt hollowed out by his neglect, had you stopped loving him. You had loved him as a wide-eyed child visiting Hometree and chasing him through the roots, you had loved him as a fiercely protective teenager, and you loved him now, as a woman who had given him a son.

But as you watched him move with a breeze of a warrior he will always be, a sudden, sharp ache of guilt pierced your heart.

You had taken him away from what he spent his whole life preparing for.

You were supposed to love every piece of him, just as he loved everything about you. Yet, when the war demanded too much of the man you loved your whole life, you had given up on the warrior entirely. You had forced him into an ultimatum between his duty to the people and his duty to his heart.

This realization plagued your mind for the days that followed. You watched him closely, searching for any flicker of resentment, any lingering gaze toward the horizon where the sky people’s metal birds still flew. But you found nothing. He looked entirely settled, his focus anchored completely on you, on Nevan, and within the confines of your family's hut.

In fact, the only thing that seemed to break his hard-earned peace was the occasional appearance of Maytel.

By midday, you were back on the platform, organizing a fresh basket of weaving fibers. Nevan and Neteyam had just climbed the ramp, returning from a short trek to gather wild spices for your recipe.

Neteyam had barely stepped onto the wood before his golden eyes laser-focused on Maytel, who was currently standing across from you, chatting about the latest village gossip. Under normal circumstances, the sheer intensity of Neteyam’s possessive glare would have made you stifle a laugh. But because you’ve spent days with the weight of your thoughts about him made the humor fade.

Maytel giggled at you, “You never did tell me anything, syulang! It’s been moons! With the way your husband looks at you, I was thinking you’d be round with child but now, but, oh well! You’re too slow,” he rolled his eyes, handing you the small, securely wrapped clay dish.

“Shut up,” you whispered, watching Neteyam and Nevan approach.

“Uncle Maytel!” Nevan excitedly greeted, waving a hand and skipping excitedly.

“I brought over some berry pie I baked this morning. I know how much you like this, little boy.”

Nevan peered up at him happily, his eyes twinkling as his hands clasped. “Thank you, Uncle!”

“Thank you again, Maytel,”  you said smoothly.

Maytel straightened himsef up himself gracefully, his eyes darting toward Neteyam’s rigid frame. “Well, I must be off. I have a date with a certain long-armed hunter down by the shallow banks, and if I keep him waiting, he might snap another bow string out of pure despair.”

He gave you a dramatic wink, but Neteyam’s expression remained entirely hard, calculating, and intensely territorial. He stood frozen until Maytel’s silhouette finally disappeared down the main walkway.

“Mama! Look at the big leaf I found!” Nevan babbled, showing it to you.

You examined it with great curiosity, admiring its beautiful patterns. “The patterns looks like the canopy at Hometree, son,” you smiled at him.

“Wow...” Nevan looked down at his leaf with wonder before scrambling past his father’s legs and running into the hut to add the leaf among his toys.

With the platform suddenly empty, you stood up and crossed the small distance between you and your husband. For the first time since he had arrived moons ago, you stepped directly into his space, your hands coming to rest flat against the warm skin of his chest where you immediately felt the heavy thudding of his heart beneath your palms.

Before he could speak, you slid your hands up to his shoulders, tilted your chin up, and pulled him down into a deep, lingering kiss.

Neteyam froze, his breath catching sharply in his throat. He looked utterly stunned, his ears twitching back in absolute surprise before the instinctual hunger took over. His large hands came up to grip your waist, anchoring you against him as he kissed you back with a sudden, dark intensity that sent a wave of heat straight to your core.

When you finally pulled away, your lips were tingling, and his golden eyes had darkened with something different.

You let out a dramatic, teasing sigh, a faint smile breaking through the serious fog of your mind. “They always told me my husband possessed the keen eyes of a viperwolf... but it has been moons, my love, and you still haven't caught on.”

Neteyam blinked, his forehead furrowing in confusion. “What?”

You let out a soft giggle, your fingers tracing the strong line of his collarbone. “Maytel just said he has a date with his hunter, Neteyam. He is trying to get on with a man, not with your wife.”

A sudden, staggering silence fell over him, his mouth opening slightly, his ears lifting as the pieces finally clicked together. You chuckled as you watched the fearsome commander of the resistance suddenly looked incredibly flustered, a violet flush creeping along his neck.

“He... with a hunter?” Neteyam muttered, clearing his throat roughly.

“Yes,” you laughed softly, leaning your head against his chest. "There was never any reason for you to be jealous, ‘teyam. I never looked at another while I was away from you. How can I possibly ever replace you? Even when I was trying my hardest to act like I didn't care, I would never betray you like that.”

Neteyam’s gaze softened, his large hands smoothing down your back, pressing you closer to his warmth. “I know that, baby,” he whispered, his voice rough. “Not once did I ever doubt your faithfulness to me. It was... the men I did not trust. But... I suppose I should thank Maytel. Not just for watching over you and Nevan when I was too blind to be here, but because the mere threat of him made me straighten myself up.”

You smiled, looking at the scars on his chest. “Well... about that. Maytel was never a threat, you see. It is just... you left the vanguard for this. You left everything you worked hard for—”

“No,” Neteyam interrupted firmly, his forehead furrowing as he caught your chin, forcing you to meet his eyes. “Do not think that. I did not leave the vanguard simply because I was jealous, I left because I was terrified of losing you completely. I have missed so much of our son’s life, yawne. I didn't even know how to make up for all the time I lost. I will carry the regret of that lost time for a very long time...”

A wave of emotion rose in your throat, making your lower lip tremble a little. “I was so hurt during those moons, Neteyam... but I wallowed so deeply in my own pain that I failed to see how hard you were struggling, too. You were keeping up with the two lives you were living, carrying the future of this world on your shoulders, and instead of being there to be the support you needed... I walked away. I left you alone, Neteyam—”

“Don't,” Neteyam commanded softly, his thumb sweeping across your cheek to cut off your words. “Don't you ever blame yourself, or think your choices were wrong. Baby, I wasn't keeping up with my lives. I was living fully as a warrior, entirely forgetting that I had a wife and a child who needed me to be a man, not just a leader. I was a terrible husband. I was a failure of a father. Do not deny that.”

He leaned down, pressing his forehead against yours, his breath shaky.

“Your decision to walk away did me a favor, baby. I was too blinded by my duty. Who knows what would have happened if you hadn't put me in my place early on, if I had kept believing that everything was perfect while you were breaking in the dark?”

You stared at him, your throat tight, unable to find an argument. Slowly, you wrapped your arms around his neck. “Then let us settle it,” you murmured. “We both made mistakes. I should have spoken to you clearly instead of expecting you to know exactly what you were doing wrong... And you should have remembered that the war isn't the only thing worth fighting for.”

He breathed a huff of relief. “I am so scared, baby... I cannot lose you. You are half of me,” he whispered.

“I forgive you, Neteyam...” you mumbled, pressing a soft kiss against his lips.

He was quick to shake his head, looking almost angered. “I don’t want you to forgive me. I will not accept that. I want to remember this moment in our lives when I have let you and our son down. I would sacrifice and leave behind everything just to make sure this won’t happen again.”

You smiled. “Then I supposed I shouldn’t ask for forgiveness, too, for my selfishness—”

“You are not selfish and I have nothing to forgive,” he countered fiercely. “You only wanted what’s good for you and for our son, I’m glad you made that your priority. Can you imagine what younger me would have thought of me now? He would beat me up, baby, I’m willing to bet...” he pressed his forehead against yours.

Both your hands came up to hold his jaw. “We are allowed to make mistakes, my love... Both of us are still learning. What’s important is that even with what was happening between us, we were still good parents to Nevan.”

He smiled, his eyes lighting up at the mention of his son. “He’s a very resilient boy, my love... It makes me even more guilty that he just... loves me very much despite my absence.”

Your brows furrowed a little even as you smiled softly. “I guess Nevan is just a reflection of my heart. He’s a part of me, too, and every part of me loves you very much,” you caressed his jaw, pressing a soft kiss in his lips.

“I love you more. I love you so much,” he whispered against your lips, before he delivered a harder, more desperate kiss. It was a release of all the months of unspoken grief, longing, and the lingering heat that had built up between you. Neteyam groaned deep in his throat, his grip on your waist tightening until your breaths mixed into one frantic rhythm.

“Oh, Great Mother!”

The loud, dramatic gasp broke the air, making you pull away from Neteyam in an instant, breathless and flushed, only to see Maytel standing at the edge of the platform, his eyes wide with a look of pure, devious glee. He had caught you both completely red-handed, and you could practically see the chaotic, mischievous gears turning in his head.

“I’m so sorry to interrupt this moment, syulang, Neteyam... Well, I forgot my weaving shuttle... Just coming back for it...” he carefully tiptoed before getting what he came here for. “Got it!”

Maytel sneaked a smirk at you, his tail swishing with absolute triumph. Before you could hiss at him, Nevan bounded out of the hut, his little ears perking up at the sound of Maytel's voice. “Uncle Maytel! You came back?”

“I did, little star,” Maytel grinned, kneeling down to Nevan’s level while deliberately keeping his eyes locked on your flustered expression. “In fact, I am on my way up to the upper terraces to visit your grandparents. Would you like to come with me and help me pick some wild ferns?”

“Yes!” Nevan answered way too quickly. “Mama, Papa, can I go?” Nevan squealed, bouncing on his heels as he looked up at you and Neteyam.

Neteyam, still entirely dazed by the intensity of the kiss and thoroughly eager to get you back into the privacy of the hut, patted his son's head, nodded wordlessly.

Maytel giggled. “And I guess you will stay there until tomorrow, little boy...” he threw you an incredibly wicked wink. You're welcome, his eyes screamed.

“Bye, Mama! Bye, Papa!” Nevan cheered, snatching Maytel’s hand and dragging him down the ramp.

You stood on the platform, your face burning a violent shade of purple, completely aware of the heavy, dark promise in Neteyam’s gaze as he slowly turned his massive body back toward you. The platform was entirely quiet, your son was snatched away by Maytel, and the commander seemed very ready to claim a year-worth of action from you.

You bit your lip as you sensed his body turn toward you, making the air feel heavier with the thick tension you know will have you inevitably under him before the day ends. You finally turned to him when he stepped forward, his shadow falling over you, his broad chest rising and falling in deep breaths, his eyes dark as he tracked the soft features of your face, the flush your collarbone, the swell of your breasts, and the curves of your waist down to your shapely thighs.

“See you inside?” you said in a small, seductive voice, stepping backward with your eyes locked onto his while you were retreating into the hut. Neteyam followed you like a predator stalking a familiar territory. He stopped at the edge of your sleeping alcove, his tall frame blocking out the fire from the hanging firepot, casting you entirely in his shadow.

With a slow, challenging smile, your hands came up to the knot of your top, holding his unblinking gaze as your fingers untied the cords, letting the feather-like fibers slip until it pooled at your feet.

You followed it by untying your loincloth behind you, shedding it off until you stood before him entirely bare, the soft dim light catching the gentle curves of your body. You knew exactly what you looked like to him. Completely vulnerable, yet entirely in control of his sanity.

Neteyam let out a low, ragged growl through his teeth, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the edge of the wooden partition. His chest expanded, his nostrils flaring as he took in the sight of you. You looked so innocent standing in the quiet of your home, yet the mischievous, heavy heat in your eyes was pure sin.

“Do you mean to torture me, baby?“ he rasped, his voice deep and rough as his hand grabbed his crotch to give his aching hard on a squeeze.

“Torture?” you echoed innocently. “Who says you can’t touch, warrior?”

He blinked, as if it took time before he realized what you said. He stepped into the alcove, his eyes never leaving you, his hand aggressively shedding his loincloth off, as he walked toward you. You opened your mouth to tease him, but before you could do that, his large hands were already on you, his grip firm as he lifted you effortlessly and pressed you back onto the soft furs of the sleeping mat.

You reached for your kuru behind you, biting your lip when his calloused hands parted your thighs with an authoritative, heavy pressure to fit himself between them. You relished the familiar weight of him on you, the warmth and heaviness of his cock grazing your thigh. “Hello,” you mumbled, smiling as you caught his kuru that he let fall over his shoulder.

He watched you darkly, his hand prompting your hands to connect your kurus together. You gasped as the burning intensity of his emotions that surged through you, enveloping your soul with a familiar warmth you’ve never felt in almost a year. You breathlessly pulled him down for a kiss and his mouth enveloped yours right away, swallowing your breaths, kissing you hard and desperately. His arm wrapped around your frame to pull you against him until your soft mounds were squished against his chest, his large hand cupping your jaw.

You kissed and kissed, and you were reminded with just how much you loved kissing him. When you two were younger, making out with each other had been your favorite thing to do. Every lovemaking starts with what seemed like hours of making out sessions, and this moment brought you back. You licked at his lower lip and kissed him with more ferocity than you had earlier, moaning against his lips as your hands roamed the hard planes of his body.

When you pulled away to breathe, his lips found your jaw, leaving burning kisses until he reached your neck. He licked and nipped at your skin, his hand now coming down to your breast to knead and fondle, before his lips followed, filling his mouth with your flesh as he suckled on your pebbled tip.

“Oh, baby...” you cradled his head, your hand grabbing a fistful of his hair.

His kisses slid down your body, his lips kissing every inch of your skin reverently until his face reach between your leg, his hot breath brushing your slick center. You bit your lip as he kissed the soft flesh of your inner thighs, his lips wet as it sucked a bit of your flesh into his mouth before it trailed down to bury his face between your thighs. Your breath hitched in your throat when his tongue swiped upward in one long stroke.

He suckled on your sensitive nub and you shrieked when he playfully nipped down on it, your hands instantly flying into his thick braids as your hips bucked violently off the mat. The sharp, electric heat hit your sensitive nub, and Neteyam hummed a low, vibrating sound of pure satisfaction against your skin as he felt you tremble. He used his tongue relentlessly, sucking and lapping at you until your breath came in ragged, broken sobs.

Desperate for the weight of him, you tilted your pelvis upward, grinding against his mouth, begging for more. Normally, he’d insert his tongue in you, and you can’t understand why he’s being greedy with his tongue now. He paused, lifting his head just enough to look up your body, his lips glistening in the dim light. He let out a low chuckle, kissing the soft, sensitive skin of your inner thigh.

“Baby, I know you love it... but I won't put my tongue in, hm? My cock will be jealous. Your best friend hasn’t been in you for a year... you see, he hadn’t known a life like that since I was seventeen.”

You groaned loudly, throwing your head back against the furs as the teasing drove you mad. You kicked his chest lightly with your heel, though it lacked any real force. “Then fuck me already! What are you waiting for?”

Neteyam caught your ankle instantly, his grip tightening as he pulled your leg over his broad shoulder. He nipped fiercely at the tender skin near your knee, making you gasp. “So bossy,” he drawled, a wicked spark returning to his eyes. “Just for that, I’d add another thirty minutes to this...”

“Neteyam, please...” you whined.

“Give me one more, baby... I am so parched,” he said dramatically, his handsome face pulling into a mock pout before his mouth came down onto your pussy again.

He didn't give you a chance to protest. He lifted your hips high off the mat, wrapping his powerful arms beneath your thighs, draping your legs completely over his broad shoulders, before burying his face deep between your legs, using the rumbling vibrations of his voice and the flat of his tongue to drive you over the edge. The pressure on your swollen, sensitive flesh was too much, that within seconds, a violent wave tore through you, making you scream his name into the empty hut as your muscles clamped tightly around his mouth.

He held you through the tremors, lapping at your release until you were thoroughly cleaned. He eased you back onto the furs, your eyes closed, completely whited out by the intensity of your recent climax. Your skin was slick with sweat, your long hair sticking to your neck, but Neteyam only seemed to burn hotter at the sight.

You felt the heavy weight of his body settle over yours, his warm mouth moving down to claim your breast, his large hand firmly pressing your knees wider.

“Eyes,” he commanded, his voice dropping into that soft, unyielding tone he only ever used on you.

“I'm so spent...” you breathed, your eyelids fluttering as you weakly pressed a hand against his muscular chest, trying to find your breath.

Neteyam chuckled, a deep sound that vibrated straight into your bones. He kissed the tight line of your jaw before capturing your mouth in a bruising kiss. “You practically kept me in a cage, woman...” he drawled against your lips, his hard length pressing demandingly against your aching center. “And now, you’ve let me loose...”

Your eyes flickered completely open, staring up into the golden fire of his gaze. You pushed your lips forward, leaning into him, and you watched him hold his breath as he realized you were completely his.

“Fuck, I missed you so much, baby...” he whispered, his thumb caressing your slippery folds before he gathered your wetness.

You watched him lather your wetness on his throbbing length as its wide tip nudged your entrance, and with one heavy, agonizingly slow thrust, he slid inside you. Neteyam let out a ragged, guttural groan deep in his throat, his arm snaking behind your waist to pull you up as he buried himself to the hilt, earning a pleasured cry from you.

He froze for a second, his head burying into the crook of your neck as his entire body shuddered, absorbing the intense, tight heat of your walls clamping around him. “Fuck, you're so tight, baby...” he choked out, his breath scalding against your skin.

Before you could fully catch your breath, he lifted himself back up on his hands, his golden eyes finding yours again, refusing to let you look away. Slowly, he began to move. He pulled nearly all the way out, letting you feel every ridges of his length, before driving back in forcefully, making you whimper. Your head rolled back against the furs as your back arched.

His hand instantly came up to cup your jaw, his fingers firm but gentle as he guided your face back to his. “No, look at me,” he commanded, his breath hitching as he started moving.

You bit your lip, but your pleasured whimpers find their way out of your mouth as his large hand caged your jaw to make sure you won’t look away from him as his pace picked up. Your moans grew louder when his thrusts turned deeper and harder, striking the very center of your pleasure. Your breaths came in jagged huffs, mixing alongside your cries and his deep groans.

“Fuck, baby...” he moaned, his eyes closing for a moment.

You pressed a palm against his chest. “Open your eyes,” you commanded, pushing him back a little. “Watch yourself take me.”

He groaned, a huff of weakened and humored laugh escaping through his nose as he lifted himself on his hands, looking down at you with eyes filled of unadulterated hunger. His humor died in his throat the moment he saw the look in your eyes. He was the commander, yes, but right here, pinned beneath the weight of your gaze, he was entirely at your mercy.

“You like to play the general now, do you?” he rasped, his voice dropping into a dangerous register that sent a violent shiver straight down your spine.

His large hand slid from your jaw, his fingers tangling tightly into the hair at the back of your head, anchoring you firmly to the furs. With his other hand bracing his massive weight over you, he delivered a frantic, brutal, and deep pace into you. You stared up at him, your chest heaving as your breaths came in ragged, desperate gasps. You watched the way the veins in his neck strained, the way his jaw clenched so hard the muscles jumped, and the sheer worship bleeding from his eyes.

He was completely undone, sweating and growling like a wild creature, stripped of all his rigid discipline until there was nothing left but his love for you.

The friction was driving you insane that you were literally reduced to a moaning, crying mess under him as your hips began to meet his every thrust instinctively, the coil of heat in your lower stomach tightening to a breaking point.

“I love you so much...” he moaned.

“Oh, baby... ‘teyam, I am so close, I can't—” you wept, your hips twitching away from his relentless thrusts but you only seemed to burn even more when his hand grabbed your waist to keep you in place.

“No, stay with me,” he rasped, his grip on your hair tightening just enough to keep you grounded. He picked up the speed, his movements becoming a blur of friction as he drove himself into you so hard that the entire world shrank down to your pussy. “Look at me when you break, baby. Give it to me.”

You couldn't hold it anymore. With one final deep plunge, the dam broke in a violent, white-hot explosion of pleasure rippling through your core, your walls seizing and pulsing around his girth. You cried his name, your eyes squeezing closed as your climax tore through you. Meanwhile, the tight clench you’re holding him with was the final blow to his restraint.

Neteyam let out a low groan as he threw his head back, burying himself to the absolute hilt, pouring his heat deep inside you while his body shuddered violently against yours. He collapsed over you a moment later, his frame curling a little so he could fit himself in your smaller frame, his face buried in the valley between your breasts.

His breath scalded your skin before his mouth moved to kiss your skin. He stayed buried deep inside you, his long arms wrapping securely around your waist, holding you so close it felt like he wanted to press his very soul into yours. You cradled his head, your other hand squeezing his shoulder when he sucked on your pebbled tip hard.

You groaned, “What about rest?” you mumbled.

He lifted his head. “Rest?” he raised a brow as if that was a foreign word.

You pushed your lips forward. “See, I was... undisturbed for moons, Neteyam. I think my stamina needed practicing,” you mumbled.

He smirked. “Now might be the best time for practice.”

You bit your lip, your hand cupping his nape to kiss him. “On the side note... You’re right,” you squeezed around him. “I miss you very much.”

He smiled, his lips coming down on yours. The hours dissolved into the shadows of the hut. The clan had grown quiet as the night went on, but neither of you noticed as though the world outside your hut didn't exist. There was only the rhythmic, heavy slap of skin against skin, his low, breathless groans, and your desperate cries of his name echoing in the quiet room.

By the time the bioluminescence outside began to glow with the midnight moons, the frantic heat had finally settled into a soft, exhausted warmth. You lay on top of him, your chin sitting on his chest as his arms wrapped securely around your waist. You were tracing the smooth, familiar lines of his chest, your breathing finally matching his steady rhythm.

Suddenly, a loud, deep rumble echoed through the quiet space.

You blinked, a bit dazed and Neteyam let out a low, amused chuckle. You pouted, pushing yourself up a little, his large hand slid down to caress the soft, slightly damp skin of your flat belly.

“Fuck, I forgot dinner,” he said, his eyes widening a little.

You blinked, lazy, satisfied smile spreading across your face. “Huh... I strangely feel full.”

Neteyam’s hand paused on your stomach, his fingers rubbing a warm, slow circle over your skin as a knowing, utterly devastating chuckle escaped him. He leaned over, pressing a sweet, lingering kiss to your lips.

“I sure hope so,” he grinned, his golden eyes flashing with a playful, wicked heat. “But let’s feed you first, my love. I’m not done with you yet.” He reluctantly sit up, lifting you up a little by your waist and gently plopping you down the furs with a hard kiss on your lips. “Don’t get up.”

He came back with the dinner you had prepared earlier and Maytel’s berry pie, both of which you devoured, occasionally feeding each other small bites while sitting cross-legged on the floor, unashamed of your nakedness. The moment the last of the food was cleared, Neteyam didn't give you a chance to think about cleaning up.

He moved to clean it all away quickly. True to his word, he wasn't done with you. The lovemaking that followed was slower and sweeter, full of whispers and quiet giggling. By the time you two settled back into a soft, exhausted warmth, you lay tucked against his side, your cheek pressed flat against his muscled chest, listening to the steady thudding of his heart while his long arm wrapped around you, anchoring you to him.

You stared into the soft darkness, tracing a light circle over his chest. “What do you think about going back to High Camp?” you asked softly.

Neteyam stiffened instantly beside you, his breath hitching before his eyes snapped down to look at you, wide and suddenly laced with absolute horror. “Baby, surely you are not kicking me back to High Camp?” he asked, his voice rough and panicked. “We have just reconciled. I want to stay. I am staying. I will never leave again. Besides... what if you get pregnant and I am not here?”

The sheer dread in his tone made you stifle a smile, but a soft chuckle eventually escaped you. You shifted, resting your chin on his chest so you could look at him properly. “I will be with you. Me and Nevan... we will all go back to High Camp together. What do you think of that?”

Neteyam blinked, entirely caught off guard, his ears twitching in confusion. “I... I don't know,” he murmured softly, his hand coming up to gently smooth down your hair. “You are safer here, baby. You and Nevan. And I don’t want to be away from you ever again...”

A sudden wave of warmth made your eyes tear up. “That is why we are coming,“ you whispered, your voice thick with emotion. “You will never be apart from me again. From us. But... that doesn't mean you have to stop doing what you worked your entire life to prepare for,” you stared at him, “I fell in love with a warrior, Neteyam. I mated with a warrior. You are a leader to the people, and I shouldn't have made you choose between your duty to them and your duty to your heart. I meant what I said earlier, baby. We are all learning. I will always be here to support you now, and I will never leave your side. So... I think we should go back. But only if you want it.”

Neteyam stared at you, his own eyes growing misty in the dark. The crushing weight he had carried seemed to fully lift, replaced by a profound peace. Without a word, he pulled you up by your waist, bringing your lips down to his in a deep kiss that tasted of absolute gratitude and a love that grew even deeper and larger.

The next say, Maytel returned your son the moment the morning sun broke over the terraces. His teasing, knowing eyes were incredibly annoying as he took in your flushed skin and Neteyam’s completely relaxed posture, but you chose to ignore his smirks, focusing instead on your son who was as bubbly as ever, practically throwing his little body into your arms, eager to tell you everything about sleeping at his grandparents’ as if it was a vacation.

While you held Nevan, Neteyam stepped forward, his expression serious but entirely respectful. “Maytel,” he said, his voice deep. “Can we talk for a moment?”

Surprised, Maytel’s smirk faltered, his eyes darting quickly to you. You offered him a warm, reassuring nod and a smile, letting him know it was for something good. The two stepped outside onto the platform, and though you couldn't hear the words, you watched as Neteyam clasped Maytel's shoulder in a gesture of gratitude.

Once the air was fully cleared, Maytel left with a promise of more pie for your son, who had just discovered that his parents completely finished off the pie Maytel brought yesterday.

“What would you like for breakfast, my little sun?” Neteyam asked, playfully tickling Nevan’s belly.

Nevan giggled, patting it as his chest puffed proudly. “I ate many smoked fish and... and kelp soup!”

You watched Neteyam chuckle, feigning surprise for his son’s entertainment. “Oh! You already ate, huh? No wonder your belly’s so rooound.” Neteyam bent down a little to blow air into Nevan’s belly, sending your son into a fit of giggles as he threw his head back in laughter.

You leaned your cheek against your son’s small arm, looking at Neteyam as you sat down on the mats of your receiving area. “Nevan,” you smiled, smoothing his little ear back. “How would you like to go on an adventure? We are flying back to Grandma and Grandpa.”

Nevan’s eyes went completely wide, his little tail swishing frantically against your leg. “To see the big ikrans? With Papa?” he squealed, jumping straight into Neteyam’s arms and hugging his neck tightly.

Neteyam melted against his son, his eyes crinkling with absolute adoration that made your smile grow wider. Later that night, you trekked up to your parents’ hut to bring a pie you made and to discuss with them your plans to go back to High Camp. Neteyam took his time sincerely apologizing to your parents who kindly dismissed his apology, gently reminding him that your forgiveness was the only kind that mattered and it clearly seemed like you had given it.

The flight back to High Camp was long and carefully calculated. Neteyam took no chances with your and Nevan’s safety, choosing to fly his ikran yards ahead of yours, scouting the valleys first, taking a much longer, winding route to completely avoid the coordinates he knew were patrolled by the RDA.

When your ikrans finally landed on the rocky ledges of High Camp where you were welcomed back with a small, joyous celebration. Jake and Neytiri were the first to embrace you, their eyes shining with relief to see their eldest son whole again, while the council looked on with relief to have Neteyam back into the fold.

But the moons he spent just learning the rhythm of the world with you and Nevan seemed to have ingrained themselves deeper than his warrior routines. Now, he couldn’t leave the hut without sharing breakfast with you, his large hands gently guiding his son’s tiny fingers over his food to teach him how to eat on his own before heading out to the scouting decks.

Then, he would return at midday to spend the eclipse with you, helping put Nevan down for a nap before heading back out to coordinate the perimeters. By the time the sun dipped below the horizon, he was home for the night, stripping off his weapons and warrior gear to belong entirely to you.

He still couldn’t believe how stupid he had been. Even though you had forgiven him, insisting that you both made mistakes because you were still just learning, he believed he should have known better. Now that he was able to manage both of his lives so seamlessly, he couldn't understand how he had let the war consume him so completely before, letting years pass making you feel neglected and thinking he had chosen his duty over you, his heart.

There are nights though, where the weight of his duty still clawed at his shoulders. After an armed encounter with the RDA during his patrols, he still tried to come home as early as possible, his body rigid and vibrating with tension. You had already blew the firelight dimmed by the time he arrived from the council, his movements hurried and when he saw that Nevan was already asleep in his hammock, you saw his shoulders slumped, his face crumpling in controlled distress.

You stood up, welcoming him to help bim remove his cummerbund and weapons, hanging them on a rack. “Has he been asleep long?”

“Only because he played too much with the other kids earlier,” you told him, chuckling as your hands caressed his shoulders. “He could barely eat his dinner, his eyelids were already drooping.”

He looked down at his son, his large caressing the boy’s head. “I’m sorry, I came home late...” he mumbled.

You bit your lip. “Neteyam...” you hugged him from the side, kissing his shoulder, feeling the tension in them soften a bit. “I heard of the encounter. Tell me what happened...”

Your hands gently worked through the knots in his shoulders as he spoke, his voice dropping into that low, tense cadence. “The skirmishes have escalated, baby,” Neteyam muttered, his jaw tightening as he stared blankly at his hands. “It’s only been three moons since we came back, and the RDA patrols are pushing further into the southern valley. Earlier, they nearly pinned my scouts against the ridge. I almost called in a full air strike, but the canopy was too thick. I had to pull them back. Lo’ak thinks we should ambush their next supply line there, but... the risk is too high.”

You stopped massaging his shoulders and shifted, angling your head so he had to look at you. “You did the right thing by pulling back,” you said softly. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned from you in all the years I’ve known you is that you are not impulsive. You are not a warrior who wants only victory. I think... they are baiting you and they are expecting an ambush on their supply line. Eywa has given us enough to fight the demons, ‘teyam. Perhaps you could change your flight paths, lead them toward the weeping bogs where their heavy metal suits can't tread. Let the forest do the fighting for you.”

Neteyam blinked, a sudden, quiet clarity washing over his stressed features. He let out a long breath through his nose, his lips parting as a humored, thoroughly impressed smile broke through his tension. “See, this is why I’m not performing well in the moons you were not with me...” he pulled you for a kiss.

You smiled, “And that’s completely my fault, I think,” you whispered. “Mind if I make up for it?”

His eyes narrowed a little as you slowly sank to your knees in front of him. His breath hitched in his throat, his hands coming down to rest heavily on your shoulders as your hand moved to his loincloth to palm his hard on, biting your lips when you found him already hard, responding to your show in an instant. You stroke it for a moment before moving the fabric aside to let the thick, throbbing length spring free.

You wrapped your hand around the base of his girth, sliding your palm up to feel the heavy ridges snaking along his length, looking straight up into his eyes, you leaned forward and opened your mouth, sliding your lips over the wide head of his cock. Neteyam let out a low, ragged groan, his knuckles turning white as he gripped on the nearest rack.

You kept an unbroken, intense eye contact as you took him deeper, your throat stretching to accommodate his impressive length, pumping your hand at the base while your mouth worked relentlessly, sucking the sensitive head before sliding all the way down until your nose pressed into his pelvic, the heat of his cock filling your mouth.

“Fuck, baby...” he choked out, his head tossing back for a second before your firm gaze anchored him right back to you.

His large hand came down, caging your jaw to keep your face tilted up toward his. His eyes darkened as he began to move his hips, delivering restrained thrusts straight down your throat. You took every inch of him, your eyes watering slightly from the depth, but you never broke your stare. You sucked harder, swirling your tongue around the ridges, driving him absolutely mad with the tight, wet friction of your mouth.

His breathing turned into frantic, ragged huffs as his thrusts became faster, deeper, completely losing his hard-earned discipline warmth of your mouth. “Fuck, you're so good to me...”

The veins in his neck strained, his jaw clenching as he reached his limit. He delivered three deep plunges into your mouth before his whole body stiffened, his thick, hot release pulsing down your throat. You swallowed every drop of his heavy warmth, your throat moving refusing to pull away even as he pulled you back.

When you slowly slid your mouth off his length with a squelching sound, he shivered, thinking it was over but when you dragged your tongue up to lick him entirely clean from base to tip, your eyes still locked onto his blown-out gaze, his knees buckled.

Neteyam looked entirely undone, his chest heaving as he stared down at you in pure, reverent worship. You licked your lips, smiling at him, while his hands lifted you up effortlessly. His arm wrapped around you, his lips crashing down on your lips at the same time your body landed on the hard planes of his. He groaning as silently against your mouth, his large hand groping your chest down to your waist and hips until it wrapped around the back of your thighs.

He lifted it up and knowing what he wanted, you hooked your arms around his shoulders before wrapping your other leg around him. His hard length was already hardening again against your thigh, and with a swift wipe aside of your loincloth, he drove into you, fucking you with a ferocity that made you feel exactly the tension that was engulfing him the whole day.

You pursed your lips to and buried your face face against the crook of his neck to muffle your pleasured sounds as his fingers dug into your hips, relentlessly moving your over his cock.

“I love you,” he groaned, way louder than he should.

“Neteyam!” you whisper-shouted, your fingers on his scratching.

He chuckled, his head angling to press his lips against your cheek, groaning as muffled as possible, but still letting you know how good he's feeling as your warmth enveloped him tightly. You let out a pleasured huff when he shivered against you, spilling his warm seed inside you, and triggering your own release.

He groaned again, but as silent as he could now, his hand working on the ties of your loincloth behind you, shedding it off you without removing himself from you. He lowered you down on the soft furs, his cock slipping out a little when he removed his own loincloth. He spread your legs wider to slip it back in though, lowering himself to kiss you softly.

Hours later, the frantic heat had settled into a soft, exhausted warmth. You lay tangled together on the messy furs, your head resting on his chest while his arm was around your waist.

“Thank you, my love,” Neteyam murmured into the dark, his fingers gently tracing patterns along your arm.

You let out a soft, sleepy giggle, pressing a light kiss against his bare chest, listening to the steady, peaceful rhythm of his heart. “Someone has to keep the commander grounded.”

The peace in the weeks that followed was a precious, yet stolen gift, because with the encounters along the borders growing increasingly volatile, you knew it would soon reach a tipping point. What began as scattered, desperate shootouts quickly spiraled out of control, and Jake found it better to lead an offensive attack before the demons pushed deeper and harder against the resistance.

So, when Toruk Makto took to the sky once more, High Camp emptied. Neteyam kissed your lips until they were bruised and held Nevan so tightly the boy let out a confused whimper, before taking to the sky on his ikran, his jaw set with the determination of a man fighting to make sure that his children would never know the shadow of a gunship.

While the sky in the distant horizons burned with the smoke of explosions, you remained in the deep caverns of High Camp, sitting among the circle of women, your fingers tightly interwoven with Kiri’s, while Mo’at led the low, rhythmic chanting, praying to the Great Mother for the battle’s success.

Every breath you took felt heavy, not just from the fear for your husband, but from the secret you had yet to tell him. You had known for a few weeks now. You were pregnant.

You chose not to tell him at the height of the planning the offense, wanting him focused entirely on staying alive, but Nevan had practically been manifesting it. Ever since one of his playmates’ mothers had given birth to a tiny, squirming infant, your son had been absolutely obsessed with the concept.

Just days before the warriors marched, Nevan had sat on the mats, badgering you both with endless demands. “Want one of those at home, Mama! To play with!”

Neteyam had just laughed, sweeping the boy up into his powerful arms to cradling him against his broad chest like an infant to distract him. “But you are still our baby, my boy,” Neteyam had teased, his voice thick with affection as he brushed the tip of his nose against Nevan's. “You are always Mama and Papa’s baby.” Nevan had thrown his head back, giggling frantically, completely forgetting about the talk.

Now, clutching your flat stomach in the dim light, you whispered a prayer to Great Mother Eywa to bring that doting their father back to you. Whole and safe. You didn’t realize how much of a pressure it would be to be his wife during a major battle. Even in your distress, you needed to put on a calm facade and show the other women the tranquility that should belong to a wife of a warrior.

Fortunately, even before night fell, Eywa answered your prayers in the thunderous, victorious roars of ikrans echoing through the mountains.

The people had won. The clans Toruk Makto had united once again cleansed Eywa’eveng of the evil the sky people brought upon your world. Tuk roamed around chirping about reports on how the war party blew up Bridgehead, crushing the RDA’s main stronghold and ensuring they won’t bounce back as quickly as they usually should, with Jake leading the talks to force them back to the sky.

High Camp exploded into a frenzy of celebratory flutes and drums as the warriors touched down, their wives and children welcoming them with tears. Through the crowd, you spotted him. Neteyam leaped off his ikran, covered in soot and paint, his braids wild. The moment his eyes found yours through the throng, his fearsome warrior mask completely shattered, walking faster to get to you.

“Papa!” Nevan sprinted toward him and Neteyam caught the boy in his arms, before colliding into you with a force that lifted you off your feet, his massive arms wrapped around your waist, burying his face into the crook of your neck as he breathed in your scent, desperate to replace the stench of burning metal.

“I'm back, baby,” he choked out, his voice rough against your skin.

You held his face, tears streaming down your cheeks as you kissed him desperately. Nevan was already pulling at his father's braids, forcing him away from you, making both of you laugh. Neteyam pressed fierce kisses all over the boy’s face, and you did the same, making Nevan giggle, his neck scrunching in ticklishness.

The celebration for the victory began as night fell, all the torches and firepots were lit, glowing brighter than it ever had before. Even the moons cast down a glow different than the ones you’ve had in the past years, as if they were breathing more peacefully, too.

As the drums beat steadily in the background, Neteyam sat with you at the edge of the gathering, his arm anchoring you to his side while a thoroughly exhausted Nevan curled up asleep against his thigh. Neteyam looked down at his son, a soft, content smile resting on his lips, before his eyes drifted back to you, brimming with an unburdened, quiet adoration.

“We can build anything now,” Neteyam whispered, his large hand lifting to cup your nape, massaging a little. “A real future. Just you, me, and our boy.”

You smiled, your heart hammering a joyful rhythm against your ribs. You took his large hand, slowly guiding it away from yours and placing his wide palm flat against your lower stomach.

Neteyam blinked, looking down at his hand on your belly, then back up at your face. He froze, his ears twitching as he caught the blooming, emotional heat in your eyes.

“Baby...?"” he breathed, his voice suddenly trembling, the fierce commander completely replaced by the image of a stunned, hopeful boy you had grown up with.

“I can’t believe you’re surprised,“ you playfully widened your eyes at him.

He chuckled, and even through that, you saw a tear slipped down his cheek. “Right. Like I wasn’t actively aiming for that.”

You huffed a chuckle through your nose. “Nevan is going to get his wish,” you whispered, “You are going to have to practice cradling another baby very soon, Neteyam.”

A breathless, ecstatic laugh erupted from his chest. He didn't care who was watching; he leaned forward and captured your mouth in a deep, bruising kiss, his large hand trembling where it rested over the new life you were carrying.

“I will be here now. Always. To hear her first laughs, first words, and to watch her first steps...” he mumbled against your lips.

You smiled, your eyes locking onto his. “Her?”

Neteyam and Tsireya, finally arrived. It was chaos. A lot of injured warriors. Healers doing what they could to help them. Norm and Max were there, helping near the helicopter, along with other doctors and scientists. He picked you up bridal style. You were still breathing, eyes had lidded and bleeding. Neteyam ran towards them, Tsireya followed behind.

"Norn! Max!" Neteyam called out to them, they turned to look at him. Seen him carrying you. Arms covered in your blood and you most likely unconscious. They acted fast. Getting a makeshift gurney, having Neteyam lying on you down on it. "She was shot. She's still breathing but not responding." Neteyam said, watching how Norm and Max began to do what they needed to do. "Prep for surgery." Norm told Max and another doctor. They were acting as fast as they could.

Both Neteyam and Tsireya gave them space, watching them work fast. They were shaken up, scared. Blood was coated on Neteyam's arms and chest. It was a lot. It terrified him. He hoped and preyed that you were okay. Ao'nung and Roxto arrived shortly. Seeing the blood on Neteyam and you getting attended to by the humans, they knew it was bad. Not long has passed, when they heard their parents approaching. Specially their mother. Who had a look on her face that was scary, even more Neteyam.

"What happened!?" She demanded, when she saw the blood on Neteyam and her child lying half dead, being helped by the humans. "Y-Y/n... she was shot." Tsireya said, as best as she could. Ronal's eyes widen even more, she tried to go over to see what they were doing to her child. But was stopped by Ao'nung and Tsireya, begging her to let the humans do what they had to do. She tried to get away from their grip. But was grabbed by her husband. Gently by the shoulders. Holding her back. He's never held her back, until now. "Let go of me, my child needs me." She growled in anger at her husband, but he didn't let her go. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and held her. "Please, let them help her. They're helping her." Tonowari said, gently as he could.

Ronal turned to look at her husband, breathing hard and anxious. "This is why I didn't want them here." She hissed, upset. "They caused this. They brought this upon us. Now my child. Is n the verge on the verge of dying!" She lashed out. She had every reason to. Tonowari stayed quiet, he knew the risks of allowing Toruk Makto and his family staying here in the village. He pulled her into a hug, trying to sooth her. She had every right to be angry.

A while passed, nothing was really said. Max and Norm would come out every now and then, with a bowl of water. Which was mostly blood than water. It was a lot. That made Neteyam sick. He remained in the same spot as he did when he arrived. The blood had dried up and refused to move. Tsireya had asked if he wanted to go clean himself up and she'll call for him. But he refused. He did not wanted to leave until he learned you were awake.

Ronal was praying to Eywa the whole time. Wanting for her child to be okay. She tried staying calm, for herself and her baby. But she couldn't. Since her other baby was shot and injured by the Sky people that she hated. It was worse since you and her weren't seeing eye to eye. Now here you were, fighting for your life. Or who knew.

After a while, Norm and Max had finally stepped out. "What happened? How is she?" Neteyam was the first one to ask. Your family right behind him. "She's stable." Norm said. "She lost a lot of blood. But she's in a coma." He added, nervously by the look of the Tsahik. "A coma?" Ronal asked. "Due to the injury she received and the major blood lose. Her body and herself went into a deep sleep. Her body sort of shut down due to the blood loss, so now it's trying to heal itself." He explained.

"For how long?" Your mother asked, caressing her stomach for comfort. "Who knows, could take days, weeks. Months even." Max explained. "Perhaps even years. We don't know for sure." Norm added. Asleep for years? That was no way of living. "Is there something we could do?" Your father asked. Hoping for a solution. "For now, we wait and see what happens. But you must care for her. Do exercises on her, bathe her, and clean her wound." Max explained.

As much as your mother did not want the demon technology in her home. She had no other choice but to allow it. Since it was keeping you alive. She'd make that exception. Norm and Max showed the whole family how to do your exercises every 2 hours. It seemed like a lot, but your mother didn't care. She was going to take care you until you woke up again. The first thing she did was change your bandages. Removing the tape and cloth, she wasn't very trusting of human tech and their medicine. She used her herbs and used huge tree leaves as bandages.

Ronal had no issue doing this on her own, but Tonowari wasn't going to let her. Along with Ao'nung and Tsireya. Even Roxto helped out in your care. Days passed and you still haven't woken up. They tried talking to you. Hoping you'd react, maybe squeeze their hands. But nothing. You were still asleep.

It hurt your mother's heart. Having you lie there. Motionless. Almost dead. She blamed no one else but the Sky People, first they hunted and killed Ro'a and now, her child was here. Half dead. Not knowing how long it would take for you to wake up.

As for Neteyam, it took him a while to finally clean the blood off himself. It took him a couple of days to finally wash it off. He felt sick to his stomach. Seeing you in his arms. Bleeding. Almost dead. He was glad that you were alive. But, when will you wake up? Were you ever going to? He wanted nothing more but to see you, but he wanted to give your family space. Hopefully in time, he'd be able to help you out if he could.

It was another day, but today his father had gone with Lo'ak to find guns. So they could use just incase the RDA showed up. Neteyam watched as his father and brother unloaded them to show to the villagers. This made Neteyam sick, he didn't understand why. He's been around guns all his life. He knew they could be useful. But at the moment, it just felt wrong. It was wrong to even look at one.

Ronal had approached, seeing what was going on. She had left you with a healer who had volunteered to help you. She carefully moved around Ao'nung. "What is this?" She asked, seeing her daughter touching the metal. "Tsireya." Ronal called out to her, startling her a bit. "What are you doing?" She asked, shocked on what she was doing. Tsireya stopped what she was doing and hoped onto the walk way. "Go check on your sister." She told her, Tsireya went back to the home.

"What is the meaning of this?" She asked, Jake Sully. "You bring that filth into our home?" She asked. "We can't fight just using arrows and spears." Jake justified. "We sank the demon ship, the pink skins fear us." Tonowari mentioned. "You've done enough, bringing your war here. Now this? My child almost died and you bring the metal that was the cause of it." She said, justified in her anger. "Get rid of these." She hissed, demanding Tonowari, then stormed off. Tonowari never questioned his wife's demands. He respected them no matter what.

Neteyam left, following the Tsahik. "Tsahik." He called out to her, Ronal stopped in her tracks. Caressing her stomach in comfort. "It is you." She said. "How is she?" Neteyam asked, nervous that she might lash out at him. "She's fine. Still asleep." She said, taking in small breathes to calm herself. "May I see her?" He asked, hopeful that she'd let him. Ronal took another deep breathe. "Come." She instructed, Neteyam followed right behind her. Thanking the great mother.

When they arrived, Neteyam got to finally see you. There you laid, on your mat. Hooked up to machines. Asleep. You looked even smaller than before. He watched as Tsireya was doing your exercises. "If you wish to help, you can help." That's all Ronal said.

That's what Neteyam did. He began to come almost every day to help. He'd be there as soon as eclipse was over. He learned how to take care of you, how to bathe you and change your bandages. He did everything that he could to help you. He'd even talk to you, tell you about his day. What Lo'ak did or what Spider was doing in current time to adjust. He'd even comb your hair to stay with you longer before heading home. He wish he could just stay with you, watch over you and be there when you opened your eyes. But he knew he couldn't, it physically hurt him having to leave you every time.

Your mother watched, seeing how Neteyam was devoted into taking care of you. He was already waiting outside the home, waiting to be lead in. She'd watch how he'd talk to you and even comb your hair. He was gentle when doing so. Not wanting to hurt you. She could no longer deny it. This boy loved you and you loved him. She tried keeping you both apart. Thinking it was best for you, to keep you safe. But now, things are different. She saw everything now. How you and Neteyam were made for one another. She couldn't keep you both apart, she shouldn't. Her husband was right. She had to let make your own decisions. And if choosing Neteyam was a part of it. So be it. She would respect it.

Another day, another routine. Neteyam was combing your hair again after he finished doing your exercises. Gently, not wanting to hurt you. Your head laying on his lap. He'd add a couple of small braids, using his beads. Ronal had entered the home. With her equipment, she was going to change your bandages now. Neteyam looked up and bowed to her out of respect.

Ronal approached, getting on her knees carefully and began to change your bandages. Neteyam helped her, carefully lifting you up to clean off the old paste from off your skin to add new one. The wound was almost healed. You wouldn't need bandages anymore, but it would leave a scar. A scar to show your bravery in surviving. Neteyam remained quiet, allowing the Tsahik to care for you.

"You've been coming here, a lot." Ronal commented, covering your wound with a new leaf. "I have. I apologize for any inconvenience. I just wish to help y/n." He responded respectfully. "Don't apologize. I see the care you have for my daughter." She said, finishing up on your wound. "I thought keeping her away from you, would keep her safe. But now I see that I was wrong to do that." She explained, gently taking your small hand onto hers. "I should have let her make her own decisions. But I was afraid, she is my daughter. She may not be like the rest of us, but she is mine. She was brought to me for a reason. Eywa has brought her to me. I just wish the best for her. And If that means her being with you. I'll allow it. You have my blessing." Ronal finished.

Neteyam was almost shocked that the Tsahik had given him her blessing. But he was grateful that she did. You and him didn't need to hide. You can love each other freely. "I promise you, that I will protect her." She promised. Ronal believed him. She knew that he was a respected and responsible warrior. "I know you will." That's all she said.

You had no idea for long you were asleep, everything was back until you woke up in a strange place. You've never seen this place before. It was a sterile place with humans machinery. Why were you here of all places? As you walked around, you spotted someone. This person was seated at a desk. You couldn't help but approached them. Carefully.

The person stopped what they were doing and turned to look at you. It was her, the woman from the picture that was given to you by Max. "Mom?" You asked, shocked. "My beautiful daughter, how you've grown." She said, that same voice that you heard when you got shot. Calling your name. "I'm so happy to see you." She said. You couldn't help but approach her, hugging her. She hugged you back. Pulling you close. Smelling your ocean scented hair. And holding you close. You were real. And you were here.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry that my birth was the cause of your death." You told her, apologizing. You didn't understand why. It just felt right. She pulled away and looked at you, gently holding your chin. "I'd die a thousand deaths just so you could live." She said, holding your face in her hands. "I knew I left you in the right hands." She added. "I knew you'd grow up in a home, with a family. A mother who would love you as much as I did." She explained. "I would have hated myself if I left you with the humans. So, I knew I did the right thing. Because you're here. Alive." She said.

You looked at her. "Am I? I was shot and I'm here. My life was cut short." You said, sadly. "Now I won't grow up, or be with the love of my life." You said, saddened. Your mother smiled sweetly at you. "No, it is not your time yet." She said, caressing your face with her thumbs. You looked at her confused. "It's not your time. I will not allow you to come back until the time is right." She added. Pulling you into another hug. As much as her words confused you. You didn't question her. You just leaned in once again. "We'll meet again, that I can promise you." She said, that felt like a promise. But you weren't so sure if to believe it or not.

Early in the morning, Neteyam was already there. Helping you out, carefully moving your leg, bending your knee carefully as he had been doing. While Tsireya was coming in with a bucket of water to bathe you again. It was quiet, the sound of the beeping monitors were heard and the oxygen mask.

Your hand suddenly twitched, that made Neteyam stop. Placing your leg down and taking your hand. "Did you see that?" He asked Tsireya, who placed the bucket down. "See what?" She asked. You squeezed your hand again. Wrapping your hand around Neteyam's hand. "That!" He said, freaking out by the sudden reflex. Tsireya was amazed. "I'll get my mother!" She said, sprinting out of the home.

Neteyam was happy, happy to finally something different happen. You were responding. "Y/n?" He called out your name, hoping that you'd hear him. "N-Net.." You said. Neteyam felt his heart stop. You spoke, which meant that you were awake. You had finally woken up after 2 dreadful weeks. You slowly opened your eyes, weak but you managed to open them fully. "Net?.." You said, as much as you tried saying his full name you were too weak to do so. "I'm here. I'm right here." Neteyam said, freaking out. But remained calm to not startle you. Holding your hand.

You were weak, very weak. But you managed. "Net." You said again. Seeing him fully. Neteyam couldn't help but hug you, not too hard bur gentle. You wrapped your arms around him as best as you could. Lightly hissing by the pain in your arm. "I'm sorry.' Neteyam apologized, thinking he'd hurt you. "Don't be... I'm happy... to see you.." You said, burying your face onto his neck. Not wanting him to let go of you. He didn't want to let you go. Not now, not ever.

Your family was happy that you were finally awake, your mother didn't stop fussing over you. Checking you, making sure you were alright. Your mother had asked Norm and Max to check you, to make sure that nothing was wrong. Everything was alright, you were weak for obvious reasons, but you were good. You had to work on getting your health back up.

You started by going on a walk with Neteyam. Holding onto his arm. He was slow and careful, allowing you to walk at your preferred pace. Meanwhile, your injured arm was on a makeshift sling. It was sore, very sore. You'd move it every now and then, but not force yourself.

"How long was I asleep?" You asked. "Two weeks, it was horrible not being able to hear your voice." Neteyam said, making you giggle and your face burned. "I met my dreamwalker mother, she said that It wasn't my time yet. It was like she sent me right back here. With my family." You paused. "And you." You said, with a shy smile. Neteyam stopped in front of you. Taking your free hand, into his chest. "She was right. It was not. I would've done anything to have you come back to me. I'd go to hell and back." He said. His other language slipping. You had no clue what he meant. But you'd ask later.

You both stared at one another, for what felt like a long time. Neteyam leaned down, closer to your height. Still holding your hand to his chest. Against his beating. He leaned his forehead in, against yours. You closed your eyes, so did he. This felt like a greeting into each other's lives. Properly. "I see you." You both said in unison. You were glad to be here, with him. And he was happy to be here, with you. Finally being allowed to be together.

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"As sure as hell as if someone shows up, we're both going to die," you replied with a crooked smile, your nails gently scratching the back of his neck.

It wasn't the first time you had sneaked into the cave, but it was the first time you ere both so desperate. It had been a couple of weeks since you had last seen each other, and the adrenaline of doing it in the most forbidden of all possible places made everything burn even more.

Wally positioned you with ease, his lips finding yours with an urgency he made no attempt to hide. Your legs tangled around his waist as he sat you on the edge of the console, one of his hands moving down to your waist, the other caressing your bare thigh.

Your pants were already on the floor. His, pulled down just enough so you could feel how impatient he was.

"I missed this," he murmured between kisses, his voice husky, his fingers tracing a slow path over your exposed skin. "I missed you."

You looked at him from so close that you felt his heartbeat crash against yours. His forehead rested against yours, and his lips moved down to your neck as you let out a sigh that he caught with a satisfied smile.

"It took you weeks to show up," you complained through gritted teeth, without real anger. "Do you know how many times I was on the verge of running away to Central City?"

"It would have been the best news of the month," he replied, placing a kiss behind your ear that made you shudder. "But you know me… when Barry needs me, I have to run."

Your fingers buried themselves in his hair, pulling him back to you. The heat between you was suffocating, delicious, and the space between his lips and your skin grew ever more nonexistent. Your hips shifted, seeking more contact. He moaned softly against your neck. Your hands found the hem of his shirt, and you pulled it up with suppressed desperation, letting your lips travel down his hot, racing chest.

Wally gasped, his hands squeezing your thighs, his mouth seeking yours again with a perfect mix of tenderness and need.

"I swear I dreamed about this every night," he said between kisses.

"Then put on your clothes and keep dreaming," a deep voice replied.

Wally froze, his eyes boring into yours as a cold sweat trickled down his back. It took you half a second to turn in the direction of the voice… and wish you could disappear.

Bruce was there. Standing. A few steps away. Arms crossed. Frowning. And that look that could freeze hell. The hood was up, but the stiffness in his posture was enough to tell he'd run out of patience before he even stepped off the damn teleporter.

"D... Dad," you managed to say, barely a muffled whisper.

"Hey, Mr. Wayne!" Wally jumped in, twisting around as best he could, covering himself with his T-shirt as he tried to put his pants on backward for the second time in two minutes. "This isn't what it looks like. Although in retrospect, it is exactly what it looks like, but oh no, I put it on backward again!"

Bruce didn't blink. "Five. Seconds."

"Five seconds for what?!" Wally exclaimed, almost panicking.

"To get dressed, run from this cave, and seriously consider abstinence," Bruce replied, his tone not changing even a decibel.

Wally struggled with his pants zipper as if it were saving his life.

"Yes, sir! Understood, sir! Totally understandable, sir!"

"Stop calling him 'sir,'" you muttered, covering yourself with the first thing you found. .

Bruce didn't move. He didn't need to. His presence filled everything. The silence was deadly. As soon as Wally disappeared into the tunnel, your father spoke.

"The Batcave?" Bruce looked at you as if he was seriously considering hanging you upside down next to the suits. "You know there are cameras at every entrance, right?"

"Dad..."

"No, don't even start." He crossed his arms again.

"We're going to have a very long talk. And if Wally sets foot in this cave again, I'm going to kick him off the planet. Is that clear?"

You nodded. Not because you agreed, but because you were on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Bruce turned back to the console. He looked at it as if it were contaminated.

"Nothing happened on the console," you quickly clarified.

"I don't care." He was silent for a few seconds. "I hope, for West's sake, it was worth it."

"Yes," you replied without thinking, a silly grin creeping onto your lips. "It was totally worth it."

Bruce didn't respond. He just sighed long and deeply, turning to disappear into the darkness of the hallway.

“Shut up Drake.” Damian retorted. “Ukhti allows me into her apartment at any time. She won’t be mad at me. You, on the other hand-“

“I think she’ll be mad at all of us if we break her stuff by acting like bulldogs.” Jason interrupted, sick of the brother’s bickering.

“Or maybe she’ll be mad because we’ll interrupt her ‘beauty sleep’” Dick grinned. “She takes that very seriously-“

“So do you Grayson. And heavens knows you definitely need it.”

“Hey!”

Tim opened his mouth to shush his brothers again, but was cut off by Jason’s voice coming from the kitchen.

“What. The. Fuck.”

Dick, Cass, Tim, and Damian looked at each other before walking to the kitchen, all of them stopping in the tracks when greeted by a sight they weren’t sure what to make of.

Wally West. Shirtless. Only wearing boxers. Standing in front of your open fridge, glass of water in hand.

Wally’s mouth was slight ajar, like he also couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Four out of the five people he feared the most just caught him red handed (the fifth was Bruce.)

There’s about ten seconds of a very terrifying and weird silence. Then it burst from three voices shouting at once.

Cass looked a mixture between stunned and slightly happy. One of Cass’ greatest skills is her ability to read body language, and she had observed you and Wally getting closer the past few weeks. She already had her unspoken suspicions, and was slightly pleased with herself.

Damian was immediately on the defensive. “How dare you dress like this in Ukhti’s home, West! You should have more respected for her and for yourself-“

Tim was asking questions that nobody gave him answers to. “When did this start? Was it right after her birthday gala? Because that means Bart was right. Does Bruce know? Does anybody know? How serious is this? A friends-with-benefits or a real relationship-“

Jason didn’t seem to believe what was in front of him, as if somehow convinced that you were on the unaware side. “Does she know that you’re standing practically naked in her kitchen? Why are you in her kitchen? Please say she was bandaging you up or something. Or that you needed food-“

But Wally wasn’t listening to them. He was staring at Dick, and Dick was staring right back at him. Neither of the two spoke. But Wally’s gut was already eating him.

He broke bro code. And he should’ve told Dick ages ago. But he kept pushing it off, because you always wanted to push it off. It wasn’t that you two didn’t want Dick to know, but it was sorta fun keeping the secret.

Well, it was a secret. Until Bruce found out a month ago.

You were in the medical room of the Tower, carefully wrapping your arm in a bandage after receiving a nasty slash from Poison Ivy’s thorns. Wally had joined you while you were half way through the act, wanting to make sure you were okay.

Wally was always more risky in public than you were. He trailed soft kisses up your arm, lingering on your neck, and then smiling against your cheek when you tutted at him.

“I’m trying to make sure I don’t bleed to death here Wally.” You snipped, but with no bite to your words. There never was when it came to Wally. He grinned back at you, his slender fingers going over yours as he helped you guide the bandage (you definitely did not need guidance, which to Wally, made the whole thing better as it had a better chance to annoy you.)

That lasted for a few seconds before a deep, unfortunately familiar voice came from behind.

“I’d appreciate it if you gave my daughter some space while she was recovering, Flash.”

Wally jumped about a foot in the air, leaping away from you as if you were burning hot as he turned around to look at his literally biggest fear.

“Yes, sir.” Wally got out immediately. “I was just- just seeing how . . . how she was doing after the-“

You rolled your eyes. “He was only checking on me, Batman.” You didn’t know how much Bruce had gathered, but reaction can tell him everything. It was pointless anyway, Wally had given him enough reaction to figure every detail out.

Bruce hummed, his cape still tucked around his shoulders to look more intimidating towards the young male.

“I’d like it if my daughter was more honest with me.”

You paused, looking at your dad. Wally stared you, making it clear that he’d follow whatever story you pulled. But you just sighed, and shrugged. You were too tired to lie anymore. Plus, you could tell from Bruce’s face that he already had you and Wally figured out.

“I’m sorry we hid it from you.” Wally blinked at your words. He’ll always find the silent conversations you and your father have very unsettling.

“How long have you known?”

“I’ve been suspecting for about two weeks now.”

You raised your eyebrows. “And you’ve only just come to us now? That’s surprising for you.”

Bruce was quiet for a moment, and then decided to make you feel a bit more guilty. “I was waiting for you to come to me.”

You pursed your lips. “I was going too. I just . . .” You looked at Wally. “We wanted to keep to ourselves. Just for a bit.”

Bruce nodded.

And then, after Wally got threatened (only a little) by Bruce, which he did expect, the awkwardness sort of disappeared. Because Bruce wanted to perform a little experiment of seeing how long it would take your siblings to catch on.

So then you and Wally’s constant unspoken fear of being caught vanished, and it turned more into a game. It was like pushing a limit to see how much your siblings would simply not notice or look past.

You and Wally had to dodge Damian the most, as the boy had a silent preference for you, especially when it came to missions. Damian liked being paired with his older sister for patrol or mission because you and his techniques worked well with each other, and you two often had the same line of thinking.

So it would happen a couple of times where Damian would go searching for you, only to walk into the meeting room to see you and Wally standing very close together. And for a second he thought he heard you giggling.

Damian cleared his throat to announce his presence. “Ukhti. It’s patrol time together.”

You and Wally sprung up, taking a step or two away from each other. You nodded quickly, swallowing your smile down.

“Let’s go, then.” You let Damian go in front of you, taking the chance to glance at Wally to give him a small wave.

Later on a rooftop, Damian spoke. “What were you and West doing?”

You hummed. “Just looking at the vent plan of a warehouse where a suspected drug dealer operates. Might be big bust, so Flash and I are studying the case.”

Damian nodded, satisfied with your words.

You were surprised you manage to dodge Tim as long as you did. The closest he got was when he caught you in the Batcave at 7 am in your pyjamas. You were hunched over the Batcomputer, watching the security footage of the camera placed outside your bedroom wall. He watched you for three seconds before speaking, making you whip your head back at him.

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing.” You said, a second too early. “Just thought I heard something last night. Wanted to double check.”

Not completely unusual. Tim narrowed his eyes before just nodding.

“Alright.”

When you left, he watched the last couple of hours from that camera himself, but didn’t see anything noticeable.

Little did Tim know you spent the last hour wiping the footage of Wally scaling your wall last night, and making sure that the footage matched up to the last second so that you wouldn’t be caught.

Cass was the hardest to lie to or avoid. She was so perceptive, and you could never fully tell how much she knew or what she didn’t know. Plus, she might be the one you were feeling the second most guilty about lying to her.

You and Cass are close. She’s your only sister, and you hers. You two often sleep in each other’s rooms when one of you finds it difficult to drift off for various reasons. And sometimes during these sleepovers you end up whispering into the darkness to each other. Secrets you wouldn’t trust with anyone else.

You don’t like lying to Cass about anything, and she’s the hardest to lie to. She can tell straight away by your body language if you’re hiding something, and she knew you were.

She could feel how your shoulders relaxed when Wally was mentioned, but tensed right back up again if she asked what you thought of him. She could see the slight clenching of your jaw when you tried to appear casual, claiming you “never gave him much thought. He’s just one of Dick’s friends.”

And now each one of them are realising that all those little lies you told, the situations you carefully avoided, all lead back to the ginger man standing in your kitchen half-naked.

As silence fell upon the group again and the voices were replaced with wide-eyed stared at each other, the weird atmosphere was interrupted by someone else moving.

Your footsteps were heard from the hall, your slippers softly slapping against the wood before you entered the kitchen, rubbing at your eyes.

“Wally? You said you were grabbing a snack ten minutes ago. I thought you were supposed to be the fast-“ But you stopped short when you saw your siblings packed together on one side, and your secret boyfriend on the other side.

And then the chaos started again, just now with your voice added in.

“Why didn’t you tell us?”

“Because I don’t have to disclose every detail with my siblings! I can have my own life for once.”

“Out of all the people you go for-“

“Hey!” That one was Wally, the first word he’s spoken this whole time.

After few more shouts, a particularly loud one echoed through the room. A voice who could silence the room with one command because he was a natural born leader, and an inspiration to everyone currently in the room. “Stop it. All of you.”

Dick Grayson. The only one who hasn’t spoken yet, but it looked like everyone was just remembering that he was there too, and that his opinion could really make or break the whole thing.

You and Wally exchanged a glance out of pure habit and familiarity when you noticed Dick, and it was that move that made him pause.

When presented with an unknown situation, you had looked towards Wally. And Wally had done the same. His two best friends had found their own language with each other that didn’t need to be spoken to be heard. Dick blinked, and looked towards his four younger siblings beside him.

Damian opened his light to protest against Dick unspoken command, but Dick stopped him with a look. He huffed before following Cass out of the kitchen, presumably going back outside to go home after opening their can of worms.

“Dick, we-“ You started.

“How long?” His words were simple, and you couldn’t gauge if he was happy or furious. But you didn’t hesitate.

You tsked. “That’s your first question?”

Dick’s eyes darted between the two of you, and you really thought you were about to fight this guy. Until his face broke out in a smile.

“Thank God!” He exclaimed, his arms laughing over both of you. “I was getting sick of the heart eyes you two were making at each other. So who manned up and said it first?”

Wally blinked. “You aren’t mad?”

Dick laughed. “Why would I be mad?”

You scoffed. “Maybe because you’ve gotten so weird over any boy that interacts with me, claiming that you need to threaten their collarbones.”

“That’s completely different.” Dick said, like it was obvious. “Those were guys I didn’t know. But of course I trust you, Walls. You’re my best bro.” His smile faltered. “But yeah, if you do hurt my sister, I will break your

collarbones.”

“Noted.” Wally muttered, but grinned back at his friend. You rolled your eyes beside them.

A few minutes later, Dick was crawling back out your living room window.

“Please just text me next time you decide to bring the whole family into my apartment.” You chided, before disappearing back into your bedroom.

Dick turned to Wally. “She’s your drama queen to deal with now, I guess.”

Wally smiled, “wouldn’t want it any other way.”

Dick nodded. “Happy for you man. I wish we could’ve had this conversation with you wearing some more clothes, but I guessed it worked out.”

“Thanks man.”

And with that, Dick joined his siblings in the batmobile to drop them off to the Cave before returning to his own girlfriend.

Wally crawled underneath the covers, sliding his body around yours where you were already texting Bruce.

You: They just figured it out. Three weeks and nine days. Not too bad.

Bruce: Noted. Thank you for indulging my experiment.

You: No problem. It was quite funny.

Wally watched your face as you stared at Bruce’s next messages for quite some time.

Bruce: Agreed. You should sleep now. Extend my good night wishes to West.

Bruce: I love you.

You put your phone away on your nightstand before curling into Wally. There was a minute of silence before:

“I really thought Dick was going to scalp me for a second back there.”

You hummed before mumbling, “I wouldn’t lower my guard around him.”

Wally didn’t get a chance to question your words before he heard your slow and steady breathing next to him, your thoughts safe and relaxed after the event of the evening.

For space reasons, they moved several pieces of furniture so they could move around freely without worrying about breaking something and getting a scolding from Alfred.

“What is this?” the woman asked, referring to an extendable wooden ruler Tim had handed her.

“It’s a ruler.” Jason’s girlfriend looked at him, stating the obvious. “But we’ll use it as a knife.”

Dick leaned against a table next to Jason, crossing his arms.

“Bruce used it with us at first to train us,” the boy explained. “After that, he moved on to real knives.”

“Huh,” she muttered under her breath, inspecting the ruler. “What a nice family,” she murmured sarcastically, raising both eyebrows.

“And yet you’re still here, doll.”

The girl winked at her boyfriend.

“All right. First I’ll show you how it’s done, then you’ll try,” Tim announced. “Extend your left arm forward with the ruler.” The girl did as asked. “Perfect. I’ll block your move.”

With a nod, the woman extended her arm forward again.

Tim raised his left forearm upward to prevent her from attacking him by pulling her arm toward him. With his other arm, he would strike the girl’s wrist with his elbow to disarm her.

However, the girl raised the ruler upward, pretending the blade was up.

Faced with the new movement, Tim stopped his arm.

“What just happened?”

Jason smirked and took another sip from his bottle.

Dick’s turn.

“After that weak job from Red Robin, Nightwing will show you how it’s done.”

The three boys rolled their eyes and sighed tiredly.

“Go ahead, Wonder Boy!” Jason exclaimed with amusement.

“All right,” Dick said, mentioning her name. “You’ll attack me from above and I’ll block your move, okay?”

The girl nodded.

Dick had given fewer instructions than Tim, which showed he wanted to catch her by surprise and prevent her from making a move he didn’t expect.

“Now.”

With her left hand, she raised the ruler above her head. Dick, with a quick movement, blocked the action by forming an X with his arms, preventing her from lowering her arm any further.

However, the girl dropped the ruler, quickly catching it with her other hand, and hit Dick on the head with it, taking advantage of the fact that he was distracted by the unexpected move.

Jason burst out laughing at that.

“Another wonderful job by the incredible and marvelous Nightwing.”

“Tt. I’ll show these fools how it should be done.”

Pff... it didn’t turn out as the boy expected.

Unlike his brothers, Damian hadn’t even given her instructions.

The boy let her approach to secure victory.

The girl, just as she had done with Tim, extended her left arm.

Damian grabbed that arm to immobilize it and take the weapon away.

However, when the boy turned his head, Jason’s girlfriend pulled a toy gun from her pants and pressed it against his head.

“Bang!”

The room was suddenly plunged into silence, as three out of four vigilantes blinked, assessing the situation that had just occurred.

Damian looked up to observe the woman, who was smiling at him while still holding the toy gun against his head.

“Impossible.”

Damian’s eyes went to the toy gun.

“How do you do that?”

“Where did you get that from?!”

The girl laughed, handing both things back and moving closer to her boyfriend.

“I took it from the box while Dick was thinking about what move to make.”

Jason extended his arm around the girl’s waist, pulling her closer to him.

“I used to take self-defense classes when I was a kid,” she said, feeling Jason’s fingers slowly caressing her waist.

“Before I knew he was Red Hood and before I could do anything, she stopped us from being robbed with a broomstick.”

Damian looked at the girl and narrowed his eyes.

“Would you be interested in being a vigilante?”

Before the girl could say anything, Jason began pushing her away to get his girlfriend away from his crazy family.

“We’re leaving, it’s time for our son’s dinner.”

When both disappeared from the room—which happened incredibly quickly thanks to Jason—to say goodbye to Alfred, Dick frowned and tilted his head in confusion at what had been said.

“Son? Since when do they have a son?”

Damian sighed, then clicked his tongue.

“He means the cat.”

"keep those two away from me" - part 2

Yet for centuries the merfolk had kept to themselves, hidden from human eyes by choice rather than necessity, for the sea was their domain, vast and forgiving, older than any castle built of stone, and they had little wish to share it with a race that seemed forever at war with itself and everything around it.

In time, that same secrecy had turned them into little more than legend, tales spun by sailors over cups of watered wine on nights when the wind howled and the deck rolled beneath them. Sirens were known to lure ships onto rocks with voices sweet enough to make a man forget his own name, and feast on whatever remained once the rocks had finished their work.

Mermaids were a gentler breed by comparison, prone to guiding lost sailors safely home as often as they were blamed for storms and ill weather they had no hand in at all. Two natures entirely, wearing similar faces, and precious few humans who lived long enough to learn the difference between them.

They were beautiful creatures beneath the waves, long tails the colour of pearl and coral fading seamlessly into human torsos, faces too fine and too still to belong to any mortal woman, gill feathers tracing delicate lines along their throats that fluttered faintly with every breath of water drawn through them. Webbing caught the light between their fingers and along the curves of their ears, and their eyes, when a sailor was unlucky or lucky enough to catch one open beneath the surface, ethereal was the word men reached for, when they had any words left at all.

It had been pure chance that placed you so close to the Gullet on the day the battle came, chance and your own incurable curiosity, which your sisters had scolded you for since you were small enough to hide behind their tails.

You had always had a weakness for collecting things. Rings slipped from dead men's fingers, buckles and buttons and the little bronze bells that sailors sometimes wore for luck that had done them no good at all in the end, coins gone green and soft with centuries beneath the salt.

You kept them in the hollow belly of an old sunken hull you had claimed as your own years ago, arranging and rearranging them the way a child arranges shells on a beach, and you were forbidden, absolutely forbidden, from ever breaking the surface to retrieve anything that had not already sunk deep enough to be safely yours. The deep waters near the wreck sites were permitted. The world above the waterline was not.

You had seen fleets pass overhead before, dark hulls cutting shadows across the sunlit shallows, and it had never troubled you much. Ships came and went. Men fought their wars on the surface and left their dead to sink down to you eventually, and you had learned not to think too hard about where the trinkets came from.

What startled you that day, what sent ice through your veins even in water still warm from the summer sun, was the sound. A battle breaking out with no warning at all, not the slow grinding approach you were used to but something sudden and enormous, the water shaking with it as though the sea itself had been struck. Fire that should not have been able to burn beneath the waves somehow did, hissing and spitting where it touched the surface, and ash sifted down through the water like grey snow, and wood came apart in great splintering chunks, and bodies. So many bodies, falling and falling, sinking past you like stones dropped from a terrible height, men who had been laughing and cursing and praying only moments before.

You very nearly got swept into the worst of it yourself. Your pale pink tail caught for one heart-stopping instant on a length of trailing rigging, and you fought and thrashed to free yourself, kicking hard for clearer, deeper water, away from the chaos above. It was then that something struck the surface with such force that the shockwave of it rolled straight through your chest, and you turned back despite every instinct screaming at you to keep swimming, and saw a dragon.

Only the one. You did not know his name yet, though you would come to learn it soon enough. Vermax, green as new leaves, thrashing against water he had never been built to fight, wings beating in great useless sweeps, trying and failing again and again to claw his way back up into a sky that no longer wanted him.

And strapped to his back, tangled in leather that should have kept him safe and now threatened only to drown him with the beast, was a boy.

A very pretty boy, you thought, even through the horror of it, because you had always had a weakness for pretty things as well as shiny ones, and some habits did not care what was happening around them.

He fought his harness with a growing, panicked desperation, one leg caught fast beneath a buckle that would not give no matter how he wrenched at it, and you watched the fight slowly bleed out of him as the water rose past his chin and then his mouth. You watched him press his palm flat against his dragon’s scaled hide, whether in farewell or in simple desperate comfort you could not say, and something inside your chest twisted so hard and so suddenly that it hurt, a feeling you had no name for and no time to think about, and you were moving before your brain had caught up to it.

The buckles gave easily enough beneath your fingers, quick clever things built for human hands rather than merfolk ones but simple enough once you understood the shape of them, all but the one pinning his leg fast, which would not release no matter how you pulled. It was your sister's whalebone dagger, tucked always at your hip, that finally cut him free, the leather parting in one long stroke. By then the boy had gone entirely still, his eyes half open and unseeing.

You spared one moment, only one, though it cost you dearly to spare it, to press your palm flat against Vermax’s scales in something like an apology, for jot being able to save him. The great beast simply closed his eyes, as if content that his rider had found safer hands than his own to carry him the rest of the way, and sank without a struggle into the dark below, leaving no trace but a slow drift of green scales catching what little light remained.

Surfacing was a huge mistake. You broke into open air in the very heart of the wreckage, ships burning on every side, smoke thick enough to sting your eyes, and had barely a breath to get your bearings before an arrow split the water beside you, close enough that you felt the wind of its passing against your cheek and almost hitting the boy in the neck.

You looked up into a row of crossbows all trained your way, men shouting words you did not understand but whose meaning was plain enough in the set of their shoulders, and understood with sudden, terrible clarity exactly how little difference they would see between a dragon’s rider and whatever monster had come to finish the work the sea had started.

You went back under. Humans could not breathe water, but neither, you thought grimly, dragging the boy's dead weight down with you, could you survive a volley of bolts meant to end lives.

You swam hard and fast and low, keeping to what cover the drifting wreckage offered, dragging him through water gone thick and stinging with smoke and ash, until the sounds of battle fell away behind you into a dull, distant roar and the nearest shore rose dark and welcoming against the horizon. You hauled him up onto the sand with strength you did not know you possessed, adrenaline lending you what your body alone could not, and only then let yourself look at him properly.

Your stomach dropped. His lips had gone the deep, bruised blue of a man already claimed by the sea, his skin pale as the underbelly of a fish, and his chest did not move at all.

The old stories. Your grandmother had told them half as warning and half as wonder, back when you were young enough to still believe every tale she spun, of how a drowned man's lungs might yet be coaxed back to life if the sea inside them was driven out in time, before the body forgot how to want air at all. You laid both palms flat over the centre of his chest, unsure of your own strength, and pressed down hard.

Once. Nothing happened. Panic clawed up your throat.

Twice. Your own breath caught, tight and painful.

Thrice, and you pressed with everything you had left in you, uncaring now whether you cracked something beneath your palms, because a bruise, even a broken rib, was nothing at all set against death.

On the fourth press he convulsed beneath your hands and turned sharply to one side, retching a lungful of seawater onto the sand, coughing so violently his whole body shook with the force of it. You sat back, tail curling instinctively beneath you, heart hammering, and watched the grey slowly bleed out of his face as air, found its way back into him at last.

He did not understand, in that first hazy moment, anything beyond the fact that he was somehow, impossibly, still alive. The world swam in and out of focus around him, blurred and ringing. The last clear memory he had was of Vermax beneath him and the water closing over them both in a great green rush, of struggling against a harness that would not give no matter how he fought it, and then a blurred pale shape cutting toward him through the murk like something out of a half remembered dream, and then nothing at all.

He sat up too quickly. Pain lanced through his skull bright enough to make him gasp, and he only dimly registered that he had knocked someone backward in the process, hearing a small startled sound beside him.

"I am sorry- I did not mean to- are you..." The words died somewhere in his throat.

A hand still rested lightly against his shoulder, small and cool and strange. He gaze followed it down past a bare collarbone, down a torso, and then no legs at all, only a long tail the colour of pale coral, still trembling faintly where it lay half in the surf, catching what little light the dying sun still offered.

His eyes came back up to meet yours. Yours were already wide with fright, caught somewhere between diving straight back into the water and staying just long enough to see what he would do with the knowledge now sitting plainly on his face.

"You," he breathed, and could not seem to manage a single word more than that.

You did not wait to find out what he would say next. You began dragging yourself backward toward the water on your palms, tail scraping over wet sand, and that seemed to break whatever had held him frozen in place, because he scrambled after you across the shore despite the state of his own battered, aching body.

"Wait, please, don't go, who are you? What is your name? Why did you save me? Why?" The questions tumbled out of him faster than you could possibly have answered even if your voice had worked properly, one tripping over the next, desperation making him clumsy with his words. When you opened your mouth to try anyway, nothing came at all, no sound, not even a whisper. You touched two fingers to your throat and shook your head slowly.

"You cannot speak?"

You nodded, something apologetic in the tilt of your head.

There was no simple way to explain it to him, not with gestures alone, that merfolk voices were shaped and tuned for the weight and pressure of deep water and simply could not survive in air thin and empty as this, so you only looked at him, sorry, and slid a little further back toward the tideline, the cool water lapping welcome against your tail.

"Wait!" He was on his feet now, unsteady, swaying slightly as he turned to take in the shore around him properly for the first time. "This is Driftmark- I think- and that," he pointed to a dark shape rising jagged from the water in the distance, smoke still curling faintly from somewhere within the battle behind them, "that's Dragonstone. That is where I live. I must find some way to thank you properly, I do not even know how yet, but I will. I swear it."

You gave him one last long look, drinking in the sight of him properly now that the worst of the danger had passed, pale and shaking and utterly unlike anyone you had ever pulled from the wreckage before, and nodded once before the water closed silently over your head.

What he did not know, could not have known, was that you had not truly gone. You lingered just beneath the surface, hidden in the shallows where the light still reached, watching as the full weight of what he had lost caught up to him at last.

You watched his shoulders begin to shake, watched him sink slowly to his knees on the wet sand as the grief he had been too shocked to feel finally broke over him, grieving the bond severed so suddenly with his dragon, a bond you understood was not so different from the ones your own kind shared with the great whales that sometimes let mermaids ride upon their backs through the deep currents. You felt sad and helpless and entirely too far away to do anything about either, your own chest aching in sympathy for a boy you did not even know the name of yet.

Trinkets, you thought at last, retreating slowly deeper into the water where the cold and the dark could swallow the strange, unfamiliar feeling sitting heavy in your chest. I will bring him pretty things. Pretty things always help. Everyone knows that.

By the time Jace made it back to Dragonstone, disguised as best his battered state allowed, the sun had long since set and the castle had already begun to mourn a prince presumed lost at sea.

Rhaenyra, who had spent the whole of that day and the one before convincing herself, against every hope, that he was truly gone, very nearly lost her composure entirely at the sight of him standing whole in the doorway of her solar, swaying but breathing, and threatened violence on anyone who dared suggest it a cruel trick before she was even certain of it herself.

Then he was close enough to touch, close enough that she could feel the warmth still clinging to him despite the cold seawater soaked through every layer of his clothes, and she crossed the room in three swift strides and pulled him into an embrace so fierce it near cracked his ribs, one hand cradling the back of his neck the way she had when he was small enough to carry on her hip.

She pulled back only far enough to strike him hard across the face, the sound of it sharp in the quiet room, then dragged him straight back into her arms before he had time to recover from either the blow or the embrace that followed it.

"Never," she whispered fiercely against his hair, "never again. Do you understand me?"

Jace made no complaint about any of it. He only held on, breathing in the familiar smell of her, flowery and something that had always simply meant home no matter where in the world he found himself, and let himself be scolded and forgiven in the very same breath, over and over, until the shaking in his hands finally began to still.

There would be time to explain everything later, the mermaid and the potion he did not yet know he would go looking for and the strange ache already settling in his chest at the thought of never seeing her again. Tonight he only wanted this, his mother’s arms and the solid stone floor beneath his feet and the simple, overwhelming relief of being alive.

It was two full days before he saw you again, two days that felt considerably longer to both of you than their number suggested.

He had taken to walking the shore each evening as the sun went down, though he offered no one an explanation for it beyond a vague murmur about wanting air, and Rhaenyra, watching her son closely for any sign of the grief she knew still sat unresolved in him, chose not to press the matter, not yet.

On the second such evening, with the light turning gold and heavy across the water at the very edge of dusk, a small shape broke the surface some distance out from where he stood. Only your eyes showed at first, wary, scanning the beach with the caution of a creature that had learned, however briefly, exactly what danger humans could pose. Once you were certain he was truly alone, no soldiers, no crossbows waiting in the shadows, you swam closer, arms full of things gathered carefully from the seafloor over the two long days you had spent working up the courage to return.

He laughed before he could help himself, disbelieving, because you had brought him what looked like a small fortune of drowned treasure: coins gone green with centuries of salt, sea glass worn to the smoothness of river stones in every colour from deep emerald to pale, milky blue, pearls still crusted faintly with the ghosts of the shells that had once held them, all of it cradled carefully against your chest as though it were the finest gift any king had ever received.

"For me?" He pressed a hand to his own chest, incredulous, and you beamed and nodded so hard your whole body shook with the force of it, tail flicking once against the shallows in what he would later come to recognise as excitement.

"I have nothing half so precious to give you in return," he said, quieter now, kneeling properly in the wet sand so that he was closer to your level, and you shook your head firmly, as if to tell him that was hardly the point of any of it, that gifts given freely required nothing given back.

He knelt at the waterline for a long while that evening and talked, filling the silence you could not, telling you his name, his House, that he was a prince of Dragonstone and heir to something called an Iron Throne that sounded, from the little he explained, far heavier a burden than any crown ought to be. Your eyes lit at the word prince, delighted, and you pointed to your own chest in turn, tapping it twice for emphasis.

"A princess, then?" he guessed, and you nodded, pleased as anything with yourself, and something in his chest that had been wound painfully tight since the moment the water closed over his head two days before finally began, slowly, to loosen.

You tried, that first proper evening, to tell him other things too, though the telling was slow and clumsy without words. You drew shapes in the wet sand with one finger, a rough sketch of a tail, of waves, of something that might have been a whale or might simply have been a very poor circle, and Jace watched with a fascination that made you strangely warm beneath your scales, guessing at your meaning and laughing softly whenever he guessed wrong, which was often.

When the moon rose high enough that you knew you had to leave, you leaned in and pressed a quick, shy kiss to his cheek, as if to tell him not to be sad any longer, that you would return, that whatever grief still lived behind his eyes need not be carried entirely alone. That Vermax lay peacefully beneath the sea. And if he had been pretty enough to catch a second glance from you even amid the chaos of a burning battlefield, well.

You had always liked pretty things, and you saw no shame in admitting it, even silently, even only to yourself.

In the days that followed, Jace found himself buried in the library far more often than seated at council, a fact that did not escape his mother's notice for long. The war, if it could even still be properly called that, had cooled in the aftermath of the battle into something closer to a wary, watchful peace, both sides circling cautiously around the idea of parley rather than open slaughter, and so Rhaenyra could afford, for the first time in longer than she cared to admit, to spend her worry on her son rather than entirely on her crown.

It was on the seventh day since his return that she finally cornered him about it, finding him hunched over a table stacked high with scrolls he had clearly been picking through for hours, Daemon lounging nearby against a bookshelf with a look of a man who had already scented an amusing story and had no intention whatsoever of leaving before he heard the whole of it.

"The one who saved me from the water," Jace admitted at last, ears burning red under his mother's steady gaze, "was a mermaid. I have been meeting her at dusk every evening since. She brings me gifts."

Silence, and then Daemon's low, delighted laugh rang out across the quiet library. "A fish," he said, "has stolen my son’s heart. Rhaenyra, did you hear that? A fish."

"She is not a fish," Jace snapped, mortified, colour flooding all the way up to the tips of his ears, and would say nothing further no matter how Daemon pressed him for details, though his ears stayed scarlet the rest of the evening and he refused, quite pointedly, to look either of them in the eye.

It was only once they were alone, Daemon finally chased off by some matter of ships needing his attention, that Rhaenyra asked, more gently now, what exactly he hoped to find buried in all those old scrolls.

He confessed it slowly, haltingly, that he was searching for some means of letting you speak properly above the water, because you listened to him so patiently each evening, tilting your head at his every word as though nothing he said could ever bore you, and he found, to his own quiet surprise, that he wanted very badly to hear your voice in return, to know what you sounded like when you laughed instead of simply seeing it in the curve of your mouth.

Something in her face softened at that, the last of the earlier sternness melting away entirely. She crossed the room and pressed a kiss to the crown of his head, something she would often do when he was but a babe and even now.

"I nearly lost you once already," she said quietly. "I do not think I would survive losing you a second time, not truly. If this girl from the sea brings you peace after everything, then that peace is worth more to me than I can properly measure. I will help you find your answer, if I am able. You have only to ask."

He thanked her, throat tight, and went to bed that night lighter than he had felt in a very long time.

By the tenth day, though, his search had turned up nothing but dust and disappointment, page after page of tidal charts and shipping records that told him everything about the sea and nothing at all about the creatures who lived beneath it, and he was scowling so fiercely at a particularly useless scroll that he did not hear Baela approach until she dropped a stack of books onto the table hard enough to make him jump nearly out of his seat.

"What have I told you about pouting, cousin? It hardly befits a prince, especially not one so recently returned from the dead."

"I am not pouting," he said, pouting.

She laughed, unbothered, and pushed the books toward him anyway, settling into the chair across from him with the satisfied air of someone bearing very good news. "Found these buried in the old archive, behind a shelf half the household seems to have forgotten existed. Scrolls on sea creatures, potions, that sort of thing, all written in the old tongue. Some of it looks to go back to Old Valyria itself, if the binding is anything to judge by. Thought they might serve you better than moping about the library like a wet cat."

His whole face changed, disappointment giving way so suddenly to hope that Baela laughed again just watching it happen. He thanked her so earnestly, gripping her hands in both of his, that she looked half embarrassed by the whole display and waved him off with a mock scowl of her own, and then he buried himself in the texts for the rest of the day and well into the night, barely stopping to eat, ink staining his fingers as he copied out passage after passage by candlelight.

The gods, it seemed, had finally decided to smile down upon him after everything, because tucked among the brittle, crumbling pages he found precisely what he had been searching for all along: an old Valyrian draught, described in cramped, faded script, said to grant a creature of the sea, mermaid or siren alike, a brief and temporary span of human legs, the magic bound to fade again once enough days had passed.

Gathering the ingredients took the better part of two more days, some of them common enough to find in any well stocked kitchen and others requiring correspondence sent quietly to a maester on the mainland who asked no questions he clearly did not wish answered, and finding an alchemist both skilled and discreet enough to brew the whole of it properly took longer still. But by the fourteenth day since the battle, Jace stood at the shoreline at dusk with a small vial clutched tight in one hand, its contents glowing faintly violet in the fading light, and his heart hammering somewhere up near his throat.

You surfaced as you always did by then, cautious first, scanning the shore out of old habit, then delighted once you saw him standing alone, swimming in swiftly with your usual haul of shells and drowned bottles clutched against your chest. He knelt at the waterline and, for once, did not simply talk about his day or ask after yours in the halting, gestured way you had both grown so used to.

He explained the potion instead, slowly, carefully, holding the vial up so you could see the strange violet light swirling within it, watching your face closely all the while for any sign that this was too much, too strange, too great a thing to ask of you.

You went very quiet. Your brow furrowed the way it always did when you turned something over carefully in your mind, weighing it from every side, and Jace, who had come to know that expression well over a fortnight of evenings spent together, made himself sit still and wait, though every part of him wanted to fill the silence with reassurance.

"It is only if you wish it," he said softly, when the silence had stretched long enough that he could not help himself any longer. "I would never have you feel forced into anything on my account, not after everything you have already given me. If you would rather not, I will understand completely, and I will still come to see you each evening, just as I have."

You studied the vial a long moment more, turning the choice over one final time, thinking of your sisters and the warnings you had grown up hearing about the dangers of the world above, of legs that were not truly yours and a voice that might vanish again the moment the magic faded.

Then you looked at him, at the earnest hope he could not quite hide no matter how he tried, and something in your face settled at last, resolve chasing out the last of the hesitation, and you nodded.

He could have wept from the sheer relief of it. He handed you the vial with hands that were not entirely steady, and you drank it down in a single determined swallow, immediately screwing your face up at the taste, which was somehow both bitter and sickly sweet beneath it, like rot dressed up in honey, and Jace laughed at the disgusted noise you made.

The change came almost at once, faster than either of you had quite expected. Your tail began to glow faintly from within, the violet light spreading through the coral pink scales, and then, slowly, the scales themselves began to dissolve and reshape, splitting and lengthening before your very eyes.

You watched it happen to your own body with something closer to wonder than fear, propping yourself up on your elbows in the shallow water to see it better. It did not hurt, not truly, only felt strange, an unfamiliar pulling and settling sensation that ran the length of what had been your tail only moments before, and then, quite suddenly, you had legs. Two of them, unfamiliar and entirely new to you, kicking weakly in the shallows as you tried, with no success at all, to make them do anything useful.

It was Jace who first remembered, with a start that nearly gave him whiplash, that you now had absolutely nothing on at all beneath the water. He spun to face the other direction so fast he nearly lost his footing on the wet sand, hurriedly unclasping his own travelling cloak and passing it back over his shoulder to you without turning around, ears burning scarlet all over again.

"Here, please, wrap this around yourself, I am so sorry, I did not think- I should have thought of it before you drank the wretched thing."

You took the cloak, bewildered by the whole strange business of clothing, and wrapped it clumsily about yourself as best you could manage with limbs that still refused to cooperate properly.

"Why," you whispered, voice thin and strange and entirely your own, and both of you went utterly, completely still.

"You spoke," Jace said, turning back around despite himself, eyes wide with wonder, all thought of modesty forgotten entirely.

"I did," you said, marvelling at the strange, thin sound of your own voice carrying through open air, so unlike the way words moved and pressed through water, lighter somehow, and stranger, but yours all the same.

He knelt properly before you then in the wet sand, something almost formal in the gesture despite how thoroughly absurd the whole moment truly was, both of them soaked and shivering and grinning like fools, and asked if he might finally know the proper name of the maiden who had pulled him back so stubbornly from death's door.

You told him. Your name, spoken aloud for the first time in your life, and that you were the seventh daughter of a house that ruled beneath the narrow sea, a true princess in every sense, just as you had claimed all along through nothing but gestures and a proud tilt of your chin.

"I know this may only last a short while," Jace said, still kneeling, still holding your hands as though he feared letting go might undo the magic.

"And I mean to keep searching, if that is what you wish, for some way to make it last longer, or even permanent. But for now, will you come and meet my family properly? They ought to see, with their own eyes, the girl who saved their prince from the bottom of the Gullet."

You tried to stand at that, eager and entirely too confident in limbs you had possessed for all of ten minutes, and discovered immediately that legs demanded a coordination and strength the sea had never once asked of you. You stumbled, pitched forward, and landed hard on your knees in the wet sand with a startled, frustrated huff.

You tried again, gripping his shoulder for balance this time, and managed perhaps three wobbling steps before your legs betrayed you a second time, sending you tumbling sideways with a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a groan of pure exasperation.

Jace, biting back a laugh of his own though it clearly threatened to escape, knelt beside you and tightened the cloak properly around your shoulders, then slid one arm behind your back and the other beneath the crook of your knees, lifting you up into his arms with far more ease than his still-recovering body should reasonably have allowed.

"I will teach you to walk properly," he promised, adjusting his grip as you settled, somewhat stiffly, against his chest, your new legs kicking experimentally against nothing at all. "Though I think that particular lesson is better suited to daylight and a rather softer patch of ground than this. Just now I have limited time before the magic fades, and I intend to make the very most of it while I can."

The jaws that dropped when Jacaerys Velaryon strode into Dragonstone’s great hall carrying a girl in his arms, salt still drying in tangled waves through her hair, wrapped in nothing but his own travelling cloak and kicking her bare feet with open, delighted fascination at the strange new sensation of having feet at all, were a sight none of the household would soon forget, and several among the kitchen staff would still be whispering about weeks later.

Baela nearly dropped the tray she was carrying. Rhaena’s mouth fell open mid sentence and simply stayed that way. You met Rhaenyra and Daemon’s twin looks of open astonishment with wide, curious eyes of your own, entirely unbothered by the attention, as though growing an entirely new pair of legs within the hour were the most ordinary thing in all the world, and gave the queen a doe eyed stare that made it very difficult indeed for anyone in that hall to remain suspicious for long.

Daemon was the first to find his voice, low and disbelieving, a slow grin spreading across his face. “Well- damn. He wasn’t kidding about the fish.”

Rhaenyra’s palm found the back of his head before he had even finished speaking, a sharp, swift smack that made him yelp and rub at the spot, wounded.

“Mind your tongue,” she warned, though there was little real heat in it, her gaze already softening as it moved from Daemon back to her son and the girl held so carefully in his arms.

In the end, there was little else for anyone present to do but believe it, however improbable the tale sounded when spoken aloud: that the lost prince of Dragonstone had indeed been pulled from the bottom of the sea by a little mermaid, and that she, in turn, without quite meaning for it to happen at all, had followed him all the way home.

Not of noble birth and yet very much acknowledged as such through the friendship you shared with the oldest children of Daemon Targaryen, Baela and Rhaena.

Your mother, a maid within the service of house Velaryon, your father a man unknown to you and a bond forged with those two girls so tight they had refused to leave you behind in Driftmark once they moved their home to Dragonstone.

You followed the across the Narrow Sea not as a lady with title and nether as a servant bound to the by duty. You followed as a friend, as someone to confide in when war and battle grew to big for them.

Though you held no claim to dragon or throne, not that you craved either, no one on Dragonstone thought it strange to find you at Baela’s side or with Rhaena’s hand hooked through your arm as the three of you wandered the halls.

Over the years you had become a familiar face within the castle as the cold stone itself, earning warm smiles from guards and servants alike and the occasional teasing remark from Prince Daemon, who insisted his daughters had adopted you long ago. As if he himself hasn’t started seeing you as someone to care for just as he did for his daugters.

The prince consort has never said it aloud, his brash character often off-putting and fear inducing, yet somehow there were little things that contradicted this entirely just like when it came to Baela and Rhaena.

He never asked whether you had eaten, yet somehow an extra place was always set whenever he knew you would return late with his daughters.

If training in the yard left bruises blooming across your arms, a jar of salve would mysteriously find its way to your chambers before nightfall without a servant ever admitting who had sent it.

When the sea winds bit too sharply atop Dragonstone's cliffs, Daemon would grumble at the three of you to "either come inside or freeze together," pretending his irritation had nothing to do with concern.

It was never spoken of, but everyone in the castle understood that any slight against you would be treated as a slight against House Targaryen itself. And for a girl born with neither silver hair nor noble name that was more you should ever be allowed to ask for.

Even the youngest princes, sweet and blissfully innocent, had taken to you like a moth to a flame. Joffery, Aegon and Viserys each demanding to be played with and told a story before bed whenever they had the chance to do so.

Lucerys, grown as he was and seeking the acknowledgement of his mother, still came to you as the young boy he still was. Lingering on the side, pretending he wasn’t as interested in the stories his little brothers greatly exaggerated until you quietly shuffled your skirts around to make space or listen to him talk to you about Arrax and how well he grew.

And then there was Jacaerys, Jace, the only one you willingly called by his nickname and the only one you felt truly comfortable enough to lower your walls of polite respect for the noble family. Then one who as heir to the iron throne should be the one you should be the most distant with and yet there was this unspoken understanding that both of you were allowed to simply be with the other.

IT was in those moments where no judgmental eyes of the court and council where you saw the oldest prince clearly. Not as an heir that was being shaped into the future of the 7 kingdoms, but as a boy that laughed at the silliest of jokes.

When duty weighed heavy on his shoulders, he’d come to you. Sometimes in the dark of night when nobody saw him walk to your chambers, sometimes when you were hiding out in the fields far above the sea. Until he was able to breath again.

In return, you never asked about what it was that had him feeling so frayed, simply listening, offering an ear that was not meant to tear down every thought the prince voiced out in front of the council.

And though neither of you were aware, both of you instinctually looked for the other first in a crowded room.

Jacaerys didn’t have time to himself very often. Not with the prying eyes of the court tracking every movement of his and his mother not allowing him to fight on dragon back as she did Baela or Rhaenys.

It frustrated him, making him feel useless and like a boy being scolded more then a prince wanting to fight for his queens claim to the throne.

Frowning, he left his mother and the lords behind once it was clear that he was no longer needed. Baela walked out just a little before he had, most likely already on her way to the dragonpit to mount Moondancer and Rhaena had left for Driftmark the day before. That only left Luke or you, and honestly, he’d rather go make his search for you then suffer of his brothers brooding.

His feet carried him through winding corridors almost without thought, guided by habit until he reached the sun-warmed terrace overlooking the sea from where he found you exactly as he’d hoped. Seated upon the ancient stone wall with your skirts carelessly bundled up so you could properly climb the stone without getting caught in the fabric of them.

As unbecoming as it was for a lady and as much as Jacaerys knew your own mother would scold you, he didn’t mind your little show of skin in the slightest. Gentleman as he was he of course didn’t look, but he really also didn’t care as long as you felt comfortable.

Yu looked up at the sound of his approaching footsteps, and before a single word was spoken, the tightness in his chest eased ever so slightly at the immediate smile spreading over your face.

“Now why do’s our noble prince look like someone has spat into his dinner?” you grinned, causing a quite laugh to leave his lips.

Leaning his forearms on the worn stone beside you the prince let his eyes trail over your face, the carefree teasing causing his heart to flutter as though he was flying with Vermax through the skies. “I’d prefer that to being stuck here and having to watch my cousin fly out.”

You hummed softly, turning your gaze back toward the endless stretch of dark water below. “Then perhaps Her Grace keeps you here because she knows Dragonstone would lose two dragons if you flew off after them the moment her back was turned.”

Jacaerys let out a long sigh, though the corner of his mouth betrayed him as it twitched upward. “You always have a way of making me sound unreasonable.”

“I don’t make you sound anything, Jace,” you replied with a playful nudge of your shoulder against his. “You usually manage that all by yourself.”

“Is that how you want to talk to your future king, my lady?”

You tilt your head at him unbothered, the wind tugging at your dress. “If my future king keeps sulking like a kicked hatchling, then yes, I think ixll risk it.” You say, eyes glinting with mischief.

Jacaerys lets out a short, incredulous breath though it breaks halfway into something softer as he shakes his head at you.

“I am not sulking,” he mutters, but the way he drops down beside you fully, shoulder pressing lightly against yours, tells a very different tale.

After a moment of silence, he adds quieter, almost reluctant, “I just… hate being left behind.”

Feeling bad for the prince you let your hand rest on his, squeezing gently to comfort you refused to look at him, wanting to prevent a scandal caused by an innocent touch.

“You know why she does it, and you know why the small council says it too. Jace, you aren’t just the son of your mother, you are heir to the throne! They are trying to keep you alive and not lose you to a reckless act of pride that might cost us your live,” you explained, understanding where the hesitancy to let him act came from more then he did. “I wouldn’t want to live knowing I have lost you.”

The last part was quieter in volume but loud in meaning and it had him look at you again. He opened his mouth to reply and got cut of by the load shriek coming from above as Vermax had found his rider sitting outside.

A thought struck the prince.

“Fly with me?”

Your head whipped around quickly, face falling a bit as the request registered within you.

“You are jesting, are you not?”

“Do you not trust me?” he shot back in an instant.

Shaking your head with wide eyes you jumped of your seat on the stones, skirt falling properly as layers on fabric returned to cover you once again.

“It is not a matter of trusting you, but Jacaerys, Vermax is going to eat me before I can even get close enough to touch the saddle!”

Jacaerys knew that Vermax would not harm a single strand of hair on your head as the dragon had taken a liking to you with the years that he rarely did with others.

Yes, his dragon was said to be ill-tempered and yes, more than one dragonkeeper had been on the receiving end of said temper over time but, you? You had been a different story. Always had been ever since you had arrived on dragonstone at two and ten and you had followed Baela right into the dragonpit.

You had stayed back, held your distance as you knew dragons were only really inclined to your riders and that just because Moondancer tolerated through association with her rider, the other bests would not be bothered if they set you on fire out of a mood.

Arrax had been small, not yet as much of a danger at that time, Vermax however had already been the size of a small horse and very capable of doing damage far greater then Luke’s dragon. And yet somehow, the green beast had only clicked and shook his scales , even going as far as to ignore the young boy Jace had still been then to investigate the newcomer.

Jacaery would keep the secret of why his dragon was so tolerating of you until the day he either died, or he somehow managed to convince his mother to betroth him to you.

“He would not. I would not let him harm you, I promise that.”

His voice softened as he stepped closer, the bravado slipping just enough to reveal the certainty beneath it.

You searched his face for any hint of doubt and found none, only quiet unwavering trust in the green beast.

With a reluctant breath, you finally nodded, letting him take your hand as he guided you down from the terrace and toward the distant roar of the dragonpit.

As if he had felt it the dragon came flying, settling low even as he saw you. His prying eyes not leaving you as Vermax watched his rider keep you close.

“Jace I’m not sure if—” you began, fear making your eyes shake and nearly cling to the princes arm the closetr you got.

Jacaerys only smiled, laying a reassuring hand over yours where it gripped his sleeve.

“Look at me, not him,” he murmured, waiting patiently until your frightened gaze left Vermax’s golden eyes to meet his own.

“You trust me when I ask you to listen, do you not?” he asked softly and when you gave the smallest nod, his smile widened. “Then trust that Vermax knows the difference between a stranger and someone his rider…” he hesitated for the briefest heartbeat, “…someone his rider cherishes.”

Vermax let out a low rumble that vibrated through the very stones under you before, to your utter surprise, lowering his enormous head until his snout hovered only a few feet away from you.

You stood frozen and not daring to breathe much as the warm dragon breath almost seemed to caress your face, smelling of smoke, ash and something you didn’t want to know while the great beast merely blinked at you with as much curiosity as you did. The fact that his teeth were mere handwidths away from your face di not seem to settle yet.

“See?” Jacaerys whispered beside you, unable to hide the pride softening his face as he watched his dragon all but demand your attention. “If he wished to frighten you away, we would both know it by now.”

Very reassuring, you thought.

With trembling fingers you slowly reached forward, expecting at any moment for the illusion of safety to shatter, yet Vermax only leaned into the hesitant touch against the warm scales his head, releasing a pleased croon that made the dragonkeepers nearby stop and stare in open disbelief.

Jacaerys smiled brightly because neither you nor anyone else could have known that Vermax had just accepted the girl his rider had long ago given his heart to.

“Not so bad, isn’t it?" He asked, the answer already knowing when you turned to look at him with wonder.

The prince let go off you, climbing up into the saddle fastened to Vermax’s back and held out his hand for you to take.

With shaking fingers you climbed up and settled behind him, feeling Jacaerys breath falter when your arms wrapped tightly around his waist.

The moment Vermax’s wings spread, the entire world seemed to drop away beneath you as the great beast launched into the air with a powerful beat that stole the breath from your lungs.

You clung tighter to Jacaerys instinctively, feeling the steady rise and fall of his breathing as he guided Vermax smoothly out of the pit and over the black waters of the Narrow Sea.

Wind tore at you, but instead of fear like before there was only… freedom.

Jacaerys turned just slightly in the saddle, his hand finding yours where held on tight, lacing your fingers together without a word as if it had always been the most natural thing in the world.

He listened to your laugh that you couldn’t hold back, relishibg in the moment of closeness and intimacy he knew he had craved for a while now.

• By morning, you almost always wake up tangled together, finding him clinging to you as though you were a part of his own skin. But sometimes he has to leave before sunrise for missions that seem to take the life out of him and on those mornings, you wake to find his side of the bed completely empty, the sheets already cold. And no matter how used to it you should be by now, it still disappoints you every single time —more than you are willing to admit.

• honestly you know everything with Leon comes with his job, and you really dont want to be a selfish brat, asking for more, or be a burden to him , already knowing that Leon does everything in his power to balance the work life and one with you: though it doesn't make it any easier for you and your poor heart — and you can't help but secretly pray for days he finally retires, so you could spend each and every single day with him.

• Spending mornings with your husband, isn't as constant as you'd like, but somehow, you still find yourself looking forward to every single one — the quiet mornings where he's beside you, holding you close, as if the rest of the world ceased to exist around you both.

• That aside, you love the mundane mornings with Leon. After all they're your favorite — not just favourite but your everything. And the quiet ones too, where the world hasn't quite woken up yet, and he's completely still in your arms, while you just smile taking in his bare and vulnerable form: in your gaze and play absentmindedly with his hairs while he buries himself closer to you, and the only sound he makes being the occasional sharp breath as he holds you just a little tighter, and even in sleep he refuses to let you go.

• Your arms lazily caressed his bare back, your fingertips absentmindedly tracing the letters of your name against his skin while you simply lay there, looking at him, somehow falling even harder for him with every passing day. Without thinking, the words slipped past your lips, quiet enough that they almost disappeared into the silence. "Even if the world ceases to exist... I hope we can still be together." Your eyes burned with hushed tears as you continued to mumble incoherent little wishes that only made sense to you. "I wish today never ends, and tomorrow never comes... that we stay frozen here, like two birds who refused to fly away from the veil of love."

• Your husband Leon loves morning kisses and no matter how stinky you both are he loves it, because somehow it is uniquely yours, your musk is something that runs in him like a primal instinct which he can't help but breathe in.

• Leon mostly sleeps naked beside you, because he says he likes to 'feel free in his sleep' and not be bound by anything external— okay maybe the true reason is he loves to fuck you wildly, first thing in the morning, no matter how tired you both are night before, or even if you didnt sleep an eye, he had make sure next morning he shows you again, how extremely beautiful you are and how much he loves you.

• Leon is definitely a light sleeper if you are not beside him. But if you are, it's almost always you who wakes up first, leaving you to admire your Greek god of a husband while he sleeps peacefully beside you. Though on the rare mornings when Leon wakes up first, he never gets out of bed immediately. Instead, he simply lies there, quietly staring at you, noticing and observing every little thing you do in your sleep. By now, he has mapped every tiny sound you make while you're deeply asleep, every little habit you've never even realized you have.

• The way your hand lazily drapes across his arms as he faces you, the way one of your legs always finds its place over his hipbone without fail. He traces your features with his eyes alone— your closed eyelids, your lips, your cheeks as though he's committing them to memory all over again.

• Then, so gently, he tucks a loose strand of hair behind your ear before quietly murmuring, "Gorgeous." He loves waking up to find you tangled all over him in the mornings, something he never thought he'd get to experience. And somehow, seeing it play out day after day never loses its magic. It simply finds its way deeper into his heart, warming every part of it.

• Leon loves to have morning sex with you and by now its almost like a ritual to him and without it he can't seen to function at all.

• His morning voice is something that makes your pussy clench around nothing but need of his cock, you always get shocked how easily turned on you get, with nothing but his voice, but you also love how deep and husky his voice in the morning, and it gets the strained edges at his words carry when he sleepily mumble, "morning princess," and you just moan in response, while kissing his forehead gently, "morning, baby", and he just easily unclasps your bra, while slowly playing with your hardened peaks, and you chuckles breathlessly, "how do you always have this much stamina?!" making you shudder all over again, "because I love you and need you.", he says desperately, and a low chuckles rumbles in his chest which vibrates against your whole body, and you just nod in response almost frantic, because god forbid you want him desperately too, and its the only, permission he needs.

• when Leon has days off he spend most day in bed with you by fucking you or just holding you against him.

• he usually wakes you up by tracing circles over your lower back and when you do wake up: he doesn't wait for you to settle anymore instead he pulls you on top of his thighs while his erected cock slaps against the crease of your ass, making you shriek in giggles and soon before you know it, he is rubbing your clit, with immense pressure, while you just sleepily moan, feeling the pressure of — pleasure building in your core and lower belly, then he just looks up at you while laying flat on his back as you straddle either side of his thighs and your knees presses in the mattress beneath you, and Leon mutters huskily, sliding his hands up until he is palming your breasts and kneading them gently with his calloused palms, "i need you to ride me, fuck--", you just breathe still half-asleep and shift your weight and hover over his tip, "sit down, darling", he commands, but doesnt wait for you to respond instead he grabs your waist, and pulls you down onto his cock, and your back arches off while you gasp his name like a prayer, 'you are so deep baby', you manage, because if anything you have never felt this way, this loved, this desired, and all of it is happening while your husband remained pussy-drunk, is the best thing that has happened to you, and soon you found yourself cursing in languages you didnt even know, as he hits the right spot in one push inside your core, "leon-- god", and he grunts, "thats right baby, i am your god", then he digs his fingers tightly in your hips bruising your skin, until he is rubbing the ridge of your g-spot, and you close your eyes everytime, he thrust his hips upward from the bed and slams into you, making your wall spasm around him, and you feel your pussy remembering each and one of his veins that are running alongside his cock and he moans your name, while your head falls back and you hold his pecs to support yourself, and he just smiles crinkling his eyes, before slamming few more thrusts and rubbing your clit until you are a dump for his cum, and when you are both done at the same time he lets you ride your high and you feel him spurting his seed deep into your womb, until your guts are marked by his semen, and the room is filled by the obscene sounds and words.

• He loves to finger fuck you awake every morning, and if you were to tell the truth you love finding him breathing into the crook of your neck while he lays beside you and his fingers remains curled inside your cunt, as he hooks them under the right spot, while holding you close to him, not caring his erect cock lined up to crease of your ass, and you feel your wetness drip all over his hand, while his other hand plays with your nipples pulling and rolling them between his fingers, though you never complained to him, because who in the right mind would, because waking up like this was one of your favourite moments.

• Some nights, he falls asleep still buried inside you, his cock nestled deep in your cunt. And in the morning, when the orange light filters through the curtains, you feel him stir— first as a twitch, then a slow, deliberate roll of his hips, circling, searching, until he finds that right spot, the one you could never quite reach yourself. And you feel him throb and getting even harder, as his cock stretches your walls and his length fills you completely, owning every inch of your cunt.

• Your eyes flutter open, heavy with sleep and sudden arousal of the feeling of his cock in you, and the words slip out of you in a voice you barely recognize as yours, raspy and needy, "Morning to you too, baby." He just chuckles, the sound vibrating through his chest against your flushed back. "Missed you," he murmurs, and begins to move in an earnest way. But soon, as you let him push deeper, instinct inside you takes over, and without a thought, you spread your legs wider, and folding them back to rest over his thighs, opening yourself completely to give him an easy access. Then he grunts as he knows what you did, breathing and cooing into your neck, 'while breathing thank you darling,' then he sinks deeper at the new angle, filling you until you feel the pulse of him against your cervix, and then his hand drifts lower, finding your clit with precised accuracy, and his fingers pinch, roll, and rubbing your engorged nub— and your nerves explode like live wires under his touch, sparking pleasure through your half-awake body in violent, beautiful waves, while he erupts his seed into you. And yeah. That was another favorite way to wake up.

• Some mornings, when you wake up, Leon asks you to walk on his back to massage his sore muscles with your feet. You happily oblige, carefully stepping across his back while he lets out quiet groans of relief. And once you're done, he always thanks you in his 'own' way, by that you mean he fucks you into a coma to show his gratitude.

• Every night before going to bed, Leon makes it a habit to lock the bedroom door so your kids can't come barging in without knocking and accidentally find the two of you like... this. According to him, he's simply saving them from future trauma. Honestly, you can't even argue with that — because what can you even say, Leon has always been a smart man.

• though he hates some mornings. When he's buried deep inside you, your hips locked together in that perfect, lazy rhythm, and then a knock comes, small fists banging against wood, high voices calling "Mommy? Daddy?", and you both freeze, suspended in that agonizing space between pleasure and responsibility, and soon you both just chuckle shaking your head, and say simultaneously, "coming, baby." Then he pulls his cock out of you with a wet, filthy sound, his cock leaving you empty and aching, while you still throb and his member glistening and hard against his stomach. You watch his jaw tighten, the muscle jumping there as he suppresses a groan of pure frustration.

• then both of you scramble away from each other and he yanks up his boxers that do nothing to hide his arousal, so he wears his pants too, and you pull the sheets up to your chest as if the cotton could erase the flush on your skin.

• after that parent mode switched on like a flashlight and then other soft voices and cereal bowls and finding lost shoes, fills the air, though the unspoken ache between you and Leon humms like a live wire.

• But after, the backpacks are hoisted, and you send them over to the bus, Leon clicks the door shut with a finality that breaks the spell.

• He turns to you in the sudden silence, his eyes dark, and your gaze lower , towards his pants that he already lowered, and then he removes them altogether, before stepping towards you, "Quick," he growls, and he doesnt wait instead he is already backing you against the kitchen counter, lifting your nightgown, finding you still wet from before. "Need to fill you before I leave" and you just nod in agreement and he sinks his cock back in where he left off, desperately chasing the interruption away with every sharp thrust until you're both breathing with need of each other. Then in another few more thrusts he has you clenching around him while you milk every drop of his cum. Yeah. He really fucking hates those mornings. But he always likes the latter.

• some mornings he sleeps on your stomach and you wake up to find him holding your waist while he clings to you like stars in the night sky.

• Some mornings, you wake not to light, but to sensation of a rhythmic pulsing between your legs, wet that pulls you from sleep like a tide. And your eyes flutter open to the sight of him there, nestled between your thighs, his mouth working your cunt with devoted precision.

• You groan, still half-drowned in dreams, and your hands find his hair, gripping them and you buck your hips upward to give him better access, then you press yourself harder against his tongue. He hums against you, the vibration sending electric shocks inside your cunt, and slowly he starts sucks your clit into his mouth, vacuuming, it until you are crying out in pleasure, while his fingers soon find its way and curl inside your hole, seeking that spot, finally he finds that spongy bud inside. The one that makes your vision blur and you gasp his name, "Go deeper," you pant, and he obeys hungrily, groaning against your folds while fucking you with his fingers , while his tongue never stops its assault on your nub. Your orgasm builds like a storm, your thighs trembles around his head, hips stuttering, until you're clenching around his mouth — and spilling your juices onto his tongue in shuddering waves. He licks every drop you give him unhurriedly, not stopping until you've finished twitching beneath him. Then slowly with a satisfied sound, he moves upward, crawling over your body, and his mouth finds yours, and you moan into the kiss, tasting yourself on his lips, your arousal mingling between your tongues. Then he pulls back just enough to smirk, eyes dark with satisfaction. "This dessert," he murmurs then he leans down pressing his head onto your chest while giving your cunt a little slap, making you twitch out of your body, "I could eat all day." And God help you— your pussy throbs all over again, already hungry, at the sound of his voice.

• and just like that, waking up beside Leon becomes something far too special, and you find yourself engraving every quiet, sweet, and intimate moment deep into the memory of your soul —something you'll carry with you even to the grave.

He knew it was a sick habit. A twisted ritual. He liked to look at the stone that read Jason Peter Todd. It reminded him of who he used to be before the coffin, before the dirt, before the green madness broke him and put him back together into something unrecognizable. Nobody expects anything from a dead body, and he liked the quiet of it.

But as he walked across the tree line of weeping willows, he froze. His hand instinctively reached out to the holster at his thigh, his posture locking into a defensive stance.

Someone was there.

Through the lenses of his helmet, he could see a silhouette huddled on the damp grass, curled tightly against the base of the headstone. Their shoulders were shivering, trembling beneath a dark coat, their knees pulled to their chest.

Jason stepped back into the shadow of a massive tree, adjusting the setting on his helmet, zooming in.

It was you.

The air left his lungs in a sudden, painful rush. His heart slammed against his rib, a frantic thumping that made the wound on his side throb. You. Of all the people in Gotham, you were the last person he expected to see here. You were the civilian friend he met at a library downtown back when he was a scrawny Robin, the one person who didn't know about the capes, the masks or the billionaire adoptive father. To you, he had just been Jason. Jay. The boy with the ink stained fingers who quoted poetry and stole half your fries.

He watched, completely paralyzed, as you reached out and laid a trembling hand against the cold granite headstone.

You didn't bring flowers. You knew he hated them, said they smelled like funerals. Instead, you brought two items on the grass. A cheap, worn out copy of The picture of Dorian Gray, its spine creased from multiple readings, and a crinkled candy bar; the specific, sugary brand he used to shoplift from the store when he was a kid.

Jason's throat went dry. The helmet suddenly felt suffocatingly hot. You remembered.

"Hey, Jay," You whispered. Your voice felt strange to you, like it wasn't yours. It was cracked with a raw, agonizing grief that cut through the silence of the cemetery like a blade. "Happy birthday. Or... Whatever today is. I lost track."

Jason closed his eyes inside his helmet. It was his birthday. He'd completely forgotten.

"I bought the book you didn't get to finish," You continued, a pathetic little laugh escaped your lips. "The library was going to charge me a late fee anyway, so... I figured you could keep it." You patted the paperback. "I still haven't finished the last chapter. I keep waiting for you to tell me how it ends."

You stared at Jason's full name written across the granite until you vision became blurry, and tears started to drop on your cheeks.

"Everyone else moved on," You murmured, your voice dropping into something so heavy with loneliness and grief it made Jason want to tear his armor off just so he could breathe. "Bruce Wayne bought a new building downtown in your name. The news called you a 'tragic loss' for a week and then moved on to the next headline. But they didn't know you. They didn't know how you used to get so mad when people bent the pages of books. They didn't know how you laughed at bad jokes."

You pulled your knees tighter to your chest, burying your face in your sleeves. "I miss you so much, Jay. It's been years, and I still don't know how to move on. I still look for you in every crowd. And I still expect to see you sitting on my fire escape reading my favorite book, wearing your favorite leather jacket that got soaking wet from the rain." You smiled in a failed attempt to mask the sadness in your voice. "A part of me died in that explosion with you. And I don't think I'm ever getting it back."

Jason stood in the shadows, listening to you mourn the boy whose living body is currently closer to you than you could ever imagine. He listened to you mourn the boy he used to be.

Every instinct in his body screamed at him to step forward. He wanted to walk over to you, rip his helmet off, dropp to his knees in the mud and wrap his arms around you. He wanted to tell you that he wasn't gone. That he was right here. That he remebered the fire escape, and your favorite book, and the way you used to smile when he read out loud to you.

However, his feet felt so heavy, like they were buried deep in cement. He looked at the bruised knuckles of his hands, stained with the blood of the criminals he'd beaten half to death an hour ago. He looked at the guns strapped to his thighs. And he certainly didn't forget about the heavy metallic helmet reflecting the graveyard fog.

The green sparks of the Lazarus Pit flickered across his mind, brutally reminding him of what he became. He wasn't the boy who read Jane Austen and Oscar Wilde in the library anymore. That Jason had died at the hands of Joker. What crawled back from the grave was a weapon. A killer. A wraith consumed by vengeance. He was Red Hood.

If he stepped out now, if he showed you this terrifying version of himself, he wouldn't be saving you from the grief that's killing you. He would be destroying the one pure, beautiful memory you had left. He would turn the grief into horror, forcing you to realize that the sweet boy you loved had been turned into a monster.

The realization shattered something deep inside his chest, a pain that's far worse than any crowbar or bomb. He had to let you keep crying in front of an empty grave, because the reality of his survival would kill you.

After twenty minutes, he was still standing there perfectly still, acting as a silent guard while you wept. He anchored himself to the sound of your breathing, letting your voice wash over him, memorizing the rythm of it. And for a few minutes, surrounded by death, he felt alive just because he was near you.

When the rain began to fall harder, you stood up slowly, your limbs stiff from the cold. You leaned down pressing your hand at the top of the headstone one last time.

"Goodbye, Jason," You wispered. "I love you."

Jason waited until you disappeared into the mist, until the sound of your footsteps completely faded away. He waited until he was absolutely certain you were outside the cemetery gates.

Only then did Red Hood step out of the shadows. He walked over to his grave, his boots sinking into the mud where you had just been standing. And as he dropped to his knees, the cold mud soaked through his pants, but he didn't care. He just reached out with a trembling hand and picked up the book you left for him. When he flipped it open, he saw your neat familiar handwriting, your name.

Jason, for the first time that night, pulled off his red helmet, letting the rain soak his dark hair, plastering it to his forehead.

He pressed the damp book against his chest, closing his teary eyes tight.

"I'm sorry," He choked out, his voice breaking. "I'm so sorry."

Jacaerys felt the bite of the arrows like a brand, pulsing like another denominator of what was to come, to swallow him whole. One in his neck, one near his heart, and others in places he couldn’t name, but remembered your hands and mouth touching countless times before.

The Gods were cruel to punish him right where your sweetness had been, where your love had touched and imprinted itself onto him, now stained by sharp steel and blood.

He hopes you’ll have it in your heart to forgive him, for he cannot do so for himself. The more the world feels like a distant memory, the more his heart aches, its beating slowing, as if trying to mimic the syllables of your name one last time before it inevitably stops. One last call out to you, willing to see if you would answer, even if he knows that to be impossible.

Would you cry, he wonders, as if he doesn’t already know the answer. Would you curse him? Would you hate him? Would you damn every moment you’ve spent together, turning it into poison and ash?

Jacaerys would not fault you if you did, but his chest feels hollow at the prospect of causing such vile emotions to bloom in your tender heart, most of all towards him.

You are his most precious jewel, and losing his life is one thing, but knowing that means losing you as well? It tears at him more than those arrows have.

He thinks of his mother, who was so delighted knowing he had found someone to love, and someone to be loved by in return, truthfully and wholeheartedly. You two were meant to have a Valyrian wedding in a few moons, as it is custom, and he had been ardently awaiting to see how beautiful you would look in traditional garments. Trying to imagine it now, just as he had many times before, feels like another arrow aimed straight at his heart, plunging deep. Now, he will never get to teach you how to recite the vows in High Valyrian, won’t get to see the sparkle of joy in your eyes when you’re face to face, exchanging them, binding your destinies together for all eternity, even in death.

Death. Jacaerys supposes that if he dies without binding his soul to yours before his ancestors, he won’t have any pieces of himself that he knows will certainly be kept in the sanctity of your heart.

But maybe it is better this way, for you will not have to carry such a heavy burden ensnared in the crevices of your chest, reminding you of all you’ve lost; of all he’s made you lose.

It might seem callous of him to think so, but the thought of you mourning him brings warmth to his veins, even through the chill of the sea. Knowing you have loved him enough to let tears fall from those pretty eyes of yours makes the inevitable hurt a little less.

Someone had cared for him and felt strongly enough to weep at his departure. That, in itself, is a gift. One of the many you had given him. You yourself have been the greatest one, blessing his days and easing his worries with nothing but a look, a word, a kiss. It had come like breathing to you, and he had never felt like he was out of air until now.

The sea is seldom merciful, and no matter how much he tries to beg the Gods to spare him, Jacaerys knows this time it might be in vain.

But how can he not beg? How can he not plead? If not with his voice, then with the remaining beatings of his heart, with the last vestiges of the memories he has of you.

He wishes he would’ve said I love you more often, for it seems like he had been scarce in his vocalization of it. Now, every day doesn’t feel like enough, because no matter how hard he tries, his throat is clogged with water and the words he means to say, if only for the last time. He would’ve hoped it enough to ease the grievances he knows you would feel upon hearing of his demise.

Jacaerys wonders if you would eventually surrender yourself to another. If there would come a day where another man would sweep you off your feet, chipping away at all the parts of Jace burrowed deep in your flesh and blood. The thought makes him want to weep. You forgetting him, replacing the memories you have of him with those of another, as if painting anew on an old canvas one has no use of anymore.

If his promise would’ve rung true, Jace would be by your side now, celebrating the victory at the Gullet, hugging his mother, then you so tight it would’ve knocked the air out of you both. He would’ve twirled you around while laughing, leaning in to press a multitude of kisses onto every patch of skin he could reach, knowing it’ll make you laugh, cheeks flushed, looking at him like he’s your whole world.

May that be the last thing he wishes for before the sea takes him. May your face be the last thing on his mind before there is nothing but darkness, engulfing every bit of light that was you. May he always remember you, even when buried beneath the sea and the sand, wishing for nothing than to hear your voice saying his name one last time, your gaze softening upon looking at him, and maybe, if the Gods allow him one last mercy, the feel of your soft lips upon his own.

He knows he is not worthy, for if he were, Jacaerys would’ve held onto his promise to come back to you, to his mother, to the Realm. But he couldn’t. The Gods were ever cruel and took from him the very essence of his being, cursed to wait for his impending doom.

And wait, he had. Was it another punishment to still feel like he was hanging on but never sinking deep enough? To will him to replay every single memory of you and imagine thousands of others? To feel so close but so far away from the object of all his affections and desires?

Jacaerys would know you anywhere, he thinks. Even blind, hard of hearing, or sinking into nothingness, he would not fail to know you are close.

So why does it feel like you are? Is this another cruel trick before the ancestors welcome him to them? He swears he can feel the soft lilt of your voice somewhere in his vicinity, and it makes him want to move, to lean towards it and taste it. Make sure it’s real.

Please let it be real. To the Old Gods and the New, let it be real. Don’t dangle such hope in front of him only to take it away, for it would feel like getting speared with arrows again and again and—

“I shall watch him,” your voice sounded, just as sweet and lovely as he remembered, but also tired, croaky at the edges. What had happened? Why were you — “You need rest, my queen. Let me, for now.”

My Queen? Mother?

The sounds were a bit muted, but he could hear footsteps, then the creaking hinges of a door, followed by a thud.

A long, hitched sigh followed, the one people do when they try not to let it show they were hurting, right before the tears inevitably fall.

Were you crying? He couldn’t bear when you were. That pretty face he loved so much, marred by tears, undid him every time.

Jacaerys had to see, had to make sure you were okay, that nothing had befallen you too, that the Gods had been merciful to an angel such as you.

He was struggling. His body was not responding the way it should, barely able to feel his hands and feet properly. But that didn’t matter now, for he only needed his eyes to will open so he could glimpse you, even if it was all a cruel fiction of his imagination, probably allowing him one more wish before taking him to the depths forever.

Please.

Please let him see his wife. His lady. His love.

Please.

One last time is all he asks.

If the Gods had ever looked down upon him and smiled, let them look down and smile once more. Grant him this one mercy. Just this once. Only this once.

He knows he’s begging, but what is there to do other than implore with all the strength left in him for one last look at you? In case he is to meet his end soon, let the sight of you be what he goes down feasting upon.

Blessed be The Mother, for I beg for one last mercy, for I shall gaze upon the one I hold most dear before my death and meet my end with a settled heart—

Jacaerys wonders if you are wearing one of your soft gowns, the ones he loves most, for you look like a Fae from the library tomes you so love. Would you still wear the necklace he had given you, or have you thrown it away in a fit of grief and anger because of his recklessness? He wouldn’t fault you for it. Just wished he could give you another to atone for his many sins, for how much sorrow he must’ve brought you.

But he is wrong.

You are wearing the pendant. Your fingers are wrapped around it, settled at the base of your throat, holding so tight your hand shakes, lips pressed to it, murmuring to yourself, eyes closed in prayer.

Are you praying for him to come back to you, just as he was? The thought makes warmth bloom beneath his ribs, licking upwards towards his chest, weaving until it finds his heart, willing it to beat faster. Even so close to dying, he supposes, you still manage to affect him just the same.

If this is but a dream, he hopes he never wakes up. Because standing here, looking at you, just as beautiful as the day he lost you, brings him more peace than any prayer he could’ve uttered. You are so pretty. His pretty girl. Always, always so very pretty. Even now, looking worn out, expression pinched, and hands shaking.

He wants to see your eyes, at least once, before he can't do so again.

"M-may you look at me, my love? For I want to—"

Jacaerys is startled from finishing his sentence by the loud gasp you let out, body jumping beside him, startled and alert, like a doe sensing hunters on its tail. Your eyes are so, so wide with disbelief, watching him with the sort of bewilderment one would when seeing a creature unknown or some oddity come to life. Why were you looking at him like that? If this were but a dream, then why—

"Jace," you whisper, shaky and soft, like a petal swept by the wind, hands trembling so hard the pendant slips through your fingers. "Jace," he hears you repeat, as if the sound of his name in your mouth is something foreign you have to taste again. "Gods, Jace!" Your voice cracks along the syllables of his name, before moving closer, gazing at him with those pretty eyes he near plead to see, now teary and wide, sweeping over him as if checking to see if he's whole. He knows he isn't, for the battle must've left him with more than grievances and a hollowness in his chest that could only be filled if he still had a chance to live.

Your movements are shaky and hesitant, wanting to reach for him but shackled by a fear he does not know yet. Why won't you touch him? He can tell you want nothing more than to feel him beneath your palms, and yet you waver. Why? If this is to be the last mercy before his death, why is he imagining his beloved faltering instead of pressing close, so close and grasping at him like the air one needs to breathe?

Jacaerys tries to lift a hand, grimacing when his body again does not count him as its master, and makes it hard to move properly, feeling a sharp pain lance through his forearm, pulling a hiss from between his teeth. One to which you react instantly, shaking your head as you plead with him not to move, cradling his hand between both of yours, letting Jace feel the softness of your skin again. "No, no, my love, do not move," you sniffle, blinking back those stubborn tears lining your pretty eyelashes. "Please, you must rest. The Maesters said you are not to tire yourself any further."

The Maesters? What ever could you mean?

Blinking his eyes rapidly to dwindle the fog clinging to his vision, Jacaerys's breath catches when your own room comes into view, surrounding both of you. He supposes his imagination could not help but want to remember you in the place where you felt most at ease, the one where you shared your first kiss, first bedding, and many, many other milestones that now feel like a vice around his heart, squeezing tight. Will this be the last time he gets to pine for what once was and for what could never be again?

"H-how do you feel?" Your voice shakes again, snapping him out of his reverie, gaze finding its way back to yours, feeling himself melt just at the sight of you anew. Gods, you couldn't be more gorgeous. "You had been asleep for half of a fortnight. We didn't know if you would ever wake—"

And oh, his heart shatters into pieces when your words trail off into hiccuped sobs, soft chin wobbling, not being able to hold the weight of your grief and sorrow. His sweet wife was crying beside him because of his own foolishness, and there was no punishment severe enough for his transgressions. He could be put to the sword, and it would never erase the guilt in his chest at making you shed even a tear.

It takes him but a few moments to rear his mind from blame to the words you spoke, eyes widening in bewilderment as he registers the information you bestowed upon him. "Asleep?"

His voice is rough and unpolished from disuse, and he's watching you like you brought both salvation and perdition to his door.

But you only nod, squeezing his hand tighter, bringing it up to your mouth to press warm lips upon his skin, feverish and lingering, before cradling the back of his hand against your tear-streaked, warm cheek. "Yes, my love," you confirm, tone lightening with pure relief. "The Gods were watching over you, breathing life into you anew, just like we prayed for."

Breathing life back into you.

Does that mean—

But he cannot hope yet. What if this is nothing but another trickery? The cruelest way to tear his heart asunder by making him believe he escaped from the unforgiving claws of the sea and is now granted another chance at spending a lifetime with you?

Jacaerys can feel a lump form in his throat, near choking him, his lashes dampening rapidly. "Do not forsake me, please," he pleads, willing his hand to clutch at your fingers again, with what little strength he has. "I cannot bear knowing this is but a dream." It is hard to speak as his chest heaves, blubbering like a child as he begs for a miracle from you, who he now hopes is all flesh and bones and not smoke and ash in front of him.

Your expression pinches, studying him carefully, as you so often used to do with your tomes and books in the low candlelight before bed, thumbing each page as you uncovered the secrets written through the dried ink. He feels like one now, as your eyes narrow, before those soft lips part in a round shape, understanding dawning on you.

"Oh, my sweet prince," you whisper, voice damp from your tears, but then the sweetest sound of all accompanies the wetness of your eyes.

A laugh.

Amidst all this confusion, all this befuddling turmoil between dream and reality, you laugh as if a weight has been lifted off your shoulders, and your mouth dared to form the shape of happiness again.

You turn your head to press a fervent kiss to his hand before moving closer, cradling his face between your palms. Thumbs soften the traces of tears onto his own pale cheeks from being under slumber for so long, willing to see a flush to them soon. "I am flesh and bone, not a mere mirage," you assure, another soft, disbelieving laugh tinkling between you, as if the mere thought of him believing this to be a play of the mind is ridiculous. "The Gods brought you back to me, just as I wished for, my love."

Gods, he thought he'll never get to hear that sound fall from your lips again. It makes his vision blur with tears, lips trembling as he chokes back from babbling again like a babe, but eager to quiet the ghosts of his mind that insist this is a delusion.

"P-prove it to me," he hiccups wetly, no longer preoccupied with how weak he must look, nothing like a prince and all like a man at the end of his hope, begging you to pull him towards salvation. "Please, ñuha jorrāeliarzy," his tongue wraps around the endearment like it never forgot it, full of longing and desperation. "Show me I still have you, for I cannot bear the thought of losing you again—"

He feels his heart breaking and mending itself back together over and over, waiting for you to grant him this one certainty in his hopelessness.

And Gods, you do.

Your lips are on his before he can blubber another supplication, palms tilting him the way you want to as you slot your mouths together so, so tenderly, like two wings of a butterfly touching while they flutter.

He feels it. He tastes it. Your tears, his tears, your promise, his desperation.

Jacaerys wishes he were stronger, for his body is weakened by the tragedy that befell him, not being able to grasp you as fiercely as he would if his limbs had not forsaken him. He can only will his fingers to brush against the folds of your skirts onto the bed, curling into the material until his hand shakes with the ardent want of closeness; of wanting to do more but being cursed into only hoping.

"You have me," you whisper against his mouth, branding the truth on his lips as you continue kissing him. He can feel you smiling into it, and it is unbecoming of him how that only makes him weep harder, his own tears trailing down your cheeks and chin now, too, from how close your faces are pressed together, smushed in your eagerness to prove what he so feared was nothing but a cruel twist of his mind. "And I have you, dārilaros ñuha."

Gods, your tongue tangles around the words so clumsily, no matter how many times he had patiently taught you the right way before, and still, he would never trade it for the world. Jacaerys wants to hear it a thousand times more, and then tenfold that, for the rest of his days.

He's overwhelmed. All the hopelessness he felt before, thinking he would never get to hear the sound of your voice, taste the sweetness of your lips, feel the warmth of your love. And now you are offering him all of those and more, and he feels like he cannot breathe if you dare stop for even a moment.

"Avy jorrāelan, " he sobs, trembling lips barely able to return the soft kisses you so kindly confer to him still. "Avy jorrāelan. Always," the words tumble from his mouth, choked and utterly devout. "Not a moment went by when I did not plead with the Gods to bring me back to you. I curse the sea for trying to wrench me from your side. For its greed and its cruelty, for—"

But you silence him with a firmer press of lips, swallowing the last of his blubbering with the sweetness of your mouth, tasting salt and love and life. You exhale shakily, drawing back so your gazes meet, lips brushing, leaning to nuzzle your noses together as you whisper, voice fervent with conviction. "No more talk of misfortune," you say, nudging his cheek in reprimand with the tip of your nose. "Let me rejoice in having you again."

Jacaerys had always been weak to your whims, never one to deny you anything, least of all when spoken with such longing, such relief, bodies close and shaking with lingering grief and solace alike.

He nods, gathering strength enough to nuzzle you back, eyes fluttering at the feeling, to which you shakily let out another one of those honeyed laughs as you whisper. "But do not think I shall forgive you for trapping me in mine own chambers before rushing to battle with such recklessness."

Oh.

In the midst of all this, he forgot the events that led him to this whole predicament. Closing his mother's door, then yours, vowing to come back in the end, no matter the cost.

"But I have—"

"Coming back in such a state is hardly enough for me to count this as you honoring your vow," you say, eyes narrowing, even teary and full of adoration as they were. And he couldn't find it in himself to feel anything, but the fullness of his chest as it filled with so much love for you, it damn near burst open. "We shall discuss more of this when you've healed properly."

"Yes, my lady," he whispers, having the gall to look a bit sheepish, but alas, a small smile curls at his lips, the normalcy of your reprimand willing his senses into solace.

You harrumph, trying to show displeasure, but he knows there is too much relief blooming between you two now, softening even this attempt at being stern.

He makes an effort to tilt his chin up until his lips brush your tear-streaked, warm cheek, kissing it softly, not moving for a very, very long time.

"I'm sorry," is pressed against the damp skin, and he knows it'll take time and an exuberant amount of grovelling to will you to forgive him, but he wouldn't have it any other way.

Now that he has escaped death's grasp, he has a lifetime ahead of him to try to gain your favour.

And Gods, what a fortunate way to live out the rest of his days.

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ñuha jorrāeliarzy — my love

dārilaros ñuha — my prince

You wonder whether it is chance or divine intervention that a Targaryen prince washes ashore beside your cottage.

By the time you get to the edge of the sea after catching a glimpse of the corpse from your porch, it is half buried in the wet sand, lying limp at your feet, and there is a lump in your throat that you cannot seem to swallow away. 

You do not know how you didn’t notice the sigil sooner.

It should have been the first thing that caught your eye, considering it was only a fortnight past that the Prince Aemond brought the great dragon Vhagar over the town you were raised in and razed it to the ground. The green and gold banners have been flying over the area since, and soldiers from the Reach have been constantly patrolling the roads, seeking out rebels and sympathizers.

You know better than to involve yourself in the affairs of any man that dons the three-headed dragon, you tell yourself, trying to will yourself to walk away from the corpse before anyone can catch you standing near it.

Red or gold, black or green—it does not matter to you, the wars of nobles are graves for common folk, and you have no desire to meet an early one. You have done well enough for yourself since your father passed. You refuse to squander the life you’ve built because a prince washed up on the shore near your home.

The boy at your feet is young, you cannot help but notice—your age, perhaps—dark of hair and fair of skin. At a distance, he had looked like any other body the sea had decided to return, and your first instinct had been to rush toward him rather than avert your gaze and pretend you had seen nothing.

Your hands tremble at your sides, and you have to forcibly still them as you take in a deep breath.

This is war, you recall the soldiers saying when the survivors demanded to know the reason for the tragedy that took place at Sharp Point—mothers with tears in their eyes and no bodies to bury, fathers who had lost their livelihood and the children for whom they built it, your neighbors, your friends. They say Lord Bar Emmon sits on the usurper’s council, so all of the commonfolk who were unfortunate enough to be born beneath his banners have been made to pay the price of his loyalties, allies of a queen they have never seen and casualties of a war they never chose.

This is war, they will tell you the same as they cut off your head if they see you kneeling beside this corpse and call mercy treason. Because it is always the burden of the commonfolk, paying the price of noble quarrels. Princes speak of honor and succession, of rights and oaths and stolen crowns, and it is fishermen and farmers who have to bury their dead. They will not care to hear what you have to say if they think you're affiliated with the Black queen and her supporters, just as the Prince Aemond did not care whether the people of Sharp Point had declared for the Blacks or merely happened to be born beneath the wrong lord.

But now, a prince lies dead upon your shore, and you wonder if this is how it begins again. 

You should leave him.

The thought comes immediately, sensible in light of the circumstances, even if it does make your stomach flip. You should turn around and go home, bolt your door, and tell no one what you saw. The sea will reclaim him, or the crabs will pick his bones clean; maybe the patrol will stumble upon the body before the tide rises, and they can parade it through the streets the same way you heard they did to Princess Rhaenys’s dragon.

By the morning, he will be gone one way or another, and you can move on with your life as though you never saw him at all. He will be somebody else’s misfortune, or more hopefully, no one else’s at all. 

It is a corpse, anyway. The boy has not moved since you arrived, and his chest does not seem to be rising and falling. There are two arrows through his shoulder, and a blueness to his lips that you’ve only seen in the dead, so—

As though to mock you, he lets out a wet, ragged cough, water bubbling at his lips, lashes fluttering just enough for you to catch sight of dark, hazy eyes that slip over you once before they slide shut again.

You feel sick to your stomach.

He does not stir again. One side of his face is bruised an ugly purple, his dark hair plastered to his brow with seawater and blood. He cannot be much older than you—the traitorous thought crosses your mind again. There is something terribly young about him, lying there half-drowned in the surf, one hand curled weakly into the sand as though, even unconscious, he is still trying to cling to something.

He does not look like a prince, you think miserably. He looks like a boy who is going to die.

The sea foams around your boots, and his body twitches as it threatens to reclaim him—the only feeble resistance he’s capable of in his state. You do not know how he still breathes—the fires might still burn on the Gullet, but the fighting ended days past. How long has he been floating about, dragged around by vicious currents and tossed by waves? It doesn’t even seem as though it should be possible, as though the Seven themselves intervened and—

—and dropped him on your shore, in your hands, and you are contemplating leaving him to die.

The thought is unpleasant, a heavy stone in your chest in place of your heart.

You are not a cruel person. You have cared for gulls with broken wings, and you leave scraps outside your door for the old orange cat that wanders the area. During the winter three years prior, you spent a fortnight nursing a lamb that did not even belong to you because you could not bear the sound of it crying.

And now there is a boy at your feet—bleeding, drowned, scarcely clinging to life—and because there is a dragon sewn onto his chest, you are trying to convince yourself to let the sea finish what arrows and war could not. 

His lashes are dark against his cheek. Young, you think again, even more traitorous than the last, no older than ten and nine, if even. There is salt crusted at the corners of his mouth and blood soaking through his tunic in sluggish, rusty streams that stain the pale sand beneath him.

He looks cold—traitor, traitor, traitor.

He looks like a prince, you try to insist. A dragon prince, fire and blood and ruin, dangerous. 

Cold. Hurt. Dying.

You need to walk away, you tell yourself again, desperate this time, because the longer you stand there staring at him, the more you fail to convince yourself of the correct path. 

A prince's life is worth more than yours, more than your cottage and your little patch of land and the fishing boat your father left you. It is worth armies and dragons and castles and men willing to kill for a name. 

If this boy lives, others will come looking for him. 

And if the soldiers discover him in your home, they will not ask questions. They will not care that you found him by chance or that you never bent the knee to Queen Rhaenyra—that you could not even tell anyone why one half of House Targaryen wishes the other dead. They will see the three-headed dragon on his breast and the roof over his head, and that will be enough to condemn you.

Worse, the Prince Aemond and the dragon Vhagar could return. You think of Tom, the miller’s son, pulled from the boiling river after dragonfire reached the gristmill. You think of little Grace’s face as she searched the ashes for her mother. You think of all of your neighbors, all of your friends, who hardly survived the first time fire rained from the sky, and you think of all of those who didn’t. 

He is not worth it. He is not worth the risk. A prince is only a man born with a special name, there’s no reason you should save him and condemn countless others—he bleeds the same, he dies the same, and when the Stranger comes for him, he is no more spared than any other man.

Except, he didn’t, did he? 

He should be dead—any other man would be dead.

Two arrows through the shoulder, half-drowned, tossed upon the sea for days on end—there is no surviving that. Yet he breathes still, ragged and shallow though it may be, his fingers twitching every now and then.

The Stranger came for him and left empty-handed.

The Stranger came for him and left him with you. 

Why?

There are no prophecies in your life, no gods whispering in your ear. You are a fisherman's daughter with a cottage by the sea and enough coin to keep yourself fed through winter if the catch is good. You know little of the gods save for the prayers your father taught you as a child and the candles you light for him on his nameday. The Seven did not save your father or your town; they did not save Tom or Grace’s mother or any of the others who screamed as dragonfire turned their homes to ash.

So why? Why this boy? Why this prince? Why should the gods spare a dragon's son when they had not spared children and fishermen and mothers? Why have they left him for you?

You do not have an answer. The only answer before you is a body on the sand, breathing when it ought not to be.

You stare down at him, furious and distressed and so, so unsure. He looks dead again—still as driftwood, cold and pale, stiff. His lips are blue like the dead, and his chest hardly rises and falls. You wonder if you imagined what you saw before. If your guilt conjured a cough where there had been none, if your conscience simply could not bear the thought of walking away even from a corpse.

Slowly, you sink to your knees beside him, damp sand clinging to your knees, the sea foam wetting your trousers. Your hand is still trembling in spite of all efforts to still it. You lift it to his throat, hesitating only for a moment. 

If there is life, you will do what you must.

If there is not, you will turn and walk away. 

You have never prayed for someone to be dead before. 

Please, you think now miserably. Please.

Your fingers brush the skin of his throat—it is cold. He must be cold. So cold, that for a brief, terrible moment, hope flares in your chest, and then—

There is a flutter—it is weak and uneven, so faint that you almost miss it, but it is there.

Your head hangs forward, and you blink away the tears that prick in your eyes, because you know this action will have consequences. You know that there is no going back once you have entangled yourself with dragons. You know that every story told of House Targaryen ends in blood and fire and ruin for everyone foolish enough to stand too close them.

You know that this boy could be the death of you.

The soldiers could discover him. Your neighbors could discover him—as much as they care for you, they fear Vhagar more. If word spreads that a prince of the black faction lives and is hidden beneath your roof, you could hang for it. They could burn your cottage to the ground. They could drag you through the streets and call you traitor.

Worse still, he could recover.

Because then he would not be a half-dead boy on the sand. He would be a prince again. A son of the house of the dragon. He would leave, and the war would continue, and perhaps one day you would hear his name in some tavern and learn that he had mounted a dragon and burned a town much like your own.

The sea rushes forward again, cold water washing over your boots and his legs alike. He does not move. He is so cold.

“Why did you have to wash up here?” you breathe out—frustrated, angry, resigned, because you have never been one to turn your back on someone in need. 

His pulse flutters once more against your fingers, and he does not stir. 

Then, because the gods have a cruel sense of humor and because your heart has always been softer than your head, you slide your arms beneath the prince’s shoulders and knees.

With a soft curse and the sea at your heels, you gather the dragon prince into your arms and carry home your ruin.

—————————

He is Jacaerys Velaryon, son of Queen Rhaenyra, Prince of Dragonstone, Heir to the Iron Throne. 

Three days have passed since you found him on the shore, and he has hardly stirred since you dragged him into your cottage. You have been riddled with anxiety since, jumping at every sound and fearing the worst when someone addresses you. It is only a matter of time—whenever a rider passes on the road beyond the trees or the patrol sweeps down your shore, you think they care coming for him. Coming for you. 

You spend the first day trying to keep him alive. 

You drag him home, soaked to the bone and half-frozen, laying him atop your bed as you get a fire going and wrap him in your blankets. For a while, you can only stand there staring at him, because it is one thing to decide not to leave a boy to die and another entirely to realize you have no idea how to save him.

You have to cut away his tunic to remove it, and it makes it easier to breathe once the three-headed dragon is out of sight, but then you have to address the monstrosity beneath it—bruises darkening one side of his ribs, yellow and purple and black, cuts everywhere, salt crusting his skin and body a ruin of blood. 

You wonder how many rocks the currents slammed him into before he finally washed to shore. The sea around Sharp Point is, well, sharp. Jagged rocks and narrow inlets line the coast, and more than one fisherman has vanished into the sea after his boat drifted too close to reefs beneath the tide.

It is a cruel stretch of sea—crueler still to a boy half-dead and alone. 

And then there were the arrows. 

The shafts protrude from his shoulders at awful angles, the flesh around them angry and swollen. You cry while removing them, because you have never done something like it before, and your hands cannot stop shaking. A part of you wonders if the gods left him for you so that his blood could be on your hands instead, and you cannot fathom what you’ve done to deserve this.

You expect him to wake once you start removing them. At the very least, you expect him to scream. The first shaft pierced cleanly through his shoulder and is easy enough to ease out, but the second lodged itself deep in the flesh, refusing to budge until you brace your foot against the bedframe and pull with both hands. 

It should have been agony—any man would have cried out. 

The prince does not so much as flinch.

You remember staring at him afterward, the arrow clutched in your hand and your own cheeks wet with tears, wondering if he had died while you were removing it. You press your fingers to his throat with a panic that borders on hysteria, and you aren’t sure if you’re relieved or disappointed when you feel the fluttering pulse still there. 

A traitorous part of you wishes that he had died. 

A corpse is a tragedy, but a tragedy can be dumped in the sea and abandoned. A tragedy will not bring more war to your ravaged home.

A living prince, on the other hand, is a catastrophe that you do not know what to do with. Your home has already faced ruin once, and the longer he remains in your care, the more at risk you will be of bringing it upon you all again, because if he is captured in your care, then that means war and blood and fire and more dragons. The whole town, all of the survivors, everyone will be branded traitors to the crown.

But the prince lived, so you can only hope that he will heal quick enough and be gone before you have the chance to regret helping him.

The fever comes on the second day, and the corpse in your bed finally gives to life. 

You notice it when you are wiping the blood from his face, and your hand brushes his forehead. It’s as though all of the cold of the sea had fled his body at once and left only fire behind. It’s what you expect of a Targaryen prince, really—the burning heat, closer to dragon than man— it feels more natural than the cold, but you are scared anyway. 

You do not know much about treating battle wounds, but you do know about fever. 

Your younger brother died of it during a long winter a decade past—no matter how hard your mother worked to keep it at bay, he was dead by nightfall. Your mother passed in the same moon, to the same sickness, as did half of the children in Sharp Point, because fever does not care whether you are young or old, rich or poor, prince or peasant.

His skin is flushed, sweat beading along his brow and soaking the dark hair at his temples as he twists in the sheets violently, threatening to reopen the wounds you just stitched close. His breathing changes too—no longer the slow drags of air, shallow and erratic, like he had spent days at sea only to begin suffocating on dry land.

You fetch water from the well until your shoulders ache. You lay cloths upon his brow and change them whenever they grow warm. You feed the fire, then fear you have made him too hot and let it die down, only to panic that he would grow cold again and build it back up.

Every few minutes, you find yourself pressing your hand to his forehead or his throat, checking for fever and pulse alike. There is never a change—still alive and burning, and you don’t know whether to be grateful or terrified. 

At one point, he begins muttering. You cannot make out most of it—the words are slurred, little more than broken sounds spilling from fevered lips. Names, you think. Places, maybe. Some do not seem to be spoken in the common tongue.

Once, very clearly, he whispers, "Mother.”

You have to change the cloth on his forehead afterward and pretend your eyes are not stinging with tears. You curse the gods throughout that second day—you wish that you’d never left the cottage at all the morning you found him, you wish you’d left him to die, you wish, you wish, you wish, as though any of it matters anymore. 

You sleep little that night, sitting beside your bed and watching him breathe. Terrified every time his breathing slowed, and equally terrified every time it quickened. You count the moments between each breath until dawn creeps through your shutters, and by morning, you feel like you have lived a lifetime in a single night.

The third day—today—you have to make the trek into town.

You have used the last of your willow bark, and there is only a heel of stale bread left, a few onions, and enough drinking water to last another day if you’re careful. You need fruit and vegetables, more barley, and you have a catch that you never got the chance to bring to the market to trade the morning you found the prince. 

You cannot put it off any longer, much as you may wish—the prince needs supplies, and unfortunately, so do you.

You do not like going into town. You have never liked going into town—you have always been fond of your neighbors and your friends, but you were not fond of the way they circle and crowd you whenever you make your weekly appearance for trade. You got overwhelmed too quickly, and you didn’t know how to make an exit without seeming rude, so you ended up staying there for hours when there were many chores you had to get done at home.

Now, it is like a graveyard. The destruction following the Prince Aemond’s attack on Sharp Point has yet to be cleared. The soldiers are too busy with war and patrols, and the survivors are too busy trying to salvage what they can of their ruined lives. 

When you enter the town, you can still smell charred flesh and death. 

The children usually run to you when you arrive, chattering about the games they’ve played and the rumors they’ve heard, if you saw the wild dragon Grey Ghost while you were out on your boat this week, and you smile and nod along with them. But all of the children are dead now, and you are not crowded by friends and neighbors eager to make conversation with you, because most of them are dead now too.

It is in the market when you overhear green-cloaked soldiers talking about the battle that took place in the Gullet, and you finally put a name to the face of the prince in your home. You try to pretend that you’re not eavesdropping, fingers shaking terribly as you sort through the fruits and vegetables that Wylem carted in from his farm, because you need to know if they have figured out what you’ve done, if they know the prince is in your care, under your roof.

But they only laugh as they speak of dead dragons and a mourning pretender queen. They say the Blacks have lost two dragons, and the bastard prince, Jacaerys Velaryon, is dead. Any man who can find his body washed up on the shore to deliver to the King will see unfathomable riches. 

Momentarily, you are angry at yourself because the royals brought this war and have caused all of this suffering, but when your lashes flutter shut, for a split second, you can only picture the haunted look on your mother’s face as she held your dead brother in her arms. You think of Miss Ellyn, who tossed herself into the sea when she found out her son had been killed on the Kingsroad. You think of your friend, Marie, who you found screaming, fisting her infant daughter’s ashes after the burning of the town. You think of them, and then you think of the black queen on her throne, and you feel the same lump in your throat.

Then you remind yourself that this is her doing. 

Her doing, her half-brother’s doing, the other nobles’ doing. They brought this war to Westeros, they brought death and destruction, fire and blood, and you force yourself to shake your head and push it all away, trading some of the fish you caught for fruits and vegetables and barley with a watery smile that you’re sure Wylem took notice of. 

There are more important things to worry about: if there is a bounty on the prince’s body, everybody will be searching for him. Not just soldiers, the people too—your friends, your neighbors, everyone. Many starve, more struggle, so if there is an opportunity for gold, they will all be on the hunt. You need to burn his cloak and tunic when you get back to the cottage, anything that associates him with House Targaryen. 

You nearly trip over your own feet racing back to the cottage, second-guessing every conversation you had in the town. Wylem asked you why you were getting twice as much food as you usually get—you do not remember how you responded. 

Did you imply that you had a visitor? Why can’t you remember? What excuse did you give? Did the soldiers overhear? Are they following you? Do they know? Why can’t you remember? You’re scared—you do not think you’ve ever been so scared in your entire life. 

You look over your shoulder every five steps, worried that they’re going to come charging after you, demanding you to bring them to the Prince Jacaerys before taking your head. You’re not cut out for this—you’re the daughter of a fisherman. There’s no world where you should be worrying whether soldiers are going to hunt you down for saving a prince. 

There are tears in your eyes when you make it back to the cottage, and your fingers are trembling around the bags Wylem packed for you. You shut the door behind you, and it takes you three tries to bolt it properly. When you finally do, you rest your forehead against the wood and let out a trembling sigh.

You—

“Who are you?”

There is a knife to your throat.

You stare at the crack in the wood of your door, breath catching, desperately trying not to move lest you risk the knife slicing through your skin. The crack appeared last winter, you remind yourself, trying not to focus too much on the fact that you can feel the cool edge of the blade. Your friend, Evander, was meant to fix before the next, but Evander is dead now, and you may well be too, if the knife at your throat presses any deeper. 

“Answer me, who are you? Where am I? Wh—” the prince—Jacaerys Velaryon, Prince of Dragonstone, Heir to the Iron Throne—falters suddenly, and you can only breathe again when the knife drops from your neck, and you feel the presence at your back disappear. “You—you are a woman.”

You do not turn to look at him immediately, eyes sliding shut as you fight to steady the frantic beating of your heart, drawing one slow breath after another until your shaking eases enough to trust your legs. Your fingers tighten on the bags cradled in your arms before you force yourself to turn around.

Prince Jacaerys Velaryon stands three paces behind you, one hand braced against the edge of your table, pained, pale, barely conscious. He is bare from the waist up, and the stitches you painstakingly worked through his torn skin have pulled loose, fresh blood soaking the bandages and dripping down his chest and back. 

You see more clearly in the light of the afternoon sun just how ruined his body is, bruises and cuts—you think his ribs must be broken, you did not notice just how bad off he was when you had him lying in the dim corner where you keep your bed. 

For a moment, you forget that you are face-to-face with a Targaryen prince—it is only the boy you dragged in from the sea and spent hours trying to keep alive. 

Your lips curve down into a deep frown, brows knitting together. You exhale as you say, “You reopened your wounds. It took me an hour to get them properly closed.”

The prince stares at you. 

As soon as the words fly from your mouth, you remember who it is before you. The son of a queen. The heir to the Iron Throne, if one listens to his mother. A pretender's heir and bastard, if one listens to her enemies. You do not know which of them is right, nor do you particularly care. Such questions belong to lords and knights and people with far too much time to argue over crowns. 

To the likes of you, prince is title enough for you to keep your mouth shut and your head bowed.

He does not immediately respond, gaze flicking around your cottage uncertainly. Your bed, stained with his blood. The dying hearth. The table where you left out the last bits of the bread, just in case he awoke while you were gone and was hungry. The bandages you left at his bedside. The basin of pink water you forgot to empty before leaving for town.

His lips, dry and cracked, part as he stares at you and murmurs more to himself than to you, “You tended my wounds.”

You hesitate, then nod, swallowing once. “I found you on the shore a few days past, my prince—” Your Grace? What is the proper way to address a prince? My Lord does not seem grand enough for the heir to a queen. Prince feels the safest—whatever he may be, no one seems inclined to dispute that part. “—I… you should probably be resting.”

“I need to know what happened,” he says instead, stepping closer to you. He is too pale, sweat beads at his forehead, dark curls matted to his skin. His eyes are wide and wild, pupils dilated the same way you’ve seen in men mad with grief or fear or fury, moments before lashing out at the nearest person. You find yourself tensing instinctively. “What do you know of the battle that took place on the Gullet? Did Baela make it back to Dragonstone? And Rhaena—she was on that wild dragon, and—my brothers, did my brothers make it back? How long has it been? Where are we? How far is it to Dragonstone? I must return immediately, I—”

The prince only just seems to realize how you’ve drawn away, back pressed against the door to your own home, arms tightening around the sack in your arms whenever he comes closer. His tongue darts out to wet his cracked lips, gaze flicking to the knife he dropped onto the floor and the fear in your face. 

Shame crosses his expression instantly.

“I—” His expression twists as he puts space between the two of you again. You wonder whether it’s from pain or from struggling to force out an apology. Both, likely. He continues, “You have helped me—saved my life, most like—and here I am frightening you. I… I thought I’d been captured. I woke in an unfamiliar place. I didn't know where I was. I didn't know if I was a prisoner or if the battle had been lost. I heard the door open and…”

He trails off, and you stand there awkwardly, tension easing slowly from your shoulders. He is still on guard, but he does not seem so inclined to pull a blade on you again. Your lips part to tell him where he is, what little you know of the battle on the Gullet. 

Instead, you ask, “Do most enemy strongholds look like a fisherman’s cottage, my prince?” 

You are mortified the moment the question spills from your lips—he is a Targaryen prince, they are known for blood and fire and madness, dragons and crowns, and you speak to him as though he’s one of your peers. 

Prince Jacaerys stares at you for a long moment, and then, to your astonishment, his gaze flicks around the inside of your home again, and something suspiciously like embarrassment crosses his face. 

“I suppose not.”

The corner of your mouth twitches despite yourself, and you let out a soft puff of air through your nose before making your way across the room to place the sack you’ve carried from town onto the table. You will have to sort all of what you’ve got later; for now, you need to get the prince resettled before he opens up any more of his wounds.

You turn to look at him again, faltering when you see the pained expression that crosses his face, so sudden that it steals all the color from his cheeks. His hand shoots to his side, fingers digging into the bandages wrapped around his ribs.

“My prince?” you ask hesitantly, taking half a step forward, arm only slightly extended. It is one thing to carry him to your cottage and treat his wounds while he’s unconscious; it is different now that he’s awake.

Prince Jacaerys inhales sharply through his teeth. He is swaying on his feet, breath gone shallow—he looks as though he’s moments from collapsing hard onto your wooden floor. Still, his jaw clenches and the muscles in his neck tighten as he draws himself upright through sheer stubbornness.

“I am fine,” he insists.

“You should sit, my prince.”

“I am standing,” he replies with a tight smile, as though a bead of sweat isn’t rolling down his temple from strain to remain upright and his lips aren’t trembling with pain.

“Barely.”

The prince blinks as though caught off guard by the response, casting a look that is partially confused, and mostly offended in your direction. Your lashes flutter shut as you brace yourself for a volatile reaction, because he is a prince and you are a fisherman’s daughter, and you are arguing with him as though he is an equal and not one of those dragon-riding royals people compose songs about. You think you must have lost your wits entirely these past few days. 

Instead, he shoots back, with all the dignity he can muster while visibly swaying, "I have endured worse."

You stare at the blood soaking through the bandages wrapped around his shoulder, uncertain if you believe him. You say with less heat, "That is not the same as being well, my prince."

His jaw tightens, and you fight a sigh. Gods, he actually looks as though he is preparing an argument. 

You wonder, briefly, what your life has become. Three weeks ago, your greatest concern had been whether the currents would ease up enough for you to take the boat out of the shallows to catch some fish. Now, Sharp Point has burned and you are standing in your cottage, arguing with a dragon prince about his injuries. 

The absurdity of it nearly makes you laugh, wondering if perhaps this entire ordeal is some fever dream brought on by bad fish and Leila’s uncle’s dubious ale. 

Then, Prince Jacaerys’s left leg buckles. 

He reaches for the table and misses, injured shoulder slamming into the edge hard enough to wrench a strangled cry from him, and before you can think better of it, you're moving.

You let go of the sack of fruits and vegetables and barley you were keeping steady on your table; it topples over, and all of your pristine apples go rolling across the floor of your cottage, but you barely notice, panicked when you realize that he careening right toward the hardwood floor.  

You catch the prince around the waist just as he starts to fall, but he is heavier than you expect.

You brace yourself, convinced that he is going to take you down with him, but you manage to steer him sideways toward the chair beside the table. He collapses into it heavily, breath hissing through clenched teeth as pain flashes across his face.

Momentum carries you forward with him—far, far too forward.

One hand lands against the uninjured side of his chest to steady yourself, the other gripping the arm of the chair. For a horrifying second, you are practically sprawled across the heir to the Iron Throne’s lap. You jerk away so quickly you nearly trip over one of the escaped apples, face burning and hands shaking.

"Sorry," you blurt, mortified. “Sorry. Sorry, I did not mean—”

“I believe,” Prince Jacaerys begins with a grimace, “that was my fault.”

You do not respond, flustered, trying to put more distance between you to calm yourself down. Your gaze flicks back over to him, but he is too busy grinding his teeth as he glances down at his wounds to pay you any mind. You let out a soft puff of air through your nose before you look at the apples rolling about your floor, and then reach for one still on your table—you might have lost some sense over the past three days with the little sleep you’ve gotten, but you are not about to feed a prince food off your floor.

You make your way back over to him and hold the apple out to him. He blinks once at it before his gaze lifts to yours questioningly.

“I do not know when last you ate—a while, certainly,” you tell him quietly. “You should get something in you while I redress the bandages. I’ll cook some stew once I’m certain you’re not going to bleed out.”

Prince Jacaerys exhales through his nose before he takes the apple from you, rolling it between his fingers. You step past him so that you can move the basin of water closer to where he’s sitting, grabbing a clean rag and the bandages that you left next to your bed. 

You come to stand in front of him again, hesitating before you motion to the wounds on his shoulder. You ask, “May I?”

His dark gaze flicks up to yours briefly before he nods, and your throat tightens as you shift closer, fingers fumbling a bit as you grab for the edge of the bandages to unwind them from around him. It is much more intimidating doing this while he’s awake, inches away from you, and eyes tracking your every move.

“I found you three days ago, my prince,” you tell him at last, trying to remember all of the questions he asked earlier so that you can busy your mind with something other than the fact that you can feel his skin hot against yours. “Before that, the fighting died another three. In truth, my prince, I do not know how you survived so long at sea.”

Prince Jacaerys says nothing in response. His attention remains fixed somewhere beyond the wall behind you, expression distant. You suspect he is counting the days since the battle, the hours his family has believed he is dead, the minutes his mother has spent mourning him. You keep your gaze trained on his shoulder as you unwind the last of the bandages and set them down on the table. 

You press your lips together when you see that the stitches have loosened at the back of his shoulder—where one of the arrows had dug deep, but not deep enough to pass cleanly through. Pulling it free had torn through muscle and flesh alike, leaving a ragged injury that had taken you nearly an hour to clean, stitch, and stop bleeding.

You exhale as you run the pad of your finger briefly over the stitches, trying to figure out if you can salvage what effort you already put in or if you would have to pull them out and redo them entirely. 

“And my family? My younger brothers? Baela and Rhaena? Have you heard what has become of them?” the prince asks, and you glance up just enough to see how his jaw tightens when your finger brushes over the wound. “Did we win the battle?”

“I do not know if anyone can be said to have won that battle, my prince,” you answer quietly, tongue darting out to wet your lips as you finally start to get to work at reclosing the wound. Your gaze slips to the side when he finally starts to eat the apple you passed to him. He makes a noise in the back of his throat, as though he’s only just realized how hungry he is. “Both fleets were decimated. The dead still wash up on the northern shore.”

How did Prince Jacaerys make it to your shore, then? 

Not for the first time, you have to wonder if the gods themselves placed him directly into your hands. 

Most of the rest of the dead have washed up on the northern and western shores of Sharp Point, as it is where the currents run strongest, but the prince somehow made it to where your cottage sits on the eastern shore. If he had washed up anywhere else, the patrol would have certainly found him by now. You've heard they have spent the last several days combing the beaches, hauling bloated corpses from the tide and turning them over with the tips of their spears, searching for the dragon prince they are certain the sea claimed.

Prince Jacaerys’s breath hitches when you tug lightly at the stitches holding the skin of his shoulder together. Already, he’s finished the apple you handed him, absentmindedly turning the core between his fingers while his thoughts remain leagues away. 

It is only when the last bite is gone that he seems to notice, and his gaze drifts toward the table. He hesitates, and you think it is almost comical—this is the heir to the Iron Throne, a dragonrider, a prince who has flown into battle, and he looks as though asking for another apple might be an imposition too great to make when he’s been floating at sea for at least a week. 

You hold the stitches carefully with your right hand so that you can lean forward and grab another apple from your table to pass to him. His cheeks color slightly when he realizes that you noticed.

“I did not mean to stare,” he murmurs, taking the apple from you and cradling it carefully between his hands. He asks again, “Have you heard what has become of my family?” 

You shake your head, focusing on tending to his wounds again. You think that you’ll be able to salvage your work. It is good, you think—you can get him resting and then cook some stew for the two of you. You didn’t eat much yesterday, frazzled by the fever and trying to keep him comfortable, and you’re starting to feel a lightness in your head. 

“I’ve only heard what the soldiers say in town, my prince,” you murmur, trying to figure out how to go about speaking the news he certainly won’t take well. The last thing you need is for grief to send him bolting for Dragonstone before he can so much as walk across your cottage without collapsing. If he does not kill himself by straining his body when it is not ready, then the patrols will certainly catch him and have his head—and then yours. 

You let out a soft sigh as you tie off the stitches on his shoulder blade and lean down to wet the clean rag before lifting it to his bloody skin. You’re careful around the edges of the wound, trying not to disturb the stitches, working slowly at the dried and wet blood from the curve of his shoulder, over the collarbone, down the length of his back. 

You try not to think too hard about what you’re doing. 

If you do, it begins to feel far too intimate. 

It is one thing to drag an unconscious stranger from the sea. It is another to stand so close that you can feel the warmth radiating from his skin, to brush your fingers across the line of his shoulders. You have spent three days tending him without much thought, because there had been no room for embarrassment while the Stranger lingered at his bedside.

Now he is awake and watching you, and every accidental brush of your knuckles against his skin seems to linger a heartbeat too long. He is a prince of the realm, and you are a fisherman’s daughter—people like you are not supposed to touch people like him, and yet—

You exhale through your nose harshly. You busy yourself with the rag, scrubbing a little harder than necessary at a streak of dried blood along his collarbone simply to distract yourself, and his jaw pinches.

“Sorry,” you say quietly.

“It does not hurt,” he replies—a lie, surely, any man would be in agonizing pain. But maybe not; any man also would have died in the sea. Maybe the rumors are true: the Targaryens are closer to god than man; they do not feel pain or have to fear the Stranger the same way people like you ought to. “What have you heard from the soldiers in town? Where are we?”

“Half a league from Sharp Point, my prince,” you answer, still evading the question, which he seems to realize from the way he glances at you over his shoulder, gaze sharp and accusing. He knows you are withholding something. You exhale lightly through your nose and then say hesitantly, “They say two dragons fell over the Gullet. I could not tell you which.”

“Two?!” Prince Jacaerys demands, immediately rising to his feet, so quickly that the chair scrapes against the floor, and you fear he might rip back open the stitches. He whirls on you, eyes wide, pupils large as coins, and you almost flinch. “Two dragons?”

You swallow thickly as you nod. “My prince—”

“One must be—” His voice catches. He cannot finish the thought. For the first time since he awoke, real grief overtakes him completely. It drains his face of what little color had returned, leaves him staring at nothing as though he can already see the answer waiting for him. “I need to know the second. Whose was it? Which dragon fell?”

It unsettles you how close he sounds to pleading when moments before, you had been wondering whether the stories of the Targaryens’ deism held some weight, because gods do not look like this. They do not stand in a stranger’s cottage with fear plain on their face, hands trembling as they wait for an answer they already dread. 

The same lump forms in your throat now that did when you heard the soldiers mocking a grieving queen and couldn’t help your thoughts from turning to your own mother, to Miss Ellyn, to your friend, Marie. For a moment, he is not a Targaryen prince or a dragonlord; you see a son and an older brother. A boy your age who knows there are only a handful of dragons flying over the Gullet, and every one of them belongs to someone he loves.

“I do not—”

“I need to return home,” he says immediately, as though his face isn’t white with pain and his stitches don’t strain every time he moves. His eyes glaze over you as though you’re not even there, and he takes a step toward the door to your small cottage. “Sharp Point—there must be passage to Dragonstone, there—”

Panic flares in your chest when he makes as though to leave. It is noon, and the patrols have become more frequent along the shores outside your cottage. They’ve spent a week carding through the western and northern shores, and they’ve been sending more and more men to the east—you worry they’re becoming desperate. The longer they go without finding a corpse, the more they may fear that there isn’t one.

If they have an inkling that Prince Jacaerys is still alive, they’ll start kicking down doors, and if they start kicking down doors, they will find him, and your life will be forfeit for harboring him. 

“You cannot,” you say before you can think better of it, lunging forward as though to grab his wrist, but you stop yourself before you can make a terrible mistake, stopping a hairsbreadth from brushing his skin. 

What is wrong with you? you think furiously. You need to rest tonight before you do something you cannot take back. Already you have gotten snide with and you have argued with a prince of the realm—now you have commanded him and nearly tried to seize him. You would have been lucky to only lose your hand in any other circumstance. Had he been standing in a hall instead of your cottage, surrounded by knights instead of rough-hewn furniture, you might have lost your head. 

“I cannot?” Prince Jacaerys turns to you, bafflement momentarily eclipsing the fear that had consumed him only seconds before, as though he cannot quite fathom that someone has just told him no. 

“My prince, you can scarcely stand,” you say. His gaze drops to where your hand is still hovering near his arm, head cocking to the side and brows lifting, and you snap it back to your chest immediately, heat flooding your face. “You have lost a lot of blood, you have barely eaten in a week, your wounds have only just been stitched again, and there are patrols searching for you every road between here and the sea.”

He continues to stare at you, disbelief riddling his expression. You have the distinct impression that no one has ever spoken to him this way before—certainly not a fisherman’s daughter. You force yourself to press on while he’s silent, hoping to make your point and rid him of this futile endeavor before he gets you both killed. 

“The Prince Aemond burned Sharp Point’s harbor. There are no ships capable of navigating the currents of the Gullet, and the water still burns besides. I do not have a horse for you to ride to Stonedance. You could not get to Dragonstone even if you were not hurt,” you insist. “I will return to town tomorrow to try to get more information, but please, my prince, you mustn’t leave. You will only be putting us both at risk.”

For a long moment, you think that he will invoke his title or duty and insist upon leaving anyway, or maybe he will simply walk out the door despite everything you have said, and there is nothing you could do to stop him. 

Then, his expression changes, twisting into something pained as he looks away, a shuddered breath escaping his lips. His shoulders, held tense since the moment you uttered the word two, sink ever so slightly. The panic that had driven him to his feet has nowhere left to go, draining from him all at once, leaving only exhaustion behind. 

One hand drops back down to his ribs, pain crossing his face. Whatever strength carried him to his feet abandons him just as quickly as the panic, leaving him swaying where he stands. He closes his eyes for a moment, and when he reopens them, the panic has been replaced by a type of defeat that is infinitely more difficult to look at.

You step forward cautiously when you see how his body is trembling, hand hovering uncertainly between the two of you, silently asking permission to help him. Prince Jacaerys stares at your outstretched hand, then at the bed on the far side of the room; you think, for a second, that he will attempt to cross on his own, but then his nostrils flare as he exhales, inclining his head just enough to grant you the permission his pride refuses to voice aloud.

Carefully, you slip beneath his uninjured arm, taking care to avoid the fresh bandages. He is warm—still warmer than he ought to be—and you can’t help but wonder if his fever has returned or if this is just how hot dragon prince’s typically run. 

He leans into you only slightly, weight settling lightly against your shoulder—you suspect he is trying very hard not to. The journey from the door to your bed is scarcely a dozen paces, but it feels much longer. 

“We were supposed to win this victory for her,” Prince Jacaerys says after a moment, voice breaking, the words slip free before he can stop it. You do not think the admission is meant for you, so you stay quiet. His throat works as he swallows. “We were supposed to—”

He cuts himself off, looking away again as you help him ease back down into your bed. As soon as he is seated, something close to relief crosses his face, lashes fluttering; the pain is still there, but not quite as terrible as it was when he was straining on his feet.

“The fact that you are alive at all is a victory, my prince,” you say quietly, even though you do not think the words will be of any reassurance. “You should rest. The sooner you are well, the sooner we can figure out a way to get you home. I’ll cook up a stew and wake you when it’s finished.”

He exhales again, jaw tightening as he looks away with a resigned expression. You turn your back on him to deal with the mess you made of the kitchen area, grimacing slightly at everything spilled across your floorboards and the table. 

“What is your name?” Prince Jacaerys asks you suddenly. “I think I ought to know the name of the woman who saved my life.”

You let a soft breath, glancing over your shoulder at him. He is pained still, but there is an earnest look in his eyes that makes you falter—you remember how close you were to leaving him to his fate, and you have to look away again before he can catch the guilt that crosses over your face.

With a shaky exhale, you give the prince your name, and you cannot help but feel as though your life has irrevocably changed, and you do not think for the better. 

————————————

The sea is on fire.

Jace cannot tell where the flames end and the water begins. Ships burn around him, masts collapsing into the waves with deafening cracks; men scream as they’re consumed by the fire, and dragons let out terrible shrieks as they dive low to bring down another ship full of Myrish mercenaries. 

He tries to focus.

He chases after the rogue dragon, hoping to kill the rider before the dragon can burn any more of the Velayron fleet—or worse, catch Baela and Moondancer. But there is panic clawing at his chest, and smoke and salt clogging his throat and stinging his eyes. He’s screaming at Vermax to fly faster, to kill the rider, and then—then he sees Rhaena. 

He sees Rhaena atop the wild dragon, and she is screaming, crying, desperately trying to get it under control, and Jace is confused, reeling as he yells at Vermax to stop at the last second. He and dragon both diving down away from the chase before Vermax could breathe fire on his cousin.

Rhaena does not have a dragon, he thinks, trying to figure out what is happening, and Rhaena is supposed to be with his brothers, and his brothers are captured by the enemy, and he isn’t sure if Stormcloud and Aegon made it to shore, and there is too much going on, and—

—and Vermax is falling. 

Vermax is banking hard, being dragged down into the sea, and Jace’s stomach lurches. He’s yelling—begging—Vermax to fly, and Vermax is trying, he’s trying so hard, wings beating smoke through the air. He shrieks as another bolt catches him in the wing, and Jace feels the pain himself—he feels the pain, the primal fear, everything that Vermax does, because Vermax is his, and he is Vermax’s, and they are bonded, and Vermax is drowning, and the water is so cold, and Jace cannot feel his legs or his hands or his face.

He fumbles as he tries to unhook himself from the saddle, choking on water and air, maybe a sob, as Vermax sinks into the sea, a stream of bubbles rising to the surface as he cries for Jace, slowly disappearing into the dark waters. Jace desperately tries to dive after him, as if he has the strength to hold them both above the sea, because Jace has already lost Luke, and he—he cannot lose Vermax. 

Not the dragon who had slept beside his cradle before he was old enough to walk, the hatchling he had grown up alongside, whose neck had once fit beneath his arm, whose first uncertain flights had ended with both of them tumbling into the sandy shore of Dragonstone while his mother laughed herself breathless.

Jace does not know a life without him—he does not want to know a life without him. His earliest recollections are not of nursery songs or wooden swords, but of warm green scales beneath tiny hands and the deep, rumbling croon that had lulled him to sleep when he was scarcely more than a babe. 

When Jace learned to walk, Vermax learned to fly; when Jace’s voice deepened, Vermax’s roar had too. 

There has never been a Jacaerys without Vermax.

But Jace’s lungs are burning, and he cannot see the familiar green scales anymore, and his body is reacting, seizing and spasming because there is no air left in him and water all around. He does not know which way is up and which way is down, the water is too dark and too cold, and he cannot think, but—but he sees the bubbles. He sees the bubbles, and he follows them, and even as Vermax sinks to the bottom of the sea, he saves his rider one final time. 

He reaches the surface with a gasp, gulping the smoky air, and everything hurts. His arms ache, his chest is too tight, his eyes burn, and he cannot breathe, because Vermax is gone. He can feel that Vermax is gone; there is a gaping hole in his chest where his dragon used to be, and Jace does not know what to do, he does not know how to live anymore, and he wants—

He wants his mother.

He just wants his mother. 

He hears the cheers before he feels the first arrow, gaze lifting to the sky as he searches for Baela and Moondancer—they are not too far, he thinks, she'll come for him.

And then, there’s a dull throb in his shoulder blade as he pulls himself over a floating piece of driftwood, but he hardly takes note of the pain, because everywhere hurts, because Vermax is gone, because he wants his mother. He turns when he hears the cheering, and he sees the men on the ship, and he sees the crossbows and the bows and the Myrish banners, but he does not see anything at all, really, blinking once, staring.

The second arrow catches him closer to the chest.

And then—then all he remembers is sea. 

White foam and bubbles, vicious currents and sharp rocks. He thinks he is dead more than he thinks he is alive, but there is so much pain. There is pain and emptiness, and Jace just wants—

“... prince, the stew is ready.”

Jace startles awake, breath hitching in the back of his throat. His body tenses immediately, because he does not remember where he is—he remembers the sea and the waves and rocks and pain and Vermax, but he does not remember…

The cottage. Waking up alone. The door opening, the fear—was he captured? Where is he? Where are his brothers? Where is Baela? What was Rhaena doing on the wild dragon? Mother, mother, mother—

You avert your eyes suddenly, an awkward expression on your face, and Jace suddenly remembers. He remembers you, the apple you passed him as you tended to his wounds; how he held a knife to the throat of a woman who is risking her own life to save his. He remembers that he is stuck bedridden in the bed of a commoner while his mother thinks he’s dead and fights for her throne alone.

He opens his mouth to apologize—to tell you that he will leave as soon as he is able, that he will ensure you’re properly compensated for saving his life—but he falters when he feels something hot and wet drip down his face.

He lifts his hand to his cheek and wipes at his face, looking down at the wetness smeared on his fingertips. For a long moment, he does not understand—seawater, maybe? But he is no longer being tossed around by the sea. He is warm in your cottage, the hearth burns low and your blankets are tangled around him. He blinks once, and another fat droplet of water rolls from his eye down his cheek.

Is he crying?

Heat rushes to his face so quickly he thinks it rivals the fever. He wipes away furiously, not sure if it’s more or less humiliating that you’re pretending not to notice for his sake, turning your back to him to ready the table. 

Jace has wept before, more than most ought to—for the father who taught him fishing and sea shanties, and the other who passed before either of them could speak the truth out loud, for the grandfather he never truly knew, for the brother who felt less like a brother and more like his other half—but never, never in front of a stranger. 

Jace promptly clears his throat and pulls himself together. He glances at you, praying that his face does not betray him, an excuse on his lips as takes a deep breath. Then he falters, mouth watering instantly, gaze cutting to the side where you are busy ladling stew into two chipped wooden bowls, back politely turned, as though you never noticed anything at all.

Jace doesn't think he’s ever been this hungry. He has dined in castles all his life—roasted swan, lemon cakes, arbor wines. He has consumed the finest meals Westeros has to offer and found them lacking, but he almost feels dizzy with need and pleasure at the scent of the stew you made.

“It—” Jace’s voice is hoarse from sleep. Embarrassed, he clears his throat again to try to even it out. “It smells good.”

You look at him over your shoulder with a small smile and murmur demurely, “I’m sure nothing compared to what you’re used to, my prince.”

“I do not know that,” he says lightly as he forces himself to his feet, grimacing as pain immediately shoots through his body. 

Everything aches—his chest, his shoulders, his legs, his arms, his head. In truth, all he wants to do is curl up and sleep more; he cannot bear to keep going. Not now. Not after Vermax, after Luke, after making such a terrible mistake that he might have cost his mother her throne. His stomach flips at the thought, and he fights a shuddered breath.

He needs to keep going—there is no other choice. He needs to get back to Dragonstone as soon as possible.

You pause in the middle of setting the bowls on the table at his words to give him a questioning look. “My prince?”

“I have not tasted it yet,” he tells you, forcing levity into his tone, because you have saved his life, tended to his wounds, and now stand over a pot of stew you cooked for him, worrying that it is not good enough to satisfy a prince. The least he can do is ease your mind. "It would seem unfair to compare a meal I have not eaten yet.”

You blink at him once, and then you smile slightly—it’s a genuine one, not like the small one you forced in his direction just before—and Jace tries his best to return it as he crosses the small room. He shuffles the last few steps toward the table with considerably less grace than he would have liked.

“Perhaps” you reply softly, waiting for him to take a seat at the table before you do as well. 

You do not immediately lift your spoon, and Jace hesitates—for a brief moment, an old childhood lesson surfaces. Do not eat until someone else has tasted it. Feasts at King’s Landing and supper at Dragonstone had been meticulous about such things—cups were poured and tasted before his mother, and plates were sampled before any of them took a bite of their food. The paranoia claws at him and disappears as quickly as it comes.

You had dragged him half-dead from the sea, spent days stitching his wounds and breaking his fever, and gave up your bed so he could sleep comfortably. If you wished him dead, you need only have left him on the shore. 

“I never thanked you for what you’ve done for me,” he says at last, fingers grazing the wooden spoon dipped into the broth. “When I return to Dragonstone, I shall speak with my mother. She will see you properly rewarded.”

“There is no need,” you murmur, finally taking a sip of the stew when Jace lifts the spoon to his lips. 

The broth is hot enough to sting his tongue, but he scarcely notices. It is a simple meal—carrots and celery, chunks of what he thinks is rabbit. It is the plainest thing he has eaten in years, and yet somehow, the best meal he can remember.

His stomach twists painfully as warmth settles into it, and before he can stop himself, he takes another spoonful, then another, the hunger of the past week overwhelming whatever restraint court etiquette had once led him. It is only when half the bowl is gone that he realizes how quickly he is eating.

Embarrassed, he forces himself to slow, lowering the spoon.

“My apologies,” he says, clearing his throat. “I fear I may have forgotten my manners.”

“You haven’t had a meal in over a week, my prince. You’re allowed to be hungry,” you say with a faint smile.

Jace lets out a half-hearted huff of amusement through his nose, though his smile fades as quickly as it came, returning to conversation to try to force himself to slow down and show a modicum of etiquette before he embarrasses himself further. 

“There is every need for reward,” he disagrees, leaning forward slightly to look at you. For the first time since he woke in your cottage, he actually observes you—you cannot be much older than he is, beautiful certainly, but there’s a weariness in your expression that Jace cannot help but feel as though is his fault. “You saved the life of the heir to the Iron Throne. You surrendered your bed, tended wounds that would have killed most men, and risked the wrath of the Greens simply by allowing me beneath your roof. I cannot allow that debt to go unanswered.”

You stare at him for a moment, a conflicted expression on your face, and Jace shakes his head slightly as he presses.

“I do not possess enough coin to repay such a debt myself—” nor, he suspects, does anyone “—but my mother will. You needn't live here any longer if you do not wish to. We could see your cottage rebuilt if the fighting has damaged it, or grant you land elsewhere, if that is what you'd prefer. Whatever you ask, so long as it is within my power, I will see it done.”

You are quiet for a long while as Jace finishes off the stew, but he expects hesitation as you mull over what to ask for: gold, land, a better ship, perhaps. Your gaze drifts off to the side, and Jace’s follows it, faltering when he realizes that you’re looking in the direction of what remains of Sharp Point.

That’s right, he remembers—you mentioned your cottage was less than a league away. 

From where he sits, he can just see the destruction through the small window. The town is little more than scorched foundations and splintered timbers now, dragonfire having reduced generations of work to ash in the span of a single afternoon. He cannot look at it for long, stomach twisting so unpleasantly that he fears the stew you just cooked him might come right up. 

You stay silent for so long that Jace wonders if you have not heard him, and his lips part to repeat himself futilely. 

“We used to think they were beautiful, you know?” you say, voice barely over a breath. “We would watch your family fly from King’s Landing and Dragonstone. The children would cheer and call out the names of whatever dragon and royal was passing overhead, even though they knew you could not hear them.” A wistful smile tugs briefly at your lips, and Jace suddenly feels a rock in his stomach, a heaviness that he cannot seem to push away. “There is a wild dragon in these parts—we call him Grey Ghost. He hunts fish along the eastern shore. I see him frequently when I take my father’s boat out. We lived alongside him for years—sometimes he swoops down close when we have a big catch, but he never bothers us. My father always said he was curious—shy, but curious.”

You exhale suddenly as you rise to your feet; Jace wonders if he should ignore the unshed tears in your eyes the same way you politely did for him.

“Then the Prince Aemond and Vhagar came,” you say at last. “The only thing I want, my prince, is for this war to end, but I know you cannot give me that. If you don't mind, I should see to my father's boat before the tide turns. There is more stew in the pot if you would have it. Then you ought to rest. You'll not heal by arguing with your own body.”

Jace opens his mouth.

He does not know what he intends to say, caught between guilt and indignation, because everybody wants the fighting to end—he does, his mother does. Maybe not Daemon, but why do you say it as though he stands opposed to peace? He did not choose this, nor did his mother. It is not his fault that the Greens usurped his mother's throne.  

He desperately tries to formulate an answer, but how is he supposed to respond to that? What were they meant to do? Yield to the usurpers? Stand aside while his mother’s birthright was stolen? Let Luke die for nothing? Should he say that he is sorry for your loss? That his mother would never have done this? That Vermax would never have burned a fishing village? That this was all the Greens? That they fight to avenge what happened here? 

That dragons are not cruel creatures, he feels the need to tell you when he sees the disdain on your face—it is the people who ride them. It is the Greens. It is Aegon and Aemond, Alicent Hightower and her father.

His lips are parted as though to respond, but he only finds himself staring at you helplessly. 

You incline your head politely before slipping out the door, the cool air rushing briefly into the cottage before it shuts behind you once more. Jace remains where he is, staring into the last of his stew until the steam no longer rises from it, the reality of his situation settling over him—Vermax is dead, Luke is dead, and his mother believes them both lost. He does not know whether his brothers and cousins are safe, if his mother still fights for her crown. He is useless, wounded in a fisherman's cottage, alive only because a woman from a town his family failed to protect chose mercy over sense.

You had been staring at the same spreadsheet for the better part of forty-five minutes, and in that time, you had accomplished precisely three things: checking the formulas, rechecking the formulas, and arriving at the slow, creeping suspicion that you had chosen the wrong degree.

The university library hummed quietly around you, the soft percussion of keyboards, the occasional rustle of pages, the distant thud of a textbook someone had given up on and none of it was helping. Your eyes kept dragging back to the same column of numbers that stubbornly refused to cooperate, as though they had developed personalities and were doing this specifically to you.

One job, you thought, pressing two fingers to the bridge of your nose. You have one job.

The spreadsheet did not care.

You leaned back in your chair until it creaked in protest and stared at the library ceiling, briefly entertaining the fantasy of throwing your laptop off the business faculty roof. Or yourself. Whichever was more efficient.

A chair scraped against the floor.

The sound was close, directly across from you and was accompanied by the energy of someone who had absolutely no awareness that other people in this building were suffering. You looked up.

Jacaerys sat down.

He was wearing that smile. The annoyingly bright one, the one that had absolutely no business existing on someone who had just interrupted your academic crisis, the one that made his eyes crinkle at the corners in a way that you found deeply inconvenient given the current circumstances. His baseball cap was pulled low, and he’d dropped his bag onto the seat beside him with the casual ease, clearly his afternoon was going extremely well.

Yours was not.

You stared at him.

He stared back.

“I need your help,” he said breaking the staring contest. You blinked, waiting for context.

“…With?”

He held your gaze with the gravity as if he was about to announce a news of natural disaster.

“It’s about my hair.”

Silence.

You stared at him for a long moment. The spreadsheet still hadn’t balanced. The library still hummed.

Somewhere nearby, someone was highlighting something with aggressive enthusiasm.

“…Your hair,” you repeated.

He nodded.

You sighed and let your head tip back again.

┈┈・୨ ✦ ୧・┈┈

For even context, you had to go back three and a half months.

Three months ago, Jacaerys Velaryon had kissed you goodbye at the airport with his hair the way it always was: cropped short, a mullet at the end with the barest suggestion of a wave at the crown, the kind of low-maintenance cut that required approximately zero thought. He’d left for a summer internship at Winterfell S-Corp, the sprawling industrial giant run out of the North by the Stark family, a company that had made its fortune in wall defence systems, industrial fencing, and infrastructure engineered to survive centuries of arctic storms and the kind of winters that made King’s Landing people genuinely reconsider their relationship with the concept of cold.

You, meanwhile, had gone south. Tyrell Luxury Group had accepted you into their Maison Tyrell couture division, and for three months you had lived inside a world of silk and structured lighting, watching hairstylists perform what could only be described as amazing work on the heads of runway models. You’d learned things, even things about fashion completely irrelevant to your degree.

Three months.

Different cities. Different climates. Different worlds, almost.

Barely any FaceTimes because the hours were genuinely cruel on both ends, you were often busy creating power points or coordinating things between people at midnight while he was already halfway through a morning site briefing. Mostly texts. Voice notes when you missed each other enough to want the sound of the other person’s voice without the worry of a call.

And then, finally! you’d reunited.

Except.

Jace no longer had the hair he’d left with.

Winterfell, apparently, had other plans. The northern cold air, clean, relentlessly damp northern air had done something to him in the intervening months. Where there had once been a short, manageable cut, there were now curls. Proper curls. Shoulder-length, loose-but-defined, soft-looking curls that caught light in a way that seemed almost deliberate.

The cold climate had transformed his hair into something that belonged in a different century or a fantasy novel, maybe, the kind where people rode dragons and looked devastatingly good doing it. (😏)

You had become, immediately and without shame, completely obsessed with his hair.

It had started the afternoon he’d come back, when you’d reached up almost instinctively to touch one of the curls and felt it spring gently back against your fingers, and something in your brain had simply misfired in the best possible way. After that, your hand seemed to find its way into his hair every chance you got. Watching TV? Your fingers were working slow, idle patterns through the curls at his temple. Studying? One hand on your notes, one hand buried in the soft weight of his hair. Walking together? You weren’t entirely sure how you managed it, but somehow, with enough creative coordination, you found a way.

Jace never said a word about it.

Instead, he’d started investing excuses. Excuses to be horizontal on the sofa or when you were studying at the coffee table. Reasons to rest his head in your lap, or against your chest, his eyes drifting half-shut while you absentmindedly scratched behind his ears and massaged his scalp in slow, looping circles. He’d made a sound once, low and content, like a large cat who had worked out exactly where it wanted to be. You hadn’t teased him about it. It felt too soft for that.

It had become, quietly and without either of you naming it, his favourite kind of affection.

Unfortunately, King’s Landing air had opinions.

The city in summer was a humidity machine. You knew this. You’d grown up with it, the thick, wet air that settled on everything like a second skin, it made fabric cling and tempers shorten and hair do things hair was not supposed to do. It had apparently taken approximately two weeks to undo everything Winterfell had built.

┈┈・୨ ✦ ୧・┈┈

Back in the library, Jace reached up and slowly removed his baseball cap.

You gasped.

It wasn’t a dramatic gasp. It was involuntary, something your body produces before your brain has time to intervene.

“…No.”

His face fell. “What?”

“You-” You pressed your lips together, hard, because the library had a noise policy and you were genuinely at risk of violating it. “You look like Dora the Explorer.”

Silence.

A long silence.

“…Didn’t realise it was that bad,” Jace said quietly.

The curls, his beautiful, Winterfell-blessed, soft and defined curls, had staged a coup. The King’s Landing humidity had gotten to them, and the result was a triangle. A perfect, enormous, fluffy triangle of frizz that began somewhere around his ears and expanded outward with a confidence that was almost impressive. It was not the romantic northern curl situation you had spent weeks running your fingers through. It was something else entirely.

“Hey.” He pointed at you, affronted, which was difficult to pull off with that hair but he managed. “What do you mean I look like Dora?”

You clapped both hands over your mouth.

The sound that escaped anyway earned you a sharp look from the student two tables over.

“I’m sorry,” you managed.

“You are absolutely not sorry.”

“I’m trying to be.”

“You failed.”

You dissolved anyway, shoulders shaking, the giggle fighting its way out despite every effort. There was something about the combination of his genuinely offended expression and the spectacular geometry of his hair that made containment impossible. He was so pretty, normally. The contrast was doing something to you.

“I look that bad?” he asked, and there was something almost plaintive under the indignation.

You nodded. “I still love you though.”

He sighed and dropped his forehead directly onto the table.

You watched him with fondness and residual laughter and with something warm underneath both of those things.

“This is tragic,” he announced, face down, voice muffled by the table.

You reached over and gently poked one of the frizzy curls. It didn’t spring back. It barely moved. That was the problem.

“You need a proper curly hair routine,” you said.

His head lifted. He looked at you like you’d said something in a foreign language.

“…A what?”

“A curly hair routine.”

“…There’s a routine?”

“Yes.”

“I thought hair was hair.”

The look you gave him communicated, as clearly as a look could, that this was perhaps the most incorrect thing he had ever said. “No.”

“What do you mean, no?”

“There are routines. Multiple. Depending on curl type, porosity, climate-”

“Plural?”

“Very plural.”

His eyes widened slightly. He looked, for a moment, genuinely alarmed by the scope of this information. You thought of the hairstylist’s backstage at Maison Tyrell, the way they’d talked about curl care with the intensity of chemists and felt something like vindication on their behalf.

“I learned loads working backstage,” you said. “Trying to coordinate things backstage. I watched the hairstylists.”

“So, you know how to fix this.”

It wasn’t quite a question. His eyes had gone hopeful, and something about that expression, eager and a little helpless, so different from his usual composed self, made it very hard to say anything other than yes.

“I think so.”

His whole face changed. The bright smile returned, the one that made the library feel less fluorescent.

“Perfect.” He slapped both palms flat on the table.

“Let’s go.”

“…Go where?”

“Shopping.”

You blinked at him. Then at your spreadsheet. Then back at him.

“Jace,” you said carefully.

“What?”

“I have an accounting quiz tomorrow.”

“And?”

“I need to study.”

He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest with an expression telling you that he is about to present a proposal he’s very pleased with.

“As the top student in our year,” he announced, “I shall tutor you.”

You narrowed your eyes.

“In exchange…” He pointed, dramatically, at his own head.

“You fix this.”

For a moment you just looked at him. The triangle of hair. The hopeful expression underneath it. The absolute audacity of the entire interaction.

Then you started laughing again, quickly muffled behind your hand, earning yourself a second sharp look from the student two tables over who was clearly having a worse afternoon than even you.

“I cannot believe,” you said, once you’d recovered, “that you are negotiating with your own girlfriend.”

He shrugged, entirely unrepentant. “It’s called business.”

“You’ve become insufferable.”

“I learned from the best.”

“…Who?”

“My mother.”

You snorted. You couldn’t help it. Rhaenyra Targaryen was, among many things, a formidably good negotiator. The resemblance was uncanny.

“Fair enough,” you said, and began closing your laptop.

┈┈・୨ ✦ ୧・┈┈

The Sephora on the high street was cool and white and smelled like overlapping perfumes that somehow managed not to cancel each other out. You stood in the hair care aisle with your notes app open like it was a battle plan because, in a sense, it was.

“Okay,” you said, scanning the list. “We need Gisou Honey Infused Leave-In Conditioner.”

Jace picked it off the shelf and dropped it into the basket without ceremony.

“Done.”

“Ouai Curl Crème.”

In it went.

“Pattern Beauty Curl Gel.”

Another toss.

“And-” You let yourself feel a small, private flicker of triumph. “Gisou Honey Infused Hair Oil.”

Basket complete. Mission accomplished.

Jace held the basket up and examined the growing collection of products thinking about a bill he hadn’t fully anticipated.

“…Is all of this strictly necessary?”

“Yes.”

“It feels expensive.”

“It is.”

A pause. “How expensive?”

You told him a rough estimate.

He absorbed this.

“Right.”

You looked at the basket again, and then a small, guilty feeling began assembling itself quietly in your chest. You’d approached this like it was your own bathroom, your own money, your own decision and it wasn’t.

“Actually,” you said.

Jace caught your expression immediately. He’d always been quick to read you. “What?”

“I feel bad.”

“For?”

“Making you buy all this. It’s a lot. And I just sort of- assumed.”

He looked at you for a moment. Then he reached into his back pocket taking out his wallet and produced a sleek black credit card with ease as if had never once thought about the number on a price tag which he probably didn’t considering his background.

“…Mother’s,” he said simply.

You stared at the card. Then at him.

“Must be fun,” you said, very pleasantly, “being born into nepotism.”

“HEY!”

A woman browsing dry shampoo three feet away turned to look.

“It’s true,” you said.

“I work hard.”

“I’m sure you do, Prince Jacaerys Velaryon.” You said in a teasing tone.

“I am not a prince.”

“You practically are.”

“I take genuine offence at your tone.”

“I take genuine offence at your bank account.”

He laughed so loud, the woman with the dry shampoo gave up and moved to the next aisle muttering about how kids these days are so disruptive.

“You are unbelievable,” he said, still laughing.

“And yet-” You smiled up at him, very sweetly. “You still date me.”

He looked at you. Something in his expression went soft before he could stop it.

“…Unfortunately,” he said.

“Liar.”

“Very unfortunately.”

“You’re smiling while you say that.”

“I know,” he said, and made no effort whatsoever to stop.

┈┈・୨ ✦ ୧・┈┈

Rhaenyra’s penthouse was exactly what it always was: impeccably maintained, decorated in understated luxury that announced itself without trying, and carrying the faint, clean scent of whatever candle she kept burning in the entryway. You liked it here. It felt, in the way that certain places do, like somewhere that was just calm.

You emptied the shopping bags onto the kitchen island and were doing a mental inventory when something clicked.

“Shoot.”

Jace, who had been reading the back of the curl gel with more focus than he’d given most of his coursework this semester, looked over. “What?”

“I forgot my hairdryer.”

“…That’s all?”

“And my diffuser.”

He shrugged with the ease of someone for whom this was a solvable problem rather than a logistical crisis. “We’ll borrow Mum’s. Pretty sure she has those.”

“Are we allowed?”

“We’ll ask.”

The front door opened.

As if summoned by fate itself, in walked Rhaenyra Targaryen. She was still in her work clothes: a black suit, perfectly cut, and not a wrinkle on it despite what must have been a full day inside it. Her laptop bag was over one shoulder. Behind her, Joffrey trailed in from school with his bag already halfway off his shoulder, heading for his room after giving Jace and you a quick greeting. He must have some activity planned for himself.

“Hello, you two,” Rhaenyra said.

“Hi, Mum.”

“Hello!” You said enthusiastically.

She paused, looking between the two of you with a suspicious expression she reserved for moments when something was clearly afoot, but she hadn’t yet worked out what. “What are you plotting?”

“Nothing,” you both said in sync.

She looked at you. Then at Jace. Then at the collection of hair products arranged on her kitchen island.

“I don’t believe either of you.”

Jace scratched the back of his neck, a tell you’d learned to recognise months ago. “Can we borrow your hairdryer?”

“…My what?”

“And the diffuser attachment.”

A beat of silence. Rhaenyra’s gaze moved, slowly and deliberately, between the two of you. She was the kind of person who could communicate volumes without raising her voice, and what she was currently communicating was something in the vicinity of I raised this child, and I know exactly what that face means.

“Should I ask why?”

“No,” Jace said.

“…That’s somehow more concerning.”

You smiled your most innocent smile. “It’s for science.” A brief, long-suffering pause.

“I regret asking,” she said. Then, after another moment of studying you both: “Fine.” She pointed toward the stairs. “But if I come home to a flooded bathroom-”

“It won’t be.”

“Or my hairdryer broken-”

“It won’t be. I’ll handle it” you said quickly.

“Or glitter anywhere-”

“There isn’t glitter.”

“There had better not be.”

She moved toward the door again. She had only returned to drop Joffery back home after school since the driver had to leave for an emergency but then paused, glancing back once more at her son’s hair, the triangle situation, now freed from the baseball cap and said nothing, though her expression said quite a lot.

Joffrey had already made it most of the way down the hall. “You two are weird,” he called, without turning around.

“We know!” both of you answered, at exactly the same moment.

┈┈・୨ ✦ ୧・┈┈

Jace’s room was as tidy as it could be. He hated making a mess and sometimes you teased him about perhaps having an OCD with how he takes pleasure in cleaning his room. His books stacked with a loose intention of order, a desk that looked like it had seen serious work, curtains that let in the late afternoon light in long, golden bars that fell across the floor.

You laid everything out across the desk with the methodical care of someone who was, in this specific domain, taking this extremely seriously. Leave-in conditioner. Curl crème. Curl gel. Hair oil. Diffuser. Borrowed hairdryer. Small microfibre towel. Everything in order.

“Right.” You clapped your hands together. Jace looked up from where he’d been reading a product label again, apparently trying to extract information that wasn’t there. “First things first.”

“What?”

“We need to wash your hair properly. No shortcuts, it needs to be clean for any of this to work.”

“Okay.”

You looked at him. He looked back.

“So,” you said. “Take your shirt off.”

A slow, wicked grin spread across his face like sunrise. “…Yes, ma’am.”

You recognised that expression. You’d seen it before. You pointed at him immediately. “Don’t. You. Dare.”

He stepped closer. He was feeling playful, leaning down until there were only a few inches of air between your faces, his curls (the chaotic ones, the tragic ones) falling forward slightly.

“If you wanted to get me shirtless,” he said, with great deliberation, “you could’ve simply asked.”

You smacked his arm, which made him laugh, and then you physically pushed him in the direction of the bathroom. “Shut up.”

“I was being helpful.”

“You were being annoying.”

“Same thing, sometimes.”

“Not even close.”

┈┈・୨ ✦ ୧・┈┈

The sink situation was, in retrospect, predictable.

You’d known it would be a little awkward, washing someone’s hair over a bathroom sink required a certain amount of spatial negotiation but you hadn’t quite accounted for Jace’s general inability to remain still when he found something funny, or his apparent talent for misdirecting water in every direction that wasn’t the drain.

Your white shirt took a direct hit.

You felt it happen. That cold spreading bloom of water soaking through the fabric. You looked down. Then up. Jace had frozen, the guilty expression because he knew exactly what he’d done written plainly across his face.

“…Oops,” he said.

You looked down again. Back up. Slowly folded your arms.

“So,” you said, in a mockingly pleasant tone.

He waited for you to continue.

“If you wanted to see my bra,” you said, “you could’ve simply asked.”

The pink that climbed up the sides of his neck to his ears happened so fast it almost startled him. “I- that’s not-” He pressed his lips together.

Then he laughed, helpless and real and embarrassed, and the sound of it bounced off the bathroom tiles.

“Now you’re using my lines,” he managed.

“I know,” you said, noting in your mind to change your shirt.

The actual process, once it began in earnest, had a quiet rhythm to it.

Jace sat on the low stool you’d dragged in from the corner of his room, which was barely adequate, but he folded himself into without complaint. You worked the leave-in conditioner through his damp hair carefully, section by section, making sure it was evenly distributed before handing him the bottle.

“Work this through while I change,” you said.

He glanced at the bottle, then at you. “You trust me?”

“Mostly.”

“Mostly?”

“About sixty percent.”

His expression was deeply offended. “I deserve at least seventy.”

“Prove it and we’ll renegotiate,” you said, and disappeared into the bedroom to swap the wet shirt for one of his oversized T-shirts that lived on a hook behind his door. It smelled like him. You spent approximately no time thinking about that.

When you came back, the leave-in conditioner had, in fact, been distributed with reasonable competence.

“…I’m impressed.”

“I follow instructions.”

“Occasionally.”

He opened his mouth. You talked over him, squeezing the curl crème between your palms and beginning to work it through.

It happened almost immediately. The moment the product touched his damp hair, and you began scrunching, gathering sections upward, coaxing them into shape, the curls began responding. Coming back. Reforming with a soft, almost indignant energy, as though they’d always been there and the humidity had merely been an interruption.

Jace caught it in the mirror.

“…Wait.”

“There they are,” you said quietly.

“I can see them.”

There was something in his voice that wasn’t quite awe but was adjacent to it. You didn’t comment on it, just kept working, methodically and with more care than the task required, because these were his curls and you had spent two weeks deciding you were very attached to them.

The hair or curl gel came next. You demonstrated first by taking a small section, working the product through from root to tip, then coiling the curl gently around your finger.

“See how that defines it?”

He watched, then tried.

“Like this?”

“Almost but make it looser. Let the curl do the work.”

He adjusted. The curl sprang gently into shape.

Something in his expression shifted, he focused with concentration, learning a new thing.

You worked in companionable quiet for a while. Then—

“My hands are tired.”

“Hush.”

“This takes a long time.”

“Curly hair requires patience.”

“No one told me that.”

“I’m telling you now.”

“I’ve made a terrible decision.”

“You asked for this.”

“You like them more. Don’t lie!”

“That’s...true” you said.

The diffuser was the final step, and it was, honestly, the most important one. You attached it to Rhaenyra’s hairdryer, set it to cold, and began working it carefully beneath each section, lifting the curls up rather than disturbing them, letting the air do its work without the disruption of direct heat.

Jace tried to copy your movements once you handed him the drier back but he looked faintly absurd doing it, which was deeply endearing.

“This feels ridiculous,” he said.

“It works.”

“I look like I’m doing something from a tutorial.”

“You are doing something from a tutorial. My tutorial.”

He made a sound that wasn’t quite agreement and wasn’t quite disagreement.

The room filled with the low hum of the dryer and the smell of warmed product, sweet, clean, faintly floral from the honey oil you’d set aside for the end. Outside, the King’s Landing afternoon was doing its best impression of early evening, the light going amber through the curtains. You were aware, at the edges of your attention, of the spreadsheet you hadn’t finished and the quiz that was tomorrow and the tutoring session Jace owed you.

But that was later.

You switched the dryer off.

The quiet it left was comfortable. Easy.

You stepped back. Folded your arms. Regarded him with the gravity of someone revealing a finished painting.

“And,” you said, with appropriate ceremony, “voila.”

“It’s voilà,” he said automatically.

You pointed at him. “Don’t ruin my moment.”

He laughed, and then he turned toward the mirror, and the laughter quieted.

His shoulders went still.

The curls were back. Properly back and not the explosion of frizz from the library, not the soft but undefined waves of the days before you’d intervened. These were curls. Defined and bouncy, with a softness to them that caught the warm light and held it. They framed his face in a way that made him look like himself again, the Winterfell version of himself, the version you’d been very quietly delighted by for the last several weeks.

He turned his head. Slowly. Watching from one angle and then another.

“They actually look…”

“Amazing,” you supplied.

“…Amazing,” he agreed, like he was still arriving at the word.

You added the finishing touch, a few drops of the honey oil, warmed briefly between your palms before you smoothed it lightly over the surface of the curls, giving them that last suggestion of shine and then stepped back for real.

“Done.”

He kept looking at his reflection with an expression you didn’t see often, genuinely caught off guard, a little undone, the studied composure he usually wore without thinking temporarily absent.

“I haven’t seen my hair look like this since Winterfell,” he said.

“I know.”

He was quiet for a moment. Then he turned from the mirror, and without ceremony or announcement, he wrapped both arms around you and pulled you in.

“You genius,” he said, into your hair.

A kiss to your forehead. Then your cheek, the warmth of it brief and deliberate. Then the other cheek. Then the tip of your nose, which made you scrunch it. Then your jaw.

“Jace.”

Another kiss found its way to your temple.

“Jace.”

His lips curved against your cheekbone. You could feel him smiling.

“Enough,” you said, though the word didn’t come out with any real conviction.

He pulled back just far enough to look at you, still smiling, and then pressed one last proper kiss to your lips, brief and fond and slightly smug.

“Thank you,” he said.

You rolled your eyes. Fond. Always fond, with him. “Now you know how to do it yourself.”

“I’ll probably forget.”

“Then I’ll make you a list.”

He considered this. “Better,” he decided, with the satisfaction of someone whose problem had been neatly solved and reached for your hand. ┈┈・୨ ✦ ୧・┈┈

Rhaenyra walked past the doorway a few hour later.

Jace was at his desk, working through a set of accounting questions with a focused look he put on when he was actually concentrating, a pencil turning slowly in one hand. You were curled in the sofa across the room with your notes in your lap, the study session having you guys dispersed around to concentrate. It was quiet between you in the way it sometimes was, comfortable and unhurried, two people occupying the same space and not needing to fill it.

She paused.

Took one step back.

Looked inside.

Her gaze moved from you to him, and landed on his hair, the curls, soft and defined and clearly the work of deliberate effort, catching the desk lamp light in a way they hadn’t in weeks. She blinked once. Twice. The expression on her face cycled through something unreadable before arriving at something that was, unmistakably, approval.

She looked at you.

“…What did you do?”

You smiled. The small, satisfied smile of someone who had earned it. “Curly hair routine.”

Rhaenyra looked back at her son.

A quiet came over her, and then she said, with perfect composure and a warmth she wasn’t quite hiding: “…Finally.”

Jace looked up from his work. “What does that mean?”

She smiled at him softly and simply replied, “It means,” she said, “that my son’s hair no longer looks like a bird built a nest in it.”

A beat of perfect silence.

Then, from somewhere down the hallway, with the unerring timing of a younger sibling who had been waiting for precisely this moment:

“I TOLD YOU IT LOOKED LIKE A BIRD’S NEST!”

Jace’s expression collapsed into something pained and theatrical. He dropped his pencil. He put his face in his hands.

“I live with traitors,” he announced, to no one in particular.

You and Rhaenyra looked at each other across the room.

And then you laughed, both of you, properly, helplessly until Jace groaned again and neither of you could have answered him if you’d tried.