Sia

ACT I

The water feels wrong.

Neteyam notices it before the pain, before the weight in his chest, before the way his limbs suddenly refuse to answer him with the same sharp precision they always have. The ocean closes over his head as he dives, powerful stroke after powerful stroke, chasing the silhouettes of his siblings toward safety.

The reef blurs past him, light bending and warping through salt and motion. He kicks harder, his muscles burning, his lungs screaming, but then—

His strength falters.

It’s subtle at first. A drag. Like the sea has hooked its fingers into him and decided he should stay.

Neteyam frowns, confusion flickering through him. He adjusts his stroke, tries to correct his form, but his body lags behind his intent. The water presses heavier against his side, each movement suddenly costing more than it should.

He reaches the rock outcropping on instinct alone.

His hand scrapes stone, fingers slipping before finding purpose. He hauls himself halfway out of the water, breath stuttering—sharp, shallow, wrong. The sounds of the battle crash around him now, no longer distant: engines, shouting, the crack of gunfire echoing across the open sea.

He looks down.

Red.

Not the soft glow of reef light or the shimmer of bioluminescence clinging to coral. Something darker, blooming outward in lazy clouds beneath the surface, curling around his thigh and drifting away with the current.

His ears flatten.

He presses a hand to his side and feels warmth.

Too much warmth.

“Oh,” he breathes, barely audible over the crash of waves. Not in fear but in realisation. “No…”

His knees buckle.

Lo’ak is there instantly.

Neteyam barely registers the impact as his brother grabs him, shouting his name, eyes wide and wild. The world tilts as Lo’ak pulls him upright, panic bleeding through every sharp movement.

“I’m shot,” Neteyam manages, the words tearing out of him like they cost something vital.

Lo’ak’s face crumples.

“No.. no, no.!” he says, voice cracking as he swings Neteyam onto his back. “Stay with me. Stay awake. I’ve got you.”

They plunge back into the water.

Neteyam clings loosely to his brother’s shoulders as they move, each second stretching thin. The pressure of the sea is unbearable now, his vision dimming at the edges, sounds muffled around him as if he’s sinking deeper than he really is.

By the time Lo’ak reaches the rock outcropping again, Neteyam is barely conscious.

Lo’ak drags him up, hands shaking as he presses hard against the wound, blood slicking his fingers no matter how hard he tries to stop it.

“I’ll get Dad,” Lo’ak says desperately, voice breaking. “I’ll get Mom. Just—just stay here, okay?”

Neteyam doesn’t answer.

Lo’ak hesitates only a second longer before diving away, fear driving him faster than exhaustion ever could. Tuk’s small form follows, her cries swallowed by the sea.

The rock grows quiet.

Neteyam lies half-submerged, chest rising faintly, blood continuing to leak from beneath his ribs and slide into the water.

𓂃 ོ☼𓂃 𓇼𓏲*ੈ✩‧₊˚

You have been waiting for this moment longer than you care to admit.

Not this—not the RDA shooting against a few boys —but the distraction. The fracture. The second where the RDA’s attention splinters just enough for someone small, quiet and expendable to disappear.

You move through the flooded wreckage like a ghost.

The raid has fractured the ocean into chaos. There is a raging noise above the surface, the constant roar of shouting, crashing and movement. Yet there is silence in the surface below, but beneath it all, the water speaks. It always has. You’ve learned to listen to it the same way you listen to a pulse or a breath.

Your waterproof pack is tight against your back, weight familiar and reassuring. Inside: compressed rations, emergency meds, suture kit, antiseptic foam, sealant patches, two spare breathing masks. You packed light on purpose. Everything else waits for you—hidden deep in the mountains, far from sea lanes and patrols. Your avatar body. Your exit.

You slip from the sinking structure without hesitation. The mask seals with a soft hiss as you dive, breath evening out as the sea closes around you.

The water is cold as it envelops you, pressure squeezing your ribs as you kick downward, mask sealing with a soft hiss as it engages. You’ve done this before. You’ve slipped past patrols, sunk into the shadows and stayed unseen against enemy lines.

For years, you’ve walked the edge of this war, patching wounds, issuing orders, following protocols that kept your hands busy and your conscience quiet. You stayed detached because you had to, stayed distant to make no more noise than necessary. Because speaking up meant disappearing in a way no one would ever question nor investigate.

You tell yourself to focus. You remind yourself that it is too dangerous to let your mind wander, even for a moment.

Then you see it.

Blood drifts past your visor in slow, terrible ribbons.

Thin at first. Then thicker. Dark, unmistakable.

Your chest tightens.

This was supposed to be clean.

You were supposed to disappear.

You slow instinctively, adjusting your course, following the trail without thinking. You don’t tell yourself why. You don’t justify it. You just move.

The blood leads you to a rock formation breaking the surface.

There someone lies sprawled across it, massive body barely moving, skin marked with streaks of red that the sea keeps trying to claim. No one else is there. No weapons. No guards.

Just a Na’vi male, young, badly wounded.

You hover at a distance, heart pounding.

This is not your fight.

Surfacing here means risk, a possibility of cameras, patrols and witnesses. Everything you’ve planned could unravel in seconds.

But you’ve watched too many bodies sink quietly into water like this.

You surface.

The air hits your lungs as you pull yourself onto the rock, movements careful and deliberate. You stay low, scanning the horizon once before crawling closer.

The Na’vi male stirs faintly.

His eyes flutter open, unfocused, catching on your shape. A human. Small. Close. His fingers twitch weakly against the stone, confusion and pain etched into every shallow breath.

You lift your hands slowly.

“It’s okay,” you say softly, even though you know he won’t understand the words. “I’m a medic.”

You kneel beside him, hands already working, pack open, supplies laid out with practiced efficiency. The wound is severe—but not beyond saving. Not yet.

As you press gauze to his side, his breath hitches.

He watches you dimly, vision slipping, but something in your touch steadies him. Your hands are sure. Your movements confident.

For the first time in years, you stop waiting for someone else to do something.

You choose.

And you don’t stop.

𓂃 ོ☼𓂃 𓇼𓏲*ੈ✩‧₊˚

Your hands don’t shake.

Not now.

They used to, years ago, when you were still just a nurse moving through bombed-out clinics and half-lit tents, learning how to keep your voice calm while the world came apart around you. They trained that out of you eventually—first through repetition, then through necessity, then through war.

You push fear down where it belongs and let instinct take over.

“Okay,” you murmur, more for yourself than him. “Let’s see what we’re working with.”

You start at his shoulders, palms firm and efficient as you sweep down his torso, checking fast for additional wounds. Entry wounds hide. Exit wounds kill. You’ve learned never to assume there’s only one.

Your fingers slide over smooth, warm skin, then around his back, careful but thorough. Blood slicks your gloves, saltwater diluting it just enough to mask how much he’s lost.

“One,” you breathe quietly. “Just one.”

Relief flickers through you, sharp and fleeting. You don’t let yourself linger on it.

You press gauze to his side again, harder this time, and his breath stutters in response. His chest rises shallowly beneath your hand in what you quickly recognise as too shallow, but nevertheless he is present. Still fighting.

“That’s it,” you say softly. “Stay with me.”

He doesn’t answer.

But his eyes don’t leave you.

They’re glassy, unfocused at the edges, but locked on your face with a quiet intensity that makes your throat tighten. You’ve seen this look before—patients anchoring themselves to a single sensation because everything else hurts too much to hold.

You keep talking.

It doesn’t matter that he can’t understand the words. Tone has always mattered more than language.

“You’re doing really well,” you tell him, voice low and steady as you cut away the damaged edge of his armor. The material is intricate—layered and etched with patterns you’ve seen on warriors before but never this close. “This is beautiful craftsmanship,” you add, deliberately conversational. “Someone put a lot of care into this.”

His ears twitch faintly.

Good. He’s still responding.

You peel the armor back just enough to expose the wound properly. It’s ugly—ragged at the edges, still oozing, but clean enough to work with. You irrigate quickly, antiseptic hissing softly as it hits raw tissue.

His jaw tightens.

“I know,” you murmur immediately. “I know it hurts. You’re okay. Breathe with me.”

You exaggerate your own breathing, slow and deliberate, letting him follow the rise and fall of your shoulders. His chest mirrors it, unevenly, but enough.

Shock is the bigger threat now.

You keep him talking by asking gentle, meaningless questions you know he doesn’t have the energy to answer, filling the space so he doesn’t slip too far inward. You tell him about nothing. About the sea. About how the light looks different under water. About how his armor caught the sun when you first saw him.

Your hands move with ruthless efficiency.

Packing the wound. Sealing it. Needle out. Thread through.

You stitch fast but careful, fingers sure despite the blood and the risk and the pounding of your heart. Every second feels stolen. Every sound from the distance makes your spine go tight with the fear of being seen—of being labeled what you already know you are choosing to be.

A traitor.

Like Jake Sully.

The thought flashes through you, cold and sharp, but you don’t let it slow you down.

You’ve lived too long doing nothing.

Neteyam barely registers the pain anymore.

It’s distant, like thunder heard from deep underwater. His body feels heavy, unresponsive, but the pressure on his side lessens slowly, gradually, in a way that tells him something important is happening.

He focuses on you.

On your voice, your soft, steady and grounding voice. On the warmth of your hands as they move over him, purposeful and kind. On the way your fingers trail along his skin as you work without hesitation, and without any fear.

He doesn’t know who you are.

Only that you are here.

His breathing stays faint but constant, each inhale an effort, each exhale shallow. His eyes never leave your face, even when they sting, even when the edges of the world blur.

When you near the end, his fingers twitch.

They lift weakly, drifting until they brush your arm.

Just barely.

You still.

You look down at his hand where it rests against you, blue fingers trembling with exhaustion. A tear slips free from the corner of his eye, tracking slowly along the curve of his ear.

Without thinking, you reach up.

Your thumb is gentle as it wipes the tear away.

“It’s okay,” you whisper. “I’ve got you.”

He tries to smile.

It’s small. Crooked. Barely there—but it’s everything he has left to give. Gratitude floods his chest, heavy and warm, even as his body fails him. He wants to thank you. To speak. To offer something, anything.

Instead, he holds your gaze.

Eywa, he thinks dimly. Thank you.

Thank you for sending her.

And then his eyes flutter, his grip loosening, breath still there — still fighting as the world finally, mercifully, slows down.

𓂃 ོ☼𓂃 𓇼𓏲*ੈ✩‧₊˚

You don’t hear them.

Not the rush of wings overhead. Not the heavy, rhythmic flapping as skimwings circle low, nor the frantic splashes as bodies break the surface and scramble onto the rock.

Your entire world has narrowed to the rise and fall of his chest.

To the faint warmth still present beneath your palm. To the steady miraculous fact that he is breathing.

You’re adjusting the final dressing, fingers already moving to secure it it, when a shadow falls across you.

Then another.

And another.

A sharp intake of breath slices through the air.

You look up.

They stand there now beside you, suddenly and impossibly close.

Na’vi warriors crowd the rock, wet and wild-eyed, weapons half-raised on instinct alone. Their grief is raw, barely contained, and when their eyes land on you—

A human.

Small. Unarmed. Kneeling beside their son.

Neytiri moves first.

A sound tears from her throat, sharp and broken, and she lunges forward with lethal speed, blade flashing in her hand. Her face is contorted with fury and terror, grief so sharp it borders on violence.

“Get away from him!”

You freeze.

Not because you don’t understand her, but because you do.

You know enough Na’vi to catch the edge of it. The command. A mother’s scream underlying her words. You’ve studied the language in secret for years now, late at night, hunched over stolen files and recordings, telling yourself it was only practical. That if you were going to disappear into Pandora one day, you couldn’t afford to be ignorant.

You had thought knowing the language might help you stay invisible.

It doesn’t help now.

Before Neytiri can reach you, a voice cuts through the chaos.

“Wait—!”

Lo’ak.

He stares at the scene in front of him, eyes darting wildly. His gaze drops to Neteyam’s chest.

To the bandages.

To the stitching.

To the fact that his brother’s chest is rising.

“He’s—” Lo’ak chokes. “He’s breathing.”

That stops everything.

Neytiri falters mid-step, eyes snapping down to her son. She drops to her knees beside him, hands shaking as she presses her ear to his chest, one hand cradling his face.

A sob rips free from her, unrestrained and devastating.

“Oh, my son,” she whispers, voice breaking completely. “My son…”

You understand that too.

Enough that your throat tightens painfully as she clutches him, forehead pressed to his, trembling with the aftershock of a grief she had already begun to accept. Her hands roam him desperately, checking for wounds, for warmth, for proof that he is still here.

Jake is there too in an instant, his presence solid and steady despite the way his jaw tightens as he takes everything in. He helps turn Neteyam carefully, eyes narrowing as he inspects the wound.

It’s clean.

Stitched.

Packed properly.

Jake looks up at you.

Really looks at you.

Recognition hits you like a blow.

You know him.

Everyone does.

Jake Sully. The name whispered through RDA halls like a warning. The human who crossed a line that couldn’t be uncrossed. The example they used when they wanted to scare you straight.

This is what happens when you forget your place.

You meet his gaze without flinching.

“I’m a medic,” you say, voice hoarse but steady. “He had a single entry wound. No exit. His blood loss was bad, but I caught it in time.”

Jake studies you, eyes sharp, guarded. You can see the calculation happening there: threat assessment, intent and risk.

“You RDA?” he asks quietly. His voice is low and controlled. The words are short and clipped, spoken in English, direct and to the point.

“Yes.”

Neytiri stiffens at the word.

You swallow. “Not for much longer.”

Jake’s brow furrows.

“I’ve been waiting for a chance to leave,” you continue, the words spilling out now that they’ve started. “I couldn’t keep pretending anymore. I—” Your voice catches. “I couldn’t keep watching.”

Silence stretches.

Then Jake nods once.

“Thank you,” he says simply. “We’ll take it from here.”

That’s your cue.

You shift back, slowly rising to your feet, suddenly very aware of how small you are among them. You hesitate, eyes drifting back to the Na’vi warrior still lying between his parents—still alive because you chose not to look away.

You kneel again.

Just for a moment.

You reach out, resting your hand gently on his shoulder. His skin is warm beneath your fingers.

“You’re going to be okay,” you whisper instinctively and softly, using the few Na’vi words you trust yourself not to stumble over. It is a small offering of reassurance, not a promise you can guarantee but of the quiet hope you carry that he will be okay. Not enough to draw attention. Just enough to mean something.

You start to pull your hand away.

You don’t get far.

His fingers close around yours.

Weak—but deliberate.

The grip isn’t strong, but it’s enough. Enough to stop you. Enough to tell you that somewhere beneath the haze and pain and exhaustion, he knows.

Lo’ak notices.

So does Jake.

You look down at him, breath catching as his hand tightens just a fraction more, like you’re the only solid thing left in the world.

You squeeze back just once.

Then, gently, you try to pull away again.

He doesn’t let go.

And for the first time since you dove into the water, fear gives way to something else entirely.

Connection.

𓂃 ོ☼𓂃 𓇼𓏲*ੈ✩‧₊˚

His fingers don’t loosen.

They tighten.

The pressure is shocking—sharp enough that it steals the air from your lungs for a split second. You glance down instinctively, disbelief flickering through you. He has been shot. He has lost blood. You stitched him together with shaking hands and hope.

And yet he holds you like this—like letting go would cost him something vital.

The others notice.

Lo’ak’s eyes widen first. Neytiri stills completely, her gaze snapping from your hand to her son’s face. Even Jake hesitates, registering the way Neteyam’s grip curls around your wrist, knuckles pale, stubbornly alive.

Another explosion tears through the air.

Closer this time.

The rock shudders beneath your feet, spray erupting around its base. Gunfire cracks in jagged bursts, echoing off the water.

Jake straightens instantly.

“We need to move,” he barks, voice cutting clean through the chaos. Commanding. Absolute. The kind of voice that doesn’t ask—it directs. You see it then, fully: not just a father, but a leader forged in war.

“Now!”

The family springs into motion.

Jake crouches beside Neteyam, already positioning himself to lift him. “I’ve got him,” he says, decisive. “We fly.”

But when Jake reaches for his son, Neteyam doesn’t respond the way they expect.

He doesn’t release you.

Jake pauses, eyes narrowing. He follows the line of Neteyam’s arm. Sees the way his son’s fingers are wrapped around your wrist—not frantically in a dazed confusion but in a purposeful way like something important.

It is intentional.

Jake looks at you.

Then at the sky, where tracer fire lights up the clouds.

A decision is made in a heartbeat.

“She comes,” Jake says.

Neytiri whirls on him. “Jake—”

Another blast detonates somewhere too close for comfort, the shockwave rattling your bones. Neytiri flinches, eyes snapping back toward the horizon, calculating the danger with a warrior’s instinct.

She looks at Neteyam again.

At the steady rise and fall of his chest.

At the way his hand still clings to you.

Her jaw tightens.

“Fine,” she snaps. “Move.”

They lift Neteyam carefully, Jake shifting him onto his back with practiced ease. You’re pulled along with them, swept into motion before you can even process what’s happening.

Only then—only when you’re moving, when the decision is no longer theoretical does Neteyam’s grip finally loosen.

His fingers slip from your wrist.

You feel the absence immediately.

His eyes are closed now. His breathing is stronger than before—still weak, but steady enough that relief floods through you in a dizzying rush. You don’t know if he’s conscious, but something in your chest tells you he is.

That he chose this.

Gratitude wells up unexpectedly, fierce and aching. Toward him. Toward fate. Toward the impossible mercy of timing.

You mount behind Neytiri, hands gripping tight as the skimwing launches into the air. The force of it punches a breath from your lungs.

And then—

You are flying.

The world opens beneath you in a way no sim, no cockpit, no briefing ever prepared you for. The eastern sea stretches endlessly below, a living mosaic of color and light. Coral reefs bloom beneath the surface like constellations, in turquoise, gold and a bright and burning pink, threaded together by currents that glow faintly in the fading light.

You gasp, unable to stop it.

The wind roars past your ears, warm and salt-heavy. You glimpse the others flying ahead. Jake flies steady and surely despite the weight on his back, Lo’ak flanking him protectively, the family moving as one unit.

Ahead, the water shifts.

Structures rise organically from the shallows—woven marui homes nestled within the roots of colossal mangrove-like trees. Their trunks arch outward and upward, forming a living cradle above the waterline, shielded from the open ocean by a natural, ring-shaped seawall of coral and stone.

It’s not built against the sea.

It’s built with it.

Your breath catches.

This, this is what they were destroying.

As Neytiri guides the skimwing lower, banking toward the village, something settles inside you. Not peace. Not yet.

But certainty.

You didn’t just save a life.

You crossed a line you could never uncross.

And as Pandora rises to meet you, glowing and alive beneath the sinking sun, you know—without doubt—that you are not going back.