Iv been seeing a lot of ash! Neteyam and ash! Lo’ak content so I must add to it!

Reader being a human scientist who is at first scared of the Navi that are now walking around the base. Being so use to avatars but the Navi are so much more different, paint and ash covering them and the lack of clothing is something you have to get used to.

She first encounters lo’ak, with her face buried into her work on her tablet she doesn’t see the tall figure infront of her. Her head collides with his stomach, falling back onto her butt she rubs her forehead. “Oh my gosh I’m sorry I-i….” Before she could finish her apologies she is met with two gold eyes staring into her soul. His tail gently swaying behind him as he gets a down right evil smile on his face. “A hì'i tawtute, fyape hona! tsmukan 'ur!” He’s crouched down before his hand comes up and grabs at her chin, looking at how the exo mask was on and letting her breath. Behind him a slightly older male is seen. His arms crossed as he watch the situation unfold before him.

“You realize she probably only speaks tawtute?” He seemed slightly annoyed but also interested at what was to unfold….

Time skip to one of those cop pool parties and readers drunk asf and throws herself on Sammy infront of his friends just sliding her words saying “you should have married me” “I've wanted you since we first got high in high school” yada yada.

Sammy embarrassed Ofc for not noticeing and his friends ragging on him for fumbling us, he takes us back to the apartment….

lowkey I don't think i've ever said this but Marianne and Ted have lore together. This'll be a little dabble on them. And what I mean by 'little' this will be a LONG one, so.. buckle up.

Marianne and Ted knew each other before Bullworth sharpened them into who everyone recognizes now.

They didn’t meet dramatically. No clash, no spark. It was mundane, a shared class, a seating chart mistake, a group project neither of them wanted. Ted noticed her first because she didn’t react to him the way others did. No giggling, no eye rolls, no fear. Just a steady look, like she was taking inventory. Marianne noticed him because he was loud in a way that felt practiced, like noise was something he wore on purpose.

At first, they existed side by side. Ted talked; Marianne listened. He filled the space easily, rambling about practice, about dumb rules, about people he pretended not to care about. Marianne didn’t encourage him, but she didn’t shut him down either, and that alone made her different. She asked questions that weren’t obvious. Follow-ups that made him pause. He liked that she made him think without making him feel stupid.

Their friendship grew quietly. They sat together more often. Walked the same routes between classes without ever officially deciding to. Ted slowed his stride for her without acknowledging it; Marianne matched his pace without comment. People noticed before they did. Whispers started, assumptions layered over something that didn’t yet have a name.

What they shared wasn’t romance not really, but it was intimate in a way neither of them had language for yet. Ted showed her the version of himself that existed off the field: uncertain, frustrated, sometimes scared of becoming exactly what everyone expected him to be. Marianne let him talk without fixing him, without judging. In return, Ted treated her presence like something grounding. He didn’t push her to open up, but he lingered when she did.

There was one summer afternoon the kind that sticks, where they sat on the bleachers after practice, sharing a drink Ted wasn’t supposed to have. He complained about his dad, about pressure, about being “the guy” all the time. Marianne admitted, softly, that she hated being underestimated, even though she allowed it. It was the closest either of them came to vulnerability, and it bonded them in a way that felt fragile.

But Bullworth doesn’t reward fragility.

As time passed, Ted leaned further into the Jocks. Not because he wanted to, but because it was easier than resisting. Noise became armor. Expectations closed in. Being seen with Marianne started to feel like something he had to justify, even if no one explicitly asked him to. He didn’t pull away all at once, just little things. Sitting elsewhere. Talking louder when she was around. Laughing things off that once would’ve earned a quiet conversation instead.

Marianne noticed immediately.

She didn’t confront him. She never did. She simply stepped back, the way she always does when she realizes someone is choosing the version of themselves that doesn’t leave room for her. She stopped waiting. Stopped lingering. Let the space grow instead of fighting it.

There was no argument. No fallout. Just a gradual absence.

After that, they existed in parallel again, nods in hallways, familiar glances, the occasional shared look that said we remember. Ted sometimes caught himself watching her from across the courtyard, quieter now, more composed, more herself than she’d ever been around him. Marianne noticed how Ted laughed louder than he used to, how his confidence had hardened into something less flexible.

Neither of them regretted knowing each other. But both understood, eventually, that what they had only worked in the in between — before Bullworth demanded allegiance, before expectations calcified into roles.

By the time Earnest entered Marianne’s life, the difference was stark. Earnest didn’t require her to shrink or wait or interpret silences. Where Ted filled space, Earnest shared it. Where Ted needed to be seen, Earnest simply saw her. Marianne didn’t have to step back with Earnest, she could stand still and be met where she was.

Ted noticed that too.

If there’s any tension left between Ted and Marianne now, it isn’t romantic. It’s the quiet awareness of a road not taken, not because of a lack of feeling, but because timing and circumstance carved them into incompatible shapes.

They were important to each other once. They just weren’t meant to last.

And somehow, that makes the memory softer not bitter, not aching, just there, like a chapter that shaped them both before the story moved on.