#tonowari

you left before dawn.

the marui was still dark, the steady rhythm of tonowari’s breathing deep and even beside you. you moved quietly, careful not to wake him as you unpeeled his much larger arm off your waist and slid out of bed, gathering your things with the practiced silence of someone who had risen early her entire life. as tsahìk, the day would be long, you already knew it. rituals, healings, disputes to mediate and you did not allow yourself to linger.

he did not stir, just continued softly snoring away as you slipped out your shared hut.

by midday, you realised something was wrong.

tonowari had not appeared at the gathering platforms. no patrols had been called, no councils convened, no decisions passed through the familiar channels of authority that always bore his voice. an olo’eyktan did not vanish, not without reason.

you asked carefully. received only shrugs. uneasy glances.

by the time the sun dipped low, painting the reef in amber and rose, the feeling had settled deep in your bones.

when you finally returned, exhaustion heavy in your limbs, the marui greeted you with silence.

not the comfortable quiet of rest.

“tonowari?” you called softly.

no answer.

you followed the feeling rather than sound, your steps slowing as you reached the sleeping alcove. the woven divider was half drawn, as if abandoned in haste. beyond it, the space was dim, lit only by the faint glow of bioluminescent threads woven into the walls.

and there, partially hidden in shadow, he sat.

the air in the marui was thick, almost suffocating. you stood frozen in the entrance, your basket of medicinal herbs forgotten at your feet as you took in the sight before you.

tonowari knelt in the center of your shared space, his massive frame trembling with barely contained tension. his skin glistened with a sheen of sweat despite the ocean breeze that usually kept the marui cool. his chest heaved with labored breaths, muscles flexing and releasing in rhythmic waves as though his body was fighting against itself.

"tonowari?" you repeated, your voice came out smaller than intended.

his head snapped toward you, and you gasped. his eyes, those warm, steady eyes that had always looked at you with such tenderness, were different. the pupils were blown wide, nearly consuming the turquoise of his irises. there was something wild there, something barely leashed.

"you should not-" his voice was rough, scraped raw. he swallowed hard, the column of his throat working. "you should not be here right now, yawne."

but you stepped further inside anyway, letting the woven entrance fall closed behind you. "you are unwell. i am tsahìk. let me help you."

a sound rumbled from deep in his chest, not quite a growl, but close. the primal nature of it sent an unexpected shiver down your spine. "this is not.. this is not something you can simply heal with your herbs."

you moved closer, your training overriding your uncertainty. as tsahìk, you had tended to many ailments, witnessed the na’vi body in countless states. but this... you had never seen this.

"then tell me what it is," you said softly, kneeling a few feet away from him. "help me understand."

tonowari's hands were clenched into fists against his thighs, knuckles pale with the force of his grip. "the heat," he managed, each word seeming to cost him. "it comes.. sometimes. for our kind. i thought i had more time before-" he cut himself off with a sharp inhale as his body shuddered.

heat.

you had heard whispers of it, vague mentions from the elders, but never the details. it had always been spoken of in hushed tones, something private, something sacred and raw.

"how long does it last?" you asked, your healer's mind trying to categorise, to understand.

"days." the word came out almost as a groan. "sometimes longer. i need-" he stopped himself, jaw clenching so hard you could see the muscle jump. "you need to leave. now. before i-"

"before you what?"

his eyes locked onto yours, and the intensity there stole your breath. "before i lose control."

you should have been frightened. perhaps you would have been, if not for the way his entire body was angled away from you, every muscle straining with the effort of maintaining distance. despite the wildness in his eyes, despite the trembling in his massive frame, he was still trying to protect you. even now.

"i am your mate," you said quietly. "i will not leave you to suffer alone."

"you do not understand what you are offering." his voice dropped to something almost guttural. "the heat.. it is not gentle. it is not.. controlled. i would not be myself. i would-" he squeezed his eyes shut, a bead of sweat rolling down his temple. "i would breed you. claim you. i would not be able to stop until-"

the words sent a jolt through your body, something hot and liquid pooling low in your belly. you had mated with tonowari before, had joined with him in the way of the na’vi, but there had always been such tenderness, such care. this.. this was something else entirely.

"show me," you whispered.

his eyes flew open in a panicked state, "no."

"i want to understand. show me what the heat does to you."

for a long moment, he simply stared at you, his chest heaving. then, slowly, he shifted. the movement was careful, deliberate, as though he was fighting his body's every instinct.

he turned slightly, and you saw it, the evidence of his arousal, impossible to hide. his loincloth was tented obscenely, and even through the fabric you could see the way his cock strained, could see it twitch and pulse with his heartbeat. but there was something else, something that made your breath catch.

at the base, barely visible, was a swelling. even now, even without stimulation, his body was preparing for something.

"the knot," he gritted out, following your gaze. "it will.. when i am inside, it will swell. lock us together. keep my seed deep until-" he shuddered violently, cutting himself off.

your thighs pressed together involuntarily. the clinical part of your mind was fascinated, cataloging this new information. but the rest of you.. the rest of you was responding to something far more primal.

the scent in the marui had grown stronger. you had noticed it when you first entered, but now it was almost overwhelming, salt and musk and something uniquely tonowari, but amplified, concentrated. it made your head swim, made your skin feel too tight.

"your scent," you murmured, almost to yourself.

he made a pained sound. "it calls to potential mates. tells them i am.. ready. fertile." the last word came out as almost a snarl. "you should not be breathing it in. it will affect you, make you.."

but you were already affected. you could feel it, the way your body was responding without your permission. your nipples had tightened beneath your woven top, your skin felt flushed and sensitive. and between your legs, you were growing wet.

"tonowari," you breathed.

"no." he shook his head violently, hair whipping. "no, you do not want this. not truly. it is the scent, the pheromones. i will not take advantage-"

"i am your mate," you repeated, firmer this time. you moved closer, close enough now that you could feel the heat radiating from his body. it was like sitting near a fire. "before eywa, we are bonded. if this is part of you, then i want to know it. all of it."

his control was cracking. you could see it in the way his pupils dilated further, in the way his nostrils flared as he scented you in return. his hands unclenched only to clench again, and you realised he was stopping himself from reaching for you.

"please," he whispered, and you had never heard him sound so desperate. "please, yawne. i am trying. i am trying so hard to-" his words dissolved into a groan as another shudder wracked his frame.

you made your decision.

slowly, deliberately, you reached up and untied your woven top, letting it fall away. your breasts were bare before him, nipples peaked and aching.

the sound that tore from tonowari's throat was nothing short of animalistic.

"what are you doing?" the words were barely intelligible, his accent thickening with his loss of control.

"i am your mate," you said for the third time. "and i am choosing this. i am choosing you. all of you."

you reached for the ties of your loincloth.

"stop." the command was sharp, but his eyes were glued to your movements, tracking every shift of your fingers. "if you do this.. if you bare yourself to me now.. I will not be able to-"

"i know."

the loincloth fell away.

for one heartbeat, two, tonowari remained frozen. his entire body was rigid, every muscle locked and trembling. you could see the war raging behind his eyes, the last threads of his control being tested to their absolute limit.

then you shifted, and your scent, your arousal, reached him fully.

those final threads snapped.

the change was instantaneous. his pupils blew so wide his eyes looked black. his lips pulled back from his teeth in something between a snarl and a grimace. and his body moved before his mind could stop it.

he was on you in a heartbeat.

his massive hands gripped your waist, lifting you as though you weighed nothing. your back hit the woven mat, his body covering yours, and the heat of him was scorching. he was everywhere at once, his scent surrounding you, his weight pressing you down, his breath hot against your neck.

"mine," he growled against your skin, the word vibrating through your bones. "mine. my mate. mine to breed. mine to fill. mine."

his hips were already moving, grinding against you with desperate, uncoordinated need. you could feel his cock, impossibly hard, sliding against your slick folds. the knot at the base was more swollen now, you could feel it catching against your entrance with each thrust.

"tonowari," you gasped, your hands finding his shoulders, his back, anywhere you could touch.

he was mouthing at your neck, your jaw, his teeth scraping over your pulse point. not biting, not yet, but the threat was there. the promise.

"going to fill you," he panted, his voice wrecked. "going to pump you so full. going to knot you, breed you, make sure it takes. need to-need to-"

his hand slid between your bodies, and you felt his fingers at your entrance, testing, preparing. even lost to the heat, some part of him was still trying to care for you, still trying to make sure you could take him.

you were soaked, your body responding to his with an eagerness that might have embarrassed you if you could think clearly. but rational thought was becoming impossible. there was only sensation, his fingers stretching you, his scent in your lungs, his weight anchoring you to the earth.

"please," you heard yourself whimper. "please, i need-"

"i know what you need." his voice was pure gravel, pure sin. "i can smell it. smell how wet you are for me. how ready. your body knows. knows what it needs. knows what i am going to do to it."

he withdrew his fingers, and you felt the blunt head of his cock press against your entrance. he was huge, bigger than you remembered, or perhaps the heat had made him swell even more. for a moment, you wondered if you could take him, if your body could accommodate-

then he began to push inside, and all thoughts scattered.

the stretch was intense, overwhelming. your body yielded to him slowly, accepting him inch by inch. tonowari’s arms were shaking where they bracketed your head, his teeth clenched as he fought to maintain some semblance of control even now.

"so tight," he gritted out. "so perfect. made for me. made to take me. made to-" his hips jerked forward involuntarily, seating himself deeper, and you both cried out.

he was only halfway inside, and already you felt impossibly full. your walls fluttered around him, trying to adjust, and each small movement made him groan.

"more," you gasped, your legs wrapping around his waist, trying to pull him deeper. "tonowari, please, more-"

his control shattered completely.

with a roar that almost shook the marui, he slammed forward, burying himself to the hilt in one brutal thrust. the growing knot pressed against your entrance, not quite inside yet but promising, threatening. your back arched off the mat, a scream tearing from your throat, pleasure and pain and overwhelming fullness all at once.

and then he began to move.

there was nothing gentle about it. nothing careful. the heat had him completely now, instinct overriding everything else, and he fucked into you with a desperation that bordered on violence. each thrust was deep, punishing, driving the air from your lungs. the wet sounds of your bodies joining filled the marui, obscene and primal.

"look at you," he growled, his voice barely recognisable. "look how you take me. so small beneath me, and yet.." he punctuated the words with a particularly brutal thrust that made you sob. "yet you take every inch. every fucking inch of me."

you could barely breathe, barely think. he was so deep, reaching places inside you that you hadn't known existed. the stretch was almost too much, your body struggling to accommodate his size, but the pleasure was devastating. each drag of his cock against your walls sent sparks of sensation through your entire body.

"tonowari," you gasped, your nails raking down his back. "i can't.. it’s too much-"

"you can," he snarled, one massive hand gripping your hip hard enough to bruise, holding you in place as he drove into you again and again. "you will. you were made for this. made to be bred by me."

the word sent a shock of heat through you. bred. your body clenched around him involuntarily, and he groaned, his pace somehow becoming even more frantic.

"yes," he hissed. "you like that. like knowing i am going to fill you. going to breed you until you are round with my child. going to pump you so full.."

his other hand pressed down on your lower stomach, and you both felt it, the bulge of his cock moving inside you, visible beneath your skin. the size difference had never been more apparent. he was so large, and you were so much smaller, and yet your body was taking him, stretching around him, accommodating every thick inch.

"eywa," tonowari breathed, his eyes fixed on where his hand pressed, watching the bulge appear and disappear with each thrust. "look at you. look at what i do to you. i can see myself inside you, yawne. see how deep i reach."

you looked down, and the sight made you clench around him again. your stomach distended slightly with each thrust, the outline of him visible, proof of how thoroughly he was claiming you. it should have been frightening. instead, it made something hot and primal coil tighter in your core.

"harder," you heard yourself beg, your voice wrecked. "please tonowari."

he obliged, his hips snapping forward with bruising force. the angle shifted, and suddenly he was hitting something inside you that made sparks burst behind your eyes. you screamed, your body convulsing, and your first orgasm tore through you with devastating intensity.

but tonowari did not stop. did not even slow. he fucked you through it, prolonging it, his own breathing ragged and desperate.

"that is it," he growled. "come on my cock. squeeze me. show me how much you need this. need me."

you were sobbing now, overwhelmed by sensation, by the relentless pace, by the feeling of being so completely filled. your body was his, pinned beneath his much larger frame, helpless to do anything but take what he gave you.

"going to knot you," he panted, his thrusts becoming shorter, more focused. "going to lock myself inside this cunt and fill it until it takes. until everyone knows you are mine. carrying my child."

you felt it then, the knot at the base of his cock beginning to swell. it caught on your entrance with each thrust, not quite pushing inside yet but getting larger, harder. the stretch was already almost unbearable, and the knot was only going to make it worse.

"i do not know if i can-" you gasped, but your body was already responding, already trying to accept it.

"you can," tonowari said, his voice rough with certainty. "you will. your body knows what it needs. knows it needs to be bred properly. knotted and filled and claimed."

his hand slid between your bodies, finding the sensitive bundle of nerves above where you were joined, and he pressed down hard. the combination of sensations, his cock driving deep, the knot catching and stretching, his fingers on your clit, sent you over the edge again.

this orgasm was even more intense than the first, your entire body seizing, walls clamping down on him like a vice. and in that moment of heightened sensitivity, when your body was most pliant, most open, tonowari thrusted forward hard and the knot pushed inside.

the stretch was impossible. overwhelming. you screamed, back arching, as your body struggled to accommodate the thick swell now locked inside you. it was too much, far too much, and yet your body accepted it, stretched around it, held it.

"yes," tonowari roared, his hips grinding against yours, the knot preventing him from pulling out now. "yes, take it. take all of me. perfect. so fucking perfect."

he was locked inside you completely now, the knot ensuring that nothing would escape, that every drop of his release would stay deep inside where it belonged. the pressure was intense, the fullness beyond anything you had imagined. you could feel him throbbing inside you, could feel the knot pulsing.

and then he began to cum.

the first pulse of his release, there was so much of it. he groaned, his entire body shuddering, and you felt it flooding you, filling you, with nowhere to go because of the knot sealing you together. your stomach began to distend further, the bulge becoming more pronounced as he emptied himself inside you.

"look," he commanded, his hand pressing on your stomach again. "look at how i fill you. how much i give you."

you looked down and saw your belly swelling slightly, rounded with the sheer volume of his seed. it should have been impossible, but the knot kept everything locked inside, and he was still coming, still filling you. the sight was obscene and primal and deeply, fundamentally right.

"tonowari," you whimpered, your hands clutching at his shoulders. the pressure was intense, almost painful, but the satisfaction was bone-deep. this was what the heat demanded. what his body needed. to breed his mate thoroughly, completely, until there was no doubt that it would take.

"i know," he murmured, his voice softening slightly even as his hips continued to grind against yours in small, instinctive movements. "i know, yawne. you are doing so well. taking everything i give you. so small, and yet you hold all of me. all of my seed."

his hand stroked over your distended stomach almost reverently, feeling the swell of it, the proof of his claim. you were marked inside and out now, filled and knotted and bred exactly as instinct demanded.

the knot would not go down for a while yet. you were locked together, his cock still hard inside you, still pulsing occasionally with aftershocks. every small movement sent sparks of over-sensitised pleasure-pain through you.

"this is just the first," tonowari said, his eyes still dark with heat even though the desperate edge had dulled slightly. "the heat will last days. i will take you again and again. will keep you full and bred until my body is satisfied that you carry my child."

you shivered at the promise in his words, at the knowledge that this was far from over. your body was already exhausted, overwhelmed, and yet some deep part of you responded to his words with want.

"rest now," he murmured, carefully shifting you both so you lay on your sides, still locked together. his much larger body curled around yours protectively, one hand splayed possessively over your swollen stomach. "rest while you can. i will need you again soon."

you could already feel it, the heat building in him again, the way his cock twitched inside you, the tension returning to his muscles. this was only the beginning. the heat would drive him to take you repeatedly, to ensure his seed took root, and your body would have to endure it all.

time became fluid, measured only in the rhythm of tonowari's breathing against your neck and the slow, aching throb where you were still joined. minutes or hours might have passed, you could not tell. your body trembled with aftershocks, oversensitive and wrung out, while his seed continued to pulse weakly inside you, trapped by the knot that showed no signs of softening.

until finally, gradually, you felt it begin to recede.

the process was slow, almost agonising in its own way. each millimeter the swelling decreased made you acutely aware of how stretched you had been, how completely he had claimed every inch of you. tonowari's breathing had evened out behind you, his grip loosening slightly, and for a moment you thought perhaps the heat had broken.

you were wrong.

when the knot had finally softened enough, he pulled out with a low groan, and the rush of fluid that followed was obscene. it poured from you, thick and hot, far too much for your body to contain. You gasped at the sensation, at the sudden emptiness after being so impossibly full, and felt it coating your thighs, soaking into the woven mat beneath you.

"look at you," tonowari breathed, his voice rough with renewed hunger. his hand slid between your legs, fingers gathering the mess he had made, pushing it back inside you with a possessiveness that made you whimper. "leaking already. your body cannot even hold all i give you."

you were too exhausted to respond, your muscles liquid, your mind hazy. you thought perhaps he would let you rest now, let you recover before-

his scent hit you again, sharper than before, more intense. the heat was rising in him once more, faster this time, more demanding. you felt him shift behind you, felt his cock already hardening again against your lower back, and your breath caught.

"tonowari," you managed, your voice hoarse. "i need-"

"i know what you need," he growled, and suddenly his hands were on you, rolling you onto your stomach with an ease that reminded you exactly how much larger he was, how easily he could move you, position you, take you however he wanted. "you need your mate to breed you properly. to fill you until your body has no choice but to accept my child."

your arms were shaking as you tried to push yourself up, but he was already there, one massive hand pressing between your shoulder blades, keeping your chest down while his other hand gripped your hip, pulling your ass up.

the position made you feel even smaller beneath him, vulnerable and exposed. you could feel him behind you, the heat radiating from his body, the weight of his cock resting against your abused entrance. you were still so sensitive, still swollen and tender from the first round, and yet your body responded, slick gathering despite the soreness.

"i cannot be gentle this time," tonowari warned, but there was no apology in his voice. only raw need. "the heat, it is worse now. stronger. i need to mount you, breed you, make sure it takes."

"then do it," you gasped, because what else could you say? this was what the heat demanded. what his body needed. and yours would endure it.

he entered you in one brutal thrust.

you cried out, the stretch even more intense from this angle, the way gravity pulled you down onto him as he drove up into you. there was no careful working in this time, no gradual adjustment. he simply took, claimed, filled you with the single-minded focus of a male in the grip of heat.

"fuck," tonowari hissed, the crude word foreign on his tongue, dragged out by instinct. "so tight. even after i just bred you, your cunt grips me like it never wants to let go."

his hips snapped forward, setting a punishing rhythm immediately. each thrust drove the air from your lungs, drove him impossibly deep, the angle letting him reach places that made stars burst behind your eyes. the wet sounds of your coupling filled the marui, obscene and primal.

"you were made for this," he growled, his grip on your hip bruising as he used it for leverage, pulling you back onto his cock with each forward drive. "made to take your olo'eyktan's cock. to be bred by me. look how your little body stretches around me."

you could not look, could barely think, but you felt it. felt the impossible girth of him forcing your walls apart, felt the way your entrance strained around his thickness. from this position, the size difference was even more pronounced, his body covering yours completely, his hands so large they nearly spanned your entire waist, his cock so thick you did not understand how your body accommodated it.

but it did. it always did.

"tonowari," you sobbed, your fingers clawing at the mat beneath you, searching for purchase as he fucked into you with increasing desperation. "it is too much, i cannot-"

"you can," he cut you off, leaning over you, his chest pressing against your back, his weight pinning you down as he continued to drive into you. "you will. your body knows what to do. knows how to take me. how to milk every drop of seed from my cock."

his teeth found your shoulder, biting down hard enough to leave marks, and you keened at the sharp pleasure-pain of it. he was losing himself to the heat completely now, all pretense of control abandoned. this was pure instinct, pure need, the drive to breed, to claim, to ensure his mate carried his child.

"feel how deep i am," he panted against your skin, one hand sliding beneath you to press against your lower belly. "feel how i fill you. how your body makes room for me even though i am too big. even though i should not fit."

you felt it. felt the pressure of his hand from the outside and his cock from within, felt the way your belly yielded to accommodate him. the sensation was overwhelming, impossible to process, and yet your body responded with a fresh wave of slick, easing his way despite the soreness.

"that's it," tonowari praised, his voice a dark rumble.

his pace increased, each thrust harder than the last, and you could feel him swelling inside you again. already. the knot was forming faster this time, the heat driving his body to complete the breeding as quickly as possible.

"going to knot you again," he warned, though there was nothing you could do about it, nowhere you could go with his weight pinning you down and his cock buried inside you. "going to lock us together and fill you even fuller than before. going to pump so much seed into you that your belly swells with it."

"please," you whimpered, though you did not know what you were begging for. for him to stop? to continue? for relief from the overwhelming sensation or for more of it?

"please what?" tonowari demanded, his hips grinding against yours, the base of his cock catching on your entrance with each thrust. "please breed you? please knot you? please make sure you carry my child?"

"yes," you gasped, because it was all true, all of it. "yes, all of it, please.."

he groaned, the sound echoing through the marui as his knot caught, swelling rapidly until it locked you together once more. the stretch was agonising and perfect all at once, your body protesting and accepting simultaneously. you felt impossibly full, stretched beyond what should be possible, and then-

he came.

the first pulse of seed was like a flood, hot and thick, filling you instantly. but he did not stop. could not stop. the heat drove him to empty himself completely, pulse after pulse of cum pumping into you with a force that made your belly cramp. you could feel it, feel the sheer volume of it, feel the way it had nowhere to go with his knot sealing you shut.

"take it," tonowari growled, his hips jerking with each pulse, grinding his knot against your entrance. "take all of it. every drop. let it fill you until you cannot hold anymore."

your belly was swelling again, distending with the sheer amount of seed he was pumping into you. you looked down, watched in dazed fascination as your stomach rounded, the skin stretching taut. it should not be possible. no body should be able to produce this much, and yet the heat made it so, made his body determined to ensure conception through sheer volume alone.

"look at you," tonowari breathed, his hand sliding around to cup your cunt. "look how well you take me. how your body accepts everything i give you."

you could not respond, could only whimper as another pulse of cum filled you. the pressure was intense and yet beneath it was a strange satisfaction, a primal contentment at being so thoroughly claimed and bred.

tonowari shifted slightly, rolling you both onto your sides again, his knot still locked firmly inside you, his cock still pulsing weakly. his hand held your stomach, possessive and reverent, feeling the evidence of his claim.

"this is only the second time," he murmured against your neck, his voice still rough with heat despite the temporary satisfaction. "i will take you many more times before the heat breaks."

you shivered, exhausted and overwhelmed, your body already dreading and craving the next round in equal measure. the heat would not be satisfied easily. it would drive him to take you again and again, each time as intense as the last, until his instincts were finally appeased.

and you would take it gladly, would take everything he gave you. because he was your mate, and this was what the bond demanded.

༻༺

hi!! i had great fun writing this one, hope you guys enjoy it because i know i did!!

You were born to a soldier on Pandora, a Seargant who seemed unbothered by her pregnancy during her term. The RDA wasn’t progressive, not at all, but they weren’t so cruel (at least to their own race) that they’d force a pregnant woman into work. Your mother simply made the decision to keep working, no matter how unsafe it was.

After she gave birth to you, she seemed… inattentive at best. She took maternity leave for the required period of time and got back into the action once she was cleared, leaving you essentially alone. It wasn’t long after her redeployment that she was killed in action along with the rest of her squad. An unfortunate accident in the dangerous wilds of Pandora

So, motherless and unclaimed by a father, you were orphaned. Too young for Cryo, they let you stay. Your mother's room became yours and yours alone. 

Of course, the RDA base was no place for a child. Ill-equipped and non-accommodative. The higher-ups reasoned that you’d best be left to the scientists and doctors. They’d know how to take care of a kid best, right?

Of course, no one really paid much attention to you. Giving the minimum attention necessary to keep you alive, lest they carry the guilt of neglecting an infant to death.

Grace wasn’t sure what to think of you when you were put in her care. She was a scientist, not a babysitter. Her focus was on the Na’vi, their way of life, and the organisms living on Pandora. She didn’t have time to look after a kid.

You were shucked off onto some lower-level scientists and assistants. She didn’t hear much from you other than your crying, which was always met with swift confinement to your room with your current caretaker. 

Eventually, though, you became autonomous. You were quick, slippery, and curious. The ones in charge of you didn’t pay much attention, which led to you sneaking around. Once, finding your way into Grace's lab.

She found you at her desk, standing on her chair in only an ill-fitting t-shirt and diapers, leaning over and staring at the projection of various pictures she had up. 

Grace wasn’t cruel; she may not have wanted to be responsible for you, but she held the same fondness for kids that most did.

Carefully, she picked you up, sitting you in her lap, and asked you what you were doing.

“Pic!” Is all you blurted out, head turned around, and staring at her with your wide and curious eyes. Grace chuckled, nodding as she hummed and affirmed your babbles.

You spent the rest of that day in her hold, watching as she scrolled through the pictures and videos she had in the database, explaining, in the most child-friendly way, the ones you were interested in. 

Being just over a year old, you weren’t still in her lap. Wriggling around, grabbing at her and objects, even standing up in her lap and jumping up and down, which she swiftly stopped. Despite all this, Grace was patient with you. Perhaps it was your curiosity for Pandora that softened her, the fact that you were interested in something she’d devoted her life to researching. 

A new brain to fill, maybe.

So, you made frequent trips to the lab after that. Slipped past your caretakers and crawling into Grace or Max’s laps, whoever was available, and babbling on and on. You weren’t the center of attention or a priority, but you became somewhat of a soft spot for Grace and her fellow scientists. Not as much of a burden, anymore.

It wasn’t long before you started picking up on the Na’vi phrases being used, especially once you discovered the parts of the lab dedicated more towards the avatars and culture of the Na’vi. Grace, ever the enabler of your interest in Pandora, started speaking to you in almost strictly Na’vi.

Being so young, you picked up on it incredibly quickly, nearly at the same speed as English, which you’d only really started learning a month or two prior.

It was cute to them, having a little human baby babbling in Na’vi and focusing so intently on the fauna and flora you saw in catalogs. Some even joked that your bedtime book should be the one Grace wrote. 

They called you the LabRat around the base. A term of endearment, of course. Many knew about you, the loose kid on base who scurried around and spent almost as much time in the lab as the scientists. You were cute. But really, that’s all you were to them, a cute kid. 

But to Grace? Somewhere along the way, she grew more fond of you than she’d expected. She ate with you at breakfast, watching you messily eat out of the corner of her eye as she held conversations with the other scientists. You stuck to her side, only ever really leaving it when you wanted to be with Max or go to sleep. Even then, she often had to carry you to your room multiple times throughout the day when you fell asleep in her lap.

You spent a lot of time with Max, too. Whenever Grace was in her Avatar, which was often, you found yourself with him. He was always a little softer with you, having been more fond and sympathetic with you earlier on. 

He treated you more like a kid than most others. He didn’t really try to feed your curiosity with Pandora, instead focusing on the fact that you were a deprived orphan child. He was the most suited to take care of you, probably. 

At some point, you found your way into the Avatar lab, watching through the windows. No one really saw it coming, but you escaped. With your little mask that was slightly too big for your face, you ran out the door, gunning right for Grace’s Avatar. 

They didn’t really think you’d recognize her, but you did, and you wanted to see her. Of course, you were a little intimidated by her drastic change in appearance and height, but at this point, you knew about the Na’vi and Avatars, so you didn’t have much of a problem.

Grace, in her Avatar form, was perhaps even more loving towards you. Maybe it was the youth of the body, or the fact that she had her own internal favoritism for it, but she seemed happier. Something you picked up on quickly. 

You loved being outside. No longer were you content being cooped up in the lab, you wanted to see the forest! Of course, they weren’t exactly ok with the idea, but your crying eventually convinced them.

Grace decided to take you to the school. She’d made excellent progress with the Omaticaya through the school, maybe it would be good to start introducing some direct human contact… through you. And she figured it could be good for your development, meeting beings that weren’t just inattentive scientists and soldiers.

With your mask on and sporting your cutest clothes, Grace took you to the school. The Na’vi kids were unsure about you at first, with their adverse feelings about Skypeople, but eventually they opened up. 

You were small, so incredibly small. Even the young children had no problems holding and cradling you. You were cute in your own, human, way.

They were intrigued by the fact that your Na’vi was as good as your English. Granted, neither were particularly good, seeing as you were a toddler, but it's the fact that they were at the same level that they admired.

Sylwanin was especially interested in you, often taking you in her arms, cooing and coddling you. 

“Sa’nok, she’s so small!” She’d exclaim to Grace, who’d laugh in response.

“Well, she’s human. You’re probably at least 2 feet taller than my human body, and I’m an adult.” She leaned over Sylwanin, smiling down at the scene. “She’s just a youngin’, not even 2 years old.”

From then on, you were a regular addition to Grace’s school and a personal favorite of Sylwanin and Neytiri. The two sisters absolutely adored you. Cooing over you and your babbles, sitting you in between them or on one of their laps during the lessons.

Often, they’d sit in the back with you, giggling at your tiny body and antics, brushing your hair, or watching as you fiddled with whatever toy or objects you could get your hands on. 

Between your time in the lab and out at the school, you were the first human to be culturally raised Na’vi. It was fascinating to Grace. 

Tsu’tey was cautious of you at first, unsure of how to handle how small and frail you were. But out of everything, you were also incredibly persistent and curious. Somehow, you found yourself worming your way into Tsu’tey’s arms, waddling up to him and demanding he pick you up through body language.

Sylwanin found this utterly adorable, how you’d stand there and “Hmf!” until he reached down and picked you up. He didn’t really know how to hold you, hands tucked under your armpits, torso and legs dangling in the air, but you crawled your way around him, finding yourself sitting on his shoulders. Well, shoulder, to be exact. You could comfortably sit on one, granted it was with one of his hands on your legs to keep your balance while you grabbed onto his braids.

“Tey-Tey” “Wanin” and “Tiri” you called them, not really able to pronounce their full names. They, of course, didn’t care, cooing at the babble of nicknames you gave them. 

In turn, they started to call you “Syulì'ang”, a butterfly-like insect that was known for its characteristic claws that latched it onto whatever it landed on. A fitting nickname, they all thought. 

Their sweet Syulì'ang. Tsu’tey was more or less simply amused by you once he was comfortable. He wasn't as doting as Sylwanin or Neytiri or some of the others; he liked you, but it was more or less than he was entertained by you. 

Of course, that changed the more you stuck around. By the time you’d learned to walk well enough to walk to the school yourself, with Grace accompanying you, of course, he was always waiting by the doorway. He’d give a simple nod to Grace when the pair of you came into view, and he tried to remain stoic as you ran forward, your small body knocking into his tall legs and calling out his name, but Grace, and just about anyone else who really knew him, could see through it. 

You spent your developmental years at the school, growing up so quickly that the Na’vi kids didn’t know what to do. When they first met you, you could barely walk, and all you could really do was babble and string together words, but years passed, and you began holding conversations and moving around fairly fluidly. 

Of course, you were still small and babyish, still just a toddler, but toddlers grew and changed fast. 

You were like their baby sister. Tsmuke, they called you. To them, you were really no different from another Na’vi kid. You spoke fluently, you were young and saw the world in a manner that seemed to reflect their own cultural point of view, perhaps from your exposure to it. 

Grace couldn’t really place when she started to love you. Maybe it was when you first called her “Sa’nok”, copying the kids at the schoolhouse. Maybe it was when that transformed into “Sa’nu”, or when it became “mama” when back in the lab. Maybe it was that day you first caught her attention, having snuck into the lab and into her heart.

She never corrected you when you called her those things, even when she got odd stares from the others around when you did. They just didn’t get it. They were too wrapped up in their own world. And yeah, so was she, but at some point, you became a part of her world. 

She didn’t really think of herself as your parent, but she didn’t mind if you thought of her as one. She wasn’t really the nicest; she was definitely more of a ‘tough love’ kind of parental figure, but that wasn’t really all that bad. 

Pandora wasn’t suited for you. You weren’t supposed to be there, and it wasn’t a good place for you by any means. You weren’t given proper attention or affection, and when you were, it wasn't consistent. Grace and Max, and the Na’vi kids weren’t role model family figures, but they tried, and they loved you, no matter how… odd it was. 

At some point, you’d met Mo’at and Eytukan. Likely, they’d heard of you from their daughters and Tsu’tey. It was hard to tell what they thought of you, after all, they had their own reservations about the humans, only allowing the school to function due to Sylwanin's request. 

But they liked you enough. You were a kid, a toddler, innocent in what was being done to their planet. You didn’t deserve to be on the receiving end of any prejudice they held towards the humans. You spoke the language and learned beside their children. You seemed to love the forest as if it were your own home.

Formally, you met Mo’at when you fell down and scraped yourself while running out of the school, being chased by Sylwanin. You cried, of course, but Sylwanin, as calm as ever, simply scooped you up and told Grace she was taking you to her mother to get fixed up, running off before she could object.

You watched the Tsahik in awe as she worked on you, rubbing a salve on your wounds, her jewelry and beadings clinking together as she did so. You watch her in silence, Sylwanin giggling at your entranced demeanor. At the end, climbing back into Sylwanin’s arms, you turned and told Mo’at she was magnificent. A big word for your age. 

Mo’at had to admit, you were a charming little kid. 

Neytiri was especially charmed by you, often taking you from anyone else's arms to hold you in hers. It became a running joke that she’d adopt and steal you away if she could. She never denied it.

You could always be found fiddling with her hair or necklaces, pulling at them or putting them in your mouth. Neytiri, despite not liking your actions, was patient with you, simply giggling as she pulled it from your grasp and pointed your attention elsewhere.

Some people on base started to voice complaints about you being out too much. Being gifted jewelry and pieces by Sylwanin and Neytiri, and one piece from Tsu’tey, you began dressing in them every day. 

Of course, the complaints went nowhere, being no more than off-hand comments made by people who had no role or responsibility in your upbringing. As loved as you were, you were still overlooked more often than not, just an orphan kid who wandered in and out of the base. Outside of Grace, Max, and a few other scientists, no one really cared.

You had your routine. Getting up, spending time with Max before running out with Grace to the school. The school was your favorite place, you often told Neytiri and Tsu’tey in giddy whispers. You felt free and loved. It was your place.

When Sylwanin stopped showing up, you were sad. You missed her. Really, she was your favorite. 

You didn’t understand why you stopped going to the school, why Grace started arguing with a bunch of the soldiers more often, and why you were no longer allowed outside of the base. You cried a lot, saying you wanted your Tsmuke’s and Tsmukan. You wanted to go to the school, you wanted to see Neytiri and Sylwanin and Tsu’tey and the others. 

You cried when a scientist, tired of your whining, told you they probably didn’t want to see you.

Grace had a hard time comforting you. She didn’t know what to say, struggling with her own grief and guilt in the whole situation. All she could do was hold you and tell you that things were going to be okay. 

It was a while before you stopped crying so much. You still whined about wanting to go outside, but you learned to stop when asked. You spent your nights fiddling with the gifts from Neytiri and Sylwanin, the jewelry they crafted for you, the toy Mo’at gifted you once, and the Ikran Tsu’tey carved for you out of wood. They were your most treasured pieces. 

You worked on your own gifts for them, on and off, through the two years you spent without them. 

You were six by the time Jake came around. You became attached to him very quickly. 

He’d just made it to base and was getting filled in by Norm. His introduction to Grace wasn’t going well, bordered by her hostility towards him being there in place of his brother. Before he could say anything else, you bounded into the room. 

“Sa'nu! sa'nu! 'ur 'upe oe run!” Mama! Mama! Look what I found! You yelled, stopping at her feet and shoving an insect you were cradling in your palm into her face. 

She glanced at the bug and tilted her head, raising a brow at you. “ Y/n, nga kame nga're ke tung wrrpa, ‘itetsyip.” You know you’re not allowed outside, little one.

You pouted, stomping your foot. “Oe ke wrrkä! tsal pamähem ne oe.” I didn't go out! It came to me. You insisted. Grace merely rolled her eyes with a grin as she ruffled your hair. 

Jake looked at Norm, confused, who translated a lazy “she’s showing her a bug.” for him. 

As if you just noticed their presence, you awkwardly glanced at the two, shyly shuffling behind Grace. Jake glanced between you and Grace before leaning in. 

“What’s that you got there?” He asked, smiling as he watched your facial expression change. Before he knew it, you were launched into a whole explanation about the bug. It's name, both scientific and Na’vi, and all the fun little characteristics you noticed and pointed out to him. 

It was easy to tell who you’re favorite was going to be among the newest science recruits. You became quick friends with the ex-Marine, demanding his attention whenever he wasn’t busy. 

You were an interesting little thing. Energetic as all could be, running around like you owned the place, switching between languages so casually as if they were one. Jake paid more attention to you in a week than most of the people on base had in your entire life. 

He’d come by your room, peaking in as you played with your toys or read a book you definitely didn’t actually understand. As soon as you noticed his presence, you’d abandon whatever it was you were doing to run to him, hoisting yourself up into his lap.

“What's up, little bug?” He’d say, smiling down at you as you went on and on about whatever it is you wanted to talk about. Most of it went right over his head, but he listened nonetheless. He got the memo pretty early on that you were essentially left to your own devices, only helped with the bare minimum by people who didn’t want to be responsible for you

So, he started being more attentive towards you. Call it fatherly instincts, he calls it common empathy. You didn’t have any plans or expectations for him, you weren’t disappointed in his presence in place of his brothers, you simply looked up at him with those wide and love-filled eyes. That was all he needed to become hooked. His little bug, he liked to call you.

To Norm, Jake had adapted a fatherly role scarily quickly. Of course, Norm thought you were cute, but he wasn’t really sure what to do with you. It puzzled him how well Jake was with you, for only knowing you for a few days. How you crawled into his lab during one of the briefings, obviously tired but wanting to be involved. 

The briefing was casual, so Jake wrapped his arms around you and cradled you, rocking you in his arms as he hummed a lullaby he’d grown up with on Earth.

It was the first time someone had sung you a lullaby, at least since you were a crying infant everyone was desperate to soothe. You fell asleep in his arms immediately. Grace only gave a passing glance and a chuckle, stating he was now on bedtime duty. 

And that he was. You were a stubborn kid when it came to bedtime, fighting your own sleep and exhaustion because you wanted to be where the attention was. You didn’t want to miss out on any of Grace or Max’s briefings or discoveries, no matter how dull they were, or the fact that they didn’t really happen after hours. Nevertheless, you were difficult to put to sleep. 

He was quickly called the Y/n Whisperer after he calmed you down from a tantrum and had you knocked out in bed within 10 minutes of you being told to go to sleep, an affair that often took at least half an hour and some strong bargaining. 

Jake was still reeling from it all. For him, he was still dealing with the fact that his brother was dead and he’d taken his place on a scientific mission on Pandora, whisked away from his dystopic life on Earth and given a brand new chance. It was dizzying, and now he had a kid attached to his leg. 

Call it what it was: whiplash. He doesn’t really understand why you liked him so much, why he was able to connect with you so well. Maybe it was because he was the first person to spare you a second glance in your entire life, a second glance you didn’t have to work and beg for. 

If given the chance, Jake was sure you two would be absolutely inseparable.

It was during dinner that things shifted. You were there for Jake's recounting of the events that transpired after he got chansed off by a Thanator. Through it all, all you heard was that he’d met Neytiri. 

Neytiri. Your Neytiri.

You missed her. You missed her so bad, and Jake got to see her. It had been two years, and you thought for sure there was no way you’d be able to see her again. But Jake saw her! He even went to the village, so he likely saw Tsu’tey, Mo’at, and Sylwanin! 

Seeing them was possible. That was the conclusion you came to. 

Tsu’tey was the one to find you the next day. You had snuck out, exopack secured on for the first time in nearly two years, and you set off. Your memory was hazy, and you hardly remembered your way through the forest.

Scratch that, you didn’t remember it at all. You got lost almost immediately, your excitement to see your friends slowly replaced with uncertainty and fear. You wandered through the woods, climbing across logs and rivers, becoming more and more sure that you weren’t going the right way…

Of course, you didn’t know what to do. No one could really blame you for how you started crying out, yelling for Neytiri, Tsu’tey, Sylwanin, Grace, whoever you thought could find you. 

It wasn’t until you heard the growl that you regretted your decision to be so loud. Nantang. They surrounded you, stalking and getting ready to pounce. All you could do was scream.

Tsu’tey found you, following the distant yelling for familiar names and then the high-pitched screams. He shot the Nantang, scaring off the others as he rode in on his pa’li. He was ready to shoot you, the human who had trespassed onto their land, but he paused. Arrow resting between his fingers, and breath hitched.

It was you.

He was quick, dismounting his direhorse and scooping you up in his arms, doing his best to soothe you with soft words as you cried and writhed in his hold. Blood was everywhere. He was horrified.

He acted on pure impulse. Jake. Jake probably knew you. He was also human, and he was an avatar- so he probably knew Grace- he had to get you to Jake.

So he rode on his direhorse as fast as he could, holding you tightly in his arms as you bled and bled and cried. Oh, how you cried, clinging to him and whimpering, he felt so helpless. Exactly like how he’d felt that day Sylwanin died in his arms at the school house. He couldn’t have that happen again. Not with you. Not with the small girl he’d grown so fond of. 

It was a blur, finding Jake and Neytiri, the morphing look of terror on their faces as they took in the sight of the girl in his arms and his disjointed explanation. It was a blur, and he was on his knees, Neytiri holding onto him as they both shook, taking in the situation as Jake ran off into the woods with you in his arms, pushing himself as fast as he could go. 

Jake was scared. You were such a sweet girl, and in the days he’d known you, he was hooked. You were small, petulant, stubborn, smart; you were a good kid. You were funny and fun to be around, and he liked you. He saw why Grace had such a soft spot for you, who wouldn’t?

But now you’re in his arms, bleeding, and Grace is gonna be horrified. 

He got you to the base, bursting through the doors, demanding a doctor, yelling you needed help because you were hurt and bleeding. You were small, hurt, bleeding, and it felt like you were at death's door.

You were swept out of his arms, and all you could do was whimper, reaching back out to the strong arms you felt safe in. They hooked you up to machines, tended to your wounds. They assured Jake and a just-arriving-frazzled Grace that you were gonna be fine. 

But the base wasn’t a hospital. Yeah, it was a military base, and those often come with medical centers, but it wasn’t good, especially not for a child. With how advanced they were, they weren’t well equipped.

You suffered for days, writhing and screaming in pain, tears only stopping once you ran out of them. 

Despite Grace and Max’s pleas and Jake's insistence towards Quaritch, you were essentially… ignored.

You were loved. But you were still just a bastard orphaned child; the RDA simply didn’t want to deal with you, especially with your seemingly growing allegiance to the Na’vi.

Of course, they did what they could to help you, but it was minimal. 

You were going to die, Grace and Jake were sure of it.

So, desperate, he went to Mo’at. He pleaded for her to help you. She didn’t need much convincing.

The night before Grace planned to move the operation to the Hallelujah Mountains, they snuck you out, careful to remove all your hook-ups to the machines. 

They took you to the village, breaking so many rules, desperate to help you. 

You were frail, withering away in his hold. The best he could do was whisper comforts as he carried you. 

Mo’at worked quickly, shooing them out of her tent as she worked on you. Salves, mixes, incense. She worked for hours. You were just a little kid; you had so much before you. She pleaded to the Great Mother to help you, even if you were a human she could barely reach. 

You were getting better, but it wasn’t enough. Something was wrong, very wrong, and she didn’t know what it was or how to help.

She pulled away, examining you with a hitched breath. Just as she went to move to grab another tool, something caught her attention. 

An Atokirina.

It floated in the air, pulsing until it wilted down to meet your skin. 

Mo’at’s eyes widened. 

“We must take her to the Tree of Souls.” She declared as she stepped out of her tent, the group that had gathered in front of it standing and moving in confusion.

They wanted to question it. Jake wanted to ask what was wrong, how you were doing, and if you’d live. All the words were on the tip of his tongue, but Grace grabbed his hand. She kept her gaze forward, at the tent, but she’d communicated enough.

Tsu’tey was the one to take you into his arms, lips pursed, and eyes gazing down at you in worry. For a moment, Jake wanted to be the one to hold you, but you curled into Tsu’teys arms so comfortably- so familiar, a moment of comfort and assurance when you were in so much pain.

Neytiri followed close behind, hand resting on your forehead as they walked, her eyes focused on your face scrunched in agony, your pinched brows and wavering lips. How she wanted to soothe you, to hold you, and kiss away the creases of pain in your face. 

You’d grown so much since they’d last seen you. You were still so small, but so much more grown. They had missed you so much, their grief compelled by the loss of two sisters. They nearly begged Mo’at and Eytukan to call off the ban on humans on their land, if only to see you.

And now, you were back in their arms, but by the force of necessity and desperation. Out of the fear of death. 

The clan, having roused at the commotion, made their way to the Tree of Souls with the group. They didn’t question their Tsahik’s care of the human child, many of them having heard the accounts of you and your kindred nature from the many children who’d attended the school.

Arriving at the Tree, Neytiri and Tsu’tey kept Grace and Jake at a distance, allowing Mo’at to prepare as the clan gathered around. They pulled Jake and Grace down to the ground with them, connecting their Kuru to the roots sticking up. They started to hum, moving as a group. 

With everything in them, they begged Eywa to help you.

You were human, yes, but they loved you. You were their sister. You were Grace's daughter, by love if not biology. You were a sweet kid, and they wanted- needed you to stay. 

“Allow this child to heal, Great Mother, allow her to heal and walk among us. To live, to feel your embrace.” Mo’at’s words echoed, her chants and pleas thrumming through the crowd. 

Placed at the base of the spirit tree, you lay there, wrapped in luminescent tendrils. They wrapped around your small body, seemingly consuming you as they grew. The light of the tendrils pulsed with your every breath, echoing across the tree like a ripple in water. 

You… you felt free. The tendrils were warm, encasing you in what felt like a mother's embrace. Your vision was blurred, but you saw.  You saw so much, all you could do was smile. You saw Sylwanin, every time you’d seen her, every word, every movement. She wrapped around you. You saw the sea, you saw the forest and the land. It was breathtaking.

Mo’at faltered, her chants falling off the tip of her tongue as she glanced down at you. At this, the ones who’d brought you here opened their eyes.

They didn’t know what to do. 

You were there, alive. More alive than you’d ever been, but they could feel that you were slipping away. 

Neytiri crawled towards you, Grace scrambling up and finding herself at your side. She took your hand in hers as Neytiri caressed your hair.

They knew it was a desperate attempt, taking you here, unlikely to work, but it hurt. They weren’t ready to let go. The humans weren’t going to help you. What else were they to do? 

Tears slid down Grace’s face as she watched you, your eyes glazed over as a smile crept onto your lips. 

“Y/n- Syulì'ang please-” Neytiri whispered, her voice cracking. She leaned down, placing a kiss on your forehead. “Stay” she begged

“Syulì'ang,” Tsu’tey choked out, pleading, biting back his words, and tears with them. “Be strong, stay with us.”

You heard their words. You wanted to reach up, to comfort them. Grace was right in front of you, and all you wanted was to reach up and wipe the tears off her face. 

Grace cried. Silent, of course. Tears slipping down her cheeks like arrows of fire burning their way through the air. They hurt like it. She wondered if they’d scar, if there would be a trail of scarred flesh down her cheeks when she was done. 

You were her child, at least, the closest she had to one. You were the best thing she’d had in a long time. And now, you were slipping away. Like the school, like Sylwanin, like Neytiri and Tsu’tey and the children who’d called her Sa’nok. You called her Sa’nu.

The grief was endless. A fountain pouring from Neytiri as she wept, hands shaking as she tried to fight the urge to take you into her arms. She’d seen you grow up, your words develop from babbles to sentences, your mind expand. She wore the bracelet you’d made for her. It was ill-fitting and poorly crafted, but she weaved it into her armband, careful to preserve its shape and structure. She meant to always have you with her, even if she couldn't physically. 

You were more than a child she saw as a sister; you could have been her child. A ridiculous notion, but she felt so strongly about you. She wanted to take you in, hold you close, and carry you as she did her chores and duties. She wanted to hunt and bring it home for you to eat till you were full. Perhaps, to her, you were an odd mixture of a sister and child, but that just meant she loved you all the more.

Her sweet Syulì'ang. She’d named you after the insect, a beautiful creature that fluttered around and gripped onto surfaces when it meant to. She wished and wished and wished that you'd stay, that you’d grip onto the ground and stay there with her. She did not like humans, but you? You, she loved.

So it hurt, watching as your eyes closed, feeling your pulse slow, have you die right in front of her, right in her reach. 

Your eyes, heavy, rose up to the sky. “Sa’nu, Tsmuke, Tsmukan, Jake-” Your words were quiet, strained, and heavy. But you spoke anyway, a warmth passing through your body. “Eywa, she’s” It was hard to speak. “She’s like the waves-” your breath released from your lips, cutting off your words.

The tendrils around you pulsed before they dulled, the light dimming across the Tree of Souls.

Jake could only hold Neytiri as she cried, his own tears falling as he felt his entire demeanor freeze.

They left you by the tree, something Grace opposed. But Mo’at had insisted it was Eywa’s wish. Jake and Grace weren’t happy, nor were Tsu’tey and Neytiri; they wanted to give you a proper burial, but they complied with their Tsahik’s declaration.

It was mere days later that Neytiri visited again, only to be met with an empty landscape. You were nowhere in sight, only an abundance of tendrils in your place, pulsing with light as Eywa breathed below them.

Ronal, for weeks, dreamed of a face. A human one. She’d never seen the girl before, unfamiliar with the face and voice she kept meeting in her dreams. It bothered her, being met so forcefully with a demon's face, but behind it, she felt the Great Mother's words. 

She couldn’t make sense of it; it drove her wild how she prayed and prayed, and all she was met with were new visions of the girl. With a newborn baby, she felt stretched thin. She confided in Tonowari about her dreams. He did what he could to comfort her, putting in effort to relieve her of as much stress as he could. 

Ronal prayed, seeking answers and clarity. What did the Great Mother want?

One night, she dreamed of the spirit tree, along with the girl. She dreamt of whispers, of a new face, of a young Metkayina child she held in her arms. 

She woke up in a cold sweat, right as dawn rose in the sky. 

She made her way through the village, mounting her tsurak, and traveled to the cove of the ancestors. She felt a weight in her chest as she arrived. She dove under, swimming through the featherlike branches as she made her way to the center of the tree. 

She reached forward, placing her palms on the branches wrapped tightly in on itself. Slowly, she unwrapped it, pulling it away from the other ‘leaves’ wrapped around. Once she got to the center, she pulled back.

An infant lay in the middle, wrapped in the leaves. Slowly, she pulled it out, taking it into her arms, she swam up. Breaching the surface, she looked down, watching as the baby breathed in the air. 

The first breath.

Ronal gazed down at the baby, brows pinched together as she took her in. Confusion was the least she could describe it as. 

A moment passed. Ronal mounted her tsurak, and she returned home.

Whispers surrounded her as she walked through the village, eyes following her and landing on the unknown infant in her embrace. In the mere minutes she’d had the baby, she felt an overwhelming sense of maternal instinct towards it. She reasoned she felt that way about most babies, but this was stronger.

She approached her Marui, Tonowari, meeting her at the entrance. He gazed down at her, then the baby, confusion panting his face. He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out, stuck in the flurry of words he was trying to put together.

“The Great Mother brought her to me,” Ronal spoke, calm and melodic. “To us.” Tonowari gazed up at her. 

Words exchanged between them in complete silence. 

He nodded, stepping aside, allowing Ronal to enter the Marui. 

The two took to their daughter quickly, entranced by the baby given to them by Eywa. They were lost, confused by her appearance, but they didn’t question it. They simply placed her in the cradle with their other baby, Ao’nung, watching as they turned and curled to hold each other.

“You dreamt of her.” Tonowari’s voice broke the silence.

Ronal, attention on the baby's unwavering, nodded. “Last night, yes.”

He looked to his wife, tentative as he examined her facial expression. “And the others?” He questioned. 

There was a moment of silence, Ronal’s hand coming to rest on the edge of the cradle. 

“I do not care. She is my daughter. She is ours now.”

Tonowari stared at his wife before nodding, reaching down to cup his daughter's face in his hand. “And what is our daughter's name?” He spoke, already transfixed by the infant lying in the cradle he crafted by hand. 

Ronal tilted her head, watching the girl. After a moment, she gazed to Tonowar, their eyes meeting as a soft smile graced her lips.

“Syuli”

After your death, Jake’s loyalty to the RDA wavered. Grace had accepted her fate as a trapped scientist long ago, but Jake refused. He bonded with Neytiri and Tsu’tey quicker, earning the faith of the clan before he finished his Iknimaya. 

He saw it in black and white. The humans left you alone and to die, the Na’vi loved you as their own and wept at your death. His decision was clear-cut.

Still, his fast actions weren’t enough to prevent the events that led to Neytiri’s belief of his betrayal. Or the destruction of the home tree. Or the death of those he fought by.

By the end of the war, your death was followed by many others. Black stains on Jake’s heart. He mourned you, grieved for you. The devastation of the war was hard enough, but you? You weren’t even a casualty; you were a victim of the most unfortunate of circumstances. He replayed it in his head over and over again, each time wondering what he could have done to save you, to prevent your death. 

It drove him to the worst of his depths. A side of himself he hadn’t even seen when his brother died. 

The only thing keeping him afloat was Neytiri and the child that lay in her womb.

“She is with Grace now, my Jake, with the Great Mother.” Neytiri would say, burying her grief. Twice, she's lost you now. When Sylwanin died and her parents shut down their connections with the humans, she wept for not only her sister but for you. Would she never see you again? At least back then, she found comfort in the fact that you were safe and in Grace’s care. 

Perhaps you still were, in her arms, just as you are in the Great Mothers. But you’re not in hers. That’s what hurt. How you’d never grow up, forever stuck as the small child she knew and loved. 

Time passed, and she had Neteyam. Her sweet baby boy. She felt the cracks in her heart start to be stitched back together, only further healed when they took in Kiri. 

She saw it in Jake, too, how he took to his fatherly role immediately, perhaps better prepared after his time with you. Slowly but surely, they came to be okay again. 

Still, you burned in their hearts. As she wove her songcord, she pulled one of the beads from the bracelet you made her, as carefully as she could, and wove it in. 

A‘eveng, Y/n, ohe oamum 

Wamintxu fi oe, a syawn

a’atanur oe mameyam 

meyam ohe ngenga, tsalsungay pehrr lom

A child, Y/n, i knew

showed to me, a blessing

a light I held in my arms

I hold you, even when gone

It was hard to speak about you to the kids. They didn’t want to introduce the idea of someone dying at such a young age. They also still grieved you, struggling to accept your death. It wasn’t fair. You should be with them, growing up alongside their children. You would have been such a good big sister.

This hit Jake especially hard, knowing how you’d been excited to have another kid on base; Spider. You raved to him about how you were going to bring him to the lab all the time, what toys you’d give him, and how you wanted to teach him Na’vi and have him as a little brother. At least, the closest you could have to one.

So it was hard watching Spider do all that, grow up and learn Na’vi, come into his family and be seen by his kids as a fellow sibling, knowing it was everything you wanted. 

But years passed, and their family grew, and it grew strong. Their children knew of you in passing, in hushed breaths like how they spoke of Sylwanin and the others they’d loved that left them through such harsh tragedies. 

Neytiri and Jake didn’t want the children to wonder what it would have been like to have you in the family. It was already too painful for them to wonder themselves.

Their children grew, their personalities developed, and they came into their own. It was hard not to see you in each of them. Tuk’s curiosity, Lo’ak’s mischief, the softness in Kiri’s eyes, and how Neteyam was so thoughtful with his words. For all its hurt, it also gave them comfort. They’d continue to see you, even when you weren’t with them. 

Their grief became something mellow, something they could plant love and strength into.

But then the RDA came back. Like an old scar tearing apart, refusing to heal. Their lives turned upside down, and their healing came to a harsh halt, slowly stepping backwards against the blood and gunfire they stood in.

That eclipse, when the kids were in the hands of the recoms, Jake felt barbed wire wrapping around his throat. 

He heard their whines, their yelps of pain, and he almost lost them. He refused to risk it. Not again.

“He had our children. Had them under his knife.” He was scared, begging Neytiri to leave, to find a better place for them. He hadn’t been able to find one for you. He wouldn’t let that happen again. “Look, I got nothing… I've got no plan. But I can protect this family. That I can do.”

Neytiri heard the unsaid, seeing what he saw when he spoke. 

“But I do know one thing, wherever we go, this family is our fortress.” It was unintentional, his hands placed delicately on her shoulders, one slipping down, grazing the armband she’d woven with your bracelet in it.

They had to protect their children. 

The Travel to the Metkayina was difficult, tiring, laborious, and met with storms that raged against them. But they pushed through. They’ve pushed through worse; they’d do this for their family.

They landed on the beach, drawing the attention of the clan, who gathered around them in confusion and awe. They were nervous, holding themselves close together as they were gawked at and picked on by oncoming clan members.

Jake felt a sense of relief when Tonowari, an honorable man and the clan's Olo’eyktan, arrived at the scene, greeting them warmly and with a smile. He felt confident, with Tonowari on their side, he believed he could get past the wall Ronal would inevitably put up.

As the crowd parted, he prepared himself, but he felt all the breath be taken out of his lungs.

Ronal stalked closer, her imposing demeanor, but that wasn’t what shocked him. Behind her, following at her heels, was a young girl. Teal skin with swirling stripes.

She resembled you. 

He couldn’t place it; the girl was Metkayina, in every way. But something about her face, the way her expression was set in it, how she carried herself. The air around her, the look in her eyes. All of it set off bells in his chest, ringing and clanging against the grief that settled there. The grief for you. 

She stood behind Ronal, tilting her head exactly the way you did when you were curious about something. 

Neytiri had seen it hundreds of times, holding you in her lap at the schoolhouse. She let out a breath. Jake glanced at her, millions of words passing between them.

She saw it too.

Jake took a moment to collect himself, pulling back from the shock he’d experienced but couldn’t explain. He went on with his prepared speech. He was seeking Uturu; sanctuary, safety for his family. 

His veins were buzzing. He didn’t want to be turned away, to force his children to retreat in defeat, praying they’d find another clan willing to listen and take them in. He felt helpless.

Ronal, skeptical, circled the family. She pulled at their tails, remarking how inefficient they’d be in the water, in their way of life. 

She approached Kiri, taking her hands in hers. A scowl crossed her face. Four fingers. Kiri held her breath, self-conscious of her extra finger, a tell-tale sign of their human descent. Demon descent.

Ronal gazed down, tilting her head.

She looked up to her daughter, the one who’d arrived with her. She watched her for a moment, the dreams she saw all those years ago flooding her mind. Something she’d never speak aloud.

She dropped Kiri’s hands, walking past the children and Jake Sully. “You are ill fit to live here.”

“We can adapt. We can learn.” He pleaded, desperate to convince them to let his family stay. Desperate to appease the leaders of the clan. 

“I’m done with war.” He spoke to Tonowari, quiet and between them. “I just want to keep my family safe.”

Ronal watched him, not convinced by his words. Behind her, her daughter stepped forward, placing her hand on her mother's shoulder.

“Sa’nu.” The words escaped her lips, and Jake breathed in. He saw you, sitting in Grace’s lap in the lab, running up to her excitedly, lying at the spirit tree, dying. 

Ronal looked at her daughter, words exchanged between their gazes, she turned to her mate, being met with the same sentiment. A moment passed, and she nodded. 

“Jake Sully and his family will stay with us.” Tonowari announced, explaining to the clan their duty to teach them their ways of life. 

Jake sighed in relief, bringing forth a ‘thank you’ from his family. 

“Our children, Syuli, Ao’nung, and Tsireya, will show your children what to do.”

Ao’nung stepped forth, displeased by his father's decision, but silenced.

“Come, we will show you our village!” Tsireya stepped forward, hand in hand with her sister. 

You looked to the family that had arrived at your village. You took in their faces. 

They felt familiar to you. You couldn’t place it.

Tsireya tugged you along through the village, humming as you made your way across the woven walkways. Neytiri and Jake, though focused on taking in their new home, couldn’t help but watch you. The bounce in your step all too familiar.

It was eerie, and they didn’t understand their attribution of you to the little girl they’d known all those years ago. 

You became a constant in their life, always around their kids, peeking into their Marui to offer fruits you’d picked with your mother. You were a sweetheart, thoughtful, and kind to their children. 

Your mother stayed skeptical of her allowance of the foreigners into their clan, fueled by your growing night problems. 

It had been years since she last caught you sleepwalking. It was a problem when you were a child, roaming around the village in the midst of the night. Many concerned clan members came to her with stories of how you found yourself at the edge of the walkways, staring up into the open sky with a withered look on your face.

You sleep-talked, she discovered after staying up to follow you one night. You spoke garbled sentences, strung together words that didn’t make sense. You spoke in a mix of Na’vi and English.

How you even knew the language? She couldn’t understand. 

She prayed nightly, seeking for guidance on how to help her sweet baby girl. Again, she was only met with visions of that human child.

It all came to a head one night when Tsireya woke her up, lip jutting out as she whispered that you’d fallen during your walks. Ronal soothed her daughter, telling her to go back to sleep before leaving to find you. 

You were on your knees, hands clasped together as you spoke in broken prayers, eyes glazed over. You were somewhere she didn’t know.

She was tired of it, worried to death, and lost. So, she did the only thing she could think of. She pulled you into the water carefully, holding you as she rode to the Cove of the Ancestors. You came out of your trance, slowly but surely, but still drowsy and out of it. 

She was able to coax you to enough consciousness to get you to dive under, connecting with the spirit tree. 

She doesn’t know what you saw when you did. All she knows is that you hadn’t sleep-walked, or talked since. She knew you were special. A child she would never truly understand, but she loved and cherished you with everything she had. 

She saw the way the animals around you seemed to move in sync with you, how the luminescence at night pulsed with your breath. She didn’t ask for answers. She loved you and she trusted the Great Mother. 

But here you were again, standing at the entrance of their Marui, eyes glazed over, staring off into the stars. Ever since they’d let the Sullys stay, you’d been walking and talking in your sleep again. 

It wasn’t as intense, thankfully, but it was enough to rouse her or her children from sleep every so often.

They worried for you. They took turns staying up, watching you, easing you back to sleep, careful not to startle you from your trance. During the day, they acted as if nothing was different. They knew you were different, but they loved you nonetheless. You were their daughter, their sister. 

Ao’nung picked on you, teasing you and going out of his way to bother you. It was his way of showing his love, he joked. He had his moments. Picking you up in his arms and carrying you across the village to your mother for treatment when you hurt yourself on a spear, ignoring your complaints that it was your hand that was injured, not your legs, you could still walk! He ignored you, carefully setting you down in their Marui, lurking by the door until you were bandaged up and ready to leave.

Tsireya was easier. You got along with your younger sister without any problems, aside from the occasional spat that never went anywhere. You two were two peas in a pod. Inseparable. Hands clasped together, arms wrapped around each other. You were always together. It’s how you thrived. 

Ronal and Tonowari, they never gave a second thought to the fact that you weren’t theirs, because you were. From the moment they’d set you down in that cradle, you’d become theirs. Their love for you was strong and unwavering. They called your name out with affection, they weaved you jewelry and clothes with love, they never let you doubt you were loved. They held you as you slept, as you dreamt.

And you dreamt. You dreamt every night. Of faces, of voices, of people you didn’t know, but knew. 

By the time you woke up, your dreams were in blurry fragments, unable to be pieced together or made sense of. 

Your family didn’t voice their worries to you. They saw how you flourished when interacting with their new clan members. 

You were patient with them, guiding them through your way of life like it was the easiest thing to do. You blended in with them, conversing with the children so easily, it was as if you’d been doing it your entire life. 

You and your siblings, Rotxo, and the Sully kids became somewhat of a friend group. Always together, at least in fragments. You felt as if your family had expanded.

The Sully kids adored you, especially Kiri. It was something about the way the two of you seemed to understand nature that connected you. And perhaps, your mysterious origins. 

You confided in Kiri, and Kiri alone, about your peculiar birth. The whole clan knew, they’d witnessed it firsthand, but the story hadn’t made its way to the Sullys. Perhaps it was because it was accepted, no one thought twice about it, you were Ronal and Tonowari's daughter. No one thought to mention that, by biological means, you weren’t.

You told her how you didn’t know your biological parents. No one did. Abandoned at the Spirit tree, you were taken in by Ronal and Tonowari, raised alongside Tsireya, and essentially as Ao’nung’s twin. 

She told you about her mother, a scientist who was beloved by their clan, who died during the first war against the humans. She was born from her Avatar.

Grace.

You spoke her name before Kiri told you.

An odd look passed her face. It wasn't until it dripped from your chin that you realised a tear had slipped down your cheek.

“I-i’m sorry, I'm just-” You strung together words, embarrassed and confused by your unconscious outburst. “It’s hard to speak about my birth.” You blamed it on that. Kiri accepted your words, wrapping her arms around you in an embrace that felt warmer than anything else you’d experienced.

You grew a lot closer to the Sully kids. It was their parents who were odd to be around.

Jake and Neytiri didn’t know what to think of you. You were Ronal and Tonowari’s daughter, Na’vi, born and raised in the reef. Yet when they looked at you, heard your voice, all they could see was that little girl they’d loved. 

They were going crazy. That was the only explanation. Driven mad by the destruction of their home and subsequent forced abandonment of it. 

They wanted to talk to you. They ached to. But it ached just as much to do so. It wasn’t fair to you, their projections of grief onto you. 

You were kind, you spoke for them when they first arrived, and you went out of your way to welcome them. You taught their children and defended them, taking them in as if they were your blood. 

But every time they saw you, they were swarmed by a whirlpool of grief and relief. 

“She speaks like her.” Neytiri would whisper one night, when all the children were off in the village attending a celebration, Jake lying next to her.

“Yeah.” He’d say, eyes locked on Neytiri’s face, watching as she wandered through her mind. Watching as a tear slipped down her cheek. 

For weeks, they watched you, watching every movement and quirk you exhibited. How you spoke, how you moved through the walkways, your sense of humor. The way you scrunched your nose in a certain way when faced with food you didn’t like. It all pointed back.

Back to her.

That girl.

She haunted them. 

A ghost following them around. One they thought they’d put to rest over a decade ago. 

They had moved on. They grieved her, yes, but they had learned to live without her. Just as they did with every person they lost. 

But she was back. 

They thought it was in their heads at first, but the more they saw, the more they became sure. 

Her body had disappeared, Neytiri recounted to him, a whisper under her breath as they watched you talk to Neteyam and Tsireya from afar. They’d left her at the tree like Mo’at demanded, abiding by Eywa's wishes. Her body was gone far too quickly to have been natural decomposition, and no creature would dare feast on a body wrapped in Eywa’s arms like she was.

They didn’t question it, too wrapped up in their grief to try and breach the topic. They simply accepted it. Eywa wanted her. She was with Grace, they believed. 

But she wasn’t.

She was in the reef, living amongst the people, living. 

They saw you, and they saw her. One in the same.

They’d grieved you, and now you stood right in front of them, out of their reach.

It tore them apart. They must have been going insane because you were not that girl they knew, you were not the girl they loved and doted on. But you were.

You couldn’t be. 

But they watched and they watched and they saw. They saw her. 

“It’s not her.” Jake’s voice was steel. Laced with a hardened grief. 

“I know what I saw, you know what you see.” Neytiri defended, unsure of how to explain it. 

He shook his head, pacing back and forth in the Marui, sliding a hand down his face. 

“She’s a Metkayina! She’s Ronal and Tonowai’s daughter! That's it.” He spoke so certainly, as if he were trying to convince himself.

The two breathed heavily, working through their mind and hearts to get their words. Logic wasn’t making sense, but they tried to cling to it, both of them in different ways. 

“Ronal didn’t give birth to her, nor did Tonowair father her.” Neytiris' words were heavy, like steel and stone. “A gift from Eywa, Ronal calls her.”

Their eyes met. 

At this point, they were haunted less by you and more by the fact that you were back. It wasn’t easy mourning someone, learning to accept their death after having grown to love them so fiercely, to learn how to live without them. All of that, only for them to appear again. 

All those walls they’d built, all the strength they’d planted in their grief, it was crumbling, the base of it all blowing away like sand in the wind. 

It almost hurt more than the grief itself. 

They simmered in it for weeks, speaking through glances and hushed whispers. 

It was quiet that day. Jake was making his rounds through the village when he heard it. The humming. Not just the humming but the tune.

Slowly, he rounded the corner, peaking around the Marui, eyes landing on you sitting on the edge of the walkway, legs dangling from an opening. You sat there, beading an arm piece as you hummed.

You hummed the lullaby Jake had used to sing that girl to sleep. The lullaby from Earth.

He felt his chest crack open. He wanted to say something, to reach out and speak to you-

“Sempu!” You called out, spotting Tonowari walk up from another direction. Wordlessly, you held up your work for him, a smile spreading across your face as he approached and knelt down.

“Ah, this is great work, my little ‘itetsyip.” He leaned in, hand reaching up to pull it closer to examine it. He grinned, nodding towards you. “You are an exceptional crafter.”

Jake watched the scene, brows furrowing, a weight resting in his chest. 

You rolled your eyes. “Oh, bah! You and Mother praise me far too much.” 

Tonowair simply chuckled, his hand moving to cradle your cheek as you grinned at him. 

“No, we simply see how great you are.”

Jake started to notice more after that. He watched not just you, but your life. How you wandered freely through the village, greeting your clan members eagerly, your cheerfulness returned. You were surrounded by kids your age, all watching you with a mix of adoration and respect. You bonded with your siblings, giggling over inside jokes and banter. 

Your parents were doting. They didn’t spoil you; they made sure you were responsible and self-aware, but they loved you, and they showed it. The more he watched, the more Neytiri did too; perhaps she’d been watching the full scene the whole time.

You weren’t alone.

You smiled so widely, and you never had to beg, you never had to work for attention or affection. You were accepted wholeheartedly. 

You had everything you wanted here, Neytiri and Jake realized. You had everything they wanted to give you, and you didn’t have any barriers. You weren’t human or parentless. You moved about freely. You weren’t raised to expect to come second, third, or fourth place. 

Neytiri and Jake had wanted to give you that life. But they couldn’t. They never could.

The Great Mother didn’t fulfill their desires to be the one to love you; she gave you what you needed. She gave you the opportunity to live. 

It was bittersweet. You had the life you wanted. You were loved. 

Just not by them. 

And that was ok. 

They’d lived their lives, they’d found happiness, a family, and they were good. 

Masterlist

You were his first child, the one who came before the others softened him, before he learned how to kneel when someone cried instead of telling them to stand.

Jake Sully did not know how to be a father when you were born, he only knew how to be a soldier, so that is what he made of you.

From the time you could walk steadily, he placed a bow in your hands. From the time you could climb, he told you not to look down. When you fell, he did not rush forward in panic like other fathers might have, he stood back, arms crossed, watching with sharp eyes that measured strength instead of fear.

“Get up,” he would say, and you always did. You learned quickly that praise from him did not come in soft smiles or warm embraces. It came in nods. In fewer corrections. In silence that meant you had done well enough.

Then Neteyam was born, and something shifted not in you, but in him. He was still strict, still commanding, but with Neteyam there was pride that felt warm instead of heavy.

When Neteyam succeeded, Jake’s voice carried approval. When he failed, Jake corrected him, yes, but with a hand on his shoulder and a steady reminder that he would do better next time.

With you, it was always expectation. “You are the oldest.” “You set the example.” “You don’t get to make mistakes like that.”

Lo’ak came next, and Jake’s frustration with him felt different too louder, but almost… forgiving. Lo’ak was reckless, and Jake scolded him for it, yet there was something in his tone that said he understood that recklessness, because it mirrored his own.

Kiri was treated with a tenderness that carved something quiet and painful inside your ribs. When she asked questions about Eywa, Jake crouched to meet her eyes. When she grew overwhelmed, he softened, voice low, patient in a way you could not remember him ever being with you.

And Tuk sweet, small Tuk wrapped around his finger so easily that sometimes you wondered if you had imagined the version of him that once lifted you into the air without worry about how strong you would become.

But you never complained. Because you were the firstborn.

You were the one who braided Tuk’s hair when her hands were too small to do it herself. You were the one who helped Neteyam practice late at night when he thought he was not good enough. You were the one who stood between Lo’ak and Jake when arguments burned too hot. You were the steady one, the reliable one, the one who did not cry when scolded.

Warriors do not cry. Warriors endure.

The night before the final battle, when the sky felt too quiet and the air carried the kind of stillness that comes before something terrible, Jake called you aside.

He did not ask if you were afraid. He did not tell you to stay safe. He simply looked at you with that assessing gaze and said, “You’re in charge of the younger ones. Keep them out of the fight unless it’s unavoidable.” There was trust in it. Heavy trust. The kind he had been building into you your entire life.

You straightened instinctively. “Yes, sir.” He placed his hand on your shoulder briefly, firm and grounding, and added, “You’re my strongest.” It was meant as pride, and maybe it was, but it felt like a burden settling more firmly across your back.

The battle was chaos, fire against water, screams swallowed by waves, gunshots splitting the sky. You moved through it the way he had trained you to move calculated, aware, always thinking three steps ahead. You kept Tuk close, directed Lo’ak with sharp gestures, reminded Kiri where to run and when to hide.

You were not thinking about yourself. You never did.

The moment comes in a blur a flash of metal, a split-second alignment of danger and innocence. The shot was meant for Neteyam. You see it in that strange way warriors sometimes do, where time stretches thin and clear. There is no hesitation in you. No weighing of cost.

You shove him aside. Pain tears through you, violent and blinding, and suddenly the world feels distant, as though you are underwater without having entered the sea.

You hit the sand, and it feels warm beneath you, too warm. Voices blur together. Tuk crying. Lo’ak shouting. Kiri praying. Neteyam is at your side first, his hands pressing desperately against the wound as though he can will your body to obey him.

“Stay with me,” he says, and it is almost ironic, because you have said those same words to him more times than you can count. You try to answer, but your voice feels thin. Then Jake is there.

He drops to his knees beside you with a force that shakes the ground, and for the first time in your life, he does not look like a leader or a warrior. He looks like a father. Terrified.

His hands press over yours, trying to stop what cannot be stopped, his voice breaking as he says your name again and again as if repetition alone could anchor you here. “You’re okay,” he insists, but the words tremble. “You’re okay.”

You look at him, and in his eyes you see something you have chased your entire life not expectation, not evaluation, but pure, raw love. “I tried,” you whisper, because that is what you have always done. Tried to be strong enough. Good enough. His face crumples in a way you have never seen.

“I know,” he says, voice shattering. “I know, baby.” The word hits harder than anything else. Baby.

You cannot remember the last time he called you that. You want to tell him you were not angry. You want to tell him you understood why he raised you the way he did. That maybe he had been trying to prepare you for a world that would not be gentle.

But the world grows dim around the edges. You feel your siblings close, their hands clutching at you as though they can keep you tethered through sheer will. Jake presses his forehead to yours, and his shoulders shake as he whispers apologies you can barely hear.

You protected them. You fulfilled the role he carved into you. And as the light fades, you realize that the only thing you ever truly wanted was this to be held like you were something fragile instead of forged.

After you are gone, the silence in the family feels unnatural, like something essential has been pulled from its center. Jake no longer speaks as sharply. He no longer demands perfection. He holds Tuk longer. He listens to Lo’ak without immediate correction. He answers Kiri’s questions with patience he once reserved only for her.

And sometimes, late at night, he sits alone with your bow resting across his lap, staring at the worn grip where your fingers once held tight, and he whispers into the quiet,

“I should have protected you.” But you were the firstborn.

Not in any way a stranger could have named, perhaps. The woven walkways were still strung between giant mangrove roots, the platforms still alive with the rhythm of hands at work, of children racing over sun-warmed wood, of nets being mended and fish being cleaned and voices rising over the endless breathing hush of the sea. But something in the air tightened all the same. The clan did not stop moving. It only moved differently, like a body drawing a breath and holding it.

You stood beside Tonowari when they arrived, just behind and slightly to his left, where the leader of the hunting parties would stand when judgment was to be watched but not yet spoken. Salt wind dragged across your skin. Your queue lay over one shoulder. The white marks of your avatar body caught the late light faintly, and though your build had always remained closer to the forest people than the reef people around you, the years had given you the easy balance of one who belonged here. Not by birth. Not by blood. But by time, by battle, by work, and by love.

It still did not stop them from looking.

You had long since learned how to feel it before you saw it. The way glances snagged on your hands, on your narrower tail, on your shoulders, on the traces that marked you as something that had not begun on Pandora no matter how deeply you had rooted yourself into it after. Most days you could let it pass like a tide under a canoe. Most days you could remind yourself that your mates had chosen you in full sight of what you were, that Tsireya’s laughter had first shaped itself around your name, that Ao’nung had once fallen asleep on your chest with seawater still drying in his hair after training. Most days it was enough.

This was not most days.

Jake Sully stepped forward carrying exile in the line of his body. Neytiri stood beside him like a drawn blade. Their children hovered near enough to their parents to show loyalty and far enough to show strain. Even before anyone said anything, the village had already seen the tails. The hands. The faces. The traces of sky-people blood riding alongside Na’vi bone.

And because the clan had seen them, the clan had thought of you.

Ronal’s gaze slid over the newcomers slowly. She did not spit the words some might have expected. She was too controlled for that, too sharp. Her judgment was worse for being clean. Her eyes rested on each child in turn, cool and measuring, then went to Jake, then back to Neytiri, then flicked once toward you before returning to Tonowari.

“They are very unlike us” she said.

That was all. Nothing louder. Nothing cruder. But the thought spread exactly as if she had named it outright. You felt it move through the gathered Metkayina like current through shallow water. Not all at once. Not boldly. Just enough. Half-breed. Strange. Wrong-shaped. Sky-touched. The same old poison dressed in softer cloth.

Tonowari spoke then, giving them uturu as his mercy demanded, because war and grief had driven them there and because he was not small enough to turn away those who came seeking sanctuary. You loved him most in moments like that. His voice was steady, his judgment larger than fear. Yet even while you loved him for it, some quieter and uglier part of you noticed that he never turned to the clan and stopped the way their eyes had slid to you too. He offered protection. He did not challenge implication.

Beside the Sullys, Lo’ak’s face set in that stubborn, bristling way boys wore when they had been cut too many times and refused to bleed where anyone could see it. Kiri stared back with painful calm. Neteyam stood straight as a spear. Tuk all but hid herself against Neytiri’s side.

Then Tsireya came up from the water, bright and curious and open as dawn, and the moment bent in a different direction for a heartbeat. Lo’ak looked at her as if the sea itself had climbed out to stare back at him. You would have laughed if the tension in the air had not still been sharp enough to cut.

Ao’nung and Rotxo ruined the moment almost immediately.

They did not begin at full cruelty. Boys rarely did when they were performing for a crowd. They started with the tails, with the shape of hands, with that dangerous tone that asked a question not because it wanted an answer but because it wanted permission to laugh. Tsireya told them to stop. Ao’nung did not listen. His eyes had gone to the Sully children with a brightness you knew too well. Not simple meanness. Worse. The thrill of sensing where the group’s cruelty would be safest, and stepping into it because it would make him bigger in their eyes.

You did not miss the way his glance brushed past you before he opened his mouth again.

That hurt more than it should have. It hurt because you knew where he had learned that comfort. Not from nowhere. Not from silence alone.

Still, the scene moved as it needed to. Tonowari assigned his children to help the Sully children learn the way of water. Only when Jake turned to him with the rigid, humiliated gratitude of a warrior accepting mercy with both hands did Tonowari glance toward you.

Tsireya was the one sent forward in the end.

That fit better than anything else could have. She was bright where the moment had gone brittle, open where the clan had narrowed in on itself, and young enough to step toward strangers without carrying quite so much of the adults’ suspicion in her bones. When Tonowari told her to show the Sullys where they would stay, she went without hesitation, all kindness and curiosity, gesturing for them to follow her deeper into the village with the easy grace that seemed to live in every part of her.

The others moved with her after a brief pause. Jake remained close to Neytiri. The children hovered around their parents, tense and watchful under so many eyes. Lo’ak looked like he wanted to stare at everything and fight half of it at the same time. Kiri was quieter, reading the village as if it might speak back if she listened hard enough. Tuk stayed tucked close. All of them followed Tsireya across the woven walkways and root-bridges while the clan watched them go.

You stayed where you were, still beside Tonowari, your face unreadable even while your thoughts moved harder than you wanted. Ronal had not said much, but she had not needed to. The clan had heard what sat underneath her judgment all the same, and because they had heard it, they had remembered you too. You could feel it in the aftertaste of the moment, in the glances that had lingered just a fraction too long before turning away.

Tonowari waited until the nearest listeners had drifted farther off before he spoke your name.

His voice was quieter now, stripped of the public weight it had carried a moment before. You looked at him, and something in his expression made you follow when he tilted his head slightly toward one of the outer platforms. It was not secrecy, exactly. More the instinct of a leader who knew when a conversation would grow teeth if it was given to the clan to overhear.

You went with him in silence.

The platform he chose sat a little apart from the nearest cluster of walkways, close enough to the village to remain within sight and far enough to let the noise of it blur into distance. Wind rolled in off the sea, carrying salt and the faint scent of algae warmed under the late sun. Below, the water shifted around the roots in restless blue-green ribbons.

Tonowari rested one hand against the rail of woven mangrove and looked out rather than at you immediately. “I want you to teach Jake Sully” he said.

You did look at him then.

For a beat, all you did was stare. Not because the request made no sense. In some ways it made too much. You were one of the strongest fighters in the clan. You understood adaptation better than most. You knew what it was to enter a people not shaped like yourself and learn anyway, hard and fast and under the pressure of never being allowed the comfort of true ignorance. Still, suspicion rose in you before duty did.

“Why me?” you asked.

Tonowari turned then, and he was too perceptive not to hear everything under the question. Not only why me because of skill. Why me when the clan has just been reminded what I am. Why me when Ronal looked at them and the people looked at me after.

His face softened, though not with pity. He had always known better than to offer you that. “Because you are capable” he said. “Because you see more than what is in front of you. Because he will need someone who understands both pride and shame if he is to learn quickly.”

Your mouth tightened. “That is not the only reason.”

“No” Tonowari admitted.

The honesty stopped you from hardening further.

He stepped closer, lowering his voice even more. “He is Olo’eyktan to his family even if he stands as refugee here. If he fails, the rest will feel it. If he is isolated, he will become harder to guide. You know warriors. You know how men like him carry humiliation. And…” He paused, studying you carefully. “There may be things in him you will understand more easily than others would.”

You held his gaze a long moment. “Because he was one of the sky-people.”

Tonowari did not flinch from it. “Yes.”

The word sat between you.

You looked away, out across the water where Tsireya’s bright figure could just be seen leading the Sullys farther along the village edge. Jake walked near the back now, his attention shifting everywhere at once despite the discipline in his posture. Soldier’s habit. Marine’s habit, maybe, though that thought came and passed before you had fully named it.

“And Ronal?” you asked at last.

Tonowari’s expression changed, not with irritation but with the knowledge that there was no use pretending that piece did not matter. “Ronal trusts you.”

“That was not my question.”

His jaw flexed once. “She will not interfere.”

You gave a short, humorless breath through your nose. “Another answer that is not the one I asked for.”

Tonowari accepted that too. “She does not like this burden being here at all” he said plainly. “But she does not doubt you. Neither do I.”

That should have eased you more than it did. Instead you found yourself searching his face for something smaller and meaner. Pity. Calculation. A hope that you would understand the Sullys because you were enough like them to make use of. Whatever he saw in your expression made his own grow steadier.

“This is not because I see you as closer to them than to us” he said, and now there was a firmness in him that left no room for retreat. “It is because I know exactly where you stand. With us. With this family. With this clan. Do not insult me by thinking I have forgotten.”

The rebuke was gentle only in tone. It landed harder for that.

You looked at him properly again. There was no hesitation in him now, no uncertainty, no crack through which old fear could crawl. For a brief moment the pressure in your chest loosened.

Then duty returned in full.

“If I do this” you said “I will not coddle him.”

Tonowari’s mouth twitched faintly. “I would be disappointed if you did.”

You folded your arms over your chest and stared out at the village once more. “And if he cannot learn?”

“Then at least he will fail honestly.”

That, more than anything, sounded like Tonowari.

Silence stretched for a few breaths. At last you nodded once. “Fine.”

Tonowari let out a breath so slight most would not have caught it. You did. He had wanted this more than he had let show. “Thank you.”

You shook your head. “Do not thank me yet.”

That almost drew a smile from him, but it faded before fully forming. Instead he stepped closer, slowly enough to give you time to refuse him if you wished. One of his hands came up to rest lightly at your waist, warm and familiar, and for a brief moment he only looked at you. Then he bent and kissed you.

It was soft, short, and almost unbearably gentle. No heat, no urgency, nothing that belonged to hunger more than affection. Just the quiet press of his mouth to yours, sweet with reassurance and the kind of love that had long since learned how to speak in smaller gestures. When he pulled back, he stayed close for only a heartbeat more before letting you go.

“I will send him to you after they settle” he said.

You watched him go.

——————————————————————

By the time Jake found you, the sun had shifted lower and the village had settled into that restless in-between hour when work had not yet ended but the worst of the day’s heat had broken. You were near one of the outer racks checking spear bindings, more to give your hands something useful to do than because the task truly needed doing. The sounds of Awa’atlu drifted around you in pieces: children splashing in shallows below, women calling to one another from the fish platforms, distant laughter, the low hush of water against root and wood.

You heard his steps before you turned.

Jake stopped a respectful distance away. For a moment neither of you spoke. Up close, it was easier to see what had first flashed at the edge of your notice before. The way he held his shoulders. The way he looked at space first, then movement, then exits, then finally people. The kind of stillness that was not ease but readiness worn so long it had become a second skin. He looked older than his face alone accounted for. More tired too.

He inclined his head slightly. “Tonowari said I’m with you.”

His Na’vi was serviceable, accented hard, each word carrying the weight of effort. You let him finish before answering.

“For now” you said.

Something in his expression shifted, not quite amusement and not quite resignation. He had likely already learned enough in the village to know that this was your version of mercy.

You set the spear aside and faced him fully. For a moment, you let the silence sit between you, weighing him properly now that the village noise had fallen farther away.

“Tonowari believes you can learn” you said at last. “I have not decided yet.”

Jake took that without visible offense. If anything, something in his posture settled, as if bluntness was easier for him to understand than politeness.

“Fair enough” he said.

You crossed your arms over your chest. “You will listen the first time. You will not argue every correction like wounded pride makes you smarter. And you will not expect me to make this easy because you were Toruk Makto, Olo’eyktan, or anything else that matters somewhere other than here.”

That finally pulled the faintest shift in his expression. Not quite amusement. Not quite irritation. More like recognition of a hard tone he had heard before in other places, under other chains of command.

“Got it” he said.

You held his gaze another beat, watching for the usual signs. Swagger. Resentment. The need to prove himself immediately. Instead you found exhaustion, discipline, and something heavier buried under both.

That did not make you trust him. It only made you think he might be worth the effort.

For one strange beat, the air between you altered. Not softer. Sharper. Recognition trying on a shape before either of you trusted it enough to name. Neither of you moved first. Neither smiled. Yet some old instinct, buried under years and planets and new bodies and new loyalties, stirred its head.

You broke eye contact first because you disliked the feeling of being read.

“Walk” you said.

Jake followed without protest. You led him down one of the narrower village paths where the platforms thinned and the sound of the central marui softened behind you. For a while you said nothing, making him keep pace over slick wood and curving roots, watching whether he looked only at where he stepped or at the full environment around him. He adapted quickly, though not gracefully. Not yet.

At last you stopped near a lower platform where the tide had come in high enough to lap against the woven supports.

“If you are to remain here” you said, turning to him “you will learn more than how to swim their way and breathe their way. You will learn when not to take up space. You will learn when pride becomes a burden for everyone around you.”

Jake absorbed that without visible offense. If anything, his gaze grew a shade more direct. “You always start this friendly?”

“No” you said. “Normally I am worse.”

That did it. One corner of his mouth moved before he could stop it.

You noticed. So did he.

It vanished almost at once.

He was silent after that, and to his credit he did not push.

That, more than the recognition itself, was what made you decide he might actually be teachable.

——————————————————————

Jake Sully learned like a man who understood that failure was no longer private.

The first few days, you gave him no softness. You made him run the shallows until his breathing turned ragged. You corrected his stance with the blunt pressure of your hand against his shoulder and the sharper crack of your voice when words failed. You showed him how to move his balance lower on the slick roots, how to enter the water without fighting it, how to watch the current rather than only the surface. You kept your explanations short in Na’vi because he needed the language in his mouth as much as the skill in his limbs. When he stumbled, you made him go again. When he swore under his breath, you pretended not to understand.

By the end of the second day, both of you knew you were pretending.

He had just surfaced from another rough dive, pushing wet hair out of his face and coughing salt from his throat, when you said, “You are still trying to win against the water.”

Jake wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “That obvious, huh?”

The English snapped between you so suddenly that both of you stilled.

Then, despite everything, the corner of your mouth twitched.

“Yes” you answered in the same language. “Painfully obvious.”

He barked a laugh. It came out rougher than amused, but it was real. For the first time since arriving, some of the tightness in him loosened.

“Jesus” he muttered. “That’s nice.”

“What?”

“English. No offense, but my brain feels like it’s getting beat with a shovel half the time.”

You folded your arms over your chest and looked at him a long moment. “You are doing better than you think.”

“Yeah?”

“No.”

That got a fuller laugh out of him, and there it was again, that quick flash of recognition. Not intimacy. Not anything you needed to fear. Just the strange, immediate ease of finding another person who had once stood under the same hard sun, listened to the same dead humor, worn the same kind of damage into the body until it became posture.

From the shallows, you saw Tonowari turn his head slightly from where he spoke with a group of hunters farther up the beach.

He looked away almost at once.

You told yourself it meant nothing.

——————————————————————

What unsettled your family was not one thing. It was accumulation.

Jake began to catch more of your English when it slipped out around frustration or instinct. Once, when he planted his foot wrong on a root slick with spray and nearly went backward into the water, you grabbed his arm and snapped “Watch your footing, soldier” before thinking. He froze. Then he stared at you with dawning disbelief.

“No way.”

You let go too quickly. “What?”

“That’s marine. Nobody says that like that unless—” He laughed under his breath. “You were one too.”

You did not answer immediately. Waves lapped around your calves. Farther out, ilu rolled just under the skin of the sea like ghosts. At last you said “A long time ago.”

“Still counts.”

“Not here.”

He studied you with a little too much understanding. “Yeah. I get that.”

You hated how much you liked being understood without having to pry your chest open for it. Hated, too, how dangerous that liking could look from the outside when no one else shared the language that carried it.

So you cut the moment short and sent him back underwater.

But these things added up. A phrase here. A tone there. A curse muttered in English when he swallowed too much water and came up sputtering. The half-grin you could not quite stop when he made some dry, bitter joke about command structures and impossible missions. The day you found yourself humming under your breath while sorting spears after training and he looked up from where he knelt checking a woven net.

“Hold on” he said.

You stopped.

“No” he said, staring. “No way.”

Your fingers tightened on the shaft in your hand. “What.”

“That song.”

You had not heard that song in years. Not truly. It was old even before Pandora, older still by the time it had crossed light-years with you in memory alone. Some fragment of Earth, half nursery-rhyme, half cheap old melody from barracks speakers and scratched recordings and a place so far gone it barely felt real anymore.

You should have denied it.

Instead you said “You know it?”

Jake let out a disbelieving breath. Then, very softly, he sang the next line.

Your whole body went still.

It was absurd. It was stupid. It was nothing but a few words from a dead world carried unexpectedly into salt air and reef light. And yet the force of it hit you somewhere behind the ribs. Something old and buried sat up inside you all at once.

So you sang back.

Not loudly. Not beautifully. Your voice had never been built for softness. Jake’s was worse, rough and low and frayed at the edges. But between you the melody formed anyway, pieced together from memory and laugh-broken mistakes and the sort of embarrassed amusement soldiers learned when they recognized one another being sentimental by accident.

When it ended, the silence after felt strange.

“Damn” Jake said.

You looked away toward the horizon because your throat had gone unexpectedly tight. “Yeah...”

“That was… damn.”

You stayed quieter this time.

Neither of you noticed Tsireya standing farther down the beach with an armful of shells for a long few seconds. By the time you did, her expression had already smoothed itself into something easy. She came forward smiling, asking what the song had meant, asking what language it was, asking if you would teach her a little of it.

You answered gently. You always answered Tsireya gently.

But that night, when you returned to the family marui, Ao’nung was sharper than usual. Ronal’s attention lingered on you too long before dropping. Tonowari asked how Jake had done, and the question was ordinary, but something under it was not.

You noticed.

You said nothing.

——————————————————————

Lo’ak came to you slowly.

It began with small things. Not intimacy. Not confidence. Observation.

You were the first among the Metkayina adults to acknowledge the Sully children’s progress without loading the praise with surprise or mockery. When Kiri held her breath longer than anyone expected, you told her so plainly. When Neteyam adapted his form in the water, you nodded once and said he learned fast. When Tuk followed Tsireya through shallow reef channels without fear, you crouched to her height and told her she was brave. And when Lo’ak took an ilu ride that ended ragged but stubbornly recovered, you caught him at the shore while everyone else focused on the larger lesson and told him “You corrected quickly. That's useful here.”

He looked at you then as if he did not know what to do with approval that had no sting hidden inside it.

After that, you caught him watching you now and again. Not often. Enough.

You did not go to him at once. Boys like Lo’ak could smell pity the way akulas smelled blood. He would have bolted from it. So you waited. You watched how Ao’nung needled him, how Neteyam shielded him when he could, how Jake’s discipline fell hardest on him and Neytiri’s worry sharpened around him until both could sound like disappointment if a child heard them at the wrong angle. You watched how Lo’ak learned to grin before the next blow landed, how he bristled before anyone touched the sore place because he had learned that if he bared his teeth first people mistook it for strength.

Then came the day Ao’nung and his friends crossed too far.

It played out near the waterline with enough witnesses to make it uglier. Rotxo laughed first. Ao’nung followed, circling the Sully children with that loose-limbed swagger boys wore when they believed the world had already decided in their favor. Tails. Hands. Foreheads. The mockery came quick and mean. Kiri’s expression closed. Lo’ak stepped forward at once, ready to start the fight that had already been offered to him.

You moved before he could.

“Ao’nung.”

Your voice cracked across the space hard enough that every child there froze.

Your son turned. Shock hit first, then defiance. He had expected adults to ignore it. He had not expected you.

“Mother—”

“No.”

The word came flat as stone. You crossed the sand until you stood between the two groups, not facing the Sully children at all. Facing him. Only him.

“What do you see when you look at them?” you asked.

Ao’nung lifted his chin. Around him, Rotxo and the others went still with the instinctive caution of boys who realized too late that the game had shifted.

He said nothing.

You took one step closer. “Say it.”

His jaw tightened. “They are not like us.”

The words struck with the force of memory because you had heard them before. Not always aloud. Not always with witnesses. But enough.

“No” you said. “They are not. And yet they are under our protection. They are guests. They are children. Is this how I taught you to carry strength?”

Ao’nung’s eyes flicked away for the briefest instant. Shame. Then anger, because shame rarely came alone at his age.

“They are freaks” one of the boys muttered from behind him, too quiet perhaps in hope of escaping notice.

You heard it anyway.

So did Lo’ak. So did Kiri. So did Tsireya, who had just reached the edge of the group and gone pale.

You felt the word land inside your own ribs like a thrown stone. For one terrible instant you nearly lost your hold on your face. Nearly let them all see exactly where it had struck. But you had stood through worse than a child’s cruelty, and this was not the moment to bleed.

Instead you looked at Ao’nung and said, very quietly “Then what does that make me?”

Silence.

Not one child moved.

Ao’nung’s eyes snapped back to yours, wide for one naked second before he forced them harder again. He had not expected that. He had not expected to be made to look directly at the bridge between what he had said and who you were.

“You are not—” he began.

But he had no ending for it.

You spared him none.

“You will not speak that way again” you said. “Not of them. Not of anyone under this clan’s shelter. If you do not know how to carry your rank with honor, then you will carry nothing. Go.”

He stood frozen just long enough to reveal the child still living inside the almost-young-man shape of him. Then he turned sharply and stalked off, his friends scrambling after him in uneasy silence.

The Sully children remained where they were.

You still did not look at them immediately. Your hurt was too near the surface. You knew if you met Lo’ak’s eyes just then you might show too much.

When you finally turned, Neteyam looked wary. Kiri looked as if she had understood far more than you wanted her to. Tuk only seemed confused. Lo’ak had that same braced expression again, like he did not trust good things not to twist into something else.

So you kept it simple.

“Go with Tsireya” you said. “Training is not finished.”

Tsireya stepped forward at once, relief and loyalty all over her face, gathering the others with the soft authority that came to her as naturally as tide.

Lo’ak lingered half a second longer.

You gave him one small nod.

He went.

Only when they were gone did you let yourself breathe.

——————————————————————

That night Ao’nung found you outside the marui.

The village slept in pieces, never fully. The sea muttered against the roots. Wind moved through hanging shells and fishbone charms with a sound like soft rattling breath. You had come out because you could not bear one more look, one more half-thought, one more silence from inside. You stood on a narrow platform over dark water and let the night keep your company while the tears you had denied yourself earlier escaped anyway, quiet and furious.

You heard him before you saw him. Young warriors always thought they moved more silently than they did.

“Mother?”

You swiped at your face before turning. He saw anyway. Of course he saw. Ao’nung had always been able to read your pain more quickly than Tsireya. He simply had less practice handling it.

He stood a little distance away, no longer broad with performance. Just young. Just your son. His shoulders had lost all their earlier swagger.

“I should not have said those things” he said.

His voice was low, roughened by shame he clearly hated. You waited.

“I should not have let them say them either” he added. “It was wrong.”

Still you waited.

Ao’nung swallowed. “I was angry.”

“Angry at children?” you asked.

“No.” He stopped, jaw tight. “At… everything.”

That at least was honest.

You looked back out over the water. Moonlight silvered the surface in broken bands. “Do you know why your words hurt?”

“Yes.”

“No” you said. “You know why they upset me. That is not the same.”

He flinched. Not visibly enough for a stranger. More than enough for you.

After a moment, you went on. “When you call them freaks, when you make their bodies into something to be mocked, you are not speaking only to them. You are speaking into a wound that existed before they arrived. A wound you have seen this clan touch in me all your life whether you named it or not.”

Ao’nung’s breathing changed. Slight. Tight.

“I know” he said.

You turned then and finally looked at him fully. “Do you?”

His face worked with things he did not know how to say. Defensiveness. Shame. Pride. Fear. The ugly confusion of realizing that someone could love you fiercely and still be disappointed in the shape you were taking.

“I did not mean you” he said at last, and it was the sort of thing a child said because he still believed intent could erase impact.

Your chest ached.

“I know” you answered softly. “But it doesn't erase that I still am lime them.”

Tears burned again. You despised them. You let none fall this time.

Ao’nung took a hesitant step forward. “I am sorry.”

This time, because it was him, because he had come on his own and because he was trying in the only way he knew how, you reached out. Your hand settled briefly against his cheek.

“I know” you said.

He leaned into the touch before he caught himself. The movement was small, almost involuntary, but you felt it all the same. It broke you a little more, because for all his sharpness and pride and the cruel stupidity of what he had done earlier, there was still something achingly young in the way he sought comfort before remembering he was meant to stand tall without it.

Your hand slid from his cheek to the back of his head before you could think better of it.

“Ao’nung” you said softly.

That was all it took.

Whatever stiffness had been holding him upright gave way at last, and he stepped into you with none of his usual swagger left, leaning his weight against you as if he had forgotten for a moment how to keep it all inside himself. You drew him in without hesitation, wrapping both arms around him and holding him close. One hand spread broad between his shoulder blades while the other rested at the back of his head, keeping him there with a gentleness that only made the ache in your chest deepen.

He did not speak. Neither did you.

For a little while, the two of you only stayed that way in the dark, with the sea breathing quietly below and the night moving around the edges of the platform. Ao’nung let himself be held in a way he would have denied wanting in daylight, all the sharp edges of him gone quiet for once. You pressed a kiss to his hairline and held him tighter for a heartbeat, as though that alone could soothe every place where disappointment had cut through both of you.

When he finally pulled back, it was slowly and with visible reluctance, his face turned partly away as if he could hide how much he had needed it.

You let him have that dignity.

He swallowed once, then straightened. “Goodnight, Mom” he said, voice rougher than before.

Your hand brushed briefly over his arm before you let him go. “Goodnight, baby.”

Only after he had disappeared back into the sleeping village did you stand there alone and let the thought come that you had been keeping away.

Ao’nung had been comfortable enough to say those things because he had heard their shape before. Maybe not in those exact words. Maybe not from Tonowari’s mouth. But from the clan. From whispers. From tones. From Ronal’s colder judgments uttered when you were not near enough to answer. From silences that let implication breathe.

And if Ao’nung had learned it there, if he had learned that such thoughts were sayable, then what had Tonowari and Ronal allowed to live around your children in all these years?

Worse still, what had they themselves believed and merely loved you enough never to say?

The question lodged like a hook and would not come free.

——————————————————————

After that, Lo’ak became a shape at the edge of your days more often.

He did not come to confide in you. Not yet. But he began staying back when the others ran ahead. He lingered after lessons under excuses that fooled no one. Once, while Tsireya helped Tuk with a breathing exercise and Ao’nung wrestled some challenge out of Rotxo farther down the reef, you found Lo’ak sitting alone on a low root with his feet in the water, staring out so hard at the horizon it looked like he was trying to force his thoughts into it.

You could have left him.

Instead you sat beside him without asking.

For a while neither of you spoke. Water moved around your ankles. A school of tiny fish flashed silver below. Somewhere overhead seabirds cried.

At last you said “You glare like your father.”

Lo’ak snorted before he could stop himself. “That’s not a compliment.”

“No” you agreed. “It is not.”

He glanced at you sideways then, suspicious amusement mixing with caution.

You let the quiet stretch again until he settled back into it.

When you spoke next, your voice was lighter than the weight of the question. “Did you want to punch Ao’nung?”

Lo’ak huffed. “Kinda always.”

“Reasonable.”

That earned you a real look. The first one not filtered through wariness.

You did not smile. Not much. Just enough.

A little of the tension left him. “You were really pissed.”

“Yes.”

“Because he was being a skxawng.”

“Yes.”

Lo’ak nudged water with one foot, watching the ripples. “And because of the other thing.”

There it was.

You turned your face toward the sea again. “Yes.”

He was quiet a long while after that. Then he asked, too casual to be casual “Does it bother you?”

You could have lied. You almost did. But something in the set of his shoulders stopped you.

“Of course it does.” you said.

Lo’ak looked down at his hands. Five fingers. Strong. Capable. Wrong, to some eyes. He flexed them once.

“Oh” he said.

It was such a small sound. Such a bare one. It carried more than any long confession would have.

You understood then, with a painful clarity, that no one had told him what he needed to hear. Not in a way that had sunk in. Not enough times. Not with the right weight.

So you spoke carefully, because some truths had to be laid in a boy’s hands like knives turned hilt-first.

“Listen to me, Lo’ak. The shape of your body does not lessen you. Not your hands. Not your tail. Not your face. Not any piece of you. Anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to make themselves feel pure by cutting someone else smaller. That is not truth. That is cowardice.”

He stared straight ahead. You were not certain he was breathing.

“You are Na’vi” you went on. “You are your father’s son and your mother’s son. You are yourself beyond both of them. You do not have to earn personhood from people who look at you and see only what is different. Do you understand me?”

Lo’ak’s throat moved.

“Maybe” he muttered.

“Then I will say it again another day.”

That made his mouth twitch a little. Not quite a smile. Near enough.

And because he was still a boy, because the ache in him had not erased the impulse to test, he said “You really think I’m perfect?”

“Nobody is” you said at once.

His head whipped toward you, offended.

You let him stew half a second before adding “You are loud, impulsive, and you make decisions like someone throwing knives blind in the dark. But none of that has anything to do with the body you were born into.”

Lo’ak barked a laugh so sudden it startled both of you.

You joined him. Very briefly.

From then on, he sought you more.

Not always alone. Sometimes he just drifted toward wherever you were helping set lines or checking spears or returning from a hunt, offering clumsy help he would never have offered before. Sometimes you found him with Tsireya and Tuk, and he was easy there, gentler. Sometimes he caught you between duties and asked sharp questions about fighting, or hunting, or how long it had taken you to feel like you belonged in reef water. Sometimes he said nothing at all, only sat near enough that the silence became company.

The Sullys noticed. So did your family.

Jake and Neytiri, to their credit, did not pry. You saw the awareness in Jake’s eyes, the cautious gratitude in the way he sometimes let Lo’ak drift toward you without calling him back. Neytiri watched too, more guarded, but she recognized help when she saw it. She simply did not know its shape.

Your own family did not have that grace.

Tsireya’s jealousy came first and hurt the least. She grew clingier in small ways, touching your arm more often, leaning against you when she spoke, asking if you would braid shells into her hair that evening or come see some little thing she had found in the tide pools. It was not suspicion. It was fear of displacement. You answered it at once, gathering her close whenever you returned home, pressing kisses to her forehead, telling her stories while you worked her braids loose and redid them, letting her fall asleep with her head in your lap when the nights grew longer.

Ao’nung’s came in the form of watchfulness. He did not mention Lo’ak directly. He simply observed too much and went sharp around the edges whenever he found you speaking to the Sully boy alone. Shame still sat between the two of you after his apology, not healed, only softened over. That made everything worse.

Tonowari and Ronal felt different.

They held it in. They trusted you, and because they trusted you they hated the feeling all the more. You could see it in what they did not say. Tonowari lingering longer after evening meals, listening when you spoke of training but not asking the questions beneath his quiet. Ronal watching your face when Jake’s name came up and then turning away before the glance could become accusation. Their discomfort did not come from believing you unfaithful. Not yet. It came from seeing parts of you open in ways they had never been invited into.

That was what jealousy often was at its core. Not fear of replacement. Fear of exclusion.

You almost understood it enough to forgive.

Almost.

——————————————————————

The fracture deepened before it broke.

You began hearing things you had never let yourself fully hear before. A pause in conversation when you approached. A woman on a fish platform lowering her voice just a breath too late. A boy saying something under his breath about sky-blood and getting hissed into silence by his sister. None of it new, perhaps. Only newly impossible to ignore once Ao’nung had put shape to it in front of you.

And Ronal, for all the love between you, did not help.

She was not careless with you. Never that. In private she touched you with certainty, trusted your judgment in battle, shared the weight of the children and the home and the clan’s expectations. But she had always kept a harder core than Tonowari, and in moments where the Sullys were discussed her words carried enough old disdain to stir every insecurity you had spent years trying to bury. She did not call them demons. She did not need to. A tone could do the work. A look. A certain refusal to separate strangeness from contamination.

Each time, you said nothing.

Each time, something in you bent a little further.

Then came the day you learned she had spoken more plainly when you were not there.

Not from Tonowari. Not from some dramatic confrontation. From chance. From walking behind a half-screened section of woven wall and hearing the tail end of a conversation between Ronal and two women who had come seeking her counsel. You only caught enough to understand. The Sully children. Their bodies. Their blood. The risk of letting too much of the sky-people remain in the heart of the clan. Ronal’s voice cool and unsparing. Not once your name spoken, but you heard yourself in every omission.

You left before they saw you.

That night you could not eat.

When Tonowari asked what was wrong, you said you were tired. Ronal looked at you too long and said nothing. Ao’nung picked at his meal. Tsireya chatted about some little thing from the reef until even she felt the heaviness and fell quiet.

You slept badly. When morning came, you threw yourself harder into your duties.

No one stopped you.

——————————————————————

The argument began with almost nothing.

That was the cruel part. The worst fights often did.

You had spent half the day with the hunting parties and the latter part of the afternoon checking on the younger trainees. By the time you returned to the marui, salt dried tight over your skin and exhaustion sat meanly in your bones. The family meal was nearly ready. Tsireya was helping set woven plates in place. Ao’nung was cleaning a spearhead with too much force. Tonowari sat mending something with hands that only looked calm. Ronal had her back partly to you, sorting herbs and shells for medicines, her profile sharp in the slanting gold light.

You entered and the shift in the marui was immediate, small but noticeable all the same. Tsireya brightened first, coming to you at once, and you kissed her forehead as naturally as breathing. Your hand rested briefly on Ao’nung’s shoulder as you passed, even though he did not look up, his attention fixed too carefully on the spearhead in his hands.

Tonowari’s eyes found you next.

He was seated near the center of the space, broad shoulders slightly bowed over the piece of mending in his hands, but the moment he saw you he straightened a little. Not enough to make it obvious. Just enough that you caught it. His gaze moved over your face in one quick, quiet check, as though measuring your tiredness, your mood, the weight you had brought back in with you from the day. When you paused near him, he reached out and let his fingers brush lightly over your wrist. It was a small touch, gone almost as soon as it happened, but it carried the kind of familiar care that long years built into instinct.

“You are late” he said.

There was no reprimand in it. Only notice.

“Work took longer” you answered.

Tonowari gave a low hum and let his hand fall away, though not before his thumb brushed once against your skin. “Sit when you are done. You have not rested enough these past days.”

Before you could answer, Ronal looked up from where she sat sorting herbs and shells into neat little groupings by her side.

Her expression was harder to read, as it often was when others were near, but you knew her too well not to catch the brief pause in her hands when you stepped fully into the marui. She looked at you for a moment longer than necessary, her gaze moving over the damp salt dried into your skin, the tension still holding across your shoulders, the faint exhaustion under your eyes. Then she clicked her tongue softly, almost under her breath.

“You pushed too far again" she said.

The words should have sounded sharp. From anyone else, they would have. From Ronal, they carried that familiar edge of concern dressed in sternness, the shape it most often took when she did not want to soften herself in front of the children.

You exhaled through your nose, too tired to fight the gesture for what it was. “I am still standing.”

“Yes, Ronal said, dry and unimpressed. “And you think that is always the same as being well.”

Tsireya hid a smile at that, clearly having heard the argument before.

For the briefest moment, your eyes met Ronal’s properly. Something quiet passed there. Not tenderness made obvious. Never that, not in front of everyone. But something steady and known, something that had lived in the spaces between the three of you for too long to need much dressing.

You shook your head faintly, more to yourself than to either of them, and moved at last to wash.

——————————————————————

It could have ended there.

Instead Ronal said, without turning “Lo’ak was looking for you again.”

The words were ordinary. The tone was not.

You stilled with water running over your fingers.

“I saw him” you said.

“Mm.”

That sound. Small. Dismissive. Heavy with all the things left unsaid.

You dried your hands slowly and faced her. “If you wish to say something, say it.”

Tsireya froze. Ao’nung’s head lifted. Tonowari’s hands went still over the mending in his lap.

Ronal turned then. Her face was controlled, but not enough. “You spend much time with him.”

“He needed guidance.”

“He has parents.”

The words landed harder than they should have because you had given your life to children who were not of your body and never once resented it. Because you knew exactly where your deepest insecurity lived. Because Ronal knew it too.

“So do ours” you replied, voice already sharpening. “Yet that has never stopped me from raising them.”

Tonowari looked up fast. “Enough.”

“No” you said without taking your eyes off Ronal.

Ronal set down the herbs in her hands one by one with terrifying care. “The clan sees. The people speak.”

“And you listen.”

Her nostrils flared. “I am Tsahìk. I hear what moves through my people.”

“You let it move.”

“That is not the same.”

“No?” Your laugh came sharp and ugly. “Then tell me, Ronal, when they look at the Sully children and see something tainted, something wrong-shaped, something less, do you think I do not know what else they are seeing in that moment?”

Tonowari stood. “Y/n—”

“DO NOT.” You barely spared him a glance.

The words came out so loud and raw that the whole marui seemed to freeze around them.

For a heartbeat, no one moved. No one even breathed properly. It was not only the force of it. It was the fact that none of them could remember the last time they had heard you scream at all, much less heard it turned on one of them. Not Tonowari. Not Ronal. Not the children. You were not gentle by nature, not always soft, but this was different. This was something torn straight out of the center of you, stripped of discipline and pride and every careful restraint you usually kept wrapped tight around your hurt.

Silence crashed into the marui so hard even the sea beyond seemed to retreat.

Ronal’s chin lifted higher. Hurt had reached her now, and pride arrived right behind it. “You are twisting this.”

“Am I?” Your voice rose. “Ao’nung did not learn those thoughts from water and wind. He learned them here. In this clan. In this home. In the things said when I am not present and the things not challenged when I am.”

Ao’nung jerked upright. “Mother—”

“Be silent.”

The words cracked out of you with a force that seemed to stun even yourself.

Ao’nung went still at once. So did everyone else. It was not simply that you had snapped at him. It was that none of them were used to this version of your anger, this loud, shaking, barely-contained thing that tore out of you without the usual control wrapped around it. You could be stern. You could be sharp. But this was different, and the shock of hearing it turned on him kept Ao’nung rooted where he stood.

Ronal’s eyes flashed. “You accuse me of turning my son against you?”

“I accuse you of feeding him poison and calling it caution.”

Tsireya made a strangled sound. Tonowari stepped between you by instinct, but you moved sideways before he could block the line of the fight.

The words struck. Not because they were true in the way she meant. Because some part of them touched something real.

Your face twisted, more wounded than angry for one naked second.

“Never offered you?” you shot back. “You speak as though you ever reached for them.”

Ronal went still.

You laughed once, harsh and shaking. “Do you know how many times either of you asked about where I came from? About the life before this one? About the language still living in my mouth? About the things I lost?” Your voice rose again, raw with old hurt now, with something far older than the Sullys and this argument and even the clan’s whispers. “You accepted that those parts of me existed, yes, but you never wanted to stand too close to them. Never wanted to know them unless they could be made useful, or small, or easy to set aside.”

Tonowari’s expression changed at that, guilt flashing through it before he could hide it.

You did not spare him either.

“I did not hide those pieces because I wished to keep you out,” you said, voice breaking around the force of it. “I kept them quiet because no one asked. Because no one looked at those wounds and wondered what they were made of.”

The silence that followed hurt worse than shouting.

You had kept those fragments hidden. Not maliciously. Not knowingly. But because pain went silent when no one around you shared its language and because the ones who claimed to love you had never truly learned how to ask for it.

“You think I would betray you for friendship?” you asked, voice trembling now with fury.

“I think” Ronal snapped, and now she was shouting too “that demons return to their own. I think perhaps you feel the pull of sameness and do not know it. I think perhaps that is why you go so often where you are reflected.”

Everything in you went cold.

Tonowari moved at once. “Ronal.”

But she was too far inside the blow already. You saw regret hit her only after the words were gone.

You stared at her. “Do you see me only as a demon, then?”

Ronal was breathing hard. Wounded pride, jealousy, fear, and years of buried prejudice had tangled too tightly to unwind cleanly. In that moment she chose anger because anger felt stronger than retreat.

“Yes” she said, in a voice that shook. “In this, yes. What else calls a mated woman away so often if not the demon in her? What else lets her laugh and sing and hide herself with another male as though the bond of her family is not enough?”

Tsireya began to cry.

The sound barely reached you. Your ears were roaring.

You stepped forward so fast Tonowari actually reached out to catch your arm and missed. “You dare” you said, each word raw. “You dare accuse me of cheating while standing in the home I built with my own hands. While speaking to the children I fed, bathed, taught, held. While wearing medicines I gathered and skins I cured and weapons I sharpened. You dare call me demon after I gave you every piece of my fucking life?!”

Ronal’s face crumpled for a heartbeat under the force of it, but you were beyond mercy now.

“You put those thoughts into Ao’nung’s mouth” you went on, voice breaking louder. “Do not deny it. He did not invent that cruelty. He learned from the contempt you carry when you think I am not looking.”

“I was protecting this family!” Ronal shouted back.

“By teaching our son to despise people like me?”

Ao’nung surged to his feet then, shaking with his own helpless rage and terror, too young and too proud and too frightened for either of you.

“Stop talking to her like that!”

You turned on him in disbelief. “To her?”

His chest rose and fell fast. “She is my mother.”

The words hung. Not wrong. Not enough.

Pain and fury made you crueler than you meant to be. “And I am what, then?”

Ao’nung’s face twisted. For a second you saw him realize the cliff edge. He stepped anyway.

“You are not even my true mother” he spat. “You are not my real parent.”

The world stopped.

There were sounds after. Tsireya sobbing. Tonowari barking Ao’nung’s name in horror. Ronal’s sharp inhale like she had been stabbed. But all of it came from very far away. What you heard most clearly was the split inside your chest. Clean. Final. A thing tearing where you had thought it had grown too strong to tear.

Tonowari crossed to you quickly, hands half raised. “Y/n, listen to me—”

“No.” You reeled back from him too. “NO. NOT ONE OF YOU.”

Tsireya ran forward then and you almost broke on the sight of her, but you could not stay. Could not breathe inside that marui another second.

You snatched up the nearest things that were yours. A wrap. A knife. Your bow. A small satchel hanging from a peg by the entrance. Tonowari called your name. Ronal did too, and hers sounded ruined now, but you could not hear anything except the echo of demon and not my true mother and the older, deeper voice inside yourself whispering the worst of all.

You could not even give them children.

Perhaps that was what had always sat beneath it. The old failure. The body that had crossed worlds and changed shape and still would not do this one thing the clan understood without question. You had told yourself for years it did not matter, because Tsireya and Ao’nung were yours in every way that counted. But pain was a scavenger. It dragged up every buried bone when called.

You fled before you screamed.

You climbed until your hands bled.

Not badly. Just enough for the sting to keep you in your body when grief wanted to blast you out of it. You left the clustered marui of the village behind, crossed a tangle of roots and tide-cut stone, and found one of the old trees farther inland where mangrove gave way to the slightly drier edges of forest. There, high above ground and water both, you wedged yourself into the cradle of thick branches and finally let the collapse come.

It was not graceful. It was not quiet.

You cried until your chest cramped and your throat felt flayed raw. You hit the trunk once with the heel of your hand hard enough to bruise. You cursed in English because Na’vi felt too sacred for the ugliness in you and because no one was there to hear Earth’s dead language anyway. Then you curled in on yourself with your forehead pressed to bark and shook like something hunted.

You thought of Ao’nung as a small child reaching for you from Ronal’s arms the first time he had chosen to come to you without prompting. You thought of Tsireya feverish and half asleep, her fingers tangled in your braid while you sat up all night cooling her skin with damp cloths. You thought of Tonowari holding you after hunts gone bad, of Ronal’s mouth at your shoulder in the dark, of every year you had given to this family, this place, this life built on the bones of another.

Then you thought of the clan’s eyes on you when the Sullys arrived. Of Ronal saying unlike us. Of whispers. Of silences. Of Tonowari never quite cutting them off. Of every time you had chosen gratitude over fury because love seemed more important than being right.

The night gave you too much room to think. Sleep would not hold for long, and every time you drifted close to it your mind kicked you back awake with something sharper waiting. So you lay there in the cradle of branches staring through gaps in the leaves at scraps of dark sky and let yourself wander somewhere crueler.

Your thoughts found Lo’ak because of course they did. Not just Lo’ak as he was now, all sharp edges and stubborn pride and hurt packed into the shape of a boy trying not to show where the world had bruised him, but Lo’ak as he had been when he was smaller, when his hands had still looked too big for the rest of him and his ears and brows and fingers had marked him out before he could even understand why people were staring. You thought of the way eyes lingered. The way silence changed texture around him. The way even kindness could turn ugly when it carried pity underneath.

And then, against your own will, your mind made the leap. If you had ever carried a child of your own here, if Eywa or fate or whatever force ruled these things had ever placed that life in your arms, would they have looked like that too. Would they have had your blood written into them in all the ways this world knew how to notice and punish. Five fingers. Strange bone structure. Some soft human wrongness visible beneath Na’vi skin. Something beautiful to you, maybe, because it would have been yours, because it would have been theirs, because love would have made every difference sacred. But not beautiful to everyone else. Not safe.

The thought hollowed you out in a new place. Because once it came, another followed it, quieter and somehow worse. Maybe Tonowari and Ronal had known. Maybe not in words, not in any deliberate, spoken way, but somewhere deep and practical and afraid. Maybe some part of them had always been relieved that no child had ever come from your body. Relieved that they had been spared the risk of loving a child the clan might look at the way they looked at Lo’ak. Relieved that they had been spared explaining your traits in the face of tradition, in the face of gossip, in the face of that old, ugly instinct to sort the acceptable from the strange.

You shut your eyes hard enough to see color behind them, but it did nothing. The thought kept gnawing. Not because you truly believed they would reject such a child once placed in their arms. That was what made it hurt in a different way. You knew Tonowari would have loved fiercely. You knew Ronal, for all her pride and sharpness, would have fought like a knife for anything she called hers. But love after the fact was not the same as wanting before the fact. It was possible to love deeply and still feel relief at being spared a harder road. Possible to adore you and still be grateful that you had not given them a child who would carry the most visible proof of what set you apart.

Your stomach turned. Suddenly the old grief was tangled with something meaner, more humiliating. It was one thing to wonder whether they had ever looked at you and seen difference they tolerated because they loved you. It was another to imagine they had looked at your empty hands, your empty womb, and thanked the stars in some quiet hidden corner of themselves that it had stayed that way.

You pressed the heel of your hand over your mouth to hold in the sound that wanted out. Below you, the forest breathed and shifted and remained indifferent. Somewhere distant, water moved against root and stone. You thought of Lo’ak again, of the set of his jaw every time he pretended he did not care, and something inside you cracked with a tenderness so painful it felt almost like guilt. Because if a child of yours had looked like him, you knew with horrible certainty that you would have loved them past language, past reason, past fear. You would have torn the world open with your bare hands before letting anyone make them feel lesser for it.

And that, perhaps, was the sharpest wound of all. That no such child had ever existed, and yet you were grieving them anyway. Grieving the possibility. Grieving the shape of a life you had never let yourself hold long enough to name. Grieving the chance that perhaps, somewhere under all this hurt, you had wanted more than you had ever admitted. Not just mates. Not just a place. Not just borrowed children who had become yours through devotion rather than blood. Something smaller and more dangerous. Someone who might have carried your difference openly into the light, forcing everyone around you to reveal exactly how much of your strangeness they could truly bear.

For a long time after that, you did not sleep at all.

——————————————————————

Morning did not fix anything.

That, perhaps, was the hardest part. Dawn came all golden over the water as if the world had not been split open. The village woke. Nets were lifted. Fish gutted. Children called to one another. Duties remained, indifferent to heartbreak. So did you.

You returned at first light only long enough to wash your face in cold water and tie your hair back properly. Then you went straight to your responsibilities. The hunters needed directing. Tracks from the night tides needed reading. Two younger warriors had argued over spear allocation. A net line had torn along one of the outer shallows and needed stronger hands to repair it before midday.

The clan saw you.

Of course they did. Word had already spread. You could feel it in the way voices lowered when you passed, in how no one quite dared ask anything. Their curiosity warred with the very obvious truth written in your face. So they watched instead.

Let them, you thought.

If they expected you to vanish because your heart had been broken in private, they did not know you at all.

By noon Tonowari found you near the storage platforms where dried lines and harpoons were kept. He approached alone, which was at least wise.

You did not turn when you heard him.

“Y/n.”

You kept checking a spear haft for warp.

He stopped a careful distance away. “Please.”

That made you laugh once under your breath. Not kindly. “You ask for gentleness now?”

Tonowari absorbed the blow without flinching. “I ask for a chance to speak.”

You finally looked at him then. He wore grief openly. Guilt too. It would have moved you yesterday. Today it only hurt.

“Where was this chance” you asked “when I needed you to stop the clan from looking at me like I was something lesser the moment the Sullys arrived? Where was it when Ronal spoke and let implication do its work? Where was it when Ao’nung learned those thoughts under our roof?”

His face tightened. “You think I don't know I have failed. I know I have.”

“Then let that knowledge keep you company.”

He stepped forward despite the warning in your posture. “I did not think—”

“No” you cut in. “You did not. That is exactly it.”

For a second you saw anger spark in him too, not at you but at himself, at the impossibility of saying enough. Then it died. He stood there broad and wounded and unable to mend with strength what strength had failed to protect.

“I love you” he said simply.

Pain sliced fresh through your ribs. “Then you should have protected me better.”

You walked away before he could answer.

——————————————————————

Tsireya came later.

Where Tonowari approached like someone handling a blade, Tsireya came like she always came to you: quickly, heart first, tears already threatening. You found her near the outer shallows because she had clearly searched until someone told her where you were. The moment she saw you, she ran.

You caught her automatically. There had never been a world where you would not.

Her arms wrapped around your waist so tightly it almost hurt. You dropped to your knees in the wet sand at once to hold her properly. She was crying before she even tried to speak. You kissed her forehead again and again, smoothing damp hair back from her face, murmuring broken comforts in Na’vi and half-English endearments that survived from a life she had never known.

“None of this is your fault” you told her. “None of it. Do you hear me?”

Tsireya nodded against your neck and cried harder.

You rocked her a little, because once upon a time that had been enough to calm every storm she brought to you. “You did nothing wrong.”

“I should have said something” she choked out. “I should have stopped them sooner. I saw Ao’nung growing mean and I thought he would soften. I should have—”

“No.” You tipped her face up until she looked at you. “You are not responsible for carrying what the adults failed to carry. Not you.”

Her mouth trembled. “Come home...”

That nearly broke you all over again.

You drew her in and held her. “I cannot” you whispered.

“Not ever?”

Your throat closed. You made yourself answer honestly. “Not yet.”

Tsireya nodded because she was kinder than anyone deserved and because she understood even when understanding hurt. She clung to you another minute, then let you wipe her face with your thumbs as if she were still little enough to fit entirely in your lap.

When she left, she looked back three times.

You watched every step.

——————————————————————

The family felt your absence exactly as you knew they would.

Not because you flattered yourself irreplaceable. Because every home had a rhythm, and you had been part of theirs for too long not to leave silence where your habits belonged. No second pair of hands to catch the small work before it fell. No evening rounds through the marui checking straps, medicines, children, weapons, weatherproofing. No body dropping tired beside theirs at the end of a long day. No one to laugh first when Tsireya made some bright joke. No one to sharpen Ao’nung’s practice blade after he had abused it against coral. No one to shoulder against Ronal while sorting herbs. No one to trade a quiet look with Tonowari across a crowded family meal.

Absence was never just emptiness. It was the shape of all the things that failed to happen.

Ao’nung felt it hardest after the first shock passed. Shame made him restless. Restlessness made him stupid. He trained too hard, snapped too fast, and once nearly got himself clipped by a reef edge because his focus was split in six directions at once. Tonowari hauled him out and cursed him senseless for it. Ao’nung took the scolding without fighting back because his thoughts were somewhere else entirely.

Ronal carried hers more inwardly. She did her work. She led. She helped heal. She moved through the village with the same proud spine and uncompromising hands. But she slept poorly, and when she thought no one watched her eyes went to doors, walkways, platforms, the outer edges of the village where you should have been appearing any minute with wet hair and sea-salt on your skin and some tired complaint ready on your mouth.

Tonowari wore his like a stone tied around the chest. He had always been large enough to contain pain without spectacle. That did not make it smaller.

You did not see all of this firsthand.

You only saw enough to guess the rest.

And still you did not return.

——————————————————————

It was Lo’ak who found you on the second evening after the fight, though not by design.

You were coming back from the outer roots with a bundle of repaired line over one shoulder and a small catch looped at your hip when you spotted him sitting alone where mangrove shadows met the darkening water. He did not hear you at first. His posture gave him away before his face did. Folded in. Guard up. Something raw fresh in him.

You almost kept walking.

Then you remembered how it felt to be left alone with hurt large enough to swallow speech.

So you went to him.

He looked up fast when your steps reached him, visibly startled, then awkward. “Oh. Hey.”

You set the repaired line aside and lowered yourself onto the root beside him. “You choose lonely places.”

He shrugged one shoulder. “Guess so.”

You studied him in profile. “What happened?”

“Nothing.”

“Mm.”

Lo’ak huffed. “You do that thing.”

“What thing?”

“That thing where you act like you already know I’m full of crap.”

“I do already know.”

He gave you a sideways look. Even in the gloom you could see the fight between pride and relief.

At last he muttered “Dad got on my ass again.”

“About?”

“Everything.” He kicked lightly at the water below. “The ilu stuff. The diving. Ao’nung. Me not thinking. Me thinking too much. Pick one.”

You listened.

“He doesn’t say I’m messed up or anything” Lo’ak said after a moment, staring hard at the darkness. “Not like that. He just… with Neteyam it’s always trust and expectations and all that warrior stuff. With me it’s like he’s waiting for the next screwup.”

There was no accusation in his voice by the end. That made it sadder.

“And your mother?” you asked.

Lo’ak shrugged again. “Mom loves me. She just…” He grimaced. “She just doesn't say he isn't right.”

You sat with that.

After a while you said “When people are afraid for someone, they often speak badly. They think fear will sound like discipline if they make the voice hard enough.”

Lo’ak snorted faintly. “That doesn’t make it suck less.”

“No” you agreed. “It does not.”

Silence. Then, softer, he asked “Did you mean it?”

You turned toward him. “Mean what?”

“What you said before.” He did not look at you. “About me.”

You understood.

“Yes” you said. “I meant it.”

Lo’ak swallowed. The dark hid his eyes, but not the tremor that went briefly through the line of his jaw.

“Okay” he murmured.

Nothing dramatic followed. No collapse into confession. No sudden ease. He only sat there beside you a little longer than before, and when you rose to leave he rose too and carried half the repaired line without you having to ask.

Sometimes trust entered by the smallest door.

——————————————————————

By the third night, the ache in you had sharpened into something cleaner.

Not less painful. Clearer.

You knew you could not keep sleeping in scattered places forever. You also knew you would not return to the marui only because they missed the space you filled in it. Missing you was not enough. Love was not enough. Not when love had left certain injuries untouched for years because addressing them would have required discomfort.

So when dusk deepened and your feet turned almost without thinking toward the old path that led to the spirit place the Metkayina kept near the inland meeting of root and freshwater, you let them.

The Tree of Voices. Mangrove-wrapped, sea-breathed, threaded with swaying tendrils that caught moonlight in pale glows. The place always quieted you. Tonight it only made you careful.

You saw Ronal before she saw you.

She floated near the top of the great tree, posture bowed in a way you had almost never witnessed from her. Not weakness. Pleading. Real pleading. It stopped you cold enough that your first instinct was to turn away before she looked up.

You pivoted.

“Please.”

Her voice cracked on the one word. You froze with your back half turned.

For a long moment neither of you moved. Then slowly, because running now would have been a kind of cruelty and because some exhausted, still-loving part of you could not do that to her, you turned back.

Ronal had risen to her feet. In the silver-blue light her face looked carved from grief. She came no closer until you allowed it by staying still.

“Do not leave” she said.

“I already left.”

“You know what I mean.”

Yes. You did.

The wind shifted. The floating tendrils stirred. Somewhere beyond the roots, water moved over stone.

You folded your arms hard across your chest. “You have words now.”

Ronal closed her eyes briefly. “I should have had them sooner.”

“That is not apology. That is observation.”

Her gaze came back to yours, wet and unshielded in a way that startled you more than any shouted argument had. “Then hear this. I was wrong.”

The simplicity of it hit harder than defense would have.

She took one slow breath. “I was jealous. I was afraid. I heard pieces of you I could not share and instead of asking for them, I made them suspect. I let the clan’s uglier thoughts sit too near me. I told myself I was protecting what was ours, when in truth I was protecting my pride. And when I was hurt, I used the cruelest words I could find because I knew where to wound you.”

Your jaw tightened so hard it hurt.

Ronal’s voice shook more now, but she did not look away. “No. I do not see you only as demon. I do not even see you as demon at all. I see my mate. I see the woman who has stood beside me through blood and storm and birth and grief. I see the one who raised my children as wholly as if they had first quickened under her own heart. I see the one I hurt because I was not strong enough to master my fear before it mastered my mouth.”

Pain and love and fury all surged at once so violently you nearly stepped back.

“You said it” you whispered. “You cannot unsay it.”

“I know.”

“You let those thoughts live around our son.”

“I know.”

“You let the clan’s whispers touch me for years.”

Ronal’s face crumpled. “I know.”

There it was. No defense. No reaching for context before accountability. It left you without the clean fuel of rage.

You hated that.

“And what of Ao’nung?” you demanded, because if you could not keep striking her, perhaps you could at least keep from softening. “What of Tonowari? What of the fact that none of you protected me where protection should have been simple?”

At that Ronal’s eyes filled properly and one tear slid down without her wiping it away. “Then do not forgive us yet.”

The words hit so unexpectedly you stared.

She took a step closer. Stopped. Waited. “Be angry. Stay angry. Ask more of us than one night of grief. But do not stay gone while we try to become better than the people who wounded you. Come where we can answer. Punish me with your honesty if you must. Not with your absence.”

Your throat worked uselessly around an answer.

Then Ronal, proud Ronal, fierce Ronal, lowered herself to her knees before you.

It was not dramatic. That made it worse. Better. Truer.

“I am asking” she said, voice almost breaking fully now. “Come back and let me mend what I can. Even if it takes long. Even if you do not touch me. Even if you do not call me beloved for many nights. Come back.”

Something inside you gave way then, not into easy forgiveness but into the terrible truth that you loved her still. Loved her enough that the sight of her bowed hurt almost as much as what she had done.

You crouched before you knew you meant to. Your hands found her face roughly, as if you could still be angry through touch. Ronal leaned into your palms with a shuddering breath.

“If you ever say those things again—”

“I will spend the rest of my life earning the right not to.”

You exhaled, shaking. “That is not how forgiveness works.”

“No” Ronal whispered. “But perhaps it is how atonement begins.”

For a long moment you stayed there, hand on her face, anger still alive and grief still raw and love refusing to die under either. Then footsteps sounded behind you, hesitant and stopping short.

Tonowari.

Ao’nung.

Tsireya.

Of course.

You looked over your shoulder. Tsireya was already crying again, though more quietly now. Tonowari’s expression was almost painfully careful, hope warring with the knowledge he had no claim to it. Ao’nung looked worst of all. Stripped bare by shame. Younger than he had in years.

He took two steps forward and stopped so abruptly he nearly stumbled.

“Mother” he said, and his voice cracked so badly you closed your eyes.

When you opened them, he was crying too. Not prettily. Not with dignity. Like a boy who had discovered too late that words could not be taken back just because terror came after.

“I was wrong” he blurted. “I was angry and stupid and I wanted to hurt and I said the worst thing I could think of because I knew it would hit and I hate myself for it and I know that is not enough and I know I am yours, I know that, I know it, and I am yours too if you still want me, please—”

He broke there.

Tsireya covered her mouth, sobbing. Tonowari looked away briefly as if the sight of his son’s grief struck somewhere too tender to witness directly. Ronal, still kneeling beside you, made no move to intervene. Wise again, for once. Let him say it.

You rose slowly and faced Ao’nung fully.

He flinched before you even touched him.

That nearly undid you.

“What you said” you told him, voice low and steady only by force “will stay with me for a very long time.”

He nodded frantically, tears falling. “I know.”

“You do not get to speak from pain and call the damage smaller because you did not mean all of it.”

“I know.”

“You are my son" you said, and his face broke open entirely. “You are my son whether blood says it, or the sea says it, or Eywa herself says nothing at all. But if you ever weaponize that wound again, I will not spare you for your age.”

Ao’nung was crying too hard to answer properly. He nodded anyway.

Then, because you were never not his mother no matter what you had told yourself in the dark, you opened your arms.

He came into them with a sound you would remember for the rest of your life.

You held him while he shook. Tsireya collided into both of you an instant later, wrapping herself around your side and pressing tear-wet kisses to your shoulder and jaw and temple as if trying to prove you were really there. You drew her in too. For a few breaths the three of you stood locked together, all pain and salt and forgiveness-not-yet-but-love-still.

When you finally lifted your head, Tonowari still had not moved.

You looked at him. “And you.”

His mouth almost twitched through the grief. “Yes.”

“You do not get to be the calm one and imagine that is enough. Your silence has teeth.”

Tonowari bowed his head once. “I know.”

“You should have stopped it long before now.”

“Yes.”

“You let me bear things alone because you thought surviving them meant I needed no shield.”

His eyes closed briefly.

You let him sit under that. Then, because he had owned it with the same painful honesty Ronal had and because love made monsters and mercies of all of you, you held out one hand.

Tonowari took it like a man accepting judgment.

When he stepped close, he did not pull you into him immediately. He only rested his forehead against yours and breathed. That hurt most of all. The restraint. The understanding that your anger still lived and had to be honored.

“I missed you” he whispered.

You shut your eyes. “Good.”

He laughed once against your skin, broken and relieved and miserable all at once. “Cruel woman.”

“Yes” you said.

That made Ronal huff a damp, half-laugh from where she had finally risen, and suddenly the impossible thing happened.

The pain remained.

So did the love.

They stood together and did not cancel each other out.

——————————————————————

You did not return to the marui that instant. You made them walk back with you slowly. You made them answer. Not every question. Not every hurt. But enough. Along the root-paths under moonlight you spoke of the clan’s whispers, of old wounds, of the ways love had not absolved them from confronting the ugliness around you. Ronal did not shy from hearing it. Tonowari did not hide behind leadership. Ao’nung spoke little after his apology, but every word he gave was honest. Tsireya stayed close enough to touch you every few breaths as if still making sure you would not vanish again.

By the time the family marui came into view, you were exhausted to the marrow.

The sight of home almost drove you back. Then Tsireya laced her fingers through yours and tugged very gently, and you let her.

Inside, nothing had changed and everything had. Your sleeping place remained as you had left it. Your things, the few you had grabbed, were not there because you still had them. Yet the air itself felt different. More careful. Less sure of itself. Good. Let it be.

Tsireya made you sit before you could decide not to. She brought water. Ao’nung, red-eyed and subdued, disappeared and returned with the wrap you had left behind days ago, folded more neatly than he had ever folded anything in his life. Ronal stood at the edge of the space as if uncertain whether approaching would wound more than soothe. Tonowari lit the low lamps and then simply remained near, visible, available, not pressing.

You looked at them and felt the ache all over again. You stood there for a long moment, looking at them all in the dim light of the marui.

Tsireya’s face was still wet with tears. Ao’nung looked wrecked by his own shame, all the sharpness gone out of him at last. Tonowari stood quiet and careful, as if one wrong movement might send you slipping away again. Ronal had not tried to come closer since your return, but her eyes had not left you once. The weight of everything still sat there between you, bruised and breathing, but it no longer felt like something that would swallow the whole family alive if no one spoke.

You let out a slow breath and looked away for a moment, gathering yourself.

“If I come back” you said at last, your voice tired but steady “then I will not return to silence. I will not come into this home and pretend nothing was said. I will not make myself smaller so the rest of you may feel more comfortable with what you have done.”

“No” Ronal said immediately, her voice low and rough. “You should not.”

Tonowari nodded once. “You will not have to.”

You looked at Ao’nung then, and some part of your chest still hurt too badly to soften fully, but there was room for something gentler now too.

“And you” you said quietly “will not hide from me when you are ashamed. You will face me. Do you understand?”

Ao’nung swallowed hard and nodded. “Yes, Mother.”

That word nearly undid you again.

The silence that followed was not easy, but it was no longer cruel either. It simply existed, full of exhaustion and the remains of tears and the fragile uncertainty of people who had broken one another open and were now being forced to learn how to touch the wound without making it worse. For the first time since you had left, the marui felt less like a battlefield and more like a place where healing might someday be possible.

Tsireya was the first to move.

She stepped toward you slowly, as though afraid you might still pull away, and when you opened one arm for her she came at once, folding herself against your side with a soft, shaking breath. You wrapped her close and kissed the top of her head. She clung to you without embarrassment, pressing her face into your shoulder the way she had as a child whenever the world felt too large or too sharp for her soft heart.

“I missed you” she whispered.

Your eyes closed. “I know, sweet girl.”

Ao’nung lingered only a moment longer before he came too, slower than his sister had, more uncertain, but no less in need of it. He did not throw himself at you. That was not his way. He only moved close enough that you could reach for him, and when you did, when your hand caught his arm and pulled him nearer, the tight control in him gave with almost frightening speed.

You drew both of your children in against you then, one on either side, and held them.

For a while none of you said anything. Tsireya’s breathing gradually evened under your hand. Ao’nung stood tense at first, then slowly let himself lean just a little into your side, no longer pretending he did not need the reassurance of your touch. You kept one arm around Tsireya and the other around him, your fingers stroking once down his back before settling there. The simple familiarity of it hurt and soothed in equal measure.

Across from you, Tonowari watched with something raw and grateful in his face. Ronal looked quieter than you had seen her in a long time, her expression stripped bare by remorse and love and relief she did not seem to know what to do with.

When the children finally eased back, you were left facing your mates.

For a heartbeat no one moved.

Then Tonowari crossed the small distance between you in that same careful way he had worn since you returned, broad body held back by restraint rather than confidence. His hand came up slowly, giving you every chance to refuse him, and rested against the side of your neck. Warm. Steady. Familiar enough that it made your throat tighten.

“You do not have to forgive everything tonight” he said softly. “You do not have to be whole tonight either. Just stay.”

The words were so simple that they lodged deeper than any grand speech could have. You looked at him, at the honesty in his face, at the grief he had made no attempt to hide from you, and nodded once.

“I can stay” you said.

Something in him eased then, not all at once, but enough. He bent and pressed his forehead gently to yours, saying nothing more, and in that silence you felt apology, relief, and love all tangled together. It was not enough to erase what had happened. It was enough to remind you why leaving had hurt like tearing out part of your own bones.

When Tonowari stepped back, Ronal still did not move immediately.

Her hands were clasped too tightly in front of her, a rare tell from someone usually so composed. At last she came toward you, slower even than Tonowari had, and stopped close enough that you could see how red her eyes still were.

“I do not know how to touch you tonight without fearing I have lost the right” she admitted.

Your anger stirred again at that, but more tiredly now than before. “Then do not decide for me.”

Ronal’s breath caught.

You reached for her first.

The look that crossed her face at that was almost painful to witness. She stepped into you as soon as your hands found her arms, and the moment she was close enough you pulled her the rest of the way in. Ronal held herself tightly for all of one second before breaking and wrapping both arms around you with a quiet, shaking exhale that seemed pulled from the bottom of her lungs. You held her through it, one hand at her back, the other slipping up into her braids.

“I am here.”

At that, Ronal made the smallest wounded sound and held you tighter.

The rest came more quietly after that.

No more shouting. No fresh wounds. Just the family settling around one another in the weary aftermath of too much pain finally spoken aloud. Tonowari brought water. Tsireya, still reluctant to let you out of reach, sat pressed close to your side while Ao’nung fetched the wrap you had taken when you left and set it beside you with lowered eyes. Ronal insisted, in the old familiar way that was half command and half care, that you sit before your legs gave out under you. This time, when she said it, a faint thread of warmth lived under the sternness again.

You sat.

Slowly, naturally, the others gathered around you. Tsireya curled in first, leaning against you with her head on your shoulder. Ao’nung sat near your knee, not touching at first, but close enough that the distance no longer felt like rejection. Tonowari settled at your other side, one arm stretched loosely behind you along the woven supports, near without crowding. Ronal remained in front of you for a few moments, as if still confirming to herself that you were real and staying, before finally kneeling close and resting one hand lightly over yours.

No one rushed to fill the quiet.

That was what made it kind.

The sea breathed beyond the marui walls. Night sounds moved through the village in soft layers. The lamps burned low, throwing warm light over tired faces and damp lashes and shoulders slowly unclenching after days of strain. At some point Tsireya’s eyes drifted shut, her breathing evening out where she rested against you. Not long after, Ao’nung shifted closer in tiny increments until his shoulder brushed against your leg. He did it as if hoping no one would notice.

You noticed.

You said nothing, only let your hand settle into his hair for a brief, gentle stroke. Ao’nung’s eyes closed for half a second at the touch before he ducked his head. That alone told you how deeply he still needed to feel he was forgiven, and how young he still was beneath all the pride.

Tonowari reached for one of the woven blankets and spread it over all of you with the same quiet efficiency he brought to every act of care. Ronal watched him do it, then leaned in and pressed a small kiss to your cheek, so soft it barely seemed to land. You turned just enough to let your forehead brush hers in answer, and the relief that moved through her was so visible it made your chest ache.

By the time the night deepened fully, the marui had gone still around you.

Tsireya was sleeping against your side. Ao’nung had not quite fallen asleep, but he sat drowsy and quiet near your knee, no longer fighting his own need for closeness. Tonowari’s hand rested warm and solid over your ankle beneath the blanket, a grounding touch more than anything else. Ronal remained tucked close enough that your shoulders brushed, her presence careful now in a way it had not been before, as though she had finally understood how precious your trust truly was.

You looked at them and felt the ache still there.

Not gone. Not erased. Still bruised, still tender, still real.

But underneath it, and around it, something softer had returned too. Something stubborn. Something home-shaped.

Your family had hurt you. They had failed you. They would have to live with that and do better, and you would make certain they did. But they were still yours, and you were still theirs, and tonight that truth was no longer a weapon in anyone’s mouth. It was only a promise resting quietly in the dim light, wrapped in warm bodies and salt air and tired love.