#war paint

Pigments stain your fingers as you work the colors together in the bowl. Ochre, deep blue, and a green pulled from crushed leaves and ash. They smell like home. Warm sap and the bark of trees that still remember song. The scent clings to you, resin-deep and humming, as if the forest itself has leaned close to watch.

So’lek sits with his back to you, spine straight, shoulders bare. Still as stone. He has already given consent. That alone tightens something in your chest.

Since leaving TAP behind, starting anew, you’ve felt like a young babe. Unsteady. Learning how to exist in a world that was never meant to keep you caged. Learning to walk again on the two feet below you as the colors change and shift beneath your toes. This was no different. Learning to understand, to grow accustomed to the ways of the Na’vi like you never had the chance to before. 

War paint was a warrior’s way of telling Eywa and the clan why they stood to fight. I am ready; I accept the cost.  It says. Yet the application is done by oneself in preparation for the battle ahead. 

When So’lek asked you to apply the pigments, you paused, giving him a moment to reconsider. 

It was an understanding the two of you were new to, something you had yet to push past, the timid glances and gentle touches. 

“Oe sngä’i ngaru.” He had said. I trust you.

He had taken your hands and pressed them against his chest, feeling the cool metal of his vest chill your skin. Was this his way of accepting Eywas' will? Accepting your hands across his skin as an acknowledgment? He was allowing you to witness his readiness and his fear. 

His hands hesitated at the fastening of his vest. Just for a breath. Then he stilled, shoulders squaring, tail unmoving, as if he had already made the choice and would not insult it by wavering now. 

“Zola’u,” you murmured softly. be still.  The pigments finally mixed, creating a bright teal that seemed made for him. 

The word hangs between you, fragile as breath. Asking him to be still feels heavier than asking him to move. There is power in it and risk. You are suddenly aware of how easily this moment could fracture if either of you shifts too soon, speaks too loudly, or decides against it now. The air feels charged, thick with sap and silence, as if the forest itself is holding still with him.

Once you touch him, there will be no pretending this is only a ritual.

He inclined his head. Nothing more.

Then, dragging your fingers through the paint, your hand met his skin. Warm. Solid. 

The heat of him surprises you because the warmth settles into your hands, grounding you in a way you weren’t prepared for. Your fingers feel suddenly clumsy, too aware of themselves, as if they have forgotten their purpose now that they are pressed to living skin instead of memory. For a heartbeat, doubt flickers. Am I allowed this?

Then his stillness answers for him.

The first touch was ceremonial, flat and steady, spreading color across his upper back. A mark of readiness. Of unity. Your hands move with care, not because you fear making a mistake, but because you understand what it means to mark someone who may not return. Paint can be washed away. Memory cannot. Every line you draw feels like a quiet promise you are not sure you are strong enough to make, and yet you make it anyway. This was not something given lightly among the Na’vi, and both of you knew it. The silence hums with that knowledge as you trace the muscles of his back with patterns and streaks. 

You trail your hands lower, leaving open prints like echoes. His breath changes. Just slightly. Perhaps in recognition, knowing your handprints will be on display as he flies. As he fights. You picture it without meaning to. The lift of his ikran, the rush of air, the way the light will catch along his back as he moves through the sky. Your handprints will glow there, faint but unmistakable, painted into motion. Anyone who looks up will see them. Will know he does not fly alone. The thought tightens something in your chest, pride and fear tangling together until you cannot tell where one ends and the other begins. Who he fights for is now imprinted across his syuratan, the glow answering your touch. 

Your fingers slow when the texture beneath them changes.

The scars are old. Some of them you recognize. The cruel precision of RDA weapons leaves a particular kind of mark, even years later. Others are older, cleaner, and earned in ways that speak of trials and survival rather than cruelty. And some you cannot place at all. They tell stories you were never meant to hear, histories he carries without offering explanation. You do not ask. Your hands learn what they can and leave the rest untouched. Your hand lingers without meaning to, thumb brushing along the edge of one long mark that crosses his shoulder blade as you circle the pigment around the area. 

So’lek’s muscles tense as he turns his head slightly, watching your hand brush across his shoulder.

His breath leaves him slowly through his nose, measured, as if he is holding himself in place by will alone. The rigid movement was not from anger, but rather control. 

“They remind me why I endure,” he said at last, voice low and measured.

Your hand stills.

Endure. Not survive. Not heal. The word settles heavily, reshaping what you thought you understood about him. Endurance is not hope. It is will. It frightens you a little how easily he carries it, how naturally it seems woven into him.

Then, gently, you press your palm over the scar, pigment and all. Not erasing it. Honoring it. “Lu Lor, So’lek,” you said. It is beautiful. 

The word feels right in your mouth. Feels complete. If there were only one reason to learn the language of your people completely, it would be him. To tell him this now. 

For a long moment, he does not move, and you think he may disagree. Then he exhales. Slow. Careful. As if letting go of something he has carried alone for too long.

“Nì’ul nga,” he murmurs.

The words settle slowly, as if they are meant to. Only you. Not a promise. Not a confession. Something quieter. Something heavier. Your pulse stutters, then quickens, each beat loud in your ears as you try to understand what he is giving you and what he is not. Whether it is a truth spoken in passing or one he has carried longer than he is willing to admit. Among the Na’vi, words were not taken lightly, and neither were they claimed without care. To misunderstand would be to dishonor them. So you do not speak. You let the meaning breathe between you.

He was right. He would only ever let you think that. Let you be the one to see him as he was. In all his anger and all his vengeance, he has found his way back to what it means to share light with another of his kind.

In the end, you choose the only response that feels right. You return to the paint. To the patterns. To the work he trusted you with. Some truths, you realize, are not meant to be answered immediately. You’re softer now, tracing patterns meant for protection, for endurance. When your fingers skim the base of his spine, he shifts just enough to remind you that he is aware of you. Of every breath. Every touch.

When you finish, your hands are stained, your heart louder than it should be.

So’lek rises and turns, sitting forward for you to continue your work on the front. 

Up close, his eyes search your face, unreadable and heavy with things unsaid. Before you can reach for new paint, he lifts your paint-marked hand and presses it briefly to his chest.

“Irayo,” he says. 

Not for the paint.

For the witness.

For you.

His hand lingers there for a heartbeat longer than necessary, as if memorizing the contact. You resist the urge to turn your palm beneath his, to close your fingers around the warmth of his chest. Is this as far as he will go? You understand that instinctively. Restraint is not distance for him. It is care. It is choosing not to take more than he is ready to give.

“I am not finished yet.” 

Though time was not in your favor this day, perhaps Eywa would be.

Send him back to me. Send him home, you think.

The clans begin to gather beyond the clearing, their voices rising and blending together. All of them. United to defend their home. To defend Pandora. You and So’lek met here, in the husk of an old resistance lab you had powered long ago during your travels across the land. Word had spread quickly. Mercer’s drill had been sanctioned. Its purpose is clear. To destroy everything in its wake.

You could not allow it. Not after everything you had only just begun to remember. Not after finding your way back to a home that had never stopped waiting for you.

So’lek stands with you now. All the clans do. And it is time to go to war.

“Same color?” you ask, adding more crushed leaves and mineral ash to the bowl, stirring slowly.

So’lek does not answer at first.

His gaze has gone distant and hooded as he watches the subtle twitch of your ears, the way your tongue passes briefly across your lower lip as you work. Lost in something quiet and internal, like a child momentarily distracted by light.

“Ftxozä,” you murmur, your tail flicking against his calf. Focus.

He glances down at the spot you struck, unfazed by the sting it must have left, then looks back at you.

“Sarentu,” he says, voice steady. “You may do what you please.” His eyes linger now, darker with something unreadable. “I will not fuss like a babe.”

Your mouth curves upward as you finish the mixture, drawing your fingers through it once more before gesturing for him to lift his chin.

“You would not want me to have my way with you, ma So’lek.”

Something hums low in his chest at the sound of his name on your tongue.

You graze your fingers across his cheeks, slow and deliberate, thumbs brushing faint traces of paint along his skin.

“Close your eyes.”

You pass your fingers across his eyes from ear to ear, streaking the pigment into a mask across his features. You allow yourself a moment to admire him while he is unaware, just for that breath of stillness. With him seated before you, you stand tall above him, his head lifted to the height of your chest.

His syuratan glows brightly against the dark markings of his forehead, catching along the places where two of his braids are threaded through scavenged bolts. It is a small thing. Two pieces of metal. And yet it always makes you smile. Perhaps because you know it tells a larger truth. A harder story. One he carries without explanation.

“You can open them now.”

When he does, his eyes shine the brightest yellow you have seen yet, pupils widening as they adjust to the light. The sight of him looking up at you, unguarded, draws a soft smile from your lips.

“Nìltsan,” you murmur. Just right.

The air between you seems to warm, the space narrowing until it feels intimate in a way neither of you names. You pull back slightly, gesturing instead to his arms and legs, giving him the choice.

He offers his arms without a word. The exchange silent and instinctive.

So’lek relaxes beneath your hands, allowing you to take your time with the designs, with the steady rhythm of your movements. You save his chest for last. When you finally reach it, you pause, fingers hovering as you consider what pattern belongs there. The handprint you had left before stood out against his blue skin. 

You linger too long.

“You are thinking too hard, Sarentu,” he says, a quiet tease threading his voice as his tail flicks impatiently behind him.

“It is not hard to think about paint,” you reply, though your gaze remains fixed on the print.

“Then why do you hesitate?”

Perhaps he knows it is not the paint or the pattern that makes you still, but the nature of it all. What it means. Why he allows you to trace your marks along his skin and yet does not claim what could be his?

In your heart, that is how you wish it. The two of you, together. Yet the words remain lodged behind your teeth, too heavy to force free.

“Quiet. Or by Eywa’s will, I will take all night.”

You gather the last of the teal and draw clean lines along his torso, avoiding the handprint, even and deliberate patterns that mirror one another and meet in harmony at his center. When the teal is finished, you reach for another bowl, this one filled with stark white that will cut sharply against the darker paint.

So’lek watches you and the pigment with narrowed eyes, his expression shifting toward something faintly unimpressed.

“More?”

You laugh softly, offering no answer as you begin to outline your work, accenting the lines with careful dots, letting yourself sink into the rhythm of it. Into the art. Your movements grow fluid, instinctive, as if your hands remember something your mind does not.

So’lek lets you drift. Lets you create. Sits patiently before you as his gaze wanders, returning to you again and again.

When you reach the last of the paint, you drag your entire hand through the bowl, coating your palm completely. You hesitate then, hovering just short of his chest and the mark from before.

He notices.

Whatever hesitation once lived in your eyes, he seems to understand it now. Without a word, So’lek reaches for your wrist and guides your hand forward, pressing your painted palm to his chest, directly over his heart where it was before.

When skin meets skin, it feels inevitable. As if it was always meant to be this way. Something settles between you, something unspoken that never found its way through the spaces between before.

“So’lek—”

You lift your gaze to him and find something different there. Something unfamiliar. His lips part as if to speak, but no words come. For a moment, he looks caught between instinct and restraint.

Then he says your name.

Just once.

You feel it vibrate beneath your palm, carried on the steady beat of his heart, and suddenly it comes in waves. This feeling. This connection. To lose it, if he did not return, would be to lose everything you have only just begun to understand. To lose the comfort of your own skin—if his hands were not there to steady you, would feel like the end of something essential. Of yourself.

Through his pain, through his vengeance, from scars to burdens and everything in between, you want your very being entwined with his.

You have spoken through danger before. Through pain. Through loss. Yet now, with him this close, the words feel far heavier than any arrow or bullet ever did. Naming this thing between you feels like tempting fate, like daring Eywa to take notice. If you speak first and he does not follow, you are not sure you would survive the distance it would create. War can take a body. Silence can take everything else.

Your pulse beats loud in your ears as you draw breath, knowing that once the words leave you, they cannot be called back.

“So’lek, I—”

His grip tightens around your wrist, halting you. He lifts his other hand and places his palm over your own heart, warmth spreading through you where he touches, steady and grounding. The words you were reaching for dissolve, silenced by the way he looks at you. By the certainty in him now.

“Nga yawne lu oer,” he says softly.

Something leaps violently in your chest. The air catches in your throat, breath stolen as understanding crashes over you all at once. You are beloved to me. Stunned. Dazed. Your heart races as So’lek rises from the bench, closing the space between you. When he steps closer, just enough that your breaths begin to overlap, you realize this was never just ceremony at all. For the first time since leaving TAP, you realize survival is no longer the only thing you are fighting for.

He releases your wrist, his hand finding the hollow between your jaw and neck, his thumb brushing slowly along your cheek. His proximity feels overwhelming in the quiet, every sense sharpened to him alone. The warmth of his body. The faint hum beneath his skin. The awareness that this is the closest he has ever allowed himself to be.

“I will not fly before I say this,” he says softly, his grip unwavering. “If it is Eywa’s will for this to be our last journey, to move on, then it is her will for us to do so together.”

He draws his hand from your chest to cradle the other side of your face, his touch steady, certain.

“Oel ngati kameie,” he breathes.

I see you.

The welling in your eyes cannot compare to the warmth blooming in your chest as you lean forward, resting your forehead against his. Both your hands come to his painted skin, grounding yourself in him, in this moment. You have been looked at your entire life. Measured. Cataloged. Watched for what you could provide. At TAP, eyes followed you constantly, yet never truly saw you. Here, with one quiet phrase, he strips all of that away. He does not see what you were made to be. He sees what you chose to become. The weight of it nearly brings you to your knees.

“Oel ngati kameie,” you whisper back.

The forest outside hums, distant and patient, as if giving you this moment before demanding anything else. Whatever comes next, you know this moment cannot be taken from you. Not by war. Not by loss. Not by time. To be seen once, truly seen, is to be changed forever. Even if you are parted, even if the world demands its price, this truth will remain. You will carry it with you, as surely as he carries his scars.

“You will come back to me, Sarentu.” He pulls back just enough to look into your eyes, his hands steady despite the tremor you feel beneath them. “Just as I will fly with your mark on me, knowing I will come back to you as well.”

He lifts a hand, brushing away the tear that slips free before you can stop it. Your fingers trail upward across his chest in answer, warm skin beneath your palms, until your hands find their place at the back of his neck, resting there as if they have always known where they belong.

“Nìwotx,” you say, nodding through blurred vision. Always.

For a moment, he does nothing.

He studies you as if committing you to memory, as if this is something he must carry with him into the sky. Then his forehead rests briefly against yours, a quiet grounding touch, his breath warm against your lips.

When he kisses you, it is slow.

Careful.

As if he is asking permission even now.

His lips brush yours once, barely there, a question more than a claim. When you do not pull away, when your hands tighten just slightly at his neck, the kiss deepens. Not hurried. Not hungry. Just full. Present. His thumb settles along your jaw, anchoring you as if he fears the world may tilt if he does not.

The taste of him is familiar in a way that startles you. Like home rediscovered. Like something remembered rather than learned.

There is no desperation in it, only certainty.

A promise carried in the press of his mouth to yours, in the steady way he lingers before pulling back just enough to breathe you in again. His lips rest against your forehead for a brief, reverent moment, as if sealing something sacred.

When he finally draws away, his hand remains at your neck, his thumb brushing once, gentle and grounding.

Nothing more needs to be said.

The forest hums softly around you as the beat of wings in the distance grows closer and for this moment, before the sky calls him away, you are held.