Chapter Text
Quaritch wakes up already cataloging the damage.
That instinct—inventory before emotion—survives death.
Ceiling first. White. Too clean. Lights recessed into a smooth curve that doesn’t belong to any ship he remembers. Gravity feels right. Air pressure stable. His lungs expand without pain, which is wrong, because humans cant breathe Pandoran air.
He inhales again, deeper this time.
No rattle. No burn.
His fingers twitch.
They feel…long.
Instinct fires before thought—muscle memory snapping into place with brutal efficiency. His fist connects with solid resistance, a sharp crack of impact reverberating through the room. Someone grunts and stumbles back, cursing.
“What the—shit, sir!”
Quaritch is already on his feet, heart hammering, breath coming fast and controlled. His stance is wide, balanced without effort, tail flicking behind him like it’s always belonged there. He scans the room for threats, eyes locking onto the man he just hit.
Lyle.
Blue. Taller.
Lyle’s hand is pressed to his nose, eyes wide with shock more than pain. “You awake now, Colonel?”
Quaritch blinks once.
The room snaps into focus—white walls, medical equipment, observation glass. His fist is still raised.
He lowers it slowly, staring at his hand like it belongs to someone else. Blue skin stretched over dense muscle. Fingers longer. Stronger. Perfectly capable of breaking bone—which they just did.
“…Status report,” Quaritch says, voice rough but steady.
Lyle grins despite the swelling already forming. “Same old Quaritch. Good to have you back, sir.”
Quaritch exhales through his nose, something tight unwinding in his chest. He’s alive. Or close enough to it to fight.
That’ll do.
This isn’t a dream.
He knows what dreams feel like. This has edges.
He swings his legs over the side of the slab before anyone can stop him. His feet hit the floor with more force than intended, toes splaying instinctively for traction.
“What the hell did you do to me?” His voice comes out rougher than he expects—deeper, resonant in his chest in a way that vibrates through bone that isn’t shaped like his anymore.
“You were briefed,” the woman says carefully. Dr. Thorne, if memory serves. Xenobiologist. One of the civilians who always thought she was braver than she was because she stood behind glass.
Quaritch laughs once. A sharp bark.
Silence stretches.
They let him walk to the mirrored surface on the far wall. Let him see it.
The thing staring back at him is tall—taller than his human body ever was. Broad-shouldered, scarred, muscled in a way that speaks of power rather than bulk. Yellow eyes burn out of a blue face marked with darker striping. His scars are still there, translated across alien skin like a cruel joke. Even his expression is familiar: jaw tight, eyes hard, mouth set in a line that’s faced down worse odds than this.
He recognizes himself.
That might be the worst part.
“This is a Recombinant,” Thorne says. “Your memories. Your tactical experience. Your command instincts. All transferred.”
“All transferred,” Quaritch repeats. He lifts a hand and presses two fingers to his neck, just below the jaw. He can feel the steady thrum of a pulse that isn’t human. “And my soul?”
No one answers.
Later—after vitals, after movement tests, after he proves he can stand, walk, fight the unfamiliar sway of a tail without falling on his ass—they sit him down in a darkened briefing room.
A screen flickers to life.
His face stares back at him.
Human. Older. Harder around the eyes than he remembers being, but unmistakably him. Colonel Miles Quaritch, in full RDA dress, speaking with the clipped authority of a man used to being obeyed.
“If you’re seeing this,” the recording says, “then I’m dead.”
Quaritch watches without blinking.
“In case you haven't figured it out yet, you're Colonel Miles Quaritch. Only younger, taller, bluer... and not nearly as good-looking.”
The man on-screen leans forward slightly, intensity sharpening.
“Remember, kid, a Marine can't be defeated. Oh, you can kill us, but we'll just regroup in hell.”
The screen goes dark.
For a moment, Quaritch feels nothing.
Then his jaw tightens.
Then his hands curl into fists, nails biting into blue flesh hard enough to draw thin lines of red. Rage simmers, controlled, compressed beneath years of discipline. Not the blind fury of a man cheated of life—but something colder.
The man on the screen had known he would fail.
That’s what twists the knife.
Training comes next.
He runs his squad through drills that push both human and Recom limits. He learns the reach of his new arms, the power coiled in his legs. He learns that his reflexes are faster now—so fast that he has to consciously slow himself not to overshoot targets. His balance improves with every hour, tail flicking and counterbalancing without conscious thought.
It unsettles him how quickly his body adapts.
Flashbacks come uninvited.
Jake Sully in his wheelchair, agreeing to his terms.
Jake Sully’s voice crackling over comms, choosing them over Earth.
Arrows slicing through the air.
That oversized tree falling, burning.
Quaritch remembers the exact moment Jake stopped being a Marine and became something else. Or maybe that’s wrong. Maybe Jake never stopped being a Marine at all—just redirected it.
That thought gnaws at him.
“He went native,” Quaritch mutters one night, staring at a paused holo-image of Jake astride a banshee. “Body and soul.”
He enlarges the image, studying posture, grip, the way Jake leans into the creature like he belongs there.
“How does a Marine do that?” he asks the empty room.
He pulls files. Reports. Footage. He reads everything. Studies patterns. Learns the Na’vi names Jake used to mock and now speaks fluently. Notices how official RDA language shifts over time—from Subject Sully to Target Sully to simply Sully, as if they couldn’t quite bring themselves to strip him of the name.
Quaritch doesn’t use Jake’s name at first.
Then he does.
It slips out during a tactical review, casual, unguarded. The room goes quiet for half a beat before someone continues the briefing.
That night, Quaritch stares at his reflection again.
Jake had chosen his new body.
Quaritch hadn’t.
He flexes his fingers, feeling the strength respond instantly. Efficient. Powerful. Perfectly suited for this world.
The line between them blurs, just a little.
Quaritch hates that.
He hates how easy it is to move now, how his body obeys without hesitation. He hates that this skin, this shape, feels right in a way he doesn’t want to acknowledge. Jake Sully had stepped into his avatar and never looked back. Quaritch had been dragged into his.
And yet.
Jake had learned faster.
That realization needles him.
Jake Sully had arrived on Pandora broken—legs useless, spine severed, career over before it had ever really begun. A file photo flashes in Quaritch’s mind: Jake in a wheelchair, eyes sharp despite the dead weight below his waist. Not a man asking for pity. A man assessing his options.
Quaritch hadn’t noticed it at the time. He’d seen a tool. A body that could walk where humans couldn’t. A Marine desperate enough to say yes.
Now, with hindsight sharpened into a blade, he sees the mistake.
Jake had adapted because he had nothing left to lose.
Quaritch stands in the observation deck hours later, arms crossed, watching his Recom squad move through a live-fire exercise below. Blue bodies weave between cover, rifles snapping up with lethal precision. They look wrong. Effective, but wrong. Monsters wearing discipline like a uniform.
Jake would’ve laughed at that.
No—worse. Jake would’ve understood it.
That’s the part Quaritch can’t shake. Jake hadn’t rejected humanity out of weakness. He’d found something on Pandora that the RDA never offered him: belonging without condescension. Purpose without a leash.
“He didn’t defect,” Quaritch mutters under his breath. “He transferred command.”
The words sit heavy.
Jake Sully didn’t abandon being a Marine. He just stopped taking orders from Earth.
The door behind him hisses open.
“Colonel.”
Quaritch doesn’t turn. He knows that voice.
General Ardmore steps into the room like she owns the oxygen—crisp uniform, sharp eyes, posture carved out of command authority. She stops beside him, gaze following his down to the training pit.
“Your unit’s adapting faster than projected,” she says. “You included.”
“Wasn’t aware this was a race,” Quaritch replies.
Ardmore’s mouth twitches. Almost a smile. “Pandora doesn’t wait.”
She gestures, and the lights dim further as a holo-projector hums to life between them. The image resolves into a familiar stretch of floating mountains—jagged rock suspended in open air, wreathed in cloud and mist.
The Hallelujah Mountains.
Jake’s territory.
Quaritch’s jaw tightens.
“Intelligence confirms increased Na’vi insurgent activity here,” Ardmore says. “This region functions as Sully’s operational base. Command. Training. Logistics.”
Quaritch studies the map, eyes narrowing as he tracks the flight paths, the blind spots, the natural chokepoints. Jake always favored high ground. Mobility. Decentralized positions. Guerrilla doctrine stripped down to its bones.
“He’s building an army,” Quaritch says.
“He already has one,” Ardmore corrects. “What he’s building is sustainability.”
She flicks her wrist, and the image shifts—overlays of red markers lighting up the mountainsides.
“There’s a complication,” she continues. “Human troops can’t access the area directly. Banshees respond aggressively to human presence. Immune response. Territorial defense.”
Quaritch snorts. “Pandora’s got antibodies.”
“Exactly,” Ardmore says. “But avatars don’t trigger it.”
Quaritch turns then, slow and deliberate. “Because the animals think they’re native.”
“Because the planet thinks they are,” Ardmore corrects. “Their system doesn’t differentiate the same way we do.”
That lands.
Jake had known that too. Of course he had. He’d ridden that line between worlds until the line disappeared entirely.
“You’ll deploy via helicopter insertion to the perimeter,” Ardmore continues. “From there, you proceed on foot. Stealth operation. Recon and track. Locate Sully. Identify the insurgent command structure.”
“And eliminate?” Quaritch asks.
Ardmore meets his gaze, unblinking. “If the opportunity presents itself.”
Quaritch looks back at the floating mountains, clouds curling around stone like something alive and watching.
Jake Sully had gone into those mountains human.
Quaritch will go in as something else.
“Get my squad ready,” he says. “If Sully’s up there, he’s already planned for us.”
Ardmore nods. “Then don’t do what he expects.”
Quaritch’s lips curl into a thin, humorless smile.
“Oh,” he says quietly. “I intend to do exactly what he’d do.”
Outside, rotors begin to spin, the deep thrum of helicopters vibrating through the base—metal and machinery preparing to challenge a world that had already chosen its side.
And somewhere in the clouds above the Hallelujah Mountains, Jake Sully waits, unaware that the ghost he left behind has learned how to fly.