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Your father, or what was left of him inside of the blue, hulking carcass filled with his memories, was damn tired of you.
It was enough to deal with your miscreant little brother, Spider, but you were a different ballgame. He supposed he forgot what teenage girls were like, seeing as the female science snots were nearly premenopausal, and the general was Father Time, herself. Out in space, you were the only non-Na'vi girl who hadn't yet reached twenty.
Honestly, Quaritch did not get paid enough to deal with Spider, let alone with some squirrely heifer he barely remembered making in his old human body. You were rude, aggressive, uncooperative, but, somehow, it got worse.
Your Na'vi obsession was the real issue. He had let you out, just once, to see what life with the savages would be like after you went on a tirade about how you didn't need him, how you were meant to roam free on Pandora, not trapped in a lab. God, that was a mistake. You came back scraped up and covered in some bioluminescent crap, but the smile on your face was wide and toothy.
You talked afterward. Too much. About the trees that hummed when you touched them, about the way the air felt alive even through a mask, about how the Na’vi weren’t savages at all but people who listened.
That wasn't the plan. The plan was for you to run back into daddy's arms with your tail tucked between your legs, maybe with an arrow or two shot into your foot by a stray Na'vi warrior. Instead you came back far too familiar, filthy, and trying to speak their terrible language.
So, he put some restrictions on you. Clearly you couldn't stay put in a lab with the scientists poking and prodding at you, so he kept you in his quarters. Doors always locked, blacked out windows, armed escorts to take you hither and thither.
You raged, of course, slamming your little fists into the reinforced iron doors. You hurled sharp insults at him—some that made him snort, others that were too accurate to crack a smile at. You called him a monster, a corpse pretending to be a father, a machine with your father's memories duct-taped together. You told him about how he would never be your real father, that the real Miles Quaritch died just as he lived: a worthless, government drone without a speck of humanity or empathy to his credit.
"And I hope to God that you die the same way and soon," you cried, scratching at the sheets of Quaritch's bed.
Quaritch didn’t respond. Not right away, at least. He stood there in his quarters, a thick muscle of his massive arms crossed over that borrowed blue chest, tail flicking once in irritation before he stilled it. No matter how much he disliked the enemy, even he could admit he looked damn good in the body of one. The silence stretched between the two of you, thick and pounding, broken only by your wild sobs and kicking feet.
"Jesus, girl, are you done? Never met someone who could cry over nothing for so long." He let his long, slender body take a seat on his bed. "You know, I like to keep an orderly bed." His eyes traced over his thrashed pillows and bedsheets.
"Get away from me," you mumbled, pushing yourself to the far end of the bed. "I hate you. More than anything else, I hate you!"
He turned away then, dismissing you with the same efficiency he used on insubordinate soldiers. He knew how to play this game, and he was always the last to crack. He got under the blankets you had so carelessly yanked apart and resigned himself to sleep.
"I ain't the fondest of you either, brat," he said through a yawn, selfishly stretching his legs out and kicking you from his bed.
-
Quaritch lied on his back, hands folded behind his head, eyes open. Sleep didn’t come so easy anymore, not since he’d woken up blue and borrowed and wrong. You knew that. You’d learned it the first night he locked you in here with him, when you’d pretended to sleep just to avoid looking at him.
You couldn't sleep either. Not since those science snobs in white coats pricked you with their needles and trapped you in their cages.
You curled in on yourself at the foot of the bed, knees to your chest, jaw clenched so hard that your teeth felt like they were going to split. Anger was safer than fear. Fear would only make you seem weak. You learned that quickly, too.
“You done glaring holes in my back yet?” Miles muttered without looking at you.
You stiffened. “I wasn’t.”
“Sure,” he said. “And I ain’t blue.”
Silence settled again, but it wasn’t the same as before. It was thinner now, dying. Quaritch shifted, his tail swishing once before he stilled it again. After a long moment, he spoke, his voice lower and clouded by exhaustion.
“You know,” he said, “you don’t love this place. Not really.”
You let a sharp glare his way, despite him not being able to see it from the back of his head. "You know nothing."
“I know obsession when I see it.” He turned his head just enough to look at you. In the dim light, his eyes caught, bright and unsettling. “I know what it's like to look for something to just pass the time. This place isn't important to you. You just want a means to an end, baby."
Your fingers curled into the sheets. “You wouldn’t get it. You don't know what I saw out there."
"'Course I do. I've burned it all down before. I know exactly what y'saw. Wasn't anything worth crying over."
-
He felt like a real sap, truthfully. He hadn't a clue why he was doing this, especially for someone who was insistent on hating him. Maybe he was just going soft. More likely than not, it was just his conscious biting at him and reminding him what he had told you the night before—about you wanting distractions. Well, in space, this was as good as it would get.
A small stack of magazines from back home. He remembered these things. Trivial little paperback books that one would read in a lobby or on a plane, and toss it away like it meant nothing after. Seemed like a real luxury now, especially considering how he had to beg the general to allow him some.
He set them down on the small metal table by the wall, the magazines making an unimpressive thump. Harmless. That was the idea. Something to keep your hands busy and your mind from drifting too far into the trees.
He glanced over his shoulder.
You were perched on the edge of the bed, arms crossed tight over your chest, eyes slit and judging. You watched the stack like it might bite.
"What are these? Boarding school pamphlets?" you spat venomously.
He snorted. “I wish.”
You slid off the bed, slow and cautious, bare feet padding against the cold floor. You picked up the top magazine, flipped it over, and opened it. Ads stared back at you. Bottles of perfume, shining jewelry, beaches, and celebrities as far as the eye could see.
Your nose wrinkled. “These are stupid.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “So are you. Read them.”
You flipped a page. Then another. Your scowl softened, just a hair, before you caught yourself and hardened it again.
He leaned against the wall, arms crossed, watching you like you might bolt at any second.
“You ever read these?” you asked after a moment, quieter.
“Once upon a time,” he said. “Back when I had time to kill and weren't so blue.”
You huffed a laugh despite yourself. It slipped out and surprised you both. You held your mouth shut quickly, eyes darting to him like you had given him something you wanted back.
He raised a brow. “Careful, kid. Keep that up and people might start to think you actually like your ol' dad.”
Your fingers tightened on the magazine, rolling it into a cylinder. "Why are you doing this?”
There it was. He wasn't quite sure himself. He considered lying. He was good at that. Instead, he shrugged, the motion heavy and stiff in his long limbs.
“Because you need distractions,” he said. “And I don’t need you goin’ stir-crazy and doin’ somethin’ real dumb.”
“That’s not the real reason.”
“No,” he said. “It ain’t.”
You waited. When he didn’t continue, you looked back down at the pages, jaw ticking. Part of you knew why he was doing this. You were half-disgusted, half-flattered. He wanted to gain your favor, to show you some decency. Maybe score some affection from you. Well, he would be hard pressed and severely disappointed, if that was the case.
"Thanks,” you muttered. "I guess."
He grunted in response, pushing off the wall. “Don’t get used to it,” he said. “I'm not Santa Claus.”
But when he left the room, he didn’t take the magazines with him. His steps receded down the corridor, and the sound of his clunking boots and racing thoughts distracted him from the fact that he didn't hear the sealing of his door behind him.
-
After an hour or so, Quaritch returned with his arms full. No weapons or restraints. Nothing like that. With him, he brought more worldly treats.
A battered deck of old cards he’d found in a rec room drawer. A holo-tablet with a few preloaded games and a cracked screen. Some rationed energy bars that could pass for chocolate.
It was all small, stupid stuff. Stuff he never would have gotten for himself, or anyone else for that matter, but a bored girl was a dangerous girl, and the last thing he wanted to deal with was your little attitude.
He adjusted his grip as he walked, feeling the tablet start to slip. He told himself he was just keeping you occupied. That was all. He wasn't a softy.
He slowed when he reached his quarters.
The door wasn’t sealed.
At first he thought his eyes were playing tricks
on him, but then he saw it. One of the magazines was jammed into the narrow seam where the iron door met the frame, keeping the door cracked. The pages were crumpled and stubborn, keeping the lock from fully engaging.
His blood flashed cold.
“That little bitch,” he growled under his breath, slamming everything in his grasp against the floor in a rage.
When he got his hands on you, he swore—! Well, he didn't know what he swore, but he knew he'd do it.
-
Your feet drank in the contrast of the cold, sterile chill of linoleum giving way to living earth beneath your soles. Pandora welcomed you like it once did before. Warm, breathing, forgiving. You didn’t slow down. You refused. You ran harder than you ever had in your life, lungs burning, heart trying to tear its way out of your chest.
You’d never needed to run before. Not like this. There had never been anything worth chasing, but now freedom pressed freshly against the tip of your tongue and you wanted it all.
Branches whipped at your arms and leaves slapped your face as you pattered deeper into the forest's foliage. The bioluminescence bloomed beneath your steps, startled bursts of blue and violet igniting with each frantic footfall, lighting your escape like the forest itself was urging you on.
Don’t stop.
Don’t look back.
Your breaths came ragged now, uneven through the mask. The ground sloped downward and you nearly stumbled, catching yourself on the rough bark of a tree. It pulsed faintly under your palm, warm. You watched the blood trickle from your scraped, split hand.
You laughed, breathless and a little hysterical. This was what you were always meant to do. Run free and feel nature lick at your heels. Feel the rustling of air against your fingers and arms. Feel free.
Your lovely mirage of freedom snapped in an instant when you heard footsteps creep your way.
A figure approached from the shadows with the quiet confidence of someone who belonged there. A Na’vi. He was clearly young, not much older than you. He was tall, taller than you ever imagined a true Na'vi to look in person, and broad-shouldered, skin striped with dark indigo smatterings. He carried no weapon or hostility, perhaps he had not yet had Uniltaron, stuck in that same lobby just scratching at adulthood's surface, like yourself. Either way, he moved towards you in confidence and curiosity, slinking forward with piercing eyes.
You wanted to say something, anything at all before he got too close. There was a shot he knew some English, especially as a Na'vi of his age.
"Hello." Your lips closed awkwardly around the word, feeling foreign on your well-acquainted tongue.
He paused mid-step. The night haloed around him, catching in the amber in his eyes as they widened just a hint. His ears flicked back, then up, like he was trying to decide whether caution or curiosity would suffice.
His head tilted. “Hello?” he echoed, slow and tasting it, like the syllables were something to be examined. His voice was higher, but smooth and edged with youth that was not yet hardened. He blinked at you and took another step closer.
Your instincts screamed to back up and fling yourself into whatever underbrush could hide you, but your scraped palm burned and your lungs were still fighting a losing battle against your greedy, rationing mask.
The Na'vi were beautiful, at a distance. Slender, graceful. Fully intertwined with their planet. Up close was slightly different. The cogs in your brain ticked as they processed just how inhuman they were. You sometimes felt the same way around Quaritch, taking in his fundamental wrongness, but that mostly came from his stoic evil, not his foreign skin. The uncanny valley of seeing humanity lost deep in his being. This real Na'vi, while gorgeous, terrified you in a different way.
Up close, you could see the tiny details in his skin. Each stripe had been painted by Eywa herself, each star smattered with unyielding purpose. His pupils were huge, swallowing up the gold around them as he studied you. You had seen Na’vi in labs and on screens, the infamous Jake Sully taking up most of them, but here, the reality of them hit like a blow.
Quaritch had always felt like an echo. He was someone trying to remember how to be human and getting the pitch wrong, benched on the opposing team's side. He wasn't quite anything, being a scrap of humanity lost in a sea of betraying blue, with only his hatred for his situation lighting up his existence.
The Na'vi before you, though, was the opposite. He wasn’t trying to be anything but himself. That was what frightened you, how absolute he was. No mask nor mimicry.
He leaned in ever so slightly, nostrils flaring like he could smell the fear on you. Maybe he could. The Na’vi had senses your body was not fit to comprehend. He crouched, bringing his gaze level with yours. Even lowered, he dwarfed you tenfold.
Up close, you noticed something else: fear. Not just yours, but his. Not fear of you, but fear for you. His eyes darted briefly toward the direction you’d come from, back toward human metal and the clear divide between Pandoran forest and Hell's Gate.
He tried to talk, but his mouth paused. Half-open as if stuck in time. You started to speak, but you too were silenced when you saw him fall backwards. His crouched form slipped, landing in a tangled mess of underbrush and his own limbs. The circular wound between his eyes was proof of your greatest fear.
You had been caught.
-
"I was nice, and I was plumb wrong to be," Quaritch spat, still gripping your wrist and dragging you forward. You wanted to scratch and smack at his hand, but you knew that would only make it worse. "Got your little head in the clouds again. Let's go."
His fingers dug into you like shackles. You were back in Bridgehead, just as soon as you had escaped it. You felt like a prisoner of war being forced back into holding, your captor being big, bad, and blue.
He had managed to get you to his door without you chewing his hand off, but that didn't mean you were going to be overly compliant. He had stolen you from happiness, yet again.
"You're lucky you don't catch something from one of the Na'vi. Easy as you are," he said, mumbling to himself as he dug for his keys in his cargos.
You took immense offense to that. Yes, maybe you were curious about the Na'vi, especially the one you had just met, but you weren't like that. Your curiosity was purely scientific and humanitarian in nature. Yes, maybe Na'vi were attractive and strange, so? You hadn't thought about them in that way. Not very often, at least.
“I wasn’t—” you tried, voice cracking around the words.
“Save it,” he snapped. “I take my eye off you for two damn seconds and you’re out here playin’ Pocahontas with the locals.”
You flinched. He didn’t soften his demeanor. Quaritch had always been a storm contained in a man’s skin, but now with nine feet of height and corded Na’vi muscle under him, he was limitless.
Finally, key in hand, he dragged you into the cage that was his dormitory. Your shoes skidded across the slick linoleum and your knees screamed as you fought to stay upright. “You’re hurting me,” you managed.
His grip didn’t loosen. “Better that than dead,” he spat. “You think they won’t gut you? You think they care about you? Those bastards? Na'vi will kill you and the forest will hide the evidence, kid. I'm not in the business of letting that happen.”
It should’ve sounded protective. It should’ve felt like concern. But his voice was shaped like a shield and swung like a blade. All you felt was controlled and constricted.
"What happens to me isn't for you to worry about," you said, rehearsing the words as they came out to sound as spiteful as possible.
His jaw clicked. "You know that's a lie."
"It's not! I'm not your fucking daughter," you said, eyeing the ripped magazines that covered the floor. "You aren't my father, I don't owe you obedience. Miles Quaritch is long dead, should've been a relief for me, but here his blue shadow comes, trying to make my life hell again."
Slowly, he turned, and the fury on his face made your stomach drop like a stone hurled from a cliff.
“You listen to me, sweetheart,” he growled, leaning down until your noses were inches apart, his breath hot against your cheek. It looked sort of funny, Quaritch practically bent in two to reach you, but it wasn't so funny being face to face with him. “You do not run. Not out here. Not from me. You ain’t gonna make it ten minutes without me bringing you back again."
You swallowed thickly, feeling the corners of your mouth twitch down. You had tried to be strong, your whole life you tried. You only had so much to give, and with his roughness, you were breaking. You weren't meant to be drilled around and yelled at. Life at the RDA had toughened you up a tad, but you were still just a scared girl without her daddy.
"I hate it here," you said, voice full with fogginess and tears.
He softened a bit, letting a deep breath puff from his chest. "Jesus, baby, I know you're bored. I know you hate it here. Hush." He took a knee, giving you enough room to see his whole face.
Nobody told him girls were this hard. He never had to do this emotional shit with Spider. When he was off of his Ps and Qs, Miles could honestly just whoop his ass. Tell him to buck up and be a proper soldier, to be a man and take orders when they were given. Not you, though. You weren't so easy.
Then slowly, he reached for your wrist again. Not to restrain. Just to look. Your skin was red where he’d held you too tight. Finger-shaped bruises already bloomed down your skin. He stared at the marks with scouring eyes.
"I didn’t mean to do that,” he muttered, voice barely above a gravel scrape. He pressed the skin to his lips, not quite a kiss, more of just a means of connection. "Let me make it up to you. Give you some fun, yeah?"
-
"Spread your legs."
This wasn't the fun you expected. You thought he'd try to woo you with trashy magazines and expired chocolate off of his meal ticket, but this was a lot more fulfilling.
You were a source of endless frustration, you knew it. Constantly barking at Quaritch and ignoring his demands. You didn't quite know why you were so awful around him, you knew it was a mix of disliking his toxic masculinity and his voice like gravel, the way he tried to hold authority over you.
Perhaps something sappier.
Something about your true father. How you missed his fleeting affection. He lived fast and died faster, but that didn't mean you weren't willing to hold on for the ride. If he had lived a year or two longer, maybe he would have seen your potential. For now, though, your father's rebirth was willing to give you all the attention he could offer, for now, at least.
"Daddy," you choked out, smacking at his chest. Your pathetic hand was swallowed by the broadness of him, but he paused and propped up on his elbows.
"Yes, baby? Tell me, what's it now?" He wanted tease at you again for calling him that testing word, but your teary eyes and leaky mouth looked too sweet for him to start.
You readjusted yourself, eyes shifting from his. "I want you to act like one. Like a real Na'vi—I want you to speak the language for me. I like to hear it," you said, albeit shamefully.
He mulled it over for a second, tongue tracing the tip of his sharpest tooth. The whole spiritualist bullshit they did honestly kinda freaked him out, but he'd be lying if he weren't a tad interested. If it'd keep you happy, and more importantly, keep him between your legs, he would put on a little show to feed your poorly hidden alien fetish that was slowly showing itself.
"That so?" he asked, drawling the words out a beat too long. "You wanna hear me speak in those damn tongues?"
You let yourself nod slowly, taking hold of the hand that was tracing your cheek.
"Mawey," he mumbled, letting himself softly rut into you again. He didn't know what he was doing, but it felt right. He palmed his kuru and removed his hand from your face. "I'll do all the stupid shit you want, baby. You got Pandora right here."
The tendrils reached out, feigning for connection. He'd be disgusted with himself if he weren't so needy. Acting primitive off of instincts he never wanted to have. The tendrils wrapped around a lock of your hair, tracing over it softly. You couldn't make tsaheylu, or whatever the hell it was called, but this was close enough.
Your hair slid through the glowing tendrils, and something inside him shuddered at the almost-connection. A near miss, like the ghost of a bond. His body leaned closer, drawn in by instinct he despised. He could almost feel the echo of what a bond would be, just out of reach.
“Nga yawne lu oer,” he tried, the syllables unfamiliar and foreign in his throat. His voice constricted tightly around the words, reeling at the taste of them in his mouth. ”You are beloved to me." A translation, sloppily mumbled against your skin. Then quieter, almost embarrassed. "Or somethin’ like that. Hell if I know.”
It was too much for you. You hadn't a neural link to connect to, but the fact that he was trying sent off flickers in your brain. You felt him deep in your stomach, plunging his cock into your fragile body, but you also felt him deep in your mind. Your brain pulsed, feeling him all around you.
"Oel ngati kameie." And fuck, he meant it.
His cock kicked in you. He saw you, felt you. Needed you. His kuru twitched a final time, searching for that final neural link. He may not have found it, but he felt you clench down on him and that was his breaking point.
"Means—oh, fuck," his teeth sunk into your shoulder for a moment. "I see you. See all of you, your soul." Miles took a shakey breath, lifting your leg up to force himself deeper. "I've always seen you. Maybe not like these fuckin' forest people, but I see you how you deserve. The real way."
You hummed.
"Earth's way."