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Chapter Text

You were going to die.

There was no beating around it. Evidence of your impending death laid all around you; in the crashing helicopters outside, the wild battle cries of the Na’vi ringing in the forest surrounding the base, the mangled bodies of your colleagues scattering the floor.

You were curled up against the lab wall, small, trembling, listening in a shocked daze to the sounds of human defeat haunting the Pandoran territory the RDA had chosen as a base. Broken pieces of glass, the only remains of your cherished test tubes, littered the metal floor, glittering under the peaceful sunlight. Your eyes clung to them desperately, as if somehow seeking comfort in a vision that held some kind of familiarity before the battle had erupted.

You had refused to believe it would, at some point. True, the tension in the military quarters had been stifling, faces growing grimmer and more hateful every day, but you had stubbornly stayed focused on the studies of your plants and roots. The world of Pandora was beautiful, that was true, and it was human nature to peek and poke at everything you came across, to better understand, or hurt. However, you were just a scientist, pushed aside to pump out as much info as you could about an environment your superiors considered untamed and savage. Results mattered. Your opinion didn’t. You supposed locking yourself in your own bubble of wonder, out of bitterness, and turning a blind eye to events you knew you didn’t have any power over wasn’t maybe the smartest choice, but it was the only one you could make. Each of the RDA wings in the base seemed to work like that, crafting its own little bubble out of beliefs, others of bullets.

And, as it was bound to happen, the bubble you wanted to ignore the most exploded right in your face.

Now you had no choice but to face the consequences. You were sitting on the floor, arms laced around quivering knees, shoulders hunched, eyes watery, shaky breathing blowing small puffs of white mist against the glass of your exopack mask. You knew you should move, find someone else, anyone else really with a little bit of knowledge on how to fly a helicopter and get the hell out of here. A commandant. A colonel. Anyone. However, that was likely too late for that. The RDA was crumbling. Sending almost all its generals to demonstrate its power against the Omaticaya hadn’t been the smartest choice either. Now the sky was raining with burning war planes, flaming pieces of helicopter rotors, scorching broken rifles. The distinct smell of blood, death and metal had slowly crawled its way inside the lab.  

The war cries grew outside. The screams, too. You guessed the Na’vi would make no distinction between humans, armed or not, innocent or not, guilty or not. It was fair. You probably would have done the same, in their place. You were incapable of moving anyway.

That was when you heard it. Quiet footsteps, gliding effortlessly over the metallic floor.

You looked up and saw what you were sure to be your future executioner. A Na’vi, peeking at you from the door. Wide blue eyes. Surprising snowy hair. Soft white stripes. A face shining with such curiosity he looked almost innocent.

Almost.

You bristled at the sight of his bow, curled comfortably around his shoulder and his quiver, adorned with pearls and feathers, missing many arrows. The glass of your breathing mask fogged up, your shaky breathing turning into panicked pants. Your limbs were frozen, your eyes locked on the curious face staring at you at the other end of the devastated lab.

He smiled.

Your poor breathing hitched. The Na’vi tilted his head at the sight, ears perking up at the sound of your terrified wheezes. The mask beeped softly, sending the first warning about oxygen level going down abnormally fast, but you didn’t hear it.

The Na’vi slid into the room, letting his lean body effortlessly into the lab with long blue limbs clinging around furniture too small, tail brushing against broken equipment. You realized, with a shiver, just how tall he was when he started crawling toward you, with his head slightly bowed, shoulders hunched, the tip of his bow easily brushing the low ceiling. The lab seemed too tight, flooded with white and blue, the space suddenly compressed by this new suffocating presence.

Even though you were racking your brain, trying to remember the various tribes the military team had briefed the staff about, you couldn’t pinpoint any details that would give away the one this Na’vi belonged to. He wore little to no war paint, something you had seldom seen on warriors. A hunter, maybe?

Your thoughts were cut short when he stopped just in front of you. A smell of wood and smoke and wind, filtered by your mask, flooded your nostrils. His tail lashed once, twice as he leaned in just inches from your face. Your gaze, frantic, met his own, curious, almost playful. It was unsettling, this childlike wonder you saw etched on every feature of his face; you would have much preferred something recognizable, like hate, anger, or simply coldness. Something that made sense, that aligned with the enraged war cries you had heard earlier.

Instead you got nothing but silence and a small, amused smile.

You waited for a blow. Violent or clean, messy or calculated. You waited for the bite of his remaining arrows in your flesh, of claws sinking in your throat, lacerating through skin.

Nothing came.

Instead the Na’vi stared at you for a few seconds, blue irises roaming all over your face. Then they settled on the panic in your eyes and he scoffed, smile curling into a smirk, obviously amused. You frowned, almost offended. Usually Na’vi warriors had the decency to eliminate their prey quickly; the one in front of you had apparently decided otherwise. He raised a hand slowly and let his fingers trail over the glass very gently, testing the solidity in a movement so careful you could describe it only as loving. You watched him drag his claws against the mask, confused beyond words before he suddenly leaned in again, so close this time that his nose bumped against the glass. You gasped, terrified, and he chuckled, tail lashing again. Your face hardened at the realization he was playing with you. His eyes sparkled mischievously upon seeing the angry scowl forming on your face.

A sudden boom suddenly startled you, rattling the metallic structure. Shelves shook, lightbulbs fell.

The white-haired Na’vi immediately straightened as best as he could in the cramped space, ears perked, eyes wide with alert, one hand flying to his bow. You watched the movement, certain now that the next arrow would be for you. He listened carefully, ears angling to sounds too subtle for you to catch on. He looked back at you, tail flicking from side to side. His expression was calm, searching yours, as if pondering something.

Then he took you in his arms and fled.

You couldn’t even move, too stunned to truly register what was happening. The walls flew in a blur of gray and white. Then the sunlight suddenly hit your eyes, brutal, harsh. You squinted at the invasion of yellowish light flooding your exopack mask, making your eyes water, but the Na’vi didn’t stop, not wavering for a second as he ran with an effortless grace, praised by scientists, despised by military, between clumps of burning ferns and chunks of scorched tanks. You tried to turn, to look around, to get your bearings outside of the base, when you saw it.

“No,” you hissed, squirming desperately at the sight of the ikran crouched low in the grass, waiting patiently. “No! No, wait!”

The white-haired Na’vi simply glanced at you, an infuriating amused smirk pulling at his lips. His grip didn’t falter either when he jumped gracefully next to his ikran. The beast immediately straightened, chirping happily, already stretching his colorful wings wide for his rider. The Na’vi whispered a few words to the cooing beast but you didn’t hear them, too busy twisting your body to escape the iron-clad grip of those blue hands. You barely had time to protest as you were shoved unceremoniously on the leather saddle. The Na’vi hopped on behind you, and the ikran took off.

To say that you screamed would be an understatement. The high-pitched, strangled noise of terror that left your lungs at the sudden howl of the wind around you left your voice breathless and your throat hoarse. You sunk your nails without even thinking in the saddle to the point of paint, flattening yourself, crushing your body as much as you could against the ikran’s twisting, coiling form dancing in the wind. The beast kept brutally lurching there and there, frenetically flapping its winds, avoiding trees and rocks, gaining altitude above the cliffs and the hills you had spent so much time studying and dreaming about. You pressed your head against its lean neck, closing your eyes, feeling nausea creep in your mouth at the shifting sight of whirling trees and sparkling rivers.

Then a blue hand came resting against yours on the saddle, calm, perfectly assured. You glanced up, surprised, to see the white-haired Na’vi lean over you, body poised to merge with the wind and follow the ikran’s movements, eyes locked ahead, the other hand resting against your ribs to steady you. You briefly forgot your fear, awe settling in at the sight of such flawless harmony between the two bodies as they carved their way in the sky together. You had heard about it, of course, and obviously studied it, but to see it in person was definitely another thing than just watching the stolen, recorded movements of warriors and their ikrans plastered on a screen during a safety briefing.

Then the ikran lurched and you screamed again.

There was a slight rumble of laughter above you in the Na’vi’s chest.

“Crybaby,” he huffed.

That was the very first time you had heard him speak, and this was to mock you?

You whirled around to glare at him with all the fury you could muster despite your fear.

“Excuse me?” you hissed, furious, before the wind immediately took your words.

The Na’vi met your eyes, still with that nonchalant, mischievous gaze you were seriously starting to hate. He leaned in, cramming you against the saddle and repeated again, slowly, as if talking to a child:

“Crybaby.”

You opened your mouth to respond. You didn’t have time. The ikran’s body suddenly arched, its head shooting up upward while it executed a flawless looping. For a few seconds all you could see was a sky of lush forests and tall trees and flowing waterfalls. You let out another shrieking sound of absolute terror, barely human when you felt the wind play with wild strands of your hair hanging upside-down. The Na’vi laughed, a pure, crystalline laughter which held such childish joy that you almost forgot it came from a warrior who had kidnapped you in the first place.

You breathed shakily, hands seemingly melted within the saddle, as the ikran settled into a normal flying position. The sky took back its place. The forests and the trees and the waterfalls all came back to the ground. The Na’vi shot you a playful smirk, tail flicking victoriously. You rolled your eyes but didn’t bother to speak. You didn’t trust yourself not to throw up if you opened your mouth.

Your mask beeped, signaling again that your oxygen level was starting to go low, but you didn’t care right now. The Na’vi leaned in at the sound, studying curiously the piece of metal strapped around your head, nose brushing against your temples, to which you responded with a sharp nudge. He hissed softly, surprised and slightly upset, but didn’t press on.

The ikran kept flying. The base was long, long forgotten behind you. You had absolutely no sense of direction left. You tried to picture the 3D maps, the valleys full of strange but beautiful rising hills between sharp cliffs, Hometrees, wide clearings full of ancient trees, but nothing came. You couldn’t pinpoint a single landmark on the landscape below you. The white-haired Na’vi was silent, focused on the flight, and you quietly thanked whatever god had freed you of his previous teasing, but worry still wormed its way inside your belly. You didn’t dare to ask where he was taking you, or why. Where was he taking you, and why had he done so in the first place? Was he going back to his tribe?

Your worry turned into full-blown panic when the ground suddenly faded below shreds of puffy clouds. The ikran gained even more altitude. You suddenly froze when a field of floating islands came into a view, like a string of rocks strewn across the sky.

“Wow…”

The white-haired Na’vi huffed smugly at your breathless awe. The ikran swerved between the sharp rocky edges poking out of the clouds, avoiding the vines creeping up the sharp cliffs like a tapestry of greenery. You shivered when droplets fell on your shoulders, dripping on your mask while it flew below a waterfall which frayed like a ribbon of water falling in misty smoke in the empty sky.

A chorus of offended shrieks greeted you and you looked up to see a bunch of ikrans nestled atop the islands, some scurrying over edges, screeching at this blatant intrusion of their territory. You tensed but the white-haired Na’vi didn’t even look up. His ikran simply kept going, and soon the scandalized squawks faded behind you. That was when the ikran started descending, gently, and you caught sight of a gaping hole in one side of a floating island. It was small, barely visible, its entrance all covered by drooping vines, but definitely there. The Na’vi whispered something to the beast and the ikran crossed the vines without difficulty, landing effortlessly in the cave. You shivered slightly at the sudden, cold air gushing out of the darkness.

What you had thought at first to be an empty cave carved in the rock was in reality a hidden den for flourishing, bioluminescent plants of all kinds. Soft rippling grass welcomed your worn shoes. Your eyes travelled with absolute delight and wonder over the many specimens of plants you had only seen on some occasional outings but mostly hidden in electronic files, plastered on some screen in a study room: sun lilies, spiny whips, healing roses, geodes, binary sunshines, ovumshrooms… You gladly took in the gentle blue and soothing purple pulsing in a network of colorful veins running all along the walls of the cave. Your breathing mask filtered numerous smells, bitter and sweet and fragrant and sour melting together in your nose, mingling with your breath. You let your mind wander over the drooping palms, the thin roots, the spongy moss, the curling ferns heaving together in a shared life of peacefulness.

That was, until you remembered you were not alone.

You whirled around, heart beating wildly, fully expecting to be met with an arrow directly aimed at your head.

Instead the white-haired Na’vi watched you just as curiously as he had done when he had peeked at you through the door, back at the base, tail flicking idly behind him. You stared at him, waiting for him to move, and he stared back, unflinching, patient. A million questions burst in your head but not a single one crossed your lips. Then, finally, the one you were most worried about finally slipped out of your mouth:

“Are you… going to kill me?”

Your own mastery of Na’vi, quite advanced compared to most of your colleagues, was reduced to a blubber of messy sounds when the Na’vi chuckled, a gentle, harmonious sound that curled among the soft humming of the plants.

“No,” he answered, that glimmer of amusement back in his eyes. “No, I’m not going to kill you.”

“But… why not?” Not that you wanted to die, of course, but the images of dead Na’vi bodies crushed under gigantic bulldozers didn’t match his friendly attitude. “Aren’t you angry? Mad? I’m a human. Shouldn’t you, I don’t know… hate me?”

The white-haired warrior scoffed, his tail curling in a way that could only be described as patronizing.

“I don’t hate you.”

In three strides he was in front of you, looking down at you smugly while you craned your neck to meet his gaze. He leaned in and you shrank away, the tip of his white braids brushing against your mask. You shrieked when those two blue arms suddenly shoved you to the ground, your head colliding with the grass-covered rock, and the Na’vi straddled your hips, resting his weight on you. That was it, you were going to die.

“I’ve never seen a human so close before,” he explained casually, manhandling your pathetic, squirmy body without problems, ignoring your squeals of protest as he poked and prodded. “Besides, you’re cute.”

You kept twisting between his blue palms as he stretched your arms, opened your fingers, squeezed your shoulder in absolute wonder, his hands turning you flat on your belly. His tail flicked excitedly behind him while he lifted your shirt, testing the strength of the fabric with a rough tug.

“Cute?” you gasped, arching when he reached a sensitive spot.

“Mhm. Yes, cute. And so fragile,” he whispered in awe, trailing his fingers over your own ribs.

You froze when you felt the smooth pads rest on the bare skin of your exposed back before crawling dangerously upwards, toward your bra clasp. Fortunately, the shriek of panic you let out made him pause briefly. You managed to turn enough, head squished against the grass, to shoot him a deadly glare. He smirked, amused.

“I’m Sa’toru, by the way,” he added, as if the presentation of his name would somehow make the situation acceptable for you.

“Y/N,” you grumbled.

He chuckled and leaned in, ready to continue his thorough inspection again, when the stark beeping of your mask cut through.

“What’s that?” Sa’toru asked, lying curiously over you to check the yellow light flickering on the screen.

“It’s my oxygen level. It means I’m going to die soon,” you muttered, wondering if death wouldn’t be more of a release than a curse at this point.

Sa’toru poked the glass, not at all alarmed by this new fact.

“Really? I thought humans only had one.”

“Nope. Too easy.”

The white-haired Na’vi hummed, and you felt his tail brush against your legs as it slowly swished.

“You’re really weak.”

You didn’t even bother replying. He stayed like this one minute, two, pondering. Then his weight suddenly lifted off your body and you took a deep breath. Sa’toru was already hopping on the saddle of his ikran, settling over the chirping beast.

“Hey, wait!” you shouted, scrambling to get up. “Where are you going? You can’t to leave me here!”

“Of course not,” he happily shouted back. “Can’t let my pet suffocate, can I?”

And with that, he was gone.

You stood, flabbergasted, listening to the distant flaps of the ikran’s wings and the insistent beeping of your mask.

Wait, did he say pet?

“Here it is!”

You stared at the pile of exopack masks Sa’toru dropped on the floor, beaming with pride. Your life expectancy had just turned from a day, maybe two, from weeks. Perhaps a month or two.

“It’s the right stuff?” he asked, his ikran poking one of the devices with its snout.

“Yes, it is,” you answered, feeling slightly awkward at the way he had carried and gathered for you the object defining the entire shape of your life on this oxygen-deprived planet.

You learned a lot of things about Sa’toru.

Once, you realized very quickly that he liked pretty things. You noticed it on the carefully placed pearls, swinging harmoniously along his snowy braids and the necklaces adorning his slender neck, flowing along his slender but toned chest. You also noticed it on his ikran, which, once completely bare save the colorful swirls of colors painting its back the day he took you, came back full of various trinkets: braids woven along his kuru, feathers sewn into a new saddle, seashells lining its sides. Sometimes it was pearls, sometimes dried flowers. Anything the Na’vi could collect, he would; and according to him, you were the prettiest thing he had come across yet.

That fact continued to stun you over the days you spent in that strange cavern. You were a human. The small size and fragile pink skin of your species, so often criticized and openly disgusted by many tribes according to many reports the military teams always came back with, seemed on the contrary the most pleasing things for Sa’toru to see. Often he would sit behind you, stroking your hair with utmost care, feeling the strands between his fingers, letting it flow in his hands, whispering various praises about its softness or its length. Sometimes he would just lean until his face bumped gently into the mask, his wide eyes staring at you with such ravenous wonder that you couldn’t help but squirm in embarrassment. That was one of the things you knew Sa’toru didn’t like; the glass stopped him from touching your face. Instead he followed the outlines of your human features with his long fingers. You felt his frustration each time he tried to brush a strand of hair behind your ear or when you had to pull off the whole device to eat in quick bites. You had yet to know which tribe he was from, for he never talked about it. You even came to think that he was a loner at some point, an estranged warrior, but his constantly cheerful personality didn’t seem to hide any loneliness a tribeless Na’vi might have been feeling.

Second, you learned that he could be as cruel as he could be kind.

You weren’t afraid of Sa’toru. Sure, you dreaded his overly playful teasing, which could be clumsy given your size difference, but he had never acted outright hostile toward you. He might be strange and you still didn’t really get while he would bother to keep a human just because they were “pretty,” but he had never acted as your enemy. The cave he had put you in felt more like a temporary inconvenience than a real prison. You had enough trust in yourself to eventually talk the Na’vi out of his weird whim, even though you had very little hope about finding an operational base left intact after the battle. However, you soon discovered that it wouldn’t be very likely to happen.

“What do you mean, out?”

You were sitting in the cave, critically examining one light green curling vine to determine its species when Sa’toru had announced you would get to go out today.

He smiled, puffing out his chest proudly.

“In the forest. You’ll get to see how I hunt.”

“I hope it’s not one of those disgusting insects you brought me last time.”

Sa’toru rolled his eyes, a gesture so commonly shared by humans and Na’vi alike that it earned a little smile from you.

“It’s not my fault if you’re picky. Now come on. We must go while it’s still daylight.”

You stood up and followed him, stopping hesitantly in front of the ikran. The beast’s six eyes locked on you and you took a small step back, remembering the unpleasant howling of the wind hissing against your mask during your last flight. Sa’toru noticed your uneasiness and his expression softened.

“Come on. I promise it’ll be nice.”

You mounted the ikran, hands clutching uneasily at its scales, then at the saddle. The ikran remained perfectly unperturbed, having long been used to your presence. Then Sa’toru mounted behind you, one hand on the saddle, the other caging your hip, and the ikran took off.

Thanks to Sa’toru’s quiet orders passing through tsaheylu, the flight was peaceful, even gentle. The ikran took care not to swerve, its wings cutting with precision into the gusts and breezes, slicing through the clouds, until the forest came into view.

It was going well, at first. The forest was as beautiful as ever, oversized leaves swaying gently above your head, Sa’toru’s ikran scrambling after some fish in a clear, singing stream. The ferns brushed against your shirt, the bushes rustled with hidden life. You felt wonder flowing over your entire self, the exact same wonder which had come each time you had been allowed on the field to study the massive trunks and take samples of the secrets running in their roots. However, this time, there were no grim-looking soldiers posted all around you, ready to shoot whatever insect flew too close. Here there was only nature, Pandora, Sa’toru and you.

The white-haired Na’vi was the definition of stealth as he moved effortlessly through the Pandora undergrowth. You had a hard time keeping track of his white-dotted skin and his blue tail disappearing among ferns but you followed nonetheless, trudging much less gracefully after him. He turned once, only once, to give you one order:

“Don’t wander off.”

You nodded. Seemed simple enough. You kept up the pace, wondering once again which tribe Sa’toru could possibly be a part of. There was a calm confidence, an assured, proud claiming of the space in the way he moved, quiet but efficient, weaving between ferns, that you hadn’t seen in the videos of Omaticaya hunting warriors. His posture, though slightly hunched, spoke of a fearlessness of predators, a silent challenge to any other creature that might be competition in the patch of jungle he had selected as his own hunting ground. You followed him carefully when he crouched, tail stilling, ears flicking, with the tip of his bow brushing over the moss.

You watched him shoot the first arrow in an unsuspecting direhorse drinking in the river. The kill was flawless and quick as the creature fell with a strangled moan to the ground, slumping its heavy body in the clear, small rapids. Sa’toru bounded lightly over to the dying beast, tail lashing out triumphantly, before turning over to you. You recognized his expression, cheerful but definitely expectant of your praise.

“Nice shot,” you said, joining him with more difficulty.

The Na’vi’s chest puffed out, obviously preening at the complement. You smiled, still amused at the way such a tall warrior, twice your size, could act just as desperate for attention as a human teenager.

The rest of the hunt should have gone just as well as Sa’toru’s first kill. You didn’t really notice it at first. You were too busy admiring Sa’toru’s hunting techniques, the blue feathers woven in his bow, the Na’vi names carved in the curve of the wood. Then it hit you when Sa’toru slaughtered approximately his seventh prey. His pleased smile had turned into a toothy, feral grin, with lips pulled back over sharp canines as his eyes locked onto another prey. He moved silently but ruthlessly, as swiftly as his own arrows, crawling under the cover of ferns, tail lashing wildly. What had started as a simple hunt turned into a growing bloodlust, fueled by the thud of fallen prey hitting the earth. Each corpse gave him an opportunity to be rewarded by one of your smiles, no matter how uneasy or awkward. Each agonizing animal was a chance to show off his incredible, deadly hunting skills. The childish pride he had shown you his first kill with had soured into pure arrogance. Sa’toru left behind you another corpse, leaving its exposed flesh to rot in the sun. You followed more uncertainly as time went by, wondering again and again if you should speak out, but the excited gleam in Sa’toru’s dilated pupils told you otherwise.

“Sa’toru…” you finally managed to say after gathering your courage.

“Hmm?”

“Maybe we could go back now… You’re a great hunter, but isn’t this enough?” you asked, hoping throwing a praise in would appease his murderous urges.

“Enough?”

Sa’toru flashed you a grin full of eager teeth.

“We haven’t even started, Y/N. Come on, keep going.”

Fear twisted in your gut at the sight of those canines cutting over his lip. That was a side of the Na’vi you had never even supposed could exist. Na’vi had a profound respect for nature, and yet each prey left behind, though an offence to Eywa, didn’t seem to bother Sa’toru in the slightest. Who knew what else he was capable of? You kept musing over this while the sun moved slowly in the sky. The forest had grown quieter around you. Sa’toru didn’t notice, too busy inspecting a trail of huge prints left in the mud. That was when you decided it was time to escape. Yes, wandering alone in a forest too eager to swallow humans would probably mean death. Yes, RDA structures had probably been almost all destroyed at that point, but you couldn’t get the sight of those peeking canines out of your head. The illusion of safety you had deluded yourself into had finally dissolved, torn apart by those white fangs and the pile of corpses Sa’toru left in his wake. You understood with a shudder that you had simply been lucky up until now. The truth was that you had been kidnapped by an apparently unstable warrior, with no mention of a tribe.

You thought you had managed to make it far, you honestly did. That was your first mistake. Time and distance were all blurred to you, lost in a world too big for your small human feet. You dipped and ducked under leaves full of dew. You tripped over gnarled roots, splashed in muddy puddles. You crouched under oversized mushrooms and leapt over rotting stumps. You marveled at fan lizards and listened to the bright, singing shrieks of faraway ikrans. You stopped and listened for thanators. You climbed over boulders and cut yourself over stony shards. Then you realized you were lost.

It wasn’t surprising, really. It was bound to happen at some point. However, you hadn’t expected him to catch up so quickly to you. The blow in your ribs sent you wheezing in pain to the mossy ground, arms flying to protect your already bruising side. Tears welled up in your eyes as the pain spread in your lungs, hot and sharp, and you rolled on your back, muddy water seeping into your clothes. A luxurious canopy of intricate leaves and an angry snarl of fangs greeted your sight. Sa’toru loomed over you, bristling with restrained fury.

“Didn’t I tell you not to wander off?!” he hissed in your face.

Your breathing quickened in panic and the glass fogged up, blurring Sa’toru’s angry scowl. You didn’t even try to speak. You couldn’t anyway. Then you saw it. The realization dawning in the Na’vi’s eyes. Your escape, not accidental, but entirely made of your own choice. A conscious decision to leave him. A spark of something flashed very quickly across his face. Then his features hardened, anger draining away only to leave a cold, calculated disdain.

You shrieked when his hand closed over the glass. You screamed when he ripped it off your face. The straps were torn under the pressure. The glass cracked. Sa’toru held it high above you, watching as your face was left completely exposed and undefended from the toxic air swirling all around you. Pandora air rushed in your nostrils, ran down your esophagus, and finally reached your unprepared human lungs. Each whiff of air was like swallowing a bunch of knives scraping and tumbling down your writhing body, easily tearing through your burning lungs. Your throat quickly became sore, flesh irritated by a violent, repeated cough. Your voice turned hoarse under strangled shrieks of terror. You choked, back arching, organs begging for some natural, good old-fashioned Earthly oxygen. Spit trickled down your chin and you watched it stain the muddy earth next to the Na’vi.

And to top it all, Sa’toru watched.

He had leaned over you and was now staring at you, fingers curled tightly around the mask. You tried to speak, to articulate some form of apology. Only garbled syllables came out. Sa’toru’s tail twitched. Then his face slowly changed. The thin line of his lips curled up into the playful smirk you had come to know, except this time it was tainted with cruelty. His ears angled toward your broken, wheezing plea for help. His eyes sparkled with mischief as he brought the mask to your face and pulled it back when you weakly tried to reach for it. There was a quiet thinking behind his eyes, an understanding you failed to grasp while you fought uselessly for your life against an air filling you with death. Finally, the tall white-haired Na’vi leaned over you, gently, slowly, his big hands splayed on either side of your face, until blue and white filled your entire vision. His braids brushed softly, snowy locks melting within your own, caked stains. He teasingly brushed his flat nose against yours in a barely existent caress, letting his white locks tingle the skin of your forehead. Then his lips closed over your mouth, stealing what little breath you had left. You gasped in surprise and his tongue slipped eagerly between your parted lips, forcing a kiss on your choking body. You didn’t have the strength to push him over. You didn’t even think about it. It was simply another layer of sensation among the pulsing pain cutting through your weakening lungs. Your hand crawled in the mud, reaching for the abandoned mask, but he pushed it away with a simple shove, cupping your face to redirect your attention. His lips moved against yours, loving and calm, but firm. His tongue filled your mouth, exploring it curiously, licking at your teeth, your gums, curling around yours. You twitched, brought your hand to his face to push. He stayed. You understood, through the firm bite he gave your cracked lips, the quiet but unmistakable claim he was setting over you.

His. His human. His pet. He had always seen you as this, something you had failed to comprehend from the start, something he was now trying to communicate to you in a language he supposed humans understood better. Humans always seemed to understand actions over words. Sa’toru had been a witness to that during the battle. Wounds over negotiation, death over peace. It was as if words could never get past that barrier Sky People had locked themselves in. You were a small, fragile thing. One of their scientists, curled up, left to die in a crumbling base. Sa’toru had thought you were different, but he guessed it must be a part of human nature so he used that physical language, imposing his body on yours, his world on yours, highlighting your weakness and his strength. Whatever control you had in that tiny, sealed up metallic world of yours, safely locked away from the forest, the dangers, Pandoran life, was gone. You needed to understand that.

You were close to passing out when Sa’toru’s lips finally left yours. The mask came back on your face, its comforting weight secured around your head, ensuring your survival. Oxygen was pumped in you with a hiss and you took greedy gulps of it, again and again, savoring the taste of safety. You heaved once, twice, the scratching of knives dulling down in your body, fading away to a soothing nothingness. You looked up, vision still slightly blurry from the previous lack of oxygen. Sa’toru was smiling at you, benevolent, satisfaction glinting in his eyes. He bent, slinging his arms under your exhausted form and lifted you up, cradling you against his chest. He looked up and uttered a single, wordless cry. Soon after you heard a rustle in the branches above and six eyes met your own, still filled with dried tears.

Sa’toru looked back at you and pressed a kiss to your head.

“Come on. We’re going home.”

Chapter Text

“No!”

You immediately tried to flee, scurrying off the same way lizards did when startled under the sun, back on Earth, except the shelter you were reaching for was a clump of overshrooms and not warming up stones. Two big, gentle blue hands slowly closed over your sides, dragging your hissing and twisting body back without an ounce difficulty. Sa’toru’s gaze was thoughtful as he looked from your snarling face to the three broken exopack masks lying on the ground. The shards of glass were now littering the soft bed of moss, gleaming almost proudly under the dim pulsing lights of sun lilies in the cave. The ragged stone you had used, the murder weapon, had been tossed next to what should have been your fourth victim.

You looked at him fiercely, angrily, spitting like a feral cat, ready to fight him with all your small human might, wishing he would fight just as hard, just this once. However, your little act of rebellion, not the first, maybe the last, was yet again met with the same forgiving, benevolent gaze you always got when you misbehaved.

Sa’toru started manipulating you with great care, thumbs rubbing over your ribs, bringing your writhing form close to his tall one. You squirmed, protesting loudly, your dreading mind fighting against your body warming up to what was to come, but the Na’vi ignored your pleas, as always. He sat comfortably, knees first in the dirt. You were then placed right on his crotch, where you could already feel his stiffening dick between your legs. His body folded around yours, lithe arms closing over your shoulders, muscled legs twisting around your own, his whole shape bending and curling around you like a protective leaf. With practiced gestures he removed your shirt, careful not to widen the tear he had made the first time. The fabric went over your head and fluttered to the ground like a discarded sheet, followed by your pants. You were left completely bare in the half-light of the cave. Again. The feeling of cold air flowing over your skin was sickeningly familiar to you now. Your squeals of protests were replaced by pitiful whines when his cock tingled the inside of your thighs, sticky pre-cum smearing your skin, pushing softly between your wet folds.

“It’s okay,” he murmured in your ear, his braid trailing against your shoulder. “I’m not mad at you.”

Your first instinct was to whirl, bite and scratch, slap that gentle, loving tone right out of his peaceful face. Your continued resistance, the poor little efforts you could make to oppose him were always reduced to that voice, to a childish human tantrum he could just brush away with a flick of his tail and a wave of his hand. As if you didn’t matter. And the truth was, you didn’t. As a scientist, you knew denying facts, logical or psychological, could only lead to a wall. As a human, you couldn’t give less of a shit. The cozy little cave was a prison. The quirky Na’vi was a captor. You were no one and nothing, with no way of getting out or ever surviving by your own means. The environment around you was tailored for dependence, to further be reinforced by the only living creature you could talk to. Pandora had lost pretty much all its shine now that your world had been cut down to a cave, an ikran and an insane, lovestruck Na’vi.

You whined again as he slowly buried himself to the hilt inside you with a grunt, his big, veiny Na’vi cock painfully stretching every inch of your human pussy. His Na’vi body was too big, too strong for you, trying to fit itself into a human shape too unfit for a proper union between two alien fleshes, but difficulties had never stopped Sa’toru before. They hadn’t stopped him for this. What some would have seen as an obscene act against nature, he saw it as the greatest proof of love he could bring to you. Sa’toru still believed in humans reading actions much more efficiently than words and took each opportunity to speak his own attachment through the gentle caresses or loving rolls of his body against yours. Each time you felt filled to the brim by his throbbing cock, slithering in your flesh until you were so full it almost hurt, was one more victory over you, one more solidification of a relationship you didn’t want to exist. You couldn’t move without feeling each slimy inch stretching you, rubbing stubbornly against your plushy, wet walls. You squirmed uselessly on his crotch, feeling his thick dick grind slowly against your aching pussy, a faint need to resist fighting against the pleasure that was pooling both around your legs and his cock.

Your thoughts were suddenly interrupted by the first thrust. You arched, half-moaning, half-whining as Sa’toru started pulling you up and down with a wet squelch on his hard leaking dick, hands locked around your arms, hips rising as gently as he could without hurting you while keeping up a firm pace. The faint need to resist gradually faded away while you were bounced like a mere toy on his lap, wearing nothing but your stupid breathing mask. Your breasts, covered in a thin sheen of sweat and free of the constraints of your bra, bounced joyfully along each thrust in a delicious, painful way against your torso, tearing another strangled moan from you. The glass of your exopack rapidly fogged up with little puffs of harsh breathing. The glinting cave blurred in front of your eyes, and soon your world was quickly narrowed to your harsh pants mixed with his own growls and the fierce swatting of his tail against nearby plants.  

Sa’toru picked up the pace, as always when he got overwhelmed by pleasure, slamming his cock a bit too hard deeper inside of you, tip kissing your walls in sloppy thrusts. Pain exploded alongside pleasure and you arched again, back immediately snapping forward as obscene leaks of drool trickled lazily over your chin, pleasure coiling low in your belly. Suddenly, the Na’vi’s hands crawled from your hips to your sides. His own hips slowed down, his cock reluctantly pulling out of your body shaking after waves upon waves of pleasure. He locked his hands around your sides, gently pulling you forward. You understood his intention and got on all fours, fingers sinking slightly into the moss beneath, the soft caress of the grass momentarily soothing your overwhelmed senses. He followed, his tall, thin body draping over you like a warm, overheated blanket. His lean torso, slightly out of breath, heaved against the entirety of your back. His kuru braid fell in front of you, snowy locks trailing against your cheek, pink filaments opening to instinctively seek a connection your flesh couldn’t provide. You watched in a daze the frail pink tendrils curl around your wrist in a firm grip, shivering at the dozens of tiny claws stabbing into your skin. The sight always left you with a strange taste, reminding you of Pandora’s great mysteries, but also the twisted mindset you found yourself in company of. You panted, sweaty with the effort, when strokes fell on your body, words of love translated by caresses of wonder. There was a firm gentleness to the Na’vi as he carefully listened to your body, testing its boundaries with precaution. Each time he had sex with you was a way for him to rediscover your human body, so small and pliable, so prone to weakness, with wonder. Hands touched your ribs, skimmed over your nape, grabbed your breasts, ridiculously small in his palms, groped and cupped firm, round ass cheeks. Slender fingers dwarfed your own. Fangs sunk in your skin. Passionate love bites rained on your back, replaced by apologetic kisses when you cried out in pain, tongue lapping over bruises.

You moaned softly when his hands glided over your damp skin, rough palms trailing down your quivering body. They rested on the small of your back for a few seconds, squeezed your ass cheeks hard around his cock, once, twice. Then he picked up the pace again. Your moans soon filled the otherwise empty cave, echoing off the stony walls, accompanied by grunted out growls of fresh pleasure. No matter how gentle Sa’toru tried to be, he still remained twice as tall as you, perhaps more, and each snap of his hips was a fierce pounding inside your womb, his cock forcing its way in and out with ugly, dirty squishy sounds. Sa’toru had to hold you to keep you your body still, hips slapping harshly against your own while your hands slipped in the earth at the brutal force of his thrusts. The wet sound of skin repeatedly smacking skin filled the cave as well, growing and swelling until it drowned even your shared noises of pleasure. Then It finally came. Pleasure shot through skin. Eyes rolled back. The orgasm bloomed, exploded and ripped through your pussy. The Na’vi’s claws sunk in your ribs and he arched behind you, coming just as you did with a rough, unintelligible cry.

The obscene sounds of interspecies sex died little by little, first harsh pants, then softening gasps slowly replaced by a peaceful silence. You would have collapsed had Sa’toru not held you, his grasp assured and firm against your shivering frame. You had barely lied on the grass when the angry beeping of your mask and lowering oxygen levels broke the fragile peace. Sa’toru huffed behind you, a smug little sound you knew all too well by now. He pulled out of your pussy, your thighs slick with his dripping seed and your own wet arousal. He grabbed an exopack out of the pile he had gathered for you, tearing the straps of the old one off your face, putting on the new device with regular gestures that were second nature to him now. It was a strange kind of aftercare, but you supposed it was better than nothing. You let him do it, taking a deep breath of the newly recycled oxygen, your exhausted body, still coming down from the aftershocks, was grateful for. The Na’vi curled around you, burying your small self against his muscled chest, one arm slung protectively around you, tail soothingly brushing your thigh. You breathed, too tired to think, and sleep came swiftly.

The breaking of the exopacks had been your third attempt at asserting defiance over Sa’toru’s control of your mind and your body. You had involuntarily repeated a pattern you had failed to notice and understand, but still believed you could overstep. The mixed, slimy liquids leaking slowly down your legs was proof you couldn’t.

Over the past few days, Sa’toru had left little clues, little cracks in the solid walls of the captivity he had constructed around you, cracks you had immediately thought about exploiting. The truth was, your attempts were doomed from the start, but you didn’t care. You hadn’t thought about how obvious each trap was, like Sa’toru’s ikran purposefully left without surveillance. Of course you would try to mount the damn thing and escape, cursing quietly as the beast simply stared at you with a curious kind of look. Of course Sa’toru had caught your transgression right away. Of course you had ended up fucked out of your brains.

The second time was even more obvious than the first, making it even more embarrassing. Sa’toru was crouched, weaving new feathers into the ends of his arrows, leaving his bow well out in open, alone and unguarded. You had pounced on the opportunity, crawling like a little creature hiding in the shadows toward a weapon too big for you to maneuver anyway. You had wanted to try nevertheless. You were too desperate. The string was too thick, too tight, the arrows out of reach, and you weren’t muscular enough or even trained to use the bow correctly, but that hadn’t discouraged you from stopping inches of it. You had drunk in the sight of what you thought to be a possible way to freedom, looking carefully at Sa’toru’s idle flicking tail. In your distraction you had failed to notice his ears angled toward you. Your eyes had trailed over the wood, stopping on three names carved with obvious, tender care in the curve of the bow. The letters ran deep, rising in gentle but proud curls. Then you had frozen. Next to the names was a hideous scar, violently stabbed into the weapon, a stain into the majesty and gracefulness the weapon carried, like the very touch of darkness Sa’toru kept in him. Your most dreaded fear about him, coming true. The mark of banishment.

That was when Sa’toru had turned with a mischievous smile toward you, and you had ended up on all fours again. Sa’toru loved to see you quietly planning in your little corner, drawing blurry maps in the damp ground, hastily erasing the lines when you heard him coming, searching for potential weapons among the ferns, testing the solid boundaries of the world he had constructed for you. Your discontent pout and grumbling amused him to no end. However, he also thought it was a great way of teaching you what you could and couldn’t do within his realm. The Na’vi’s apparent carelessness allied gentleness to cruelty in his guiding, wanting to lead you to the eventual understanding of your own powerlessness, which would last as long as he was around. You were still stubborn for now, but Sa’toru was hopeful his teachings would come to fruition.

That was the last time, you swore to yourself as you rode the Na’vi’s dick, hips rolling in short movements against his own.

The remnant of Sa’toru’s poisoned dinner laid next to you. You had tried to lace it with a broken shard of glass in a half-hearted and sloppy attempt. After so much time spent away from your peers, alone and defenseless, your heart was slowly realizing you truly had no way out of this pretty prison of greenery, no matter how badly you wanted it. You hadn’t even hidden the piece well. It poked out of the meat, tearing through cooked tendons like a tooth of glass peeking out of burnt gum. Sa’toru had simply inspected his meal with curiosity, turning the food over and over in his palm. Then he had looked at you, and thus the ritual had begun, except this time Sa’toru had chosen to reward your guilty, fleeting stare by letting you take over.

You were slightly ashamed of your own neediness, but it felt good to be handed even this little piece of control back over something as trivial as a sex position. It felt good to see the giant warrior lying under you, whimpering lips curled over predatory fangs, snowy hair fanning out in a white, messy halo on the ground, neck tilted to offer you his flesh, back arched in obvious pleasure. It felt very, very good to set your own pace, slamming yourself on him however you wanted, letting your swollen pussy milk his throbbing cock over and over, even though you looked ridiculously small on top of him. Your hands didn’t even reach his pecs when you leaned on him. Your fingers instead splayed over tightening abs, nails sinking in his blue skin, tearing through a constellation of white dots. A pathetic whine was torn out of the Na’vi lips, his eyes rolling at the delicious mix of pain and pleasure, fingers long enough to crush your head curling helplessly in the earth. You kept going, letting sensations drown out sour shame, using the ripples of pleasure twisting your body to cope with the sadness the knowledge of your long-term captivity brought. Emotions mixed, welled up inside your chest. You stubbornly ignored them, instead focusing on the sounds of your breathy moans and Sa’toru’s constant whimpers. Tiny drops of blood blossomed like tiny roses on his wounded skin, swirling over the torn dots of white. His hands rested on your hips, thumbs brushing over your hipbones, steadying you with a gentle grip. You hated and loved the feelings of his slender fingers holding your body with such care, as if you were a doll of flesh, fragile and breakable. Which you were.

The thought was so sudden, so sharp you couldn’t stop an uncontrollable, unexpected sob among your whines and whimpers. Sa’toru’s eyes snapped back from their haze of pleasure to yours, panicked, worried, caring. The Na’vi sat up, one hand crawling over your back, before pulling you gently against him. He took over, hips pushing into you with all the gentleness he was capable of while tears flowed freely on your cheeks. It felt horrible. It felt good. You let him cradle your face in his chest, glass bumping against his sweaty muscles, feeling blood and cum drip over your trembling legs. With a frustrated hiss, as sudden as your sobs, you unstrapped the cursed thing and let it fall on the ground. Sa’toru’s breath hitched in surprise, but he didn’t stop you as you nuzzled against his chest, feeling his skin, alive, breathing, rippling with life, against you. Sa’toru’s body folded against yours again, shielding your tears as the orgasm came, jerking your body against his own.

“Isn’t this beautiful?”

You looked up at the stars. The wind brushed softly over the ikran’s wings, and the beast uttered a little cry, carving its way higher against the breezes to get closer to what its rider was admiring. Here, the sky was pure, untainted even by nightly drifting clouds. The stars unfolded above you like a dotted tapestry, the thin milky white tail of distant comets and the bright green of exploding nebulas weaving themselves into the familiar dark blue pattern of the night. The planet Polyphemus hovered like a gentle giant above it all, its eye of twirling clouds watching over his little Pandoran sister in the emptiness of space. It was beautiful. It was gorgeous. There weren’t enough words to describe the soft swirls of otherworldly colors and the lovely twinkling of stars above your head.

Yet you couldn’t feel anything.

There was once a version of you who would have craved the sight, eyes jumping from stars to stars, noticing patterns, mapping down a new sky your young mind had dreamt of walking under. There was a version of you who would have loved comparing the curling paths of stars the constellations here, new and foreign, were made of to the old constellations of Earth. Well, to say you felt nothing was maybe a bit of an overexaggeration. At least here the quiet song of the wind, calmer, more soothing brought you a small relief. It was infinitely better than that awful silence you were locked in, back at the cave. Out in the open, you could enjoy this tiny piece of freedom Sa’toru was willing to give to you. He was sitting behind you, arms laced tenderly around your waist, letting you lean against him when the ikran turned or gained altitude. A necklace of carefully collected feathers and seashells adorned your bitten neck, designed to match the color of your eyes. The Na’vi had made a point of taking you out at least thrice in a week, to let you familiarize yourself with what he definitely saw as your new home. He loved to let you discover places he particularly enjoyed, like secluded meadows draped over rolling hills in the plains or shivering ribbons of coiling water falling into lush valleys. Sa’toru also hoped one day to get rid of your fear of flying. It saddened him to see your stiff fingers and rigid postures whenever you mounted his ikran. If the beast had long gotten used to you, you still weren’t comfortable with having your legs dangle miles away from the ground, no matter how hard Sa’toru was holding you or how careful his ikran was flying.

The good part of these frequent outings was that you could at least pretend you weren’t treated like a prisoner. The bad part was that you couldn’t pretend you weren't treated like a pet.

Sa’toru pressed his chest against your back, ears twitching as he sensed your tired, dwindling interest. The loving nuzzle he gave your neck and the tiny but sharp nibble he gave your ear brought you back to the present. You turned toward him and he smiled, leaning in to press a kiss on your head. The Na’vi’s affection was both a gift and a curse, something you couldn’t refuse. However, you didn’t have much choice but in a world deprived of interaction with any other living creature.

“Isn’t this beautiful?” he repeated cheerfully, tail curling, trying to coax your old wonder back to life.

You nodded.

“It is,” you whispered, eyes travelling over the dancing patterns of stars.

Comfortable silence fell over you. You searched among the glittering, frozen strings of dots above you, trying to distract yourself from the rising gusts the ikran was fighting off. Suddenly Sa’toru straightened behind you, his tail swishing excitedly from side to side.

“Y/N! Look! Up there!”

You followed the direction he was pointing at. Your eyes widened. A shining star, a mess of grayish white, burned brightly in the sky, way closer than it should have been. You squinted, slightly intrigued, slightly uneasy. Then you understood.  

Not a star. A spaceship.

Your breath hitched. Sa’toru understood too. He let out a hiss full of defiance, hungry for battle. The ikran screeched softly.

You heard neither, eyes locked on the ship. The distance made its outlines nearly impossible to distinguish, but the geometrical, unnatural shape among the gracefulness of space was unmistakable. The RDA, the mighty company you had deluded yourself into thinking was gathering its strength back, was fleeing. Humanity bowing in front of the might of the bioluminescent planet and its unseen goddess. For a few seconds you pictured the inside of the only vehicle capable of bringing you home. The rough, metallic corners hovering precariously above a hostile atmosphere. The vague smell of oil and repairs flowing into the corridors, almost sweet, too bitter. The walls, low, clear-cut, practical, pulsing almost imperceptibly with the vibrations of the engines below, roaring to life, their thundering noises of burning fuel absorbed by the interstellar space outside. The stark, annoying beeping of too control panels. The staff running into positions, scientists and civilians hastily strapping themselves into the safety of their cabins, pilots meeting head-on the millions of light years separating them from Earth. You saw it, as clear as day, your mind temporarily transported to the spaceship, the one which had sheltered your frozen body during your trip to Pandora.

A trip you now knew you wouldn’t be coming back from.

A tiny part of you had hoped. Even strapped on this ikran, skin adorned with Na’vi bites, your captor holding you against his chest, you had hoped for it. A miracle. Stumbling on a patrol during one of your outings with Sa’toru. A SA-2 Samson chopper flying near the string of floating islands, close enough to the entrance of the cave to notice you. Patrols of AMP suits roaming the forest for missing members of Bridgehead. Anything.

But no. Humans weren’t coming back.

Or at least, they weren’t for a long, long time.

A numbness settled over your heart like a quiet fog. Your eyes stayed glued to the retreating figure of the spaceship, high, high above, the lights of engines faintly piercing the calmness of the Pandoran sky. Sa’toru snickered behind you, lips victoriously curled back over sharp fangs, body stiff with feverish, arrogant pride, as if the spaceship itself was just another competition for territory he had finally managed to ward off.

“Serves them right. Good riddance,” he scowled, his usually melodious words emerging out into a smug growl.

The rough sound was picked up and amplified by his ikran, whose wings cut relentlessly through the air, picking up speed as if heading for battle, fueled by the sudden hostility of his rider. The colorful scales rippled under your fingers, quivering under the strength of the increasing growl. You were already dizzy with fear when the beast let out a powerful, ear-tearing shriek, a raw mimicry of his rider’s war cry, a sound so full of aggressivity you startled on the saddle, recoiling in front of such contained ferocity. Sa’toru laughed good-heartedly, proudly patting the ikran’s sides while you involuntarily snuggled your body against his chest, seeking reassurance from the sharp teeth and the snapping wings of the beast you were riding on. Sa’toru smiled, nuzzling your head soothingly.

“Don’t worry. He gets excited when I’m like this.”

You glanced at the tsaheylu joining them.

“I bet.”

Sa’toru kept patting the ikran’s sides until it settled back into a normal flying position, with little growls of frustrated bloodlust. You stayed securely snuggled against Sa’toru, watching warily the ikran shake its head once, twice, as if trying to get rid of his rider’s previous murderous thoughts.

You looked up again, quietly. Sa’toru noticed. He kissed your shoulder, letting his lips linger against old bruises and blossoming new ones.

“It’s okay.”

He glanced at the ship ahead, eyes gleaming.

“You’re better off with me, anyway.”