Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

"Mangkwan…" Tamtey said softly, her gaze stuck and unmoving, as though she were looking through Wukula at something far more vast and distant. "Replacing Eywa's seed with the Sky People's poison… you call that resistance. You're just headless maggots… looking for the next corpse to crawl into…"

She smiled suddenly. Through the blood-haze in her eyes, something utterly cold and contemptuous flickered. "Pathetic garbage-pickers, the lot of you!"

Savage fury detonated behind Wukula's eyes. Every trace of his composed patience was gone. He clamped his hand around Tamtey's wrist and hauled her upright, his other hand snatching up his knife — not levelling it at her throat, but pressing its edge, with absolute malice, against the root of the kuru braid at the back of her skull.

Tamtey's drug-dilated pupils suddenly shuddered.

Wukula’s voice sounded impossibly distant, yet it boomed like thunder. “Say goodbye to your Eywa.”

The poisoned blade cut through the delicate nerve bundle without mercy. Tens of thousands of luminous nerve tendrils flickered, and went dark, all at once.

A soul-rending agony exploded inside her skull. The pain exceeded every limit the nervous system could bear. In one instant, all of Tamtey's senses collapsed into a single screaming knot and plunged into a bottomless void.

Her world finally, completely, went dark.

So'lek had lost count of how many he had killed.

His heavy bow was slick with congealing blood, his armour cracked and scored by explosions. Like a thanator driven truly mad, he had torn his way from the RDA's outer perimeter all the way through to the ground level of the Aranahe Hometree now held by the Mangkwan.

Bodies were everywhere. Burning AMP suits and shredded tents. But no sign of Tamtey.

So'lek stood holding her bow — the one he had given her — and for a moment, he was utterly lost.

Then Wukula's figure, daubed in grey and red war paint, broke into his line of sight.

Every shred of anguish, terror, and fury found its single outlet in that instant. There was no contest. So'lek didn't even use the bow. He hurled himself forward like a beast provoked beyond reason, his blade ripping through Wukula's guard with absolute killing intent.

"Where is she?! Where is Tamtey?!"

So'lek's knee was driven into Wukula's chest. His hunting knife sank into the Mangkwan leader’s throat, blood running down the fuller and onto his hand. In those golden eyes, always so still, there now burned a blood-red fury that would have ground the world itself to ash.

Wukula wheezed like a ruptured bellows through his shattered sternum. He looked up at So'lek's madness, and across his scar-ravaged face there cracked open a smile of the purest malice.

“You’re too late… So'lek.” Wukula coughed blood and laughed, a sound to curdle the marrow.  "You will never bring her back again… not even Eywa can ever, ever bring her back to you…"

So'lek's heart plummeted. A terrible, formless dread flooded through him.

“What did you do to her?!” He pressed the blade down, nearly severing the Mangkwan’s windpipe. “Tell me! Where is she?!”

A vicious gleam flashed through the depths of Wukula's eyes. His left hand, hidden behind his body, whipped out a poisoned dagger and drove it straight at So'lek's unguarded ribs—

Thwip—thud!

A long arrow struck like lightning from the shadows, piercing Wukula’s throat with lethal precision, pinning his laughter and his poisoned blade into the ash forever.

Wukula’s body convulsed once, then went still for good.

So'lek whipped his head around.

In the flickering firelight, Nor stood in the shadows at a distance, longbow in hand, and gave him a quiet nod.

But there was no relief in So'lek. No gratitude for having been saved.

He stared at Wukula's lifeless corpse, and the last string of his reason snapped with an audible crack.

“Who told you to kill him!” So'lek surged to his feet and hurled at Nor a roar so utterly unhinged it nearly tore his own throat apart. “He hadn't told me where Tamtey is!!!”

Nor stumbled back half a step from the force of that savage howl. He looked at the beast before him — red-eyed, shaking from head to foot — opened his mouth, and could not produce a single word.

She was nowhere to be found. Nowhere at all.

Tamtey had vanished as completely as a drop of blood soaking into scorched earth.

A suffocating gloom settled over the Sarentu camp. Ri'nela kept talking through plan after plan, insisting in a voice of certainty that they would find their lost companion, though she could not even convince herself; only Rasi would nod and offer comfort. Teylan's eyes carried bruise-dark hollows as he monitored every RDA communications channel around the clock, cracking open every patrol log, but never finding a single record of a "Sarentu captured" or a "body disposed of." Nor had vanished again, likely slipping into another RDA base for his endless vengeance.

So'lek did not return to camp. It was as though he had stepped back onto that solitary road, searching every canyon, every rock cave along the Western Frontier. Only Ìley kept him company, nuzzling his blood-caked hand after he had finished yet another one-sided slaughter of an RDA patrol and tossed aside the head he had ripped from the cockpit of an AMP suit.

He knew he was walking further and further down a dangerous path. But no one could call him back.

It wasn't until half a month later that So'lek heard a rumor from an Aranahe hunter.

“It’s been about two weeks now. They say something appeared in the forest — a feral beast, terrifyingly powerful." The hunter gestured, still visibly shaken. "Bodies everywhere it goes. viperwolves, chameleon crawler — even a feral thanator, torn open at the belly, guts dragged out. But nothing is taken. It eats nothing. It only wants to kill, to destroy… No one has ever seen what it looks like. You can hear the animals screaming, but when you follow the sound there is nothing but corpses. Even our most experienced hunters cannot track this beast's footprints in the mud. As if it were… a spirit, wandering the forest."

Not for food, only for destruction.  It sounded like a textbook feral —those wretched animals the RDA had altered, their neural whips severed, cut off from the bond with nature and with their kind, driven to destroy until they themselves were destroyed. He should bring it peace, removing the threat for the local hunters, So'lek thought. But the word spirit clung to him, and an unnameable dread coiled up his spine like a snake.

No one could find the beast’s footprints.

Perhaps because… they weren't the footprints of a beast.

He shuddered, shaking off the terrible thought. Whatever this creature was, he could not allow it to remain in Kinglor Forest. So'lek slung his bow across his back, did not even call for his ikran, and walked into the trees in the direction the hunter had pointed.

He soon found the trail paved in blood and carcasses. Viperwolves torn in half. A chameleon crawler with its neck snapped. Disembowelled feral beasts. And further along, an RDA squad camp was left the same way. Blood and machine oil running together across the ground, human limbs scattered in pieces, even the AMP suits ripped apart by brute force. The sheer ferocity of it made even So’lek draw a sharp breath. There was no hunter's skill in any of these kills. Only the purest, most bone-chilling savagery.

Indeed, there were no animal tracks.  So'lek crouched and searched through the undergrowth with care. He found a smear of blood. And half a Na'vi footprint.

The further he walked along that road of death, the clearer and heavier the shadow over his heart became.

Until a familiar structure loomed in his sight. So'lek's stride faltered. The shadow that had been hanging above him came crashing down. He drew a deep breath and walked toward the ending he had already foreseen.

The ruins of the TAP facility.

Rain washed over the cold, twisted metal wreckage. This was where he and Alma had rescued the Sarentu children from their cryo-pods. This was where Tamtey, not long ago, had been taken by Mangkwan and Bukowski while covering his escape.

Beside the mangled remains of an anti-aircraft turret, So'lek stopped.

In the pouring rain, a hunched, wasted figure crouched with its back to him, sprawled on the ground in a grotesquely contorted posture, tearing at a shattered piece of armour and the rotting corpse inside it.

“Tamtey……” So'lek’s voice shook in the rain.

The figure heard the call and whipped its head around like a startled animal.

It was a face of absolute ruin. The withered blue skin was caked in blood and filth. Those blue eyes that had once been as bright as the Pandora starlight, always warm with a thread of mischief, were now clouded with a dead, sightless murk, filmed entirely in red.

But what shattered So'lek's heart beyond anything else was the back of her head. The long, dark, beautiful braid adorned with Sarentu-style feathers was gone. Through the tangled, matted hair, the charred, dead stump of her severed kuru was exposed.

Wukula's curse detonated in his ears: Not even Eywa can ever bring her back to you.

Because Eywa had already lost Tamtey.

The severed kuru had cut Tamtey off from the Great Mother's touch. And not only Eywa, the loss of the kuru meant the loss of everything that made a Na'vi able to sense the world. This was a hell worse than death. She had become a wraith, exiled from Pandora for eternity. Nothing remained but the most extreme agony reverberating in the deepest reaches of her soul, driving her back to the origin of every nightmare, compelled again and again to destroy what had already been destroyed.

“Tamtey, it’s me.”  So'lek dropped the heavy bow from his hands and leapt down from the raised platform. “It’s So'lek.”

Tamtey let out a shriek that sounded nothing like a Na'vi.

The pain in So'lek's chest felt as though it would split him open. The feral beast before him could no longer understand his words. Tamtey stared at him, tense as a frenzied Thanator, before suddenly lunging on all fours. She slammed into him with such force that they were both thrown into the flooded ruins. Sharp nails sank into his shoulders as she bared her blood-stained teeth, lunging for his throat.

It was a fight that tore at So'lek’s soul.

He knew Tamtey's combat habits too well. Close quarters had never been her first choice. But the creature she had become was no longer the Sarentu who hunted from the shadows. What he faced was a feral beast with no regard for its own life, intent on tearing the world apart and itself along with it. So'lek had no choice but to roll with her through the muck and scrap metal, using his arms, his thighs, even his tail to fend off her frenzied biting and thrashing. Deep gashes opened across his body, some down to the bone. He tried to lock her limbs with his own, but she wrenched free with a twisting force that threatened to snap her own joints.

So'lek could not fathom how this wasted body still held such strength. Like a tree burned hollow, fanned by the wind of its own agony into one last flare of light.

"Wake up! Tamtey!" So'lek's eyes were so red they looked as though they would bleed. In the mud and water he clamped down on her terrifyingly thin wrists, but could not bring himself to break her bones.

The feral beast responded only with a desperate hiss through bared fangs, and a brutal headbutt against his cheek.

Blood welled at the corner of So'lek’s mouth. He understood at last. The Sarentu who used to tease him, who tugged at his hand and laughed, was gone. Her soul was locked in a silent, lightless hell, and what inhabited this body now was nothing more than an echo of pain.

He could not leave her trapped here.

When Tamtey wrenched another hand free and clawed at him, So'lek finally gritted his teeth and twisted. The wrist in his grip — thin as a dead branch — snapped. Through her howl of pain, he seized her other arm.

After roll upon roll of increasingly brutal struggle, So'lek's superior strength at last pinned Tamtey against a slab of shattered concrete. His legs locked her knees. His tail wound tight around hers. His left hand clamped both her arms, while his right tore the hunting knife — the one etched with the Trr'ong totem — from his belt.

The beast beneath him had almost no strength left, yet still it struggled, futile, as though somewhere inside there lingered one last thread of the Sarentu who never knew how to give up. Her blood-red eyes locked onto his, but they looked at him as though he were her mortal enemy.

So'lek raised the knife high. The tip was aimed directly at the large, eye-shaped scar on her chest.

One strike, and this broken shell would feel no more pain.

Thunder rolled over the Sky People's abandoned base. Rain ran down So'lek's clenched jaw and fell onto Tamtey's face.

The veins stood out across the hunter's arm.

He had to do this. It was the Na'vi way. She deserved a warrior's release.

“Great Mother Eywa… I beg of you……”

So'lek murmured the prayer. The only answer between earth and sky was lightning, thunder, and Tamtey's agonized gasping.

“……I’m sorry.”

His wrist snapped around suddenly. So’lek flipped the knife and drove the pommel hard into the vagus nerve at the side of Tamtey's neck.

The feral beast's anguished thrashing stopped dead.

That battered body went limp all at once. Every rigid muscle surrendered its strength. Only the faintest rise and fall at her chest remained.

So'lek’s knife clattered to the ground. He sank to his knees in the cold mud, gathered that motionless body into his arms with infinite care, and then held her tight.

The rain hammered down, washing away the traces of the fight. Plants grew rapidly in the downpour, crackling faintly as they unfurled. In that vast tomb of steel, which had buried every part of the Sarentu's past, the hunter who had survived more battles than he could count finally let out a sound. A single, despairing keen, like a dying beast.

Chapter Text

So'lek wanted to dig up every Mangkwan he had ever killed and kill them again. And then once more.

This was the first thought that entered his mind after he carried the unconscious Tamtey back to his hidden camp and examined every wound on her body.

He could not even identify the source of some of them. He recognised the round puncture of bullets, the blistering of flamethrowers, the long raking tears left by claws and fangs. But far more wounds lay across that gaunt frame, in places no battlefield could account for, in positions that defied any explanation but deliberate, vicious cruelty. Twisted knife-marks layered upon one another, torn open again by other, larger wounds of savage intent. Where the flesh had been peeled back, the exposed tissue was discoloured, giving off the toxic reek of rot.

So'lek cleaned the wounds as carefully as he could, cutting away dead flesh with his knife, stitching the gashes closed with thread, trying to piece that ruined body back into the shape he remembered. Then he found some fresh dapophet pods and crushed them, little by little, into a salve. The juice filled the creases of his fingers, and a feeling seized him, as though he were reaching across a vast distance in time.

A year ago, it was he who had taught her to identify and use this plant. The Tamtey of that time had just woken from sixteen years of cryosleep, stumbling out of that metal box, knowing nothing, blundering into the world of Pandora — the world she should have belonged to — like a newborn animal. When she took his longbow of her own accord, her lips pressed together with a trace of uncertainty, and her fingers ran back and forth across the string. But later, leaning against a tree, watching from a distance as that agile figure wove through the forest and picked off an entire RDA squad with ruthless efficiency, So'lek had already known: this young Sarentu would become a remarkable warrior one day.

And she had been. Through battle after battle, Tamtey had grown fast, becoming the feared Death on Wings of the Western Frontier, becoming the companion he trusted to guard his back.

But now, that Sarentu warrior had been stripped of all her formidable armour, lying weak on the ground, so covered in wounds that it was impossible to believe she would survive the night.

That night, So'lek sat vigil at Tamtey’s side, checking her breathing again and again.

However, he had underestimated the stubbornness of a Sarentu. Not long after the herbs were applied, Tamtey jolted awake in the dead of night.

The eruption was terrible. The mindless beast thrashed and rolled across the ground like a viperwolf caught in a snare, shrieking from its throat. Fortunately, So'lek had bound her in several loops of cord twisted from fibre and bark as a precaution. Even so, Tamtey's thrashing tore free of half the restraints and drove the rest deep into her flesh. She seemed to feel none of it. She would have broken her own bones if that was what it took to get loose and destroy everything within her reach.

It took every fiber of So’lek’s strength to subdue her again without adding another wound to her body. In the end, he had to pin her down and force a heavy dose of sedative into her, and only then did she go still. Her whole body went slack under the drug. Her eyes drifted open, unfocused. A breathing corpse.

He took her fingers gently in his. They lay in his palm like dead reeds, cold and without strength, trembling faintly with each breath she drew, betraying a pain that could not be suppressed.

So'lek remembered the day of his final vengeance for the Trr'ong. In that burning RDA base, he had smashed his fists into the already-dead pilot inside an AMP suit, drowning in the hollow void of slaughter, unable to pull himself out. It was Tamtey's warm hand, with all its sure and steady strength, that had pressed down on his shoulder and stopped him from sliding further into the abyss of hatred.

She had pulled him back from that hell of blood and fire. But now, with their roles reversed, he looked at her trapped in her own agony and did not how to bring her back.

So'lek did not contact the other Sarentu.

Over the following days, the only thing he could do was administer larger and larger doses of sedatives to keep Tamtey calm.

During the rare moments when Tamtey was relatively quiet, So'lek fetched water to clean her body, worked a bone comb through her tangled hair strand by strand, careful not to touch the withered, charred kuru. He even dipped his fingers into pigment and repainted the face-markings he remembered onto her cheeks. Though honestly, he was no longer certain this was the right pattern. Tamtey loved to experiment with styles from different clans. Each time she picked up a new hairstyle or war paint, she would come running over and make a deliberate show of parading past him, back and forth, never satisfied until she had drawn out a sigh and a shake of his head.

She seemed to be trying, through this kind of imitation, to find her place in every clan she encountered. Tamtey loved making friends, loved being in the thick of things, was always cheerfully running errands and lending a hand. It had won the Sarentu many allies, and everyone was convinced she was born diplomats.

But as So'lek's fingers traced her thin cheek, other images came back to him.

He had once caught a glimpse of her at the Resistance headquarters, staring blankly at the changing place, half-braided hair loose across her shoulders.  Amid the noise and bustle around her, those blue eyes held something solitary. It was the same look that had belonged to the Tamtey who first escaped TAP and set eyes on Pandora's vast forest — full of excitement, curiosity, and wonder, yet carrying always, at the very bottom, a thread of sadness that could not be erased. The kind only someone as familiar with loneliness as he was could recognise.

So'lek looked at Tamtey's blank, drug-fogged eyes and felt a poisoned fire burning inside his chest. He could not imagine how lonely she was, how much pain she was in. A prisoner locked inside her own body, exiled by the entire world. He wanted desperately to hold her, and found, with a grief that cut to the bone, that he had no idea how to reach that lost soul.

Another day, when Tamtey was too spent to put up much of a fight and swallowed the medicinal draught without struggle, So'lek could not help murmuring a few words of quiet praise, as one would to a child, knowing full well she could not understand. Tamtey sagged against the stone pillar, limp under the drug's weight, docile and unknowing and utterly at his mercy. The sight of it cut So'lek to the heart.

The Sarentu he knew had never been an obedient student for long. She had quickly figured out the temperament behind his stern facade, and then had fallen hopelessly in love with arguing with him, fiercely determined to win every single contest between them.

So'lek stroked her hair softly, and realised how desperately he missed those days. He had never admitted it, but he had always enjoyed it. He had never even minded seeing the Sarentu's smug, triumphant grin when she won — not that he ever let her win on purpose. Ikran or direhorse racing simply were not his strongest suit. As for picking off RDA targets, she never did beat his record.

Once the floodgate of memory opened, the tide was unstoppable.

He remembered the Tamtey who was entirely focused, eyes shining during a race; the Tamtey who wove through the canopy, as lethal and swift as a thanator; the Tamtey who had flown all night just to find one perfect branch, beaming with delight; the Tamtey who bared her teeth in a savage snarl at an RDA commander; the Tamtey who wept silently in the shadows of a campfire after losing a friend; and the Tamtey who sometimes, after the crowd had thinned and the noise had faded, fell to the back of the group and walked slowly, alone...

There were moments here that were too private, moments a good mentor should not have looked. But So'lek had looked.

He could not look away.

“Tamtey……” So'lek called softly. Aside from the wind, he received no answer.

As the days passed, the sedatives lasted for shorter and shorter periods. The pain Tamtey endured during her waking hours seemed to travel along some invisible link, carving into So'lek’s own nerves.

He could not stop replaying the disaster at TAP. The beginning of this nightmare. Tamtey had fought off Ka'sem, broken free — and in the instant her feet touched the ground and freedom lay before her, she had looked toward the window where Wukula had So'lek pinned against the glass. Their eyes met. All he saw was a gaze as fierce and absolute as blue flame. This brilliant hunter had not spared a single thought for her own escape. She had launched herself at Wukula like a shell from a cannon, smashing through the window, shoving So'lek bodily out of that steel cage.

So'lek would never forget the last image he saw as he fell backward into the wind: Tamtey, surrounded by armed Mangkwan and RDA, her kuru seized and her limbs pinned. In that fleeting second, what crossed her face was a smile of utter, radiant joy.

A trembling pain, almost sweet, bored into So'lek's chest. He understood then, suddenly, that perhaps she had sensed the unspoken feeling between them before he had. Only in those days of smoke and gunfire, neither of them had paused long enough to lift that thin veil. And that fleeting smile had been the last response she could give.

If he could, So'lek would have given anything — his own soul — to trade places with her in that moment. But this world has never dealt in ifs.

On the seventh day, the sedatives failed completely.

In a fit of extreme agony and frenzy, Tamtey snapped her own freshly healed wrist again, just to tear free of a single cord. When So'lek tried to hold her down, she bit clean through his shoulder. Blood poured from So'lek's wound, and from Tamtey's eyes. Two lines of something that looked like tears — but was blood — slid down, livid and terrible, and dripped onto So'lek's face.

Those scalding blood-tears burned through the last thread of hope in So'lek's heart. He could not go on being this selfish. Stubbornly keeping Tamtey trapped in this agonised shell, only to satisfy his own desperate need not to lose her.

He decided to give her the mercy of death.

For a Na'vi, this was the hardest decision there was. Without a kuru, Tamtey could not return to Eywa’s network after death. And So'lek, who had not yet officially joined the Sarentu, was destined never to reunite with her in the bond, even if he died in battle later.

But that no longer mattered. So'lek only prayed for the Great Mother's mercy — that someday, Eywa would find this lost child and take her pure soul into her arms.

So'lek sat by the fire, sharpening his hunting knife with excruciating slowness.

The blade reflected his bloodshot eyes. Finally, he stood and walked to where Tamtey lay bound in layers of rope.

The feral beast was still snarling, still trying to bite through everything in sight.

So'lek wore no armor. He leaned in, unguarded, and cradled that face stained with blood and tears. Ignoring her struggles and shrieks, he gave her their first and last kiss.

A kiss of absolute devotion. Absolute bitterness.

Tamtey responded by biting. Her sharp canines punctured his lips and wounded his tongue. The taste of blood spread between their mouths. So'lek continued the kiss through the blood, and tightened his grip on his knife, pressing the cold tip against her heart and pushing it in, so slowly it was almost gentle.

The blade cut through skin and flesh.

For some reason, the moment the blade touched bone, the frantically struggling Tamtey miraculously went still.

She didn't pull away. She didn't scream. In those blood-dyed blue eyes, something seemed to flicker. A ghost, impossibly faint, of the real Tamtey's release. Warm blood ran down the blade's fuller and soaked So'lek's hand on the hilt.

The blade sank deeper. Without warning, a sweet-scented wind swept into the dark cave.

So'lek's head snapped up.

A small, pale, five-petalled flower drifted down from the air above, settling at last upon the wound in Tamtey's chest. It slipped past the blade, and followed the trail of blood, finally down to So'lek's stained fingers.

Tana'ring. The flower of fortune in Trr'ong legend.

Then a second, a third… Countless white petals were swept into the cave on the wind. They moved as though alive, circling and dancing around So'lek and Tamtey, laying a soft white covering over the winding trail of blood.

Eywa's miracle had come.

So'lek's heart hammered. He tore away every rope binding Tamtey, gathered her up — the hunting knife still buried halfway in her chest, her body sliding into unconsciousness — and followed the scent of tana'ring and the whirl of petals out of the cave and into the open air.

The white spirits led him through the treacherous paths between the floating mountains, until at last they reached a hidden pool deep among the cliffs. On a small island in its centre, a zeykoma of breathtaking size and beauty had broken through the earth and was blooming without restraint in the darkness, its white petals curling open as though beckoning him closer.

So'lek laid Tamtey beneath the bioluminescent crown. The zeykoma's vast, slender petals dipped low, like a mother's fingers tracing the Sarentu's body. Rings of shimmering light spread outward across the ground. Glowing spores, carrying the energy of new life, rose like a gentle net and wrapped around Tamtey from below. White tana'ring blossoms gathered at her sides, quietly cradling her head. Under the caress of the zeykoma's petals, in the rich fragrance of the tana'ring, in Eywa's flickering light, the charred, severed nerve-endings began, slowly, to flush pink — and then, miraculously, to grow.

So'lek knelt beside her, his hand trembling as he gripped the blood-stained knife. He drew the blade out, inch by inch. The blood was swiftly covered by white tana'ring petals.

Listening to Tamtey’s breath finally steady into a calm rhythm, So'lek pressed his forehead into the earth and let out a jagged, broken sob.

Chapter Text

Tamtey walked slowly along the aerial roots stretching between the floating mountains, hand drifting absentmindedly to the base of her neck.

It was a new habit. Every Na'vi child knew better than to fiddle with their kuru, but Tamtey could not stop herself from brushing that new-grown shoot every now and then, only to flinch at the terrifyingly raw sensitivity of it.

"Tamtey—"

So'lek's voice sounded right on cue. Tamtey turned to look but couldn't find him. Ever since she had woken, he had been shadowing her at a distance, materialising out of nowhere. She hesitated, then pulled her hand away. No need to invite more trouble from a man who was getting better and better at giving her grief.

And if she was being honest, she still did not know how to face him.

Tamtey's last memory was Wukula's cruel voice and a pain that split her soul apart. She had not expected to survive. Much less to have a new kuru.

So'lek had told her the story in the barest terms. He had found her after Wukula severed her braid, brought her to the floating mountains, and the Great Mother had blessed her beneath a zeykoma, granting her new life.

A good story. But it did not account for the month she had lost. Even setting aside the stretch of unconsciousness after the ritual — Eywa's blessing seemed to have forgotten to include the Sarentu ancestors' gift; she could feel that stubborn vitality in her blood still sleeping — there remained over twenty days of blank space waiting to be filled. The Sarentu who cAmay to visit her clearly knew nothing, and she could not pry a single word out of So'lek.

Fair enough. They both had things they did not want to talk about. Tamtey had no intention of sharing what had happened to her with the Mangkwan either. But when she realised that the bandaging and stitching on her body could only have come from one pair of hands, the Sarentu felt a surge of fury at the helplessness of her own position.

He had seen those wounds. Not the kind of marks a warrior could wear with pride, only a record of how powerless she had been, how utterly at their mercy, in that nightmare. So'lek had never said a word about it, had even been careful to look away. But Tamtey could not stop thinking about it.

What did it mean? Sympathy? Pity?  A mentor's sigh over a junior who had been broken beyond repair?

What frustrated her even more were the wounds on So’lek.

He had clearly never treated them properly, which meant the scarring was all the more impossible for Tamtey to miss — and those were not the marks of Mangkwan bone knives or RDA bullets.

They were claw marks. And savage, brutal bites.

What had happened? Her intuition told her it was all connected. So'lek probably had the answers she was looking for. But Tamtey did not want to ask him.

He wouldn't answer anyway.

She wanted to go to the Hometree. Returning to that place would not be pleasant, but the battlefield must still hold traces and clues. At the very least, it should jolt loose the memories buried under the fog. Tamtey had tried searching in her dreams, but all she had gained was jolting awake again and again in the Mangkwan's shrieking laughter and the cold gleam of metal, drawing a silent gaze from nearby. Nothing of value.

Tamtey sighed and called Amay. The spirit-companion beat her wings and landed beside her, crooning with affection. Tamtey stroked the ikran's long beak with one hand while the other reached back instinctively for her braid — and found nothing.

The new kuru was still too short for tsaheylu with an ikran. Sometimes Tamtey feared it would never grow back to what it had been. How long before she could take to the sky again, or was she grounded forever? She fought to keep her thoughts from sliding toward the question of what use a Death on Wings was if she could not fly. Tamtey shook her head, patted the ikran, and tried to gesture her meaning without the bond.

Amay seemed to understand. She spread her wings with a snap and launched into the air, circled once between the floating stones, and dove straight at her.

Tamtey crouched, coiled, and sprang with everything her long legs had, reaching for the ikran's talons. In the instant she was airborne, the wind sang past her ears and a joy she had almost forgotten flooded her chest. Her fingertips grazed the raptor's hind legs — and caught nothing.

She plummeted.

Wind screamed past her. Tamtey spread her limbs wide, letting out a long, carrying call for her spirit-companion. But before Amay could reach her, another ikran streaked in from the side, and a strong hand caught hers.

Swinging up onto Ìley's back, Tamtey hadn't even had a chance to reassure Amay, who was catching up alongside, before she heard So'lek's disapproving grunt from in front of her.

"You should be resting."

"That was resting. Any more lying down and I'll sprout mushrooms." Tamtey rolled her eyes. "What, afraid I'll steal your moves?"

So'lek was quiet for a moment, then sighed. "When you're better, I'll teach you myself."

"I'm perfectly fine right now," Tamtey muttered. "Race me if you don't believe it."

So'lek turned without warning and, in a few swift moves, had the bluffing, all-bark-no-bite Sarentu pinned. "You lose."

"That's because you ambushed—" Tamtey was gearing up for another round of shameless excuses when her eyes caught the scar peeking out from So'lek's shoulder. "…what's that?"

So'lek noticed her gaze. He said nothing, only tugged at his armour to cover the scar, and turned back to fly.

But Tamtey didn't need his answer. She recognized that mark. She had them on her body too.

Na’vi bite marks.

She had to get to the Hometree.

The Dogtag Warrior could not babysit a Sarentu around the clock. Teylan had turned up new intelligence on Bukowski and another new RDA base. So'lek had braced himself for Tamtey's inevitable demand to tag along, but this time the Sarentu was suspiciously well-behaved. He knew something was off, but the RDA would not wait. He dropped two stern warnings and took off into the night sky with Ìley.

Tamtey watched until the blue shadow vanished into the clouds. Then she drew a breath, tilted her head back, and let out a keening call.

Tumbling gracelessly off Amay's back, Tamtey had to concede that perhaps So'lek had a point. Riding an ikran without the neural bond was not a wise choice, and even the smartest, most agile ikran in the world had given her a miserable time of it.

But she had made it.

She pushed to her feet on the RDA metal platform and looked around, searching for the way into the Hometree. But her eye was caught by a wrecked AMP suit. Calling it a wreck was generous — both mechanical arms, the one that held the shield and the one that held the machine gun, had been blasted off and lay to one side. The remaining cockpit had a jagged hole punched through it, half a rotting corpse jammed inside. The other half had clearly been torn apart by hand and tossed onto the ground. Further away, another human body was pinned to the wall by a single, long heavy arrow.

Tamtey walked over and wrenched the arrow free. She ran her fingertips along the Trr'ong-style fletching.

She knew it.

Holding that familiar shaft, Tamtey could almost see the slaughter. The machine gun spitting a rain of fire, and on the other side, the warrior drawing his bow on the run. A long arrow detonating the ammo pack even as he surged upward, one fist smashing through the cockpit, ripping the pilot out and tearing him in half. Through the spray of blood he drew the heavy bow again, not breaking stride, and put an arrow through the next man's skull.

Tamtey followed in the warrior's footsteps, past RDA and Mangkwan bodies flung in every direction. Almost none of them were whole. What had it cost to leave behind this kind of devastation? She looked at the bloodstains rusted into the steel underfoot and wondered how much of it belonged to the enemy, and how much to So'lek.

Following that road soaked in blood and gunsmoke, Tamtey walked into the heart of the Hometree. She had replayed this scene in her mind a thousand times, yet when the hellscape spread out before her in the flesh, her breath still caught. Among the smouldering embers, the Mangkwan altar crouched at the centre of the ruins like a vast spider. Rusted iron hooks dangled from above, hung with the charred carcasses of animals tortured to death, swaying in the wind with a teeth-grinding creak. Below the altar, skulls carved with hideous markings were stacked high, giving off a stale stench of old blood, rotting flesh, and chemical fuel.

The memories of what had been done to her detonated in Tamtey's mind like lightning. The wire biting into her throat, suffocating. The muffled grinding of a serrated bone knife against her ribs. The sickening laughter. Her body began to tremble. Her fingers clenched involuntarily around the shaft of hardwood.

Tamtey slowly looked down. The rough texture and the familiar binding in her palm felt heavy and real, reminding her of the line between the past and the present.

And even in that nightmare, she had not been alone. Someone had charged into this hell, caring for nothing else, just to bring her back.

She wouldn't fail his efforts.

Tamtey exhaled a long breath. Following the imagery in her mind, she found the Mangkwan camp outside the altar where her kuru had been severed. She searched for a moment, then knelt, her fingertips hovering over a patch of earth stained with dried blood.

In that instant, it was as though she had been thrown back. The pain of toxic metal radiated from her bones. She felt her braid being pulled, and the soul-shredding agony of the cut swept through her.

But this time, she did not close her eyes. Tamtey looked around and, from the scattered ash, the broken footprints, the snapped branches, began to piece together what she had done. Her memory was still blank. But a good hunter could track the truth by traces alone, let alone track herself.

It was a path exactly opposite to So’lek’s charge. The RDA’s fire and the Mangkwan’s frenzy had all been drawn to the Dogtag Warrior descending like death from the sky. In the shadows behind them, a stumbling figure had drawn little attention — a few RDA corpses killed by teeth and claws were likely the only witnesses.

Tamtey followed the broken trail forward, the dim, chaotic prickling in her skull growing impossible to ignore. Guided by old bloodstains, she stepped into the jungle and found uprooted shrubs, a chameleon crawler torn violently in two, and inch-deep, patternless gouges raked into tree trunks.

Every new horror confirmed the same conclusion. Tamtey had never thought of herself as someone afraid to face the truth. But now that the truth was staring her in the face, she could barely make her feet move.

But she kept walking.

Following carcass after broken carcass, Tamtey walked deeper into the forest, until she stopped in a clearing that had been levelled completely.

The body of a feral thanator lay in the mud.

Its belly had been ripped open, its massive head twisted at an unnatural angle. The body was covered in frenzied claw marks and bite wounds.

Na’vi bite marks.

At the edge of consciousness, blurred memories began to stir — no colour, no sound, no light. Only pain trapped inside a pitch-black shell, reverberating, screaming for the one desire left: to destroy everything, and to destroy itself.

The memory of a feral beast.

A spike of pain shot from the root of her kuru. Tamtey remembered. Two beasts, both driven by despair, tearing at each other. No hunter's skill. No reverence for life or death. Only the most primal summons of annihilation.

Tamtey knelt and stared at the massive corpse for a long time. She could feel it again. The thanator's claws ripping through her flesh, its jaws snapping for her skull, and her own hands buried in its belly, gripping the slippery meat, clinging underneath it while she tore its throat out with her teeth. Hot blood flooding into her throat, until the beast's last drop drained out as it ran.

At last it fell, surrendered into the arms of death, released from the endless loneliness and pain.

And she had crawled out from beneath the carcass to face the same silent void. A world without Eywa.

"Tamtey!"

So’lek’s voice pierced the jungle like an arrow. Tamtey's head snapped up. In the distance, the outline of the TAP ruins appeared in the morning mist.

In an instant, every piece fell into place. She finally understood her destination.

The origin of every nightmare. The place that a body stripped of its soul had been driven toward by the last, faintest flicker of instinct. The place it had wanted to tear apart and destroy.

More memories flooded back like a deluge.

So'lek leapt from Ìley's back and stumbled on the landing.

When he saw the figure crouching beside the thanator's carcass, he forgot how to breathe. Only when Tamtey turned her head and looked at him with those clear, unmistakable Sarentu blue eyes did So'lek let out a long, shaking breath.

"Tamtey—" He rushed forward, then stopped dead. Panting. Unable to speak.

For one terrible instant, he had thought it had happened again. She was trapped once more in that dark, feral hell, and he no longer had the strength to wait for another miracle.

"So'lek." Tamtey said his name, her expression still half-dazed. She stood up unsteadily, fingers pressing against her chest.

So’lek’s pupils shook. He knew what she was touching. Beneath the chest plate, there was a short, thin scar, almost invisible now. The scar he had left.

"So it was me, right?" Tamtey said, her gaze falling on the bite marks on So’lek’s neck and shoulder that he had tried to hide beneath his armour.

So’lek frowned slightly, as if searching for some explanation. "No... that wasn't..."

Tamtey didn't seem to hear him, still lost in her own thoughts. "It was you… You should have killed me, So'lek."

Her words were soft, almost gentle, but they hit So’lek like an arrow to the chest. "No!"

"I couldn't! I already—this is all my fault, Tamtey!" His tall frame shook in the morning mist, head bowed, words tumbling without order. "All my fault. From the start, TAP, I failed to protect you… then I was too slow, I couldn't… I should have stopped all of this, but I couldn't even—"

Give you a clean release.

So’lek choked. "...I’m sorry."

“You brought me back,” Tamtey said.

He paused, then shook his head with a bitter twist. "Eywa brought you back."

Tamtey only smiled.

She didn't argue further. The tangled memories were still churning in her head, and she was genuinely exhausted. This had been far too long a night, and her body, still not done coming back from the dead, could not yet endure this kind of journey.

They found a sheltered cave nearby, and So’lek quickly built a fire. Orange-red light jumped between them. No one spoke. Only the crackle of burning wood.

Tamtey leaned against the cave wall, watching the dancing flames. Her fingertips rose unconsciously, touching her lips. In the feral beast's memory, amid all the blood and the killing, that had been the only distinct warmth.

So’lek looked away. He grabbed a branch and poked the fire with unnecessary force.

In perfect, unspoken agreement, they both refused to mention the kiss that hadn't quite been a kiss.

The wind swept over the rocks at the top of the floating mountains, whistling sharply.

Amay's wingbeat kicked up a gale. Tamtey barely managed to twist her body mid-air before slamming down hard onto the soft moss, yet she still wore an excited smile.

"You did it," So'lek said. This was the first time in days that Tamtey had successfully caught Amay's hind legs on the call and swung herself up. Especially without the kuru's neural sync, riding an adult ikran on nothing but physical coordination and trust was like walking a tightrope blindfolded over a cliff. Making one circuit and coming back down in one piece was a feat in itself.

Tamtey rolled over, lying on the ground and gasping for air. Sweat clung to her face, making her blue eyes look incredibly bright. “Not perfect yet.”

So'lek shook his head. His mind was already racing through the exact tone of voice he would need to shut down the "let me try again" that was absolutely coming. Her freshly healed bones would not survive many more rounds of this.

"Thank you," Tamtey said.

The stern refusal died in So'lek's throat. "…What?"

"For everything." Tamtey's voice was rough with fatigue, her eyes fixed on the clouds drifting overhead. "I've always been glad that it was you who found me."

She looked up at him and held out a hand.

So'lek went rigid for an instant. Something unnameable seized his heart. Before he could think, he stepped forward, took her hand, and pulled her to her feet.

It was not a particularly intimate gesture. But So'lek flinched as if he had been burned. The moment Tamtey was steady, he let go.

"I have things to do," he said stiffly. "Can you get back on your own? No flying."

Tamtey shrugged. "Fine."

So’lek stared at her. She raised her hands. "No flying. I promise."

He nodded, stepped back, whistled for his ikran, swung up onto Ìley's back, and plunged straight into the churning sea of clouds.

The wind roared in his ears. So'lek looked down at the hand that had just held hers, his thumb tracing absently across the palm, as though a warmth that did not belong to him still lingered there.

When he landed at the edge of the wind-trader caravan camp, So'lek did not yet know why Ìley had brought him here. But among the hanging drapes and wind chimes, something caught his eye. As though guided by some force beyond reason, he settled the trade.

When So’lek returned to the hidden camp under the cover of night, only the flickering firelight greeted him. Tamtey sat cross-legged on the stone platform, an RDA military tablet in her hands. She wore a comm device, her fingers flying across the screen as she talked to Teylan, somewhere out on the edge of Kinglor Forest, clearly working through something far beyond So'lek's area of expertise.

The pale blue glow played across Tamtey's face, illuminating her focused expression. Hearing his footsteps, the Sarentu lifted her eyelids just enough to give him a flat glance.

No greeting, no asking where he’d been. She returned her gaze to the scrolling symbols on the screen.

So'lek said nothing either. He sat down on the other side of the fire. The cave held only the soft tap of the screen and the occasional murmur. Between them, firelight swayed. Beneath the silence, something moved without sound.

This suffocating state lasted for several days, until Teylan landed his Ikran on the cliffside.

He had brought a freshly cracked set of coordinates and intelligence on a newly established RDA data relay station. Tamtey quickly checked her weapons and slung her reclaimed longbow over her shoulder.

"I’m coming with you," So’lek stood up, grabbing his heavy bow.

"You finally learned how to use a SID?" Without looking back, Tamtey shut him down in a single sentence.

So'lek's hand stopped mid-reach.

She walked over and patted his shoulder. "It's just pulling a few plugs on some unguarded data centres. If it were dangerous, I wouldn't be bringing Teylan along for field practice." Tamtey adjusted her armour, her tone perfectly matter-of-fact. "You’ve been busy lately, coming and going. I’m sure you have more important things to do."

She swung neatly onto the back of Teylan’s Ikran without another glance at him, and the two of them rose into the sky.

So'lek's fingers slowly tightened around his bow. He walked to the cliff's edge, watched their silhouette disappear into the clouds, and in the end, silently mounted Ìley and followed at a distance. Far behind, and high above.

Hidden in the cloud layer, he watched them land at the RDA site. He watched Tamtey slip into the shadows like a true thanator, her bowstring singing as she dropped the perimeter guards with precision. He watched her and Teylan work in seamless coordination, one hacking the system, the other covering and clearing.

No wasted movement. Lethal. Efficient. Unstoppable.

After the two of them took to the sky again, So'lek landed in the camp that reeked of blood and machine oil. He walked across a floor covered in RDA shell casings, scanning the clean, precise arrow wounds on the bodies of the soldiers.

Tamtey had recovered. Apart from the short braid on the back of her head that still swung with every movement, she had returned fully to the busy, formidable, indispensable life she had always led.

So'lek leaned against a cold metal wall. A thought he could no longer avoid forced its way in: she should have gone back by now. Back to her people, to live with the Sarentu at the new Aranahe camp. After all, for a Na'vi who could not yet ride an ikran freely, his hidden cave high among the floating mountains was not a sanctuary. It was a cage.

The only reason she was still here was that he had never told her to leave.

A sharp wave of self-disgust made So'lek straighten abruptly. He called Ìley, followed the RDA tyre tracks, and swept through several nearby poaching teams that had been trapping wild animals.

When he returned to camp, reeking of smoke and gunpowder, it was deep into the night. He had expected an empty cave and a dead fire.

Instead, a dim glow spilled from the entrance. Tamtey was sitting by the fire. She looked up when she heard him. "Got anything to eat? All you've got in here is mushrooms."

Before So'lek could process what was happening, he was already crouching by the fire, turning strips of lean meat dipped in egg.

The meat sizzled over the flame. In the smell of it cooking, So'lek turned the question over and over, and finally could not hold it back. He asked quietly, "Why didn't you go back with Teylan?"

"Bukowski isn't dead yet." Tamtey ripped off a piece of meat with her nails and stuffed it into her mouth, her words muffled. "He's as crazy as Mercer. Probably still has his eye on me. I don't want to bring trouble to the Aranahe."

The reason was flawless. But watching Tamtey's face in the firelight, So'lek couldn't shake the feeling that something he couldn't quite grasp was hiding beneath that calm surface.

"If you want to kick me out, you could try making the food even blander." Tamtey swallowed and turned up her nose. "This meat tastes like tree bark. I'd be better off chewing mushrooms."

"Hasn't stopped you from eating every bite," So'lek said, fighting to keep too much satisfaction out of his voice. "You eat faster than I do."

"That's because I’ve been climbing all day to find those data centers! Next time I'm cooking, and I'll show you what real food tastes like."

They passed the evening in that warm cave, with roasted meat and bickering that was half-serious and half-play.

Late that night, the fire had faded to a dim red glow.

So'lek tossed and turned on the animal skin, then reached into the leather pouch at his chest and drew out two pieces of vine-wood that had been hidden there for some time. They were wound tightly together, a common thing in Trr'ong tradition. He glanced at Tamtey's sleeping form, eased himself upright, and by the light of the embers, began to polish the intricate swirl-patterns carved into the wood.

So absorbed was he in the work that the seasoned hunter failed to notice a pair of blue eyes that had quietly opened in the dark, watching his back without blinking.

Another night, several days later.

So'lek sat in the corner, buffing the intertwined wooden rings in his hands with a piece of soft hide. The artifact had been finished for some time now. The two vine-wood swirls locked together in a flawless fit, their surface polished smooth as jade. But he kept feeling they were not right, not perfect enough, that there was some place left to refine, though he could not find it. So he polished them for what must have been the ten-thousandth time.

During the repetitive motion, his mind drifted. A few days ago, the Sarentu had come to him together, and Tamtey had made a formal invitation, asking him to join the Sarentu clan. Tomorrow was the day they would hold the bonding ceremony before the Tarsyu.

That wasn't entirely why he couldn't sleep. He had been a solitary wanderer for so long that he had almost forgotten what it felt like to belong to a clan. But that was not what was circling in his heart.

Soft footsteps suddenly sounded very close by.

So'lek's wrist jerked in alarm. He stuffed the braces into his pouch, grabbed his bow and arrows, and pretended to be inspecting the fletching.

Tamtey leaned in close behind him, as though she hadn't noticed his fumbling at all. "Maintenance again?"

He gave a vague grunt. "What is it?"

"Come with me," she said. Before he could react, she grabbed his hand. "Let’s go."

"Where?"

"Don't ask."

She didn't call for her Ikran. Instead, she led him directly toward the steep mountain path outside the cave.

The floating mountains at night were draped in countless plants glowing deep blue and violet-red. Except for the moments they had to let go to climb the vines, their hands stayed locked the entire way. Tamtey's palm was warm, dry, and carried a force that would not be refused, leading So’lek through clouds of luminous spores that drifted like something out of a dream.

They climbed all the way to the summit, where a vast Tarsyu stood before them, shimmering with soft light.

So'lek's heart quickened without his permission. "I thought the ceremony was tomorrow."

"This has nothing to do with the Sarentu." A thread of inexplicable irritation ran through Tamtey's voice, tangled with something she was trying very hard to disguise as calm. "I… have something for you."

She let go of his hand. So'lek's palm was suddenly empty, and he found he was not used to it.

Tamtey reached into the leather pouch at her waist and drew something out.

A heavy, sharp beast-tooth. White pigment had been used to trace delicate tana'ring petals in flight across its surface. Both ends had been secured with tough plant fibre, leaving loops ready to be woven directly into a songcord.

"I asked Alex for the plants. Thought you might like them," Tamtey said. "The feral beast's tooth. You know." She was, for once, fumbling for words.

So'lek knew. This was a tooth from the feral thanator that the feral Tamtey had killed with her bare hands in the mud of the deep forest. It had left scars on the Sarentu that went to the bone. But now, this fang soaked in the memory of death had been carefully shaped and polished until it gleamed like a jewel in the moonlight.

So'lek stared at it. "This is… for my songcord?"

"Put it wherever you want," The hand holding the tooth had started to tremble. "I mean—"

This is going wrong. Tamtey’s heart began to pound. What if those braces weren't meant for me at all?

Tamtey began licking her lips, readying a smile and a long string of lies along the lines of just a small token of gratitude for saving my life, no pressure at all. But before that false smile could form, So'lek suddenly reached out and snatched the tooth from her hand. He pulled out a pair of interlocked wooden swirls, polished to a lustrous sheen from endless handling. A pair of Lover's Braces.

"They could still use more work…" His head was bowed, his voice strung as tight as a bow drawn to its limit, his long fingers trembling slightly as he tried to separate the complex interlocking swirls.

Tamtey laughed.

She reached out, her warm fingertips settling over his stiff, nervous hands, and helped him ease the two perfectly fitted vine-wood halves gently apart.

"They’re already perfect."

Chapter Text

Moonlight lay across the broad leaves of the Tarsyu, giving off a quiet bioluminescence.

The swirl-pattern had been polished so fine that her fingertips felt nothing but silk. She imagined the expression on his face as he had gazed at it through all those countless hours of handling. That face, always pulled taut — what did it look like in the deep of night, when no one was watching?

"So'lek."

He gave a quiet sound, turning the beast-tooth between his fingers, studying the tana'ring petals traced fine as hair across its surface.

"That kiss."

So'lek's hand stilled.

Tamtey did not look up. Her voice was so soft it might have been talking to herself. "I remember something warm against my lips. It was the only… clean feeling from that time. But I don't remember how it happened, or why."

Silence spread between them like the Tarsyu's glow.

"Was it before?" She raised her eyes. "Or after that?"

She did not say what that was. She did not need to.

So'lek's gaze sank into the dark. He looked at Tamtey. The chest plate she wore today was short, and where the moonlight fell on the exposed skin there was almost nothing to see. That scar in particular was very narrow — he had poured every fiber of strength into making that cut precise — and the Sarentu ancestors' gift had smoothed it into a thread-thin line of white. But he knew, perhaps better than she did, what had once been there. The crescent of blood that was branded into his midnight dreams.

"Before," he said at last.

Tamtey held his gaze for a moment. Then, unexpectedly, she smiled.

It wasn't a mocking smile, nor a relieved one. It was something he had almost never seen on her face — a naked, unguarded softness — lasting only an instant before she turned away, a little guiltily, to hide it.

"So what you're saying is," Tamtey slid the bracer onto her arm and bit her lip, "you took advantage of me at my worst."

So'lek had no idea how to answer this absurd accusation.

Tamtey's tail swept lightly across the moss behind her. The small tell she always gave away when she was pretending to be calm. She took a step forward, closing the distance.

"Then it's only fair I even the score, right?"

She did not wait for an answer.

Her lips found his. Not soft, not tentative, but carrying a clear and unmistakable claim, as though she intended to register every detail of what had happened without her knowledge firmly onto her own ledger.

So'lek felt the sharp edge of the beast-tooth between his fingers. Felt his heart slam into a war-drum rhythm.

He did not move.

In the instant Tamtey's kiss ended and she began to pull back, So'lek's hand closed around the back of her neck and took that kiss to a depth she had not reached.

Tamtey let out a short, almost startled sound, caught off guard for a heartbeat by the force of it. Then her canines settled lightly on his lip with the calm of a flag being planted, and she swallowed his breath whole.

As their lips and tongues tangled, So'lek's kuru unfurled gently in the moonlight.

Tamtey felt it. Her heartbeat stuttered.

Her new kuru was still too short, as a shoot barely broken through the soil, so sensitive that the faintest breeze could set the nerve-endings ablaze. She normally dared not let anything near it. Even her own fingers would flinch away from the near-scalding sensation.

But now, So'lek's neural tendrils hovered beside her young shoot with exquisite restraint, almost questioning. Not touching. Only bringing a faint breath of warmth.

Like the moment a tana'ring petal had settled upon the edge of a blade.

"May I?"

His voice was so low it was nearly lost in the wind.

Tamtey drew a deep breath, and beside his waiting tendrils, she brought her small, new kuru gently—

Tsaheylu.

The current detonated from the crown of her head, shot down her spine, and curled the very tip of her tail.

This was no ordinary bond. Tamtey had bonded with the Tarsyu before, bonded with Amay, but she had never connected this intimately with another person's heart. And her new-grown nerve-endings were so fragile, so starved, that the instant the bond locked, everything So'lek had never said poured through like a dam breaking, flooding her perception without barrier.

She saw the time she had lost.

The flood hit. The anguish and terror of prowling the forest without rest; the wordless remorse and refusal to surrender, wept out in pouring rain; the clumsiness and heartache of painting face-markings onto her unconscious cheeks without knowing whether he had the pattern right; every night she had thrashed and convulsed in pain while he held her, covered in wounds of his own, clinging to her with the desperation of a drowning man gripping driftwood; and the hunting knife, freshly sharpened, catching firelight — the moment he had finally pressed the point home, the deafening collapse inside him…

"So'lek…" Tamtey found her voice shaking.

He did not answer. He only held her.

It was an embrace no language could define. The trembling of someone who has hung too long at the edge of the abyss and can finally, finally breathe. She heard the unguarded gasping in his chest and felt that body, always held so tight, crack open for the first time, truly, for her.

Inside the tsaheylu, two torrents of feeling merged into one. Neither could tell which half belonged to whom.

Tamtey buried her face in the hollow of So'lek's throat and breathed him in. He smelled of Pandora's soil, the pine-resin of a bowstring, and a faint, distinct scent that belonged only to the Trr'ong, laced with the fragrance of tana'ring.

She took his hand and pressed it against the scar.

So'lek's breath stopped.

"It's okay," Tamtey said in her usual offhand tone, though her voice was slightly hoarse. "Even if you had... it would still be okay."

So'lek said nothing. His fingers dug deep into her shoulder.

"But you didn't." She lifted her head, eyes burning. "So you owe me a life, So'lek."

So'lek's throat bobbed. What kind of logic was that? He didn't care. He was willing.

"How do you plan to collect?"

The corners of Tamtey's mouth slowly curled up.

She was not good at this kind of talk. Even Anqa could write better love poetry. But she was a hunter of extraordinary action, and she never let wanted prey escape. Her fingers found the buckles on So'lek's armour and unfastened them one by one, tossing each piece into the moss beside the Tarsyu.

"With every single day you have left," she said. "Starting tonight."

The sound of the armor hitting the ground vanished into the wind.

Tamtey's lips traced down his neck, following the old bite-scars. She ran her tongue lightly over the deepest one and felt a shudder pass through So'lek in the tsaheylu — those were hers, left in the days she could not remember, the marks the feral beast had branded into him.

"...Do they still hurt?" she asked softly.

"Not anymore."

"Good." Tamtey kissed that scar. "I'll leave you a new one."

So'lek let out a sound. Low, dragged up from deep in his chest. Through the tsaheylu, its resonance dropped into her nerve-endings like a stone into still water, spreading outward ring by ring, raising a shiver across her scalp.

Her new kuru was too sensitive. Every ripple of feeling that passed through the bond was amplified into a wave.

So'lek must have noticed, because he carefully lowered the intensity of his neural signal, the way a seasoned hunter deliberately softens his step before a fragile young creature.

Tamtey immediately bit his jaw.

"Don't hold back."

So'lek met those challenging blue eyes. After a long beat, the hands that had held themselves in check for far too long finally let go of every rule.

His palms slid down from her waist, tracing the curve of her thigh. Through the tsaheylu, Tamtey felt desire surge through like a beast finally free of its chains. She hooked one leg around his waist and pulled him hard against her. So'lek's breath broke against her neck, its rhythm gone entirely. She turned her head and grazed her lips across his throat, savoured the shudder. Their kuru were twined deep, and her new-grown shoot could no longer tell whether the heat it was feeling belonged to her body or to his — inside the bond, both had melted into a single scalding blur.

"Tamtey."

He called her name, and that always steady voice was shaking now, like a string plucked by her fingertip. She could feel his heartbeat through the tsaheylu, drumming into her nerve-endings, tangling with her own into a single chaotic rhythm.

"I know." Tamtey arched up, her long blue tail locking tight around his waist. "Come."

At the moment of joining, the bond expanded into a tide.

No more the weight forced upon her in nightmares. No more the cold of metal. No more the sickening malice. This was a heat that pulsed with life, a mutual penetration she had chosen, a fusion of the soul entire. A shudder detonated up Tamtey's spine. She sucked in a sharp breath, then jammed her chin against So'lek's shoulder, trapping the sound that might have been too soft inside her throat.

Her nails scored new marks down his back, the old ones she had forgotten in a fair, evenly-matched exchange.

So'lek began to move in a slow, deliberate rhythm, precise the way he was when drawing a heavy bow, so unhurried it made her want to grind her teeth.

"So'lek—"

"What is it?" he murmured against her ear, a thread of rare, dangerous amusement in his voice.

Tamtey gritted her teeth. This man who normally took three full seconds to respond to one of her jokes was choosing now to find his tongue.

"Don't hold back!" She surged forward, pinning him beneath her like a beast, her strong thighs locked tight.

So'lek stopped holding back.

With a precision and certainty that only ever showed itself on the battlefield — the hallmark of a Trr'ong hunter — he found the exact threshold behind each of her cries and reached them, one by one, without mercy. It was not tenderness, but it carried more weight than tenderness could — a fierce, absolute cherishing that could only be born after two people had seen each other's darkest depths. The tsaheylu stacked their shared perception into infinite mirrors: he felt how she loosened, inch by inch, the string she had held so taut, and she felt the way he felt her, him burning, unreserved, almost naked, inside that transmission.

"So'lek..."

Tamtey's palms pressed firmly against his back, sliding down to press deeply along the groove of his spine, savoring how that formidable body tightened inch by inch beneath her touch, stripped of all disguise. She called his name through the tsaheylu—not as a provocation, not as a command, but just aimless, raw calls—So'lek suddenly rolled them over, gathering her tighter. His pace turned savage. The long, restrained wanting he had carried for her erupted like a flash flood, crashing through the network of the bond with a force that far exceeded anything Tamtey had expected, drowning her new nerve-endings in scalding tremors.

The moss crushed beneath them. Moonlight draped over Tamtey's arched throat and taut abdomen. The Tarsyu's fragrance was churned by two burning bodies into something headier. Her long tail cinched tighter and tighter around his waist, as though she meant to pin him there permanently. She felt herself about to shatter inside the roar of the resonance — and So'lek felt it too. He leaned down, pressed his forehead against hers, panting, and at that deepest point, paused for one heartbeat.

"Don't stop—" she commanded, her voice raw.

"I know," he said, lips touching hers. "I see you, Tamtey."

That bond violently expanded, swallowing them both whole.

Neither of them knew how long it was before their ragged breathing finally stilled.

The Tarsyu's glow still pulsed in its quiet rhythm. The scent of tana'ring drifted in from somewhere, so thick it seemed to drench the entire floating mountain.

Tamtey lay on her back upon the moss, staring up at the sky brimming with stars, lost in thought for a moment.

"So'lek."

"Mm."

"Those braces of yours," she said lazily. "The Trr'ong Lover's Braces. How long have you been carrying them around?"

So'lek was quiet for a beat. "…You already know."

Tamtey laughed aloud. She rolled over in the moss and propped her chin on his chest, meeting those calm golden eyes.

"So," she said, word by word, wearing that familiar, insufferable look of triumph, "you had already made up your mind. Before I even opened my mouth, you had already decided."

So'lek's ears flicked back. A faint flush crept across his face — barely visible, and exceedingly rare.

"…Quiet, Sarentu."

Tamtey laughed softly, buried her face contentedly in the hollow of his throat. Something real and tender threaded through the sound.

"So'lek... I see you."

Tana'ring petals drifted down without a sound, settling on their clasped hands, settling on the pair of braces that had each found where they belonged.