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Quaritch tightly held a tiny, chubby hand, pulling her up when she tripped and holding her steady as she wobbled around. The child babbled incoherently, but he hung onto every word that slipped past her little blue lips. He’d never gotten this far with Miles. Never got to see the astonished way he looked at the world around him, never got to hear him desperately try to communicate all the words he wanted to say.
It was beautiful.
She’d never even seen beyond the land of fire, but she saw so much beauty in everything. Even the crumbling trees, and the decades old skeletons, charred and piling, were incredible to her. He took her out to walk every afternoon just for this, to see through her eyes.
Txep’ite babbled something that almost sounded like the Na’vi word for stop. There was no point in teaching her English when she was surrounded by natives. Maybe by the time she could speak, he would be fluent too.
He halted, and she crouched down to paw through the dirt, producing an ashy-grey pebble, yowling in delight. She stretched up towards her father, extending her little fist until he took the pebble from her, adding it to the rest of the treasures she had collected over the last half-hour. He didn’t understand what she saw in them, but she was so excited. They were important to her, so they were important to him, and he would keep them in his pocket for as long as she wanted.
He would carry her for as long as she wanted, too. When her little blue feet started to drag, and her shoulders slumped, Quaritch swept her up with a gentle smile. She nestled into his shoulder, yawning, swinging her tail sleepily. He tried not to look at the hand on his chest, smaller than the other, with a thick scar where her pinkie should be. She was too small to even realise what she was missing, what had been done to her.
But he knew, and the memory haunted him. Every night, as he fell asleep, he remembered the way he had frozen in place, unable to protect someone who depended on him, and only him, for protection. Yet, somehow, she loved him anyway. She looked at him like he was the whole world, when he couldn’t even protect her from something right in front of him. Right fucking in front of him.
What was he, if not a protector? She didn’t care about how many confirmed kills he had, or how he handled a gun. She didn’t care about how disciplined he was, or how many medals he once had. She deserved someone who could protect her, and that someone wasn’t him. She would have to know how to protect herself. He would teach her everything he knew the moment she could hold a weapon.
His daughter would never be defenseless again.
But in this moment, when she was so small and soft… Perhaps she could just be. She could look at the world with love for a little while longer, before she saw danger everywhere she looked.
~
Varang sat cross-legged in her yurt, stripping meat from Pa’li skin, depositing it in a bone bowl. This fleshy meat was not the nicest tasting, but her people could not afford to be picky. Perhaps she would use the skin to make a new tewng for the child. She was growing quickly, and would need new clothing soon enough.
The beaded curtain rattled behind Varang, and a small blue mass collided with her before she even turned around. Muddy hands wrapped around her neck, accompanied by excited gibberish and shouts of the only word she could speak.
“Sa’nok! Sa’nok! Sa’nok!”
Varang held very still, scowling, staring at Quaritch. He attempted to pull the child away, but his heart was not in it. She crawled under Varang’s arm, kicking the hide away and tipping the bowl of meat to the floor. Varang hissed in annoyance, berating the child and Quaritch in one hushed breath.
Quaritch crouched down beside them, softly pulling his daughter out of her lap. The child kicked at him, letting out her own imitation of her mothers hiss. The kicking did nothing against his grip. She was too small to pack any force into her little legs, but the hissing stopped him in his tracks. So much feist, just like Miles. He smiled, and that brief moment was enough for Txep’ite to writhe out of his hands and flop back into her mothers lap triumphantly.
Varang still did not move. She could hear people outside, kicking a skull around, high on smoked herbs. They could walk in at any moment, see her in a moment of weakness and strike. She kept her back stiff and did not move to brush the stray hair out of her daughter’s face. The hair she braided when Quaritch had gone with the hunters to find food, leaving the village all but empty. Txep’ite had looked at her with so much love that day…
Her chest constricted and her throat tightened. Varang held back a sob. She was so weak. If she were to be killed in this moment, it would have been a mercy, freeing her from this life-long sentence of fragility.
Varang snapped her head towards her mate, ears pinned back, brows forced together in an intense frown.
“Remove it! ‘Aku!”
Quaritch’s smile dropped, and he took the child from Varang’s lap. She curled into his chest as he walked away, frightened by the yelling. She never understood why her mother was so hot and cold. One day, she was holding her close and feeding the child her own portions of food, and the next she would hiss and growl until Quaritch took her away. Txep’ite didn’t see that she only got her mother’s affection when they were alone. She didn’t see anything other than her mother, her world, her kifkey. She didn’t understand it. She never would.
He placed her into the bed and stayed with her until she finally fell asleep, drooling over his hand. For a brief moment, he wondered if Miles did the same at her age, but he shook the thought away as quickly as it entered his mind.
~
Varang muttered to herself angrily on the other end of the yurt, behind a maze of Tekre Lo’a. Quaritch had suggested taking them down at risk of scaring the child, but she was mesmerised by them. He had found her climbing the wooden beams more than once, reaching with sticky hands for their spiked jaws, too small to succeed, but endlessly persistent.
“She just wanted you to have these, y’know,” Quaritch whispered as he sat down beside Varang, rubbing her shoulder with his hand as he emptied his pocket of pebbles. “Spent all afternoon collecting ‘em.”
Varang gazed back at him with glassy, golden, saucer-eyes, lips pursed. She glanced down at the stones in his palm. Beautiful red, blacks, and shards of grey-bone, chipped off over the years, left in the ash. She held her hand over them, testing the trap, before she closed her grasp on the pebbles, drawing them close to her heart.
Quaritch’s brow furrowed as he looked at his mate. He opened his mouth, only to shut it hastily, before a sound could escape.
“You wish to say something, Skyman?” Varang asked delicately, relaxing her face, a sharpened blade hidden behind her soft tone. Quaritch glanced down, sighing. He looked back up at her, meeting her eyes with such human sincerity.
“You… She thinks the world of you, baby. She thinks you put the clouds in the sky. You could be a little… nicer.”
The Tsahìk glared at her mate, brewing a punching retort on her sour tongue.
“You could be a little stronger.”
He bit his tongue. There was no point forcing it with this woman. She couldn’t change her ways. She couldn’t be convinced of anything. If he had nothing to offer her, she had nothing to give. That was how it had always been, and he was senseless for thinking their child would change that.
Quaritch stormed out of their yurt, leaving the beaded curtain singing out in a percussive chorus as they swung. Varang waited until she could no longer hear his footsteps, finally looking at her daughter's gift, free from prying eyes.
She was so clever, despite her size. The pebbles matched Varang’s headdress so perfectly. Her mate wouldn’t have even noticed. He fawned over the child no matter what she did. He did not see how brilliant she truly was, and Varang could not tell him. Varang could not tell anyone. They could not know what she saw.
Every day that child amazed her, and every day, she saw her death in the hands of her daughter. She would make a strong leader some day, but Varang would not get to see it. That was not the way.
But she was so small. She would not kill Varang yet.
She used her knife to cleave thin strips of leather from a worn out bed-stretching, feeding them through the naturally-formed holes in the child’s treasures. Varang worked swiftly, stopping every time she heard feet fluttering beyond the walls of her home. Soon, she held a dozen strips of beaded leather in her hand, which she pressed gently to her lips before climbing the interior structure, resting precariously above her sleeping child.
She tied the strips to the roof frame, glancing down at her daughter, filthy hands in her mouth, a puddle of drool on her chest. She slept like her father. It was… sweet. To see someone you cared for in another.
Txep’ite would not notice her pebbles above the bed. She probably wouldn’t even remember them when she awoke, too busy planning her next big adventure. But Varang would know what they were, and she would stare at them every night as she faded into dreams.
~
When Quaritch returned, his footing looser and his breath a touch smokier, he found his mate curled up around their child, holding her in the crook of her elbow. He found them like this often, but he never saw it occur. Did she embrace her child as she fell asleep every night, or was it innate, something that could only happen when she was unconscious, unable to resist motherly instinct. He curled up around them, pressing soft, herb-scented kisses to each of their cheeks, before falling into his own slumber. For just a few hours, they could be nìsoaia. Family.