Chapter Text
The air is free up here.
Cold, sharp, cutting past Neteyam’s braids and over the ridges of his ears, carrying the distant smell of salt and forest. His ikran’s wings, Seze, beat steady beneath him, strong, familiar. Trusted.
Ao’nung laughs behind him, loud and reckless, arms hooked tight around Neteyam’s waist.
“You fly like you’re one with the of the sky,” he shouts over the wind.
Neteyam huffs, the corner of his mouth twitching. “You fly like you want to fall out of it.”
Ao’nung squeezes tighter in response, chin knocking briefly against Neteyam’s shoulder. “You’ll catch me.”
Neteyam taps his arm back but doesn’t reply, because it isn’t a joke to him. It’s a fact.
He shifts his weight, guiding Seze higher, eyes scanning the clouds, the distant glint of metal far below. His fingers rest near the reins, near the bow strapped at his back instinctively.
Then—
The wind feels wrong. Still.
Neteyam has just enough time to say, “Something is wrong.” Before a sharp whistle cuts through the sky. Too fast. Too loud.
Neteyam barely has time to suck in a breath before Seze screeches.
The world tilts violently.
“Hold on—!” Neteyam shouts, but the wind steals the words.
Seze jerks, wing faltering, blood spraying hot across Neteyam’s arm and he feels the pain in her wing as if it was his own. Ao’nung yelps behind him as the sudden drop throws his weight back.
Another crack.
Something slams into Neteyam’s shoulder. Pain flashes white, brief and distant, like a star bursting behind his eyes.
They’re falling.
Neteyam’s hands clamp down instinctively, body moving without thought, thighs locking, core tight as Seze spirals. He stays on because he knows how.
Ao’nung doesn’t.
Neteyam feels it—the shift, the slip, the sudden absence of weight.
“Ao’nung!”
Fingers scrape. Miss.
Ao’nung’s grip tears away as the wind rips him backward, his face flashing into view—wide-eyed, terrified, reaching.
Neteyam screams his name as Ao’nung disappears beneath them.
The forest surges up too fast.
Neteyam slams his hand to the comm at his throat.
“Dad—! We’ve been hit—!” The world spins violently. “We’re going dow—”
Branches explode around them.
The impact is not instantaneous.
Neteyam hits branches hard, dragged through leaves and bark and snapping limbs, his body battered but held together by sheer momentum and muscle memory. Pain blooms everywhere at once, but none of it sticks long enough to register.
Ao’nung hits worse.
Neteyam hears it before he sees it—the sickening, hollow crack of bone against earth.
“Ao’nung!”
Neteyam tears himself free from the reins, stumbling, half-falling toward the sound. Ao’nung lies twisted at the base of a tree, gasping, one arm curled tight to his chest, leg bent wrong.
Blood seeps dark into the soil beneath him.
Neteyam drops to his knees beside him, hands hovering uselessly for half a second.
“Hey—hey, look at me,” he says, voice low, urgent, trying to anchor Ao’nung’s frantic breathing. “You’re here. You’re alive.”
Ao’nung tries to speak and chokes instead, teeth clenched against pain.
Behind them, Seze crashes down hard, wings flaring uselessly. One drags through the dirt, shredded and bleeding. She hisses, a deep, broken sound, positioning her massive body between the forest and the two boys. In pain but knowing she needs to protect them.
Neteyam glances back, chest tightening painfully.
“I know,” he murmurs without realizing he’s speaking. “I know.”
Movement flashes through the trees.
Metal. Voices. Sky People.
Neteyam’s body coils instantly.
He rises in one smooth motion, bow in his hands before his mind catches up. He crouches low, tail lashing, ears flattening as a snarl rips from his chest—sharp, animal, warning.
The first man steps into view.
Neteyam looses the arrow.
It punches clean through the man’s throat.
Another crack rings out—gunfire.
Seze screams again.
Neteyam spins just in time to see the bullet tear into her already damaged wing.
“No!” The sound rips out of him, raw and broken.
She collapses with a thunderous wheeze, massive body shuddering as it curls instinctively toward Ao’nung, shielding him even as her blood pours into the dirt.
“Now you can’t fly,” snarls one of the RDA men.
Something inside Neteyam snaps.
The pain in his leg—sharp, hot—registers for half a heartbeat before he discards it entirely.
He drops the bow and draws his knife.
The forest becomes close. Intimate.
Neteyam moves low and fast, crouched, hissing through his teeth as he lunges from cover. His blade sinks into soft places—throats, ribs, the space beneath armor. He feels impacts, bullets grazing, slicing—but they don’t slow him.
He doesn’t feel the arrow tear through his arm.
Doesn’t feel the blood soaking his side.
All he sees is Ao’nung’s pale face.
All he hears is Seze’s labored breathing.
When there’s a break, just a breath, Neteyam rushes back to them.
Ao’nung is barely conscious.
Neteyam slides an arm under him, lifting carefully despite the way his own leg screams in protest. He hauls Ao’nung up onto Seze’s back, whispering desperately.
“Stay. Stay with me. Please.”
Seze shifts weakly but allows it, turning her head to brush Ao’nung with her snout.
Neteyam swallows hard.
“There’s a cave,” he mutters, more to himself than anyone else. “Just—just a little further.”
He half-drags, half-guides them through the trees, blood slick under his feet, vision narrowing. When the cave finally yawns open before them, he nearly collapses with relief.
He gets them inside. Settles Ao’nung as gently as shaking hands allow. Presses his forehead briefly to Seze’s, breathing hard.
“I’ll protect you,” he promises, voice feral and shaking. “I swear it.”
Then he turns back toward the entrance.
Neteyam plants himself there, blood-soaked, shaking, eyes blazing.
When the Sky People come, they die.
Arrow after arrow until his quiver runs empty. Knife when they get too close. Teeth bared, hissing, snarling, striking like a cornered predator.
By the time footsteps thunder toward him—many, familiar—his body is barely holding together.
Jake’s voice cuts through the ringing in his ears.
“Neteyam!”
Neteyam raises his dagger, not fully seeing who’s in front of him.
The forest around him is silent. Littered.
Ao’nung’s family skids to a halt behind the Sullys, eyes wide at the carnage, at the cave behind him.
At him.
Neteyam sways once.
“Neteyam, it’s alright. It’s just us, baby boy.”
Neteyam recognizes Jake and whispers, “Dad?”
Then finally—only then—he lets himself fall.
Neteyam doesn’t wake up.
Not when hands grab him.
Not when voices shout his name.
Not when his father’s blood-slick fingers press down on wounds that should have killed him.
He drifts in a place where the forest hums low and distant, where pain exists only as pressure—like the memory of being crushed by waves.
When he does surface, it’s to warmth.
Soft. Living.
He growls without meaning to, a broken sound scraping up his throat as his body tenses instinctively, muscles locking like he’s about to spring.
“Easy,” Jake murmurs, close. Too close. “You’re safe. We got you.”
Neteyam’s eyes slit open.
Light filters through leaves overhead. Not the cave. Outside. Home.
His vision swims. Shapes blur into color—blue, darker blue, stripes, beads, feathers. He smells antiseptic paste, blood, smoke.
He tries to sit up.
Agony detonates through his leg.
A sharp sound rips out of him—half snarl, half scream—and suddenly there are hands everywhere again, firm but careful.
“Neteyam,” Neytiri says sharply, voice trembling at the edges. “Do not move.”
His chest heaves. He bares his teeth without realizing it, eyes wild as they flick frantically around.
Ao’nung.
He pushes against the hands holding him. “Where—” His voice cracks, ruined. “Ao’nung.”
Silence drops like a blade.
Then Tonowari steps into view, massive and solemn, eyes shining strangely.
“He lives,” Tonowari says. “Because of you.”
Neteyam freezes.
The words don’t land all at once. They sink in slowly, heavy as wet earth.
“Where,” Neteyam rasps again, softer now. Afraid to hope.
Tonowari gestures.
Neteyam turns his head.
Ao’nung lies on a pallet nearby, chest rising and falling shallowly. One leg wrapped thick with bindings, arm splinted, face pale—but breathing. Alive.
Neteyam’s breath shudders violently.
A sound breaks out of him that he doesn’t recognize at first—low, shaking, torn from deep in his chest. His shoulders curl inward as if he’s trying to fold around something precious.
Ao’nung stirs.
His eyes flutter open, unfocused, then slowly sharpen when they land on Neteyam.
For a second, they just stare at each other.
Then Ao’nung croaks, voice barely there. “You look like shit.”
Neteyam lets out a breath that’s almost a laugh. Almost a sob.
“You fell,” Neteyam says hoarsely, like he needs to say it out loud to make it real. “You fell and I—”
Ao’nung’s fingers twitch weakly, reaching.
Neteyam doesn’t think. He grabs Ao’nung’s hand instantly, clutching like if he lets go Ao’nung will disappear again.
“You didn’t let me die,” Ao’nung says, voice shaking now. “You didn’t let either of us die.”
Neteyam swallows hard, jaw tightening.
Behind them, there’s another presence—heavy, aching.
Seze lies not far away, wings bound, chest rising with difficulty. Its breathing is wet and uneven, but her eye opens when Neteyam looks at her.
She hisses softly.
Neteyam jerks upright, then falls.
He tries to get up again, panic surging. “Seze—”
Jake presses a firm hand to his shoulder. “Easy. She’s alive. Barely. But alive.”
Neteyam exhales a broken sound and sinks back, trembling.
Later—much later—when the camp settles and the adrenaline fades, the weight of everything finally crashes down.
The wounds start to scream.
Every cut, every puncture, every shattered nerve lights up like fire. Neteyam curls instinctively, fingers digging into the mat beneath him, breathing fast and shallow.
Neytiri kneels beside him, hands gentle but unyielding as she cleans dried blood from his skin.
“You did not feel this before,” she says quietly.
Neteyam shakes his head. “Didn’t matter.”
Her hands still.
“It matters now,” she says, voice thick.
Jake watches from across the room, eyes dark and haunted. He’s seen warriors. He’s seen soldiers.
But he’s never seen someone so young stand alone like that.
Tonowari speaks low to Ronal nearby.
“He did not fight like a child,” he says. “He fought like an animal.”
Neteyam hears none of it.
He’s watching Ao’nung sleep.
Still breathing. Still here.
That’s enough.
When sleep finally takes him again, it’s not empty this time.
He dreams of wings beating.
Of hands holding on.
Of falling—and not letting go.