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Neteyam was fifteen the night the Mangkwan ripped him away from his family, from everything he had ever known.
Jake had sent him to investigate a section of the reef near the forested coastline, where unusual human activity had been reported. Aonung had insisted on going with him. He never said it outright, but ever since a human had nearly killed Neteyam during one of their battles, the thought of him heading out on missions like that alone left a knot in his stomach.
Neteyam had nearly died once… And the thought of losing him a second time was something Aonung couldn't bear.
And although the Omatikaya kept insisting that he would be fine, that night, beneath the stars; he eventually let himself be persuaded by the endless kisses Aonung always seemed to have for him. Because as stubborn as Neteyam could be, so convinced that he could handle everything on his own, the Metkayina had a way of breaking through those walls.
He made it clear to him, time and time again, that he didn't have to carry everything alone anymore. Not now that he was in his life. And although Neteyam was still getting used to having someone by his side like that, it was... nice. It felt good not to bear the constant weight on his shoulders all by himself anymore.
Aonung pulled him closer, wrapping his arms around him as their tails intertwined, gently pressing Neteyam against his chest.
“I love you more than anything in this world.” Neteyam leaned back just enough to look at him. His gaze lingered on those pale blue eyes, always getting lost in them, as though they could light up every corner of Aonung's face. “I know I've said this already, but I'll be fine. You don't have to come with me.”
Aonung pursed his lips, a slight frown forming. Neteyam wasn't even finished speaking before he was already shaking his head, unwilling to accept the idea.
“I know you're strong, Neteyam. I really do. Just... let me do this, this once. I love you, and I want to protect you.” he brushed his nose against Neteyam's and pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “I don't want to be far away again if something happens to you.”
Neteyam didn't argue any further. He simply nodded and settled deeper into Aonung's hug, resting his cheek against his chest. The steady rhythm of his heartbeat soothed him instantly, easing the tension from his body.
Aonung leaned back against the nearest rock wall, long since accustomed to its rough surface after spending so many nights in that cave. It was their refuge, the one place where they could be themselves in secret, where they could speak their love openly without fear.
But only for a little while longer.
Once the war against the humans was over, Aonung intended to introduce Neteyam as his mate. The thought alone filled him with so much excitement that sleep became impossible. Instead, he spent most of the night watching Neteyam rest beside him.
He knew he could spend the rest of his life at his side and be happy.
The following day, while they were scouting the area Jake had assigned to the Omatikaya, the Mangkwan emerged from hiding and attacked without warning.
Poisoned arrows rained down on them, and Aonung was the first to go down. The toxin took effect almost immediately, leaving him dazed and unsteady. The ash na'vi seized the opportunity, striking him across the head and sending him to the ground with little effort.
And Neteyam stepped between him and their attackers without hesitation.
He fired arrow after arrow until his quiver was empty, until the last Mangkwan standing before him collapsed lifeless to the ground. Then he looked back, Aonung was barely conscious.
His heart lurched. They needed to get out of there, he had to run. Somehow, he had to get Aonung back to the reef.
But then something struck his neck... a dart.
The world around him immediately began to warp. The voices and laughter of approaching Mangkwan sounded distant, muffled. The last thing he heard was Aonung screaming his name, and then there was only deep and suffocating darkness.
The Mangkwan didn’t kill him.
Varang, the clan's Tsahìk and leader, had noticed him long before that day. And thanks to the information Quaritch had provided, she had finally been given the opportunity she needed to claim him.
He was strong, determined, the kind of person she could shape into exactly what she wanted: a powerful ally forged by her own hand.
She needed him. And, as always, Varang got what she wanted.
He now knelt at her feet, having been delivered there by her disciples. A sharp smile curled at her lips as a surge of satisfaction coursed through her veins.
Ancient rituals were woven together with technology acquired from the humans. Machines stripped away every trace of his memories, erasing the person he had once been. For days, he was kept inside laboratories provided by the RDA, where they worked to turn him into someone else entirely.
His entire life vanished from his mind within a single week. The forest, his mother, his father. Lo'ak, Kiri, Tuk, Spider.
Aonung, his first love.
One by one, they were erased. In their place, they planted a different story.
He was Mangkwan, he had always been Mangkwan. Born among the ash people and raised by Varang herself. She was his real mother, she had trained him, shaped him into the strong warrior he was today: the son of the ashes, the clan's future Olo'eyktan.
They taught him to hate the Great Mother, that loyalty was proven through blood and pain. That no one else would ever come to save him, and that if he wanted to survive, he would have to rely on himself alone.
Miracles didn’t exist.
Aonung, despite everyone's attempts to help him accept his loss, never believed Neteyam was dead.
They searched the site of the attack for weeks. They found blood and his broken bow, but they never found a body. Aonung, somehow, knew Neteyam was still alive somewhere.
And every night, in the cave where they had once shared their love; the Metkayina would carefully hold one of the pendants he had carved himself: a beautiful necklace strung with pearl beads, the one he had planned to give Neteyam the day he would ask him to marry him.
“I'll find you,” he whispered into the silence. “even if I have to search every corner of Pandora.”
He left behind his duties, his clan, even his family. And for the next three years, he wandered farther than he had ever imagined possible, traveling from region to region in search of any trace of the Mangkwan.
He questioned every Na'vi who crossed his path, he threatened humans for information and killed them when they refused to give him the answers he needed. Aonung was convinced they knew something, and their silence only gave him another reason to kill them.
Months blurred into years. Sleepless nights, fresh scars carved across his skin, endless journeys that eventually led him to his first real lead. While infiltrating an RDA facility, he overheard rumors about a warrior fighting alongside Varang and Quaritch... Tall, blue-skinned, golden eyes, his hair worn in braids.
It could have been anyone, but something deep in Aonung's heart told him it was Neteyam.
When the opportunity finally presented itself, Aonung cornered a Mangkwan and offered him a choice: information in exchange for his life. Terrified, the na'vi immediately told him where to find the Mangkwan's main camp.
But Aonung killed him anyway without hesitation. He no longer felt guilt for taking the lives of those people, they were not his brothers, not fellow Na'vi. Only souls who had strayed too far down a path with no return.
Afterward, he stole an RDA uniform and used it to blend in among the ashes, slipping through the dead trees and jagged rock formations that dominated the volcanic landscape the Mangkwan called home.
In the distance, he spotted columns of smoke, blazing fires, and warriors marked with red and black body paint. Like the others, they had coated their blue skin with ash gathered from the volcano itself.
But he was captured before he could get close enough to investigate.
He fought back fiercely, quickly realizing that the Mangkwan carried more than their traditional bows, many wielded human weapons as well. He moved fast and managed to take several of them down. But there were simply too many, one against everyone.
A gunshot to the knee finally brought him down. Pain exploded through his leg, tearing a sharp cry from his throat as he collapsed onto the ash-covered ground. One of the Mangkwan seized him by the kuru and dragged him through the camp without mercy.
His wrists were bound before he was thrown at the feet of their Tsahìk, Varang sat atop a throne crafted entirely from bones. She was tall, with long braided hair, large golden eyes, and a smile so unsettling it sent a chill crawling down Aonung's spine.
And standing beside her, back straight and every inch the warrior, was Neteyam.
Older, taller. Leaner, yet still powerfully built. Scars marked his body, some old, some new. One in particular cut across the bridge of his nose and down part of his cheekbone. A human rifle rested against his shoulder, while a knife hung at his hip beneath the edge of his loincloth.
But none of that shocked Aonung as much as his eyes, those large golden eyes had once been bright and expressive, reflecting every hidden corner of his soul... Now they were cold, empty.
“Neteyam... It's really you.” his lower lip trembled, and for a moment his voice broke. “It's me, Aonung. Do you remember me?”
The young warrior blinked. A look of disgust settled across his face, as though hearing that name alone left a bitter taste in his mouth.
“That name doesn't belong to me.” he said coldly. “Who are you to call me that? I don't even know you.”
Aonung let out a dry, humorless laugh. The whole situation felt absurd and unreal.
“Who am I?” he repeated, swallowing hard. His gaze dropped to the ground for a moment as he searched for the right words. “I knew you before all of this, Neteyam. Before these idiots took everything from you and turned you into someone you're not.”
Neteyam's expression didn't change, he continued staring at him with the same detached coldness.
“See that scar on your knee?” Aonung asked quietly. “You got it while we were training, you slipped and smashed it against a rock in the ocean. You bled so much I thought it'd never stop.”
A faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
“I laughed at you for it.” his voice softened. “But that was the first time I ever saw you cry from pain.”
Neteyam's gaze dropped instinctively to the scar stretching across his knee, it looked like the kind of wound that had once been deep.
“I tried to comfort you afterward,” Aonung continued. “and I apologized for laughing. Then I asked why you had done something so reckless, and you admitted it was because you wanted to impress me.”
The warrior said nothing.
“That was the day I realized we felt the same way about each other... And then we kissed for the first time.”
Neteyam's expression remained cold. It was as if Aonung's words couldn't reach him, no matter how deeply he tried to dig through the ruins of his memories.
And yet, the longer Aonung looked at him, the more he recognized every small detail that made him who he was. The bioluminescent freckles scattered across his nose and forehead, the shape of his lips. Those same hands that had held him so many times before, the same hands that had touched him during the quiet, intimate nights they had shared together.
“We loved each other, Neteyam.” his voice cracked. “I've been looking for you for three years... please. You can't have forgotten everything we went through together.”
“I don't know what you're talking about.”
Neteyam shook his head. But his ears pinned back, and his lips trembled ever so slightly. A crack had formed inside him. And little by little, it was beginning to spread.
“It seems your past has come looking for you, my loyal warrior.” Varang mused from her throne. “Do you recognize him?”
Aonung didn't stop, despite Neteyam's repeated denials.
He told him everything: about who they had once been, about the cave. About the future they had promised to build together, every word they had ever shared. Every I love you whispered without hesitation, over and over again.
“This belongs to you,” Aonung said at last, tilting his chin toward the pendant wrapped around his forearm. The same one he had looked at before leaving Awa'atlu, before abandoning everything for him. “I was going to give it to you when all of this was over, Neteyam.” His voice grew quieter. “I was going to give it to you the day I would ask you to marry me.”
Neteyam's gaze fell to the strand of pearl beads resting against his turquoise skin, dulled beneath layers of volcanic ash.
And then something inside him broke, a sharp pain speared through his skull. Images crashed into him one after another... The ocean, a laugh, warm hands wrapped around his waist. A familiar voice whispering “I love you” against his ear.
He remembered his real mother's face, her voice. Training with his father in the forest. Conversations with his siblings that always dissolved into uncontrollable laughter until their stomachs ached.
The memories came faster and faster. Neteyam staggered, nearly collapsing before one of the Mangkwan warriors caught him by the arm.
“Stop...” he growled, clutching his head with both hands. “Stop talking, you're lying.”
“No, I'm not.” Aonung dragged himself forward, ignoring the arrows and weapons trained on him and the sharp pain shooting through his injured knee. “Look at me...” he pleaded. “Please, I know there's a part of you that still remembers me.”
Something in Neteyam's chest suddenly tightened and the air seemed to vanish from his lungs. He drew in a breath, then another. His heart slammed violently against his ribs, as if it were trying to break free from his chest.
More memories surfaced... And for the first time in years, the certainty he had carried his entire life began to crack.
Voices overlapped inside his head. Aonung's voice, speaking of the love they had once shared. Varang's voice, echoing through the past three years, reminding him where he belonged and who he was supposed to be.
They all spoke at once and the noise was unbearable, all Neteyam could feel was the agonizing pain eating away at his mind. His claws dug deeper into his scalp.
“No... no!” he shouted. “Stop, shut up!”
“Your family is waiting for you, Neteyam!” Aonung cried. “Your mom, your dad. Lo'ak, Spider, Kiri, Tuk... You don't belong here!”
His tail lashed wildly behind him, and the bioluminescence across his skin flickered in erratic bursts. His knees finally gave out, he crashed to the ground with a strangled scream as the flood of memories tore through him all at once. Tears spilled uncontrollably from his eyes, streaming down his cheeks without mercy.
And then, for a second, the fog lifted. The emptiness vanished from his golden eyes and Neteyam looked up at Aonung. A faint smile appeared on his lips.
“Aonung...” he whispered.
His voice was broken, barely audible.
And then Varang spoke.
“Enough.”
The clan leader's voice cut through the tension like a blade. Neteyam froze and the crisis consuming his body vanished as suddenly as it had appeared, as though someone had flipped a switch deep inside him. His breathing steadied, his hands fell away from his head and settled at his sides. The frantic flickering of his bioluminescent freckles ceased and every trace of emotion drained from his face, leaving behind the same cold, unreadable expression as before.
Slowly, he pushed himself up from the ground as if nothing had happened.
By the time he straightened his back, there was nothing left of the young man who had been on the verge of breaking apart. Only the ash warrior remained, the one with the dead eyes.
Varang smiled, satisfied.
“Prove your loyalty,” she ordered. “kill him.”
Neteyam nodded once, without emotion. Still kneeling, Aonung looked up at him with renewed desperation.
“Neteyam, listen to me!” he begged, his voice breaking. “Your name is Neteyam te Suli! These people aren't your family, they're using you!”
Neteyam looked at him as though he were nothing more than a loud, irritating stranger.
“Be quiet.”
His voice was flat and empty. He stepped forward until he stood directly in front of Aonung, ignoring every word that left the Metkayina's mouth. He wasn't listening anymore.
With precise, almost mechanical movements; he unslung the human rifle from his shoulder, raised it and aimed it directly at Aonung's chest. Not a single muscle trembled, there were no tears, no trace of the panic that had shattered him only moments ago.
The only thing left inside him was loyalty. Loyalty to his people, to his new home and his new mother.
Tears streamed down Aonung's face as he accepted his fate. He didn't blame Neteyam, he never would. All he could think about was how deeply he loved him.
“I love you,” he said one last time, his voice trembling. “I’ll always love you no matter what, Neteyam.”
Varang's smile widened.
“Now.”
Varang's command never reached its end when a gunshot cracked through the air. The sound echoed across the wasteland for several long seconds, bouncing off stone and ash.
At the last moment, Aonung squeezed his eyes shut.
Neteyam slowly lowered the rifle and his face revealed nothing, only the emptiness of someone who had carried out an order without question, unconcerned with whether it stained his hands with another person's blood.
The blood of someone who had once loved him unconditionally.
Varang rose from her throne and placed a hand on his shoulder.
“Well done, my warrior.”
Neteyam bowed his head in silent obedience. And while Aonung's body lay motionless on the ash-covered ground, Neteyam had already turned away, ready to return to his place at Varang's side. Prepared to leave behind, forever, the memory of the person he used to be and the love that had once made him feel alive.