The fire hissed and spat as you stirred the pot of viperwolf stew, its acrid smoke stinging your nostrils. The meat—tough, sinewy scraps scavenged from a recent kill—swirled in a broth that smelled more of bitterness than sustenance. You wrinkled your nose, the scent mingling with the damp moss and iron-rich tang of the cave walls around you. This is what survival tastes like now, you thought, gripping the wooden ladle tighter. Your Ikran, perched at the mouth of the cavern, had insisted this was the "finest meal" the forest could offer, her serpentine head tilted in a mix of pity and reproach. She didn't understand. How could she? You hadn't eaten properly in days, your stomach clawing at your ribs, but every bite felt like ash.

Your tail lashed behind you, restless, its once-vibrant stripes now dulled under a layer of grime. You stared at your hands, the ones that had once braided ceremonial beads into your sister's hair, now clawed and shimmering with iridescent scales. They caught the firelight like fractured glass, a grotesque mimicry of the Na'vi's sacred connection to Eywa. The transformation had begun subtly—a patch of skin hardening here, a joint cracking there—but now it crawled across your forearms, your torso, a relentless armor you hadn't asked for. You ran a trembling finger over a scale, half-expecting it to cut you. It didn't. Nothing hurt anymore, not the way it should. Not even the memory of Jake's face when you'd driven the knife into his side.

The cave shuddered as a gust of wind howled outside, carrying with it the distant shriek of a banshee. Or was it a scout's ikran? You froze, ears twitching, straining to parse the sounds of Pandora's night. Both clans and sky-people were hunting you, their reasons as different as their methods. The Na'vi wanted vengeance for Jake, for the betrayal that stained your name like a brand. The RDA... they wanted what you'd become. Their transmissions crackled through the stolen earpiece in your pack: "Asset is unstable. Retrieve alive. Terminate if necessary." You were a relic of their experiments now, a hybrid abomination neither side could tolerate.

The stew bubbled violently, jolting you back. You scooped a portion into a chipped clay bowl, the steam ghosting over your face. Last moon, you reminded yourself. That's when you'd severed the queue, the neural bond to your ikran fraying as you hacked at the tendrils with a rusted blade. She'd screamed—a sound that still echoed in your skull—but you'd had no choice. The changes were spreading, corrupting, and you wouldn't let her drown in your poison. Now, she followed you anyway, her loyalty a mirror of the Na'vi principles you'd abandoned. Or perhaps she stayed for the same reason you did: guilt.

A droplet of stew slid down your wrist, and you watched as the scale beneath absorbed it, the fluid vanishing without a trace. Your stomach turned. What were you becoming? Something that didn't need food, or water, or air? Something that could survive the RDA's bullets and the Na'vi's arrows alike? You thought of Jake again—the way he'd gripped your shoulder that final night, his voice ragged. "You're still my brother. We can fix this." But you'd seen the fear in his eyes, the flicker of instinctive revulsion at your cracked, blue-and-crimson skin. You'd shoved him. Then the knife, the blood, his choked gasp...

Outside, your ikran crooned softly, a sound like wind through hollow reeds. You set the bowl down, uneaten. Let the stew thicken and rot. Let the hunger gnaw. Survival wasn't worth the cost—not anymore. But as you reached for the vibroblade at your hip, a familiar click echoed through the cavern. Human tech. A safety switch.

"Don't move," came a voice, crisp and human, from the shadows. "You're coming with us, freak."

Your lips peeled back in a snarl, revealing teeth that glinted too sharply in the firelight. The RDA had found you first.

SCENEBREAK

The soldier's grip on your horns ground the jagged bone ridges into your skull, his gloves reeking of gun oil and synthetic sweat. "Bring her alive!" he barked, voice crackling through his exopack's filter. Behind him, the AMP suit's hydraulics hissed like a wounded thanator, its pilot leering through the cockpit's reinforced glass. You thrashed, your labored breaths fogging the air—each exhale carried the metallic tang of blood from where your fangs had split your lip.

The machine's hands clamped down, cold ceramosteel fingers digging into the membrane of your wings. You felt the delicate webbing tear, heard the sickening pop of your shoulder joint wrenching free from its socket. A scream ripped from your throat, raw and guttural, as white-hot pain lanced down your spine. Your tail lashed wildly, scattering mud and crushed ferns across the soldier's boots. Run, you'd hissed to your Ikran moments earlier, your throat still raw from the command. She'd keened in reply, her mournful cry echoing through the mist-shrouded canopy before vanishing into the amber dusk. The emptiness where her mind had once brushed yours throbbed like an open wound.

"Heh. Quaritch's gonna love this bitch as his new pet."

You froze. Wainfleet. His voice was a blade twisting in your ribs. Through the haze of agony, you glimpsed his face—the same crooked smirk, now warped by the green glare of his retinal display. Memories flashed: shared rations by a campfire, his laughter as he'd taught you to curse in Sky People slang. Back when your veins hadn't burned with this alien bioluminescence, when your hands hadn't been claws.

The AMP suit jerked you upward, your dislocated arm dangling uselessly. Below, the soldier wiped your indigo blood from his gloves onto his tactical vest. "Careful with the merchandise," he sneered. "Recoms pay extra for intact specimens."

Rain began to fall, sluicing through the mangled undergrowth. Somewhere in the distance, a viperwolf howled—a sound that once would've sent you scrambling for a weapon. Now, you almost envied it. Prey, at least, knew what it was.

The RDA soldier's grip on your horns tightened, his gloves creaking as he barked orders. The metallic stench of the AMP suit's hydraulics filled your nostrils, mixing with the coppery tang of your own blood. Then, like a thunderclap splitting the sky, a ululating war cry echoed through the trees—a sound as sharp and primal as the forest itself. Your ears flicked backward, straining. Na'vi.

An arrow hissed through the air, punching into the AMP suit's visor with a crack. The machine staggered, its grip faltering as sparks rained down. Another arrow followed, this one embedding in the soldier's thigh. He screamed, his voice human and brittle against the jungle's roar. A direhorse burst through the undergrowth, hooves churning mud as it trampled a mercenary, bones crunching like dry twigs beneath its weight.

You collapsed to your knees, wings crumpled behind you like torn sails. Through the haze of pain, you caught the musky scent of woven beads and forest resin—Neytiri. Her obsidian braids swung as she leapt from her mount, bow still humming with the aftermath of the kill. Beside her, Tsu'tey's amber eyes burned with disdain, his lips peeled back in a snarl that showed too-white fangs.

"Up," he growled, yanking your dislocated shoulder with no more care than if you were a sack of roots. Your talons scraped grooves in the soil as you lurched upright, a guttural hiss escaping your throat. Neytiri's gaze flickered to your mangled wings, her nostrils flaring—whether in pity or disgust, you couldn't tell.

"Why—" you rasped, throat raw from screaming.

Neytiri silenced you with a slash of her hand. "Kehe, [no]," she snapped, her voice frayed at the edges. "Questions later. Run now." She hauled you toward the direhorse, its six-legged bulk stamping impatiently. The beast snorted at your alien scent, its bioluminescent stripes flickering like warning lights. You barely had time to grip its sinewy flank before Neytiri vaulted behind you, her thighs clamping tight. The forest blurred into streaks of violet and green as the direhorse surged forward, Tsu'tey's answering war cry fading behind you.

The hidden lab emerged like a wound in the jungle's flesh—a squat, angular dome half-buried under vines, its airlock hissing like a disturbed lezwani. Inside, the sterile glow of human lights clashed with Pandora's natural luminescence. Machines hummed, their cables snaking across the floor like roots. Norm's avatar stood hunched over a console, his humanoid fingers clumsy on the keys, while Grace's hologram flickered above a terminal, her arms crossed.

And then—him.

Jake Sully sat slumped in a Na'vi-made slingchair, his tail twitching in jagged arcs. His stripes had faded, as if the forest itself had begun to erase him. When his eyes met yours, the yellow rings around his pupils contracted—recognition, guilt, something softer.

"Y/N," he breathed, the name catching in his throat like a thorn. His ears flattened, but his hand rose halfway, trembling, before falling to his thigh.

You bared your teeth, the motion pulling at the gash on your cheek. "Sully." The word tasted bitter, a curse and a plea.

Neytiri shoved you onto the medpod, her claws retracted but her touch unyielding. The cold glass bit into your back. "Fì'u tsap'alute sängi," [This will hurt], she warned, slicing through the polymer bonds at your wrists. The sudden rush of blood to your talons sent needles of fire up your arms. Jake flinched as you hissed, his own hands gripping the chair's edges until the wood creaked.

Grace's hologram leaned closer, her brow furrowed. "Vitals are spiking. Sedate her, Norm."

"Don't," Jake snapped, rising abruptly. His tail lashed once, a whipcrack of authority. "She stays awake."

Neytiri's ears flicked backward, but she stepped aside, her gaze locked on Jake. The silence thickened, broken only by the drip of your blood on the floor. Somewhere in the shadows, the jungle whispered, relentless and alive, waiting to swallow you whole again.

You turned to Jake, your scales shimmering faintly under the lab's harsh artificial lights, their blue-red irises narrowing to slits. The air smelled sterile, bitter—human—but beneath it lingered the faint herbal musk of Na'vi remedies. Your tail lashed once, striking the edge of the medical pod behind you, as your voice clawed its way out of your throat, raw and fractured. "Why?" The word was a blade, sharpened by months of guilt. "I killed you."

Jake's Na'vi form seemed both alien and achingly familiar: the slope of his shoulders, the way his ear twitched at the hum of machinery. His tail coiled tight against his leg, a mirror of old tension. He shook his head slowly, the bioluminescent freckles along his cheeks flickering like dim stars. "No," he said, his voice a low rumble, the kind that once steadied warriors before battle. "Neytiri and Mo'at... they saved me. Dug the bullet out, sang to Eywa to keep my spirit tethered." He extended his hand, palm up, fingers calloused but steady. "I know you were just scared. We all were."

You reeled back, hissing. Your fangs gleamed wet and sharp in the sterile light, the thing inside you—the dragon, the rage, the shame—coiling like a serpent in your gut. The lab's fluorescents buzzed, flickering as if recoiling from your snarl. "Don't," you spat, the sound guttural, wrong, even to your own ears. The bonds around your wrists were gone, but your wings still ached, the dislocated shoulder throbbing in time with your pulse. "I don't deserve this. You should've let the RDA take me. Let Quaritch make me his pet."

Your claws dug into your palms, the pain a grounding counterpoint to the storm in your chest. Jake didn't flinch. His eyes—still that impossible human blue, even in this body—held yours, unyielding. Behind him, Grace's avatar hovered near a bank of monitors, her frown etched with pity. Norm's larger frame blocked the exit, as if worried you'd bolt.

"Eywa has left me," you muttered, the admission ash on your tongue. You stared at the floor, where a crack in the plastisteel split the reflection of your face into jagged fragments. The dragon writhed again, that feral, scaleless thing the RDA had carved into your DNA, the experiments that had turned your blood acidic and your bones too light. You were neither Na'vi nor human now. A ghost. A weapon.

Jake's hand didn't waver. "Eywa hasn't left you," he said, softer now. "You just stopped listening."

Neytiri stood in the shadows by the door, her bow slung across her back, ears flattened. She said nothing, but her gaze was a weight—a reminder of the arrow she'd buried in a soldier's skull to free you. Tsu'tey's absence loomed louder than his presence ever had.

The silence stretched, brittle, until Jake's fingers brushed yours—a fleeting touch, warm and alive. You jerked, but didn't pull away. The dragon quieted, just for a heartbeat.

"Stay," Jake said, not a plea, not an order. A truth.

Outside, the jungle groaned, a distant howl of viperwolves chasing prey. Somewhere, your Ikran circled, lost. But here, in this cursed human box, Jake Sully's hand remained open.

You closed your eyes.

The war wasn't over.

But for now, you stayed.