Chapter Text
Quaritch wasn't a romantic person, he wasn't someone who was passionate. He wasn't hypocritical enough to say he lived the American dream, with a perfect woman who greeted him at home with a mug of freshly brewed coffee and a satisfied smile, and a son who was a star in American football. No, even his relationship with Paz hadn't been satisfactory for either of them, surrounded by heavy silences and dinners that felt like obligations. Spider was the only reason they hadn't actually separated, the boy needed a father figure, they both recognized how good the other was as a parental figure.
But in the end, she was his wife, and he loved her, even if in his own military and reserved way. Her death devastated him as much as it would devastate any husband.
He had occasional flings after Paz, random girls he'd spend a night with, but he wouldn't remember their names the following week.
He wasn't a bad lover, nor was he selfish, he knew how to treat a woman, heavens, if his distribution of nicknames wasn't any indication.
His current lover was a wild little thing for sure, and she captivated him in a way he hadn't felt since before Paz. A Na'vi relationship wasn't exactly in his plans, but hey, who was he to complain? He'd gained an entire clan at his disposal as long as he kept his lady satisfied and happy. The principle was simple and practical.
Falling in love wasn't part of the plan.
The Tsahik was a dictator, a fighter, and a conqueror. The saying that opposites attract couldn't be more wrong in their case, as they were literally two sides of the same coin. Two leaders who only wanted the best for their people, and didn't care about the means to achieve it. She was enchanting, without a doubt.
Miles found her sexy and extremely endearing in her own way, with her curiosity about his decaying world, its technology, and its customs. Perhaps because she was so far removed from the hippie lifestyle that the Na'vi loved so much, perhaps simply because her home consisted of an arid desert and a charred tree, so the dirty, polluted human world wasn't so different from his daily reality.
He didn't think he loved her, of course, he cared about her, about her safety and well-being, but they were allies, that was common in alliances. But then he found himself lying in a tent made of hides he didn't know what they were, with a Na'vi in his lap and his own body smeared with her body paint from so much rubbing against each other.
And then Tsaheylu.
He had seen Varang use this bond as a method of torture on other Na'vi, he himself had briefly experienced the sensation of being subjugated to her will. It wasn't something fun.
What they did was different, gentle, kind...even vulnerable.
He wasn't completely ignorant of what the act meant at the time, having been told about it by his partner. He agreed to perform it anyway.
Partners for life.
He accepted it so easily that he was surprised by the response, but it was done, and if he thought he could convince himself that it was still something casual and that he was in control, oh boy, how wrong he was.
Because Quaritch was on his knees for her, he adored her, he could feel her heart beating, he understood what every movement of her ears, eyes, and tail meant. He felt as connected to her as his own life, as if she were a part of him. With this small fact, he realized, defeated, that he was in love.
The thought disturbed him, and although Varang's comforting warmth on his body was wonderful, he needed to clear his head and put his thoughts in order. The Mangkwan clan laughed outside, and what the hell? He was sleeping with their leader anyway, he might as well socialize with them a little. So he went outside, drinking a bit with the men and women who had once tried to kill him, but now looked at him with curiosity and respect. He enjoyed the attention and felt good in that environment.
The human Colonel Miles Quaritch would have skinned him alive if he'd seen him there, drinking with those savages who laughed and spoke in a language that wasn't natural to him, even though he understood it.
Recom Miles Quaritch felt... at ease. Comfortable , relaxed, even happy...
He felt the absence of some figure from his past by his side almost immediately, perhaps Lyle , who would have laughed loudly at any joke his general told, but Lyle wasn't there, not among the Mangkwan, he was in his room in the city, where Quaritch should have been. He thought of his former comrades, all dead with arrows in their chests or shots in their backs, good men and women...
His need to have Varang by his side was so great that he stood up before he could even truly reason why.
He found her nearly murdered by the woman who had once killed him with arrows to the chest. Before he could even question what had happened, she was already airborne on her nightwraith , chasing after the traitor's wife whom he so despised. He himself rushed to his Ikran , attempting to mediate the situation that had suddenly descended into chaos.
Jake, rescued.
Spider, gone again.
And his competence was questioned by his superiors.
Quaritch was furious, frustrated, and felt humiliated. As he marched back from the barracks, where he had practically been punished by General Ardmore .
The double doors to his room opened silently, and the sight inside somewhat calmed his blind rage.
Varang had insisted on going with him, but remained in his room, seemingly offended by human ignorance regarding her hierarchy, where she laid on her back on his bed, occupying the space as if it belonged to her by ancient right, as if human rooms, military bases, and narrow metal beds were just another conquered territory.
In her hands she held Miles' communication tablet.
The device seemed small between her long fingers, made for wielding spears, opening throats, or leading warriors into battle. The bluish light from the screen partially illuminated her face, reflecting in her golden eyes with a curious, almost feline glint. Her fingers glided across the smooth glass with methodical slowness, tracing words that were not natural to her, enlarging images, navigating menus, opening maps and files like someone disassembling an unknown object just to understand each piece that composes it.
Quaritch paused at the entrance for a second.
Then he laughed. It wasn't a hearty laugh.
It was that short, nasal sound that escaped his nose when something genuinely amused him. The sight was simply… absurd.
Varang, a woman he had seen tear open an enemy's kuru with the same ease with which another soldier would step on an insect, was lying on his bed, with a tablet like a child fascinated with a new toy.
There was something strangely endearing about it.
Especially considering that the same woman could, if she wanted, rip out someone's entrails and hang them on a branch as a warning.
He entered the room. The door closed behind him with a soft click.
Varang's ears twitched immediately. A slight backward flick, picking up the movement of his bare feet . That was the only sign that she recognized his presence. Her eyes remained fixed on the screen. Fingers slid across the surface again, magnifying the image.
A map.
Geometric lines, digital markers, territories delineated in different colors.
Miles walked slowly around the room, his jaw clenched. The memory of the meeting with Ardmore still simmered in his head.
"If you break this thing," he muttered, "it's going to be a long week of backups."
Varang didn't answer. She ran her finger across the screen again.
The map changed.
Now it was a sequence of aerial images captured by drones, Pandora's forests seen from above, rivers snaking through the vegetation, small dots marking recorded movements.
Her golden eyes narrowed slightly. She wasn't just playing around with it. She was studying it.
Quaritch finally succumbed to the weariness weighing on his shoulders and approached the bed, slowly sitting on the edge of the mattress. The metal frame creaked almost imperceptibly under his weight, and the movement caused the mattress to sink slightly beneath Varang's outstretched body.
She didn't even seem to notice. Or rather, she did notice, of course. He knew it. But her attention remained fixed on the tablet. It was almost hypnotic to watch it.
Her finger slid across the smooth surface again, zooming in on an aerial image of a forested mountain range. The drone's sensors had captured incredible detail: the glint of water between the trees, trails left by animals, tiny thermal marks of movement.
Varang tilted her head a few degrees.
Miles watched that for a moment. Then, almost absentmindedly, he reached out. His fingers found one of those tiny braids that escaped from the larger mass of her hair, a thin strand adorned with small dark beads that gently clinked against each other when he touched them.
He started playing with it, twirling the braid between his fingers.
The gesture was unconscious. A habit he didn't even remember acquiring. But then he stopped. His hand hung suspended in the air for a second.
His eyes were fixed on his own skin. He turned his wrist slightly.
Varang's body paint still covered part of his hand, a deep, blurred white that contrasted with the bluer tone of his skin . In some places the paint had already begun to dry, leaving his skin with that slightly pale, almost whitish appearance.
Miles frowned. Then he looked down.
He was practically naked.
Only the damned Mangkwan loincloth that Varang had insisted he wear still covered anything.
“You are Mangkwan now,” she had said, with that casual authority of someone who saw no room for discussion .
And he had finally given in.
Now the result was right there.
His entire body was covered in paint.
Her white ink spread across his chest, shoulders, ribs, and sides. Some marks were just smudges, others were clear impressions of fingers, hands, lines that had originally been drawn on her skin but had been transferred to him in the heat of an intimacy that neither of them was particularly concerned with keeping organized.
There was even a clear mark across his shoulder where her arm had probably pressed against him.
Miles felt a shiver run down his spine when he realized that.
Not exactly because of the cold.
More for the realization. He let out a low groan and rubbed his face with both hands.
"Ah shit…"
Now it all made sense. That strange silence in the hallway. The stares. The half-smile, poorly disguised, of some soldiers.
And most importantly…The expression on the Ardmore face.
Miles could still remember perfectly. The general stood behind the desk, arms crossed, eyes narrowed, assessing him from head to toe with a very clear mixture of disapproval… and something that seemed dangerously close to scorn.
At the time, he thought it was just irritation over the mission's failure.
Now…
Now he understood. He must have looked like a damn clown.
A nearly three-meter-tall recom, a soldier, with Na'vi tribal paint smeared all over his body and wearing a leather loincloth.
Jesus Christ.
He let out a long, tired sigh.
“Humans don’t use ink” Varang remarked, without taking her eyes off the tablet. It wasn’t a question, more of an observation.
Miles let out a small, tired laugh.
"No. Usually not"
“Strange.” Her finger slid across the screen again. Another aerial image appeared. “You mark territories,” she continued calmly, “you mark machines… you mark weapons…” She tilted her head slightly. “But you don’t mark your own bodies.”
"Some mark their faces" Miles shrugged.
"Not like us"
He didn't had an answer for that. So he simply let the matter drop.
Varang enlarged another image on the tablet.
This time it was an area of denser forest.
She stared at the image in silence for a few seconds.
"How?"
"How what?"
Now she finally turned her head towards him. Her golden eyes gleamed with genuine curiosity. She raised the tablet slightly.
“How do you mark the ground like this?” She touched the image with her finger. “From so high up.” Another touch. “And they send it to this...” She turned the device in her hands, studying the smooth surface as if she still couldn’t believe that something so small could contain all that. “small thing” Her gaze returned to him. “And the world fits inside it.”
Miles let out a small, nasal laugh. He leaned forward slightly, resting his elbows on his thighs.
"That was captured by a drone."
She blinked slowly.
“Drone.” The words sounded harsh in her tongue, rough. He liked how it sounded.
"Small. Pilotless. Full of sensors and cameras." He made a vague gesture with his hand.
"A mechanical spirit." Her eyes narrowed slightly.
Miles laughed, "Something like that."
Varang looked back at the screen, "And she sees everything."
"Almost everything"
"And send it to you"
"Exacly"
Varang ran her finger across the image again, staring at it for a few seconds.
"I'll want some."
Miles raised an eyebrow.
"Some what?"
She raised the tablet slightly.
"Drones" The word still came out harshly in her mouth, as if her tongue was still trying to decide whether to accept that foreign sound “For my people.” She looked at the map again. “To map the lands surrounding the clan's territory.” Her finger traced an imaginary line across the screen. “And to observe enemy territories. To see before we are seen.”
Miles let out a small, nasal laugh. This sounded exactly like something Varang would ask for, nothing like innocent fascination with technology.
She was already thinking about how to turn that into a tactical advantage.
"Of course." The answer came almost automatically. "Whatever you want, sugar" He didn't think twice. He didn't even worry about logistics, authorization, or the fact that Ardmore would probably have an aneurysm if she found out he was promising more military reconnaissance equipment to a Na'vi clan.
His hand moved almost instinctively. It slowly moved up to her face.
His fingers touched the side of her cheek with a surprisingly gentle care for someone like him. Miles began to absentmindedly caress that area just below her eye, where the skin was slightly smoother.
Until something caught his attention. His hand slid down a little further.
His eyes found the mark. A small cut. Nothing profound. But recent.
The skin around her neck was still slightly pink, contrasting with the artificial white of her skin.
Miles was silent for a second. Then he let out a low sigh.
"Son of a..."
He remembered immediately. Ever since Miss Sully had escaped from their tent, everything had turned into chaos. Chase. Screams. Ikrans flying through the air. And then the damned reunion with Ardmore .
He hadn't really stopped to look at Varang closely since then. He hadn't asked what exactly had happened between them.
Now the answer was right there.
Marked on her skin.
He ran his fingers along her neck, feeling the delicate line of the wound beneath the tip of his thumb.
Varang's body tensed immediately, an instinctive reaction. The muscles in her neck tightened. Her ears recoiled an inch. But she didn't pushed his hand away, nor did she try to stop him.
Her golden eyes turned to him again.
Cold. Evaluator.
As if she were measuring exactly what that gesture meant. Miles knew perfectly well what was happening there. That wasn't just any touch. That region was pure vulnerability. In any species. He had already seen Mangkwan warriors react with instant violence when anyone came too close to that area.
But there he was. His fingers slowly gliding over the neck of the most dangerous woman in that damned desert. And she was allowing it. He was perhaps literally the only person on all of Pandora who could do that without losing a hand. Or the head. He ran his thumb over the thin line of the cut again.
His eyebrows furrowed even more.
"She came close"
Varang did not respond immediately. Her eyes remained fixed on his. After a few seconds she spoke.
"Close enough that there won't be a second time."
Miles felt something unpleasant stirring inside his chest. It wasn't exactly anger. Nor fear. It was something more... dark. A line of thought that arose uninvited. A "what if"
What if he hadn't shown up at that time?
What if he had taken a few more minutes?
What if that damned Mrs. Sully had managed to finish what she started?
The image appeared in his mind without him asking for it.
Dark red blood was splattered across the tent floor. That cut... but a deep one. Deep enough to open her throat.
Miles clenched his jaw. His thumb was still on her skin. Feeling her pulse there. Varang narrowed her eyes. It was a small movement, almost imperceptible to anyone not used to observing her closely, but Miles already knew that look. There was a hint of impatience there… perhaps even a slight disapproval.
“Don’t be sentimental” she said, her voice low and firm, laden with that dry tone she always used when she thought someone was complicating something simple.
Miles let out a short, harsh snort through his nose. "Sentimental my ass..."
He let his hand fall from her neck and threw himself sideways onto the bed, his large body settling parallel to hers. The mattress gave way slightly under his weight, and the cold air of the room slid across his skin, still marked by the dried paint splattered across his torso. He turned his head, his face now practically touching hers.
“I’m just saying,” he murmured, “that although I enjoy this… alliance of ours, I’m not ready to say goodbye to you so soon.”
The silence that followed was dense. Varang didn't blink. She simply stared at him. Her golden eyes were still, intense, fixed on his with an almost uncomfortable concentration. Those eyes were a curious thing. In certain lights they seemed simply yellow, like those of any Na'vi. But there, under the artificial, white lamps of Bridgehead , there was something different about them. Something deeper. More vivid. Almost like live embers.
Miles held her gaze for a few seconds. Then five. Then ten.
And for a strange, fleeting instant, he found himself wishing for something impossible: to be able to open her mind as if it were a tactical map. To understand every calculation hidden behind that fixed gaze. To know exactly what was going on in that woman's thoughts. Because Varang was many things, brutal, direct, merciless when necessary, but simple had never been one of them.
She was thinking. Always. Even when she seemed to be just observing.
Then, without warning, she put down the tablet.
The small device was simply dropped beside her on the mattress with a soft thud , discarded with the same nonchalance with which someone would drop a piece of peel after finishing a piece of fruit. It was almost comical to see. Just a few minutes ago she had been completely fascinated by the device, now it seemed to have lost all its value. Because her attention had shifted.
She turned her body around.
The long muscles of her shoulders and back moved as she positioned herself face down. The movement was fluid, predatory in a way. And then she leaned over him. Her head hovered above Miles's, her braids falling slowly around his face like a small curtain of beads, dark strands, and feathers.
He couldn't help the thought that came to his mind. With that feathered headdress rising around her head and that artificial white light illuminating the contours of her face, Varang almost seemed… ethereal. Not in a delicate sense. Not in an angelic sense. It was a different kind of beauty. Raw. Sharp. Almost menacing. Something reminiscent of an ancient entity, the kind that appears in stories of war and rituals, something beautiful and terrifying at the same time. And, in a somewhat bitter, and perhaps somewhat frightening way, he adored it.
Her hands slid down to his face. She cupped both sides with ease, her long fingers encircling his cheeks as she leaned lightly against him. Her golden eyes remained fixed on his. But now… there was something different there. The hardness had softened a little. Not much. Just enough for someone who knew Varang to notice. She leaned in a little closer. Then she planted a quick kiss on his forehead.
It was brief. Almost abrupt. But still… deliberate. Miles didn't even have time to react before she moved again. Because the next instant her teeth closed lightly on his left ear.
“Ow, hey!” He let out a small, muffled groan as her teeth pressed against the sensitive cartilage. It wasn’t strong enough to actually draw blood… but it wasn’t exactly gentle either. His tail automatically tensed behind his body, his muscles reacting to the unexpected stimulus. But despite this, a low laugh escaped his chest. The sound vibrated against his chest, deep and hoarse.
Because that… that was no surprise anymore. Miles had already begun to get used to Varang's particular way of showing affection. She would bite. Then came the rest. Like now. Because in the next instant her teeth parted and her warm tongue passed over the small mark she had left on his ear.
A slow lick. Almost lazy. As if she were simply… correcting the damage she had just caused. Miles let out another small puff of laughter through his nose.
"You really are something special, did you know that, cupcake?"
His tail was still slightly stiff behind his body. But his expression had already relaxed. Because, in some strange way and completely outside of any military logic he had ever followed in his life… this was comfortable.
Biting. Then licking the wound. That was her way.
And he was starting to think he liked it.