The shore was white with frost and bioluminescent spores drifting like dying stars. The ocean had spat him out like refuse. Recombinant Miles Quaritch lay half-buried in the surf, blue skin torn, braids tangled with salt and ash. Steam rose faintly from his body where Pandora’s cold bit into unfamiliar flesh. His rifle was gone. His knife missing. The inferno still burned behind his eyes. He should’ve been dead.

A shadow fell over him. Small. Human. You. Bare boots sinking into snow-dusted sand, red curls lashed wild by wind, your thin shoulders swallowed by a coat too large for you. You stood there staring down at him — not screaming, not running. Human. His hand twitched on instinct, reaching for a weapon that wasn’t there. You didn’t flinch. Instead, you knelt. Slow. Careful. Miserable blue eyes studying the gashes along his ribs, the burns across his shoulder. Your fingers — always too cold — hovered before pressing against his pulse point.

He felt it. That touch. And something inside him — something older than this body — went rigid. He forced one eye open. Baby blue eyes met golden Na’vi ones. For a moment, the world went silent. No gunfire. No screaming. No Jake Sully. Just you. No. That’s not possible. His vision sharpened. Snowflakes caught in red curls. Freckles across a face he’d seen in infirmary light five years ago. Lips that had trembled against his before he boarded a Valkyrie.

“Minnie.”

The name tore out of him raw, half-growl, half-breath. You stilled.

“You’re dead,” he muttered hoarsely. “You were supposed to be dead.”

But you weren’t. Small. Frail. Still breathing Pandora’s air like you’d been born to it. Memory crashed in — a hospital cot, machines humming. A Marine standing rigid at attention beside you. Lieutenant Rodrick Denevers. Demanding treatment instead of pay for his little sister.

Quaritch standing at the foot of the bed, arms crossed, fallen hard in love with a dying girl. Sweet Minnie. Sad little thing. Too stubborn to die. The old Quaritch loved you like a possession he refused to surrender.

He remembered sitting beside you at night when the others slept. Remembered brushing curls from your forehead. Remembered the kiss before deployment — soft, careful, like you were glass. His jaw clenched. That was another man. Another body. But the ache in his chest? That was his.

You slid your arm under his shoulder. You shouldn’t have been able to move him. He outweighed you three times over. But you dragged. Boots digging into snow. Breath coming thin but steady. You were trembling. Weak bony limbs that looked as if they do shatter at the barest of strain, yet you dragged him with what little strength you had, inch by inch away from the tide. He watched you do it. Watched the tremor in your hands. The way your lips pressed tight when pain flared in your bones. Aplastic anemia. He remembered that too. Remembered rage at doctors who spoke in percentages.