𝐄𝐒𝐂𝐀𝐏𝐄 ➻ 𝐓𝐬𝐮'𝐭𝐞𝐲 ✔

[- chapter eighty eight -]

The AMP staggered under the sudden weight on its structure, metal shrieking as something — someone — clung to its upper frame with desperate precision.

Quaritch cursed inside the cockpit, jerking the controls as the suit lurched violently from side to side. "Get off me!" he barked, slamming the machine backward toward a tree in an attempt to crush whatever had landed there.

But the figure held fast, blue hands found purchase along a damaged seam near the cockpit glass — right where Tsu'tey's blade had cracked it earlier. Fingers slick with blood from gashes from what seemed to be a while ago that had reopened, tightened, knuckles paling with strain.

Nate's blurred vision sharpened. Blue skin, hair hanging loose and wild. A body moving through pain like it had long ago stopped asking permission from it.

"Mom—" The name tore out of him, half breath, half disbelief.

She didn't look down.

Her face was streaked with dirt, one shoulder hanging lower than the other where the injury had followed her into this body — not in broken bone, but in memory. The trauma lived in her muscles, even if this body didn't bare the same bruises that her human one did, in the way she favoured one side without thinking. Even here, even stronger, her body carried what had been done to it.

The AMP bucked again and she nearly lost her grip. But she shifted her weight, digging her toes into a seam in the plating, and with her free hand she reached for something.

Tsu'tey's knife, she had found it.

Quaritch finally managed to slam the AMP's back against a thick tree trunk.

The impact rattled the clearing.

Eleanor's memory of an injured shoulder screamed, her grip faltering for a fraction of a second — but she refused to let go, despite her mind screaming at her, she knew it was real in this body.

With a raw, animal snarl trapped behind a ruined throat, she drove the knife down into the cracked cockpit seam.

The reinforced glass fractured further and spiderweb cracks burst outward from the impact point.

Inside, Quaritch's expression shifted from irritation to something sharper.

Recognition.

The AMP's free arm swung upward, trying to reach her, but she moved faster than the heavy hydraulics could compensate. She stabbed again, forcing the blade into the weak point created by earlier damage.

The glass shattered inward, air pressure shifted violently whilst alarms screamed from within the cockpit.

Eleanor ripped the blade free and reached through the broken opening, grabbing hold of the internal frame to steady herself.

Quaritch stared up at her through the fractured canopy, blood already streaking his temple from flying shards.

For a moment, neither of them moved and the forest held its breath.

"You," he said, disbelief threading his voice.

She bared her teeth and her throat convulsed as she attempted to use it.

The sound that emerged was broken — a jagged hiss torn through damaged vocal cords that resisted every attempt to shape air into language. The effort made her entire body tremble.

She forced it anyway.

It scraped out of her like something dragged across stone.

"You... made me small," she rasped, each word costing visible effort. "You thought... that was power."

Her voice was rough, fragmented, but it carried.

"You were wrong."

The final word came out more hiss than syllable, but the meaning was unmistakable.

Quaritch's jaw tightened as he reached for his sidearm inside the cockpit.

She was faster.

With every ounce of strength left in her battered body, Eleanor drove the knife forward — straight through the shattered canopy and into him.

The blade sank deep, she didn't hesitate.

And she definitely didn't look away.

Years of humiliation. Years of control. Years of being told she was less, weaker, breakable. Years of abuse that she had faced in more ways than one.

She twisted the knife.

Quaritch's breath hitched violently.

For a second, the AMP convulsed, systems glitching as its pilot's grip faltered. His hand slipped from the controls. The cannon arm drooped uselessly toward the ground.

She leaned closer, her face inches from his. "You do not own me," she whispered — barely audible, barely formed — but carved from something unbreakable. "And... you never will."

Then she drove the blade deeper.

The AMP powered down in a stuttering cascade of failing hydraulics. Its massive frame dropped to one knee before collapsing sideways into the mud with a thunderous crash.

Eleanor pulled the knife free only long enough to reposition it — then plunged it back into his chest and left it there, buried to the hilt.

A declaration.

Anyone who found him would know, killed by Na'vi.

She released the cockpit frame at last, the strength that had carried her this far gave out all at once.

She slid down the side of the fallen AMP, feet scraping against metal before her knees hit the ground. The forest noise returned gradually — distant insects, settling leaves, Nate's ragged breathing somewhere to her left.

For a moment she simply knelt there, chest rising and falling in uneven pulls, throat burning from the effort of speech.

Tsu'tey was the first to move, he forced himself upright despite the pain and crossed the clearing as quickly as his injured leg allowed.

He reached her just as her balance wavered. "Ma Eleanor," he breathed.

She turned her head slightly at the sound of his voice.

Up close, he could see how hard it had been for her to stand at all — how her muscles trembled from overexertion, how her shoulder sagged with strain even in this stronger body, a less injured one that carried phantom pain, psychologically carried over from her human body.

But her eyes, her eyes were steadier, like a demon had been pulled away from behind them.

Nate staggered to his feet and joined them, staring at the fallen AMP in disbelief. "He's—" Nate couldn't even finish.

Eleanor didn't look back at the body, because she had already given it enough of her life.

Instead, she exhaled slowly — a shaky release that wasn't relief exactly, but something close to it.

The war wasn't over, and the pain certainly wasn't gone.

Her voice was still fractured, fragile, she knew she had eliminated any progress for any time in the recent future where she'd be able to heal her voice again, but she knew she had to spit in his face for a final time.

Because he would never touch her again.

And this time, she had been the one standing at the end.