My_lost_hiraeth

Spider was six, which meant the forest was still a playground.

He ran barefoot through the ferns with Kiri and Lo’ak, laughing too loud, tripping on roots, getting back up like nothing could really hurt him yet.

Sunlight slipped through the leaves in broken pieces, warm on his shoulders, cool again when he ducked under low branches. The ground was soft with moss and fallen leaves, springy under bare feet. Someone, probably Lo’ak, threw a seedpod that exploded in a puff of green and blue dust, and Spider squealed and ran through it on purpose.

Kiri had climbed halfway up a thin bendy tree and was sitting there like she belonged to it, legs hooked easily around the trunk. She talked while she climbed, like always, narrating her thoughts out loud.

“If you listen,” she said seriously, palm pressed to the bark, “you can feel it moving. It’s like breathing.”

Lo’ak snorted from below. “It’s a tree, Kiri.”

“It’s still breathing,” she shot back, sticking her tongue out at him.

Neteyam stood nearby, calm and patient, watching both of them like it was his job to keep his siblings. He caught Lo’ak when he tried to climb too fast and nearly slipped, steady hands firm but gentle.

“Slow down,” Neteyam said. “You’re going to fall.”

“I’m not!” Lo’ak protested, immediately slipping anyway.

Spider laughed so hard he almost tripped over a root.

He loved this part. The noise. The movement. The way nobody cared if he was loud or dirty or clumsy. He darted around them, ducking between legs, grabbing a handful of soft seedpods and throwing them into the air so they burst into dust. 

“Spider!” she yelled. “Do it again!”

He did, of course.

Why wouldn’t he?

This was the good kind of tired. The kind where your chest burned a little and your cheeks hurt from smiling. The kind where your brain felt light and floaty and nothing bad could reach you out here.

For a while, Spider forgot about everything else.

Forgot about Hell’s Gate. Forgot about masks and rules and adults watching him. Forgot about being the only one who needed a breathing pack strapped onto him half the time.

Here, he was just another kid running through the trees.

Eventually, slowly, without knowing exactly when, it changed.

It wasn’t anything loud, no sudden shout, no danger.

Spider was catching his breath, bent over with his hands on his knees, when he noticed the way the air felt different just ahead. Quieter. He straightened, brushing dirt off his palms, and followed the feeling with his eyes.

Then he saw Jake and Neytiri.

They were standing a little apart from the children, half-hidden by the trees. Grown-ups always thought they were being quiet when they weren’t. Neytiri’s tail lashed behind her. Jake’s shoulders were stiff in that way Spider had learned meant arguing.

Spider slowed.

His stomach did that weird drop thing.

Neytiri was always mad at him.

Not yelling-mad. Worse. The kind where she looked at him like he was already wrong before he even moved. Like when he’d broken that tablet in Hell’s Gate and the scientists had stared at him, tight mouths, disappointed eyes, before anyone even asked what happened.

That look meant you messed up, even if you didn’t know how.

Spider hugged his arms to his chest. If Neytiri was angry, maybe Jake was in trouble. Jake was nice. Jake smiled at him. Jake never looked at him like that.

He glanced back at the other kids. They were distracted, wrestling over a stick, too busy to notice him slipping away.

So Spider did what he was very good at.

He snuck.

Bare feet, careful, and breathing quietly in the Exo-pack, he crept closer, hiding behind a thick root and a curtain of leaves. He didn’t mean to sneak. Not really. He was just… curious. He just wanted to know if Jake was okay.

Jake’s voice came first. Low. Firm. “He’s a child.”

Neytiri answered sharply, her words fast and angry. Spider didn’t understand everything, grown-up talking was like that, but he caught his name.

Him.

“He should be with his own kind,” The way she said it, like it tasted wrong. “…he is not Na’vi. He has demon blood.”

Spider froze.

The forest didn’t disappear, but it went far away, like when he dove underwater and everything got muffled and strange.

The word hit him slow, like it had to travel a long way to reach him.

Demon blood.

The word felt heavy. Bad. Like something from the scary stories Norm tried not to tell. Like monsters. Like the things you weren’t supposed to let near the home.

Spider looked down at his hands.

Small. Pale. Human.

He turned them over, as if he might see it. The blood. The demon part. It looked the same as always. Veins under the skin. Dirt in the creases from playing.

It’s inside, his six-year-old mind decided, quick and certain. That’s why you can’t see it.

He thought about how different he looked from the others. 

But Kiri’s hands were blue.

Lo’ak’s were blue.

Neteyam’s were blue.

Spider’s chest tightened.

So it’s inside, he thought, very seriously, the way kids do when they land on an idea that explains too much at once. That’s why I don’t match. That’s why she’s mad. That’s why I’m always in trouble.

He pressed his fingers together hard, like he could feel something wrong hiding there. He didn’t feel evil. He didn’t feel like a monster.

But maybe monsters didn’t know they were monsters.

Maybe that was the point.

Jake said something then, Spider caught his name again, heard his tone turn protective, but Spider wasn’t really listening anymore. The word echoed in his head, bouncing around, getting bigger.

Demon blood. Demon blood. Demon blood.

Spider swallowed.

He backed away slowly, carefully, heart pounding, until the voices faded and the forest felt normal again. The kids were still playing, laughing, calling his name like nothing had changed.

Spider put his hands behind his back and ran to them, smiling because that’s what he always did.

No one noticed anything was wrong.

The kids were still laughing.

Kiri ran up to him, grabbing his hand. “Where’d you go?”

Spider smiled automatically. “I was right here,” he said.

And for the rest of the day, he ran and laughed and played like nothing was wrong.

But sometimes, when no one was looking, he glanced down at his hands again.

Just to check.

He was used to being alone.

No one at Hell’s Gate was really his parent.

They all looked after him. When they remembered. when their day wasn’t too full of bigger problems. Spider learned fast how to move around people without being in the way. 

They praised his independence, how he would always charge his own Exo-pack at night, how he would go alone in the kitchen to get snacks, how he would entertain himself alone without bothering them so much.

They praise his strength, how he was a “tough little boy”. When he never cried for the moments he should have… but in those moments, he simply didn’t understand that he could cry 

Freedom was nice. As long as he didn’t bother anyone, he could do whatever he wanted.

But sometimes, quietly, unexpectedly, he felt like something was missing.

He noticed it most in the forest.

Jake and Neytiri wouldn't just stand near their children. They touched them constantly, without thinking. A hand on Kiri’s shoulder as she passed. Fingers brushing Lo’ak’s hair out of his eyes. Neytiri would lean down to murmur something soft into Neteyam’s ear, her forehead resting against his for just a moment.

Spider never interrupted.

He stayed a little to the side, pretending to look at something else, pretending not to watch.

But he always watched.

He watched Jake kneel and cup Kiri’s cheek, thumb warm and steady against her skin. Watched the way Kiri leaned into it without even thinking, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Spider would lift his own hand.

Carefully, like he was copying something fragile, he would press his fingers to his jawline, where his Exo-Pack allowed him to, and try to imagine it wasn’t his own touch, try to imagine warmth that wasn’t self-made, try to imagine what it felt like to belong somewhere so completely that touch just happened.

It didn’t work.

It felt… flat. Empty. 

He would drop  his hand quickly, embarrassed, even though no one was looking.

Sometimes he pretended.

Pretended he was part of it. Pretended that if he stood close enough and mirrored their movements, and if he laughed at the right time, he might blur into the shape of their family.

But pretending always ended when Neytiri glanced at him.

At Hell’s Gate, it was different, but the same.

He sat quietly on crates or against walls, watching the techs work. Hands moving with confidence. Fingers pressing buttons, adjusting wires, tightening bolts, passing tools without looking. He liked hands. He liked watching how much they did without saying anything.

Sometimes they didn’t notice him at all.

Sometimes they smiled and waved him over, let him hold a tool, or explained what they were doing, like it mattered that he understood, and sometimes, too often, they told him to go play somewhere else. Not unkindly. Just… distracted. Busy.

Norm and Max were different.

They always made sure he ate. That he slept. That he washed the mud off his feet and the dirt out from under his nails. They taught him English properly. Na’vi carefully. They corrected him gently. They worried when he disappeared for too long.

They were the closest thing he had to parents.

But they didn’t kiss his forehead.

They didn’t pull him into their chest just because they felt like it. They didn’t stroke his hair when he was quiet. They didn’t touch him softly, gently, the way Jake and Neytiri did with their children.

Spider didn’t resent them for it.

He just noticed.

But after that day out, Spider found a motive why he didn’t feel like the other children did. 

It’s because of my blood.

The word came back to him then. 

Demon.

Maybe that was why touch stopped short with him.

Maybe that was why love looked like something you watched from a distance.

Spider accepted that idea the way children accept gravity, not happily, not angrily. Just as a fact.

And if something was wrong inside him…

Then maybe it made sense that he had to fix it himself.

Back in Hell’s Gate, Spider was on his own again. 

So he crouched, body facing the wall so adults couldn’t see what he was doing, heart pounding, not with fear exactly, but with something like determination. Like when he tried something new and didn’t know if he’d get in trouble.

He looked down at himself, at his skin, his legs. He pressed his thumb hard into his flesh until it turned yellow, just to check.

It was still him.

Still warm.

Still real.

Demon blood, the words echoed.

A thought formed, small, quiet, logical in the way only children’s thoughts are.

If it’s real… I should see it. I need to fix it before I get in trouble.

He knew it was wrong. That’s why he was careful. Quiet. Why he choose a place no one ever looked.

There was no anger in him. No drama.

Just curiosity.

And a need to fix the problem

His thigh was there in front of him, ready to be inspected and to draw away the bad blood from him.

He reached to his side to grab his trusted pocket knife, which was a retractable military knife from the RDA that they allowed him to carry and use for any emergency.

And this was definitely an emergency. 

The blood needed to go out of his body.

He pressed with his thumb and index finger a part of his lap and spread the skin tight,  deciding that was the perfect location.

He didn’t hesitate; his plan was clear in his mind. It had to be done.

The sharp edge instantly broke his young skin apart. At first, it was light; Spider didn’t know what pressure to use.

It still hurt, but there wasn’t enough blood.

He shake slightly, not because he was scared or in pain, but because he was concentrated to go over perfectly the first line. 

His brows here arched and his tongue stocked out of his side in pure concentration.

He was so focused that the pain wasn’t registering. 

He just wanted to see the blood leave his body.

He pressed the right amount because he felt like he popped open a water mashk, and the blood instantly poured out.

He watched his lap cry tears of demon blood out; he instantly felt relief and satisfaction. 

He fixed the problem; the demon was out of him. He could finally be loved and be part of somebody.

He used his loincloth to dab the blood away and clean form were it spilled… the cloth absorbed to much blood that instead of wiping it clean now it smeared more…. 

He tried to clean the best way, the blood that rolled down to his calf, he used spit to wipe it clean. 

When he was done, he sat very still, staring at the cut.

Nothing had changed yet.

Eywa didn’t speak.

Spider wrapped his arms around himself and waited for the strange feeling to go away.

It didn’t.

Later, when Norm asked what he’d been doing so quietly, Spider smiled.

“Nothing,” he said.

He nodded to himself, like he’d passed some kind of test.

Okay.

He moved on.

Spider padded to the small wash station, cut still burning, but he ignored it; he dragged the stool over because he still wasn’t tall enough. The metal was cold, and he flinched a little before turning the water on. He washed his hands carefully, rubbing his palms together the way Norm had shown him.

Clean is good, he thought.

He washed his leg next. He didn’t think about it much, just another thing that needed doing, like wiping mud off after playing outside. When the water was clear again, he shut it off and dried himself with the towel, using too much of it, bunching it up and pressing it wherever he thought it should go.

Then teeth.

Spider climbed onto the stool again, grabbed his toothbrush, and scrubbed hard, making a face at his reflection. Foam dripped down his chin. He wiped it with the back of his hand and laughed quietly, like he always did.

Still him.

Still Spider.

He splashed water on his face next, eyes squeezed shut, droplets running down his nose. When he looked up again, he leaned close to the mirror, inspecting himself seriously.

Same eyes.

Same hair.

Same grin.

Same Spider. 

But better, somehow.

Calmer. Fixed.

Satisfied, he hopped down and padded back to his bed. He climbed up without help, tugged the blanket over himself, and wriggled around until it felt right. He lay there for a moment, staring at the ceiling, fingers curled into the sheet.

Norm and Max didn’t have to worry now.

He’d taken care of it.

He turned onto his side, hugging the pillow, and closed his eyes. Sleep came fast, heavy, and easy, like it always did when he felt he’d done something right.

Much later, the door opened just a little.

Just a habit. Just checking. Norm leaned in, quiet as he could be, eyes going straight to the bed. Spider was already asleep, breathing slow and even, one arm flung over the blanket, hair stuck to his forehead.

Norm watched him for a second longer than usual.

Then he reached in, flicked off the light, and closed the door softly behind him.

Spider slept on, certain, completely certain, that everything was fine now.