⋆ 𖤓Bee⋆˚࿔

It covers her eyes in a film of longing, one that Jake knows squeezes her heart in the tight fist of grief. One that will have him finding her later in the night, when the little ones are claimed by sleep, kneeled under the comforting glow of Vitraya Ramunong.

He will stay with her until memories of old comfort her to a sleepy lull, bully Sa'ata into returning to highcamp without her, and then take her home. Tucked against his chest, whispering sweetness into her hair.

She’d set the soap down, instead, wandering toward the stalls dedicated for adolescents. A shawl for Kiri, necklaces for their sons, two carved Zakru figurines for Tuk-- a mother and her baby.

She’d traded all she’d brought, but looked satisfied in the end. She was happy, smiling-- More than she'd had in a while. A fact that grated at him every moment of every day. A fact that pushed him toward an impossible goal, if only to give her a life she deserved.

Still, Her bow remains slung across her chest, eyes flickering to the skies, ears on a swivel. A vigilance learned from blood. She does so whilst speaking to a rowdy circle of expectant mothers, all eager to receive advice from the Omaticaya’s tsakarem.

And so, in the easiest decision he'd made in a year, immediately turned to ask the elderly mated couple who manned the stall what he’d need to offer to take the whole lot.

They’d laughed, equally tickled, and said three Slotsyal eggs. 

Unfertilized, of course. Let there be no grieving mothers today. The old man mentioning something about how the whites made the smoothest base for paint, of all things, and how the Zeswa were easy to give up their best cheeses when promised a bright color.

Whether or not they'd thought him joking, or judged him for his sudden greed, mattered little. Jake had his price tag.

Then, a few serious whispers to the warriors stationed to guard the caravan, and appointing Tarsem to order them around in his place. A too sweet kiss to his wife's hair, which had the surrounding women titter and coo.

Neytiri had smacked his arm, face purple and pretty, which made him plant another to her cheek, his chest warm and his lips turned up in a smile only she could give him.

In the distraction, he'd whisked her haul into his arms, fixed his poncho atop her own, because it was getting colder by the minute, and disappeared.

--And he'd returned that night, of course, a little whisplashed, with a comically large basket at his hip, the satisfied grin on his face starry and moronic. The look on her face was enough for the callous of his heart to flutter like a boy's, and the kiss she'd given him had made all of their children groan in disgust, damn near ready to bolt to their grandmother's.

It did not take long, though, for him to recieve the absolute talking to of his life when, the following morning, said elderly couple had started poking around, guiltily asking her if he was uninjured, and that they’d throw in some skin oils for the trouble. 

Still, she never used anything else.

“Well–” Norm begins, barely supported by the thick, blast-proof resolve he'd developed over the course of a decade and some change in order to deal with his day-to-day. And still, having sat here and been witness to everything Jake had said, had brought into his lab, he wonders if it is enough.

Norm's eyes flicker up toward his friend, heart in his throat, nausea stirring in his belly.

Spider’s gone. Now surrounded by flighty trigger fingers and people too well-paid to have any sort of moral compass. He’s just a kid.

Spider knows everything.

Norm let’s out a long, suffering breath. Right between clicked teeth.

“Are the kids alright?” He asks, instead, croakily, in a voice that says he already knows the answer.

Jake gives a single, firm shake of his head, no.

“Fuck man…” he trails off, jaw clicking, wanting so badly to get up and move. Scoop up the works and high-tail it to Mo’at’s, deaf to the absolute fit that would cause from both her and Neytiri. At least it’s something he can actually do.

He thinks of little faces that are becoming not so little anymore– faces he’s been there for since Jake had popped out of that tent, hands on his shoulders, eyes so completely and irrevocably changed and said “It’s a boy.”,

— but there are things to figure out. Answers to be given. No one else Jake could, would turn to. So he switches on the part of him that sees the world through data and reason, the part that can help now.

Norm straightens and opts to start simple. Starting with– his eyes flicker to the side–

—their guest.

Eywa and her balance. They take one of yours and you get one in return. He can only hope Spider will give them more hell than she will.

He takes a deep breath, and begins to gather the pieces of the puzzle. Corners and sides first. Options. Options.

“Well, uh, we’re going to have to do work outside in. Vitals, scans, bloodwork, trial of elimination. Maybe even a complete reverse engineer of the attachment.”

Jake grunts, eyes laser-focused behind him. Norm knows he won’t get pushback until Jake’s soaked everything he’s had to say in and has reworked it ten times to Sunday, so he presses on.

He recalls what Jake had called “the brick”. “It does look like something I’ve seen before. Just an altered automated drug delivery system— but one that requires outside permission, on an extremely regular basis…“

He works a lip, bringing up his holo-tab to try and start jotting down notes, but he sets it down, sliding it away, restless.

“Maybe they wanted to have a quick way to control how lucid she was? Especially if she was with SecOps— makes it easier on them, administering-wise. Say it wears off quickly— they could just skip a dose, and she’d burn it out of her system within a certain timeframe.“

Jake gives a sharp nod, “Keep it tight— in case plans change.”

Norm raises a brow, giving a weak, bewildered shrug “They sure changed alright.” he mutters, before he leans forward, elbows on the table, giving himself a second of contemplation.

Jake's eyes are trained behind the man.

She’d fallen asleep.

Had done so after they’d finally gained their bearings, of course, not without being subjected to another horrible round of wailing.

He’d bandage-wrapped Kiri’s shawl around her arm, stuffed it tight with moss, and then rounded up all their pieces and got the hell out of dodge— Everyone tired, confused, and on the way to High Camp with one more person than they’d left with.

Jake notes that it is only when he’d asked Neytiri to start tying her to his back that the Atokirina had vanished into the thicket, leaving them up to the elbow in shit, without so much as a good luck.

They flew low, cautious. Comms off. A tight fit with only three Ikran. A slow weave between the trees with Neytiri leading their position—his wife, the only one of them who knew the forest so well she could make it home blind and deaf if they’d asked her to.

Still, they heard it; A constant needle in the calm they so desperately needed. Tolerable, now—but it sang and sang and sang until the robotic voice had said something new, but unintelligible, through layers of damp green and Mo’at’s finest weavework.

It’d been quiet since.

Now, she’s flat on a diagnostic table— out cold and still gift-wrapped in restraints, but seemingly fine. There’s even a blanket thrown over her, and a threadbare pillow tucked under her nape, like she’s taking a nap.

A nerve in Jake’s forehead twitches.

Norm lets out a breath, pulling him back, “What we need to do is take a sample, and then keep administering whatever it is until the cartridge either runs out, or we can see if this is something she is dependent on or not.”

“Cutting her cold turkey can send her into withdrawal, Jake— especially without knowing how long she’s been on this stuff, or how high the dose is. We'd cause a lot more problems than we’d fix.”

Problems problems problems— Jake nods, absorbing, arms crossed, used to the pile-up. “How long?” he asks, curt.

Norm works his jaw in thought, fingers tapping on the metal of the table between them. “A day? Two?” He squints, and then runs a hand over his face, letting the frustration bleed through.

“I really can’t give you much right now, man. This is, uh, super fucked. You really get into the thick of it, don’t you?” It’s not even exasperation at this point. More of a watered-down, tempered acceptance that this is just how it is.

At that, Jake leans, elbows pressing into the edge of the examination table, a heavy thud that makes it seem like Atlas himself just hunched before him, buckling. Leaving Norm in shadow.

“God, It’s like it looks for me, Norm.” He rasps, pressing the heels of his palms hard against his eye sockets.

Norm thinks it’s the first time since this began that his friend let himself sound upset.

Not angry, not frustrated. Upset. So far from the usual simmering fuse that it might as well be crying— as close as Jake could get to it.

He’s watched him metamorphosize into whatever man the situation called for, month after month, raid after raid— pushing the eastern front further toward Bridgehead. Painstaking, slow. Never truly enough.

—Because it’s just Jake and the Omaticaya against the never-ending hive. An endless amount of bodies and tech on rotation every month, leaving them right back where they started. Over and over again.

And Jake, the stubborn fucking bastard, never let it faze him. He held the line with an iron fist. Took every bad way as a suggestion and then wrangled it in their favor by force. It’s what’s kept everyone alive, fed, and hopeful.

But, now? There is nothing to shoot, nothing to raid, no tracks to derail. He sees the loss for what it is.

Things are about to change, drastically, and Norm can only brace for impact, and try his hand at damage control.

—but sympathy never really did it for Jake, ever, so Norm holds it in, tight and bound, and presses forward.

“…And you're sure about it being—?”

“Quaritch.” He spits, involuntary, bitter, teeth set to gnash. A surge that Norm swears he can feel in the air.

God, Quaritch. Ain’t that a name you never want to hear again? And he has Spider. God. What the fuck.

“Yeah.”

A pause, then, weighted. Then, “It’s him.” he says quietly, and that’s that.

—Because that train of thought is for later tonight, when everyone is tucked in bed, and Jake can mutter to himself in the dark: When he can plan how he’s going to dodge a manhunt when he’s ten steps behind the game and there’s more unknown variables than solutions. Thoughts spool and flicker, mulling.

A full body sigh. “They’re pulling out all the stops, Jake. Things Max and I and the team have only worked with in theory. If what you’re saying is true, then they might’ve succeeded in a full transfer of the human consciousness. A recombination. Not a host body.”

Jake stares a hole into the wall, fingers twitching in phantom impulse, thoughts racing a million miles a minute. Now that the shock has left, the debris is starting to settle, hard and wrong.

Jake exhales, “This is fucked.”

Norm nods, sightlessly waving toward the body, “I mean, that’s just going off initial observations. I don’t think she’s an Avatar Jake, otherwise they could just shove her in a link-bed whenever they needed a pilot and then take her out.” Norm shakes his head. I need to call Dr. Cortez. He murmurs, scratching his temple.

Jake squints, “We don’t have any intel, Norm. Nothin’. We need a reason. Why would they keep one of their own tied n’ drugged in the back of a helo, begging a native for help?” Begging his boys. His good, sweet boys who would never abandon someone in need. Because you taught them that, didn't you? Taught them to be better, and now—

“She could’ve defected. Maybe they caught her out there.” Norm counters.

“This deep in the flux?” Jake raises a brow.

“Maybe the shack was a secondary location.”

Jake nods, trying to accept at least crumbs of a theory. Trying to let it settle. Trying not to think what if this is all part of some long-strung, fucked up web of events specifically plotted to take them all out. Details lost to them, keeping them blind, confused. No limits. No budget. A thousand minds against theirs.

Norm nudges the conversation forward, right into the sensitive bits.

“Jake, a full transfer of the consciousness via data? That’s gotta be Yottabytes. An entire life compressed into what? A chip? Every single thought, every single memory—even the ones you don’t remember?"

Jake’s eyes sharpen, lips parting in a silent, sudden thought. Norm gives him a look, as if to say, out with it.

He wets his lips, face scrunched in concentration, “Maybe it’s someone important. Knows something and didn’t wanna sing.”

Norm hums, brows scrunched. “What, lugging her around like some kind of living flash drive?” Norm asks, incredulous, parsing through the thought with nimble hands. “Bringing back stronger, intelligent, obedient muscle, I get. They have to find a way to move around Pandora outside of base— but anyone else? I mean, diplomatic relations are a no-go, and what kind of intel can’t be stored on a computer? Why bring back the person?”

“Data a computer can’t make sense of…?” Jake asks himself, quiet and drums his fingers against the table. Then, he stills.

“Wouldn’t that be…everything? I mean, how can you search for a memory?” Jake says, genuinely curious– but for Norm, the question nudges a piece in place and it clicks.

His eyes widen, tugging on the single hair of a lead and letting it unravel between them. A frizzed pile. Ugly, but something.

“Yeah yeah. A conscious mind could be the search engine. The filter. You can have the self, stored, but with no way to pull up what you need because a computer has no context, no connection to piece it together and hand it to you–“

He points at Jake, “—if what they need is extremely specific and abstract.”

The satisfaction the realization brings is short-lived. Instead, a sour, bitter taste fills the scientist's mouth.

“It’d also be easier, cheaper, for the situation to just have the person. Not a team of decrypters working round the clock to find something they aren't even a hundred percent on.”

Norm halts, abruptly, and roughly puts his hand on Jake’s forearm, gripping tight. Jake’s eyes meet his, already steeled, anticipating.

“Jake, they get their hands on someone at the heart of this, or the people we love? That’s… the things they could do to them. The luxury of death is now thrown out the fucking window, Jake. We’re sitting ducks in a mine field as it is– and Spider! Spider. This—Max and I have to work this out quick—

—send it over to the resistance base in the West—

—they’re running on fumes, but they got a good team of heads—“

Norm’s words are low, frantic, and Jake closes his eyes, letting it soak in.

Jake shoves down the urge to start screaming.

It feels like a knife to the gut, a stone in his heart. Nausea pools and threatens. He feels fear, sharp and ugly. Disgust, making him want to bare his teeth and snarl.

It is then, inbetween the microseconds afforded in the onslaught, a seed of an idea is planted. One that he dare not speak aloud. One that he tucks away and saves for later. Birthed from that ancient, instinctual knowing that they are not safe. His family, is in danger.

Run.

In the end, they make plans for a plan.

It’s nothing. Sparse, thin, fragile fibers on a rickety spindle. Coming together to create a thread that will snap, should they grow frantic. Still, it is something, and it ends up as their stranger needing to stay here, in the lab, until they work out what's her deal.

A lab with vulnerable people. Humans, Avatars that are too quick to turn their back, and, for most, whose nearest weapon of choice is a ballpoint pen.

“Hey.” Jake calls, right when Norm starts getting ready to dive headfirst. He’s already moving things around, screens coming to life, a flutter of energy that matches the speed of his mind and the severity of what lurks on the horizon.

“Mh?” He responds, brow pinched, almost surprised he’s still here.

Jake tilts his head, serious. “You okay with doin’ this?”

Norm scoffs, irritated, and waves him away. “Yes. Now get out before you keel over. I don’t even wanna ask when’s the last time you drank water.”

Jake blinks at the shift, frowning. “Spellman.”

“Doctor Spellman. Now shoo, go home.” He snarks, and then pauses, moving to stick his hand in a drawer.

Whatever he grabs, he throws it at Jake, who catches it with one hand. Frowning when he is met with the memory-inducing crinkle of a nutrition slurry. He blinks, and looks up.

Norm stares back, unamused, and points. “Eat that.”

Jake clicks his tongue, subdued, but still concerned, “And you’ll tell me if–”

“Anything happens, yes, Jake—and before you start —I know how to use a gun, and I have also fought in a war. Am, fighting. Thank you. Now go away.”

Jake stares, and Norm meets him head-on— a silent assurance, and a trust that only living through hell together brings.

Jake thinks that if he had to look for someone to call brother again, it wouldn’t be a hard find.

“…Tell Mutxuk and the brats I said hi.”

Norm snaps on a pair of gloves. “Yeah, and that Uncle Tsyeyk is bringing Tuk over to play.” He huffs, rolling his eyes, but dead serious. “Popiti keeps asking.”

Jake walks out of the airlock, and immediately sees his son try and skulk around the bend of a hut.

“Boy.”

Lo’ak freezes.

There is a moment where both of them just stare at each other, the air already prickling with anticipation. The dread of the inevitable clash.

Eventually, it is Jake who budges.

“You see your grandmother already?”

Lo’ak turns slow, ears twitching, posture adjusted to hide the guilty sway of his tail.

“…yes?”

Jake closes his eyes, a pressure building, that familiar ball of frustration— of the need to correct, because learning fast is a necessity in war, and what kind of father would he be if he’d let his babies be out there on their bellies, ready for slaughter.

Things could have turned out different, today, if you’dve taught them better.

It builds and builds. Giving him the bends. Ready to implode. His head hurts. His body hurts. Everything hurts.

—and he is so fucking tired. His fuel gauge far past empty. He lets it overtake. The ease of worry, the relief of sweetness.

The pelt of duty falls to the ground and stays there, too heavy to lift.

He makes a weak, almost defeated gesture, “Lo’ak, baby, you’re filthy.” The endearment slips out easily, surprising even Jake, who can’t help but cringe at how much his boy looks like he’s been through the wringer. Calves caked in mud, riding leathers ruined, god knows what in his hair— he can see scrapes on his knees—

From when they forced him to kneel, gun to his head.

Jake’s jaw twitches.

His son blinks, looking down at himself, not even bothering to hide the embarrassed curl of his tail. He grows a searing purple.

“Sir?”

“C’mere.” He walks, feels his joints ache with each step. He places a hand between his shoulder blades, steering him through the bustle of High Camp.

There’s yet to be an official explanation— just a curt assurance that nobody is dying, and a promise of a later discussion.

And his people, his clan, so desensitized to whatever ridiculousness life tends to throw at them, still mourning the dead from the recent raid— relent, and only offer mutters of well wishes and looks of concern, all of which he waves off.

Still, along the way, some of the elder women, ones who find it very easy to ignore their Olo’eyktan and his stubbornness, shove small jars of ointment into his hands. Jake stuffs them into his waist pouch, unwilling to fight a losing battle, and both Sullys offer thank yous that are deemed sufficient enough to allow their release.

In the end, the walk is short, but heavy. He parts the flaps of their Kelku and steers his son inside.

“Dad, I’m s–”

“Hold this.” He presses the nutrition packet into Lo’ak’s hands, and grips his chin, turning his head side to side, gentle, but firm. Searching.

It begins as clinical reflex, checking the neck, the spine, his ears, pupil dilation— but when he digs his fingers through his braids, parting his scalp for any signs of the familiar sticky flow of a head wound, he feels the tension in his boy fade.

He works his throat at the feeling of him leaning into the touch, eyes closed.

Jake slows, staring at the crown of his boy’s head, trying to remember the last time he was soft with him.

Nothing.

The moment morphs. His fingers, now beginning to work on the instinct of a father, and not a general, grow comforting. A silent devolvement. Even in his minute affections, he listens hard for any involuntary yips of pain.

He still finishes up the checks, but it isn't lost on him that behind his son’s closed eyes, there is a lingering rigidity and a thin line between his brows.

Jake presses a thumb over it, smoothing it out until the stubborn muscles relent. Lo’ak’s eyes flutter open, and he’s staring at him like he’s a stranger.

Jake’s heart, all scar tissue, squeezes hard.

He takes him by the shoulders, steering him toward a recently filled water basin– courtesy of whoever saw the state of them and decided to save the family the trouble, and parks him right next to it. Lo’ak, completely silent, lets him.

“It’s gonna be cold.” He says, quiet, grabbing a spare cloth and dunking to let it soak in.

“Wait. I–”

He wrings it out and starts to wipe.

It is both calming and the most irritating thing he’s ever done. He watches the muck and blood slough off, meanwhile, the events that put the stuff there linger at the forefront of his mind.

—A muzzle against his son’s head, his kuru, so sacred, pulled tight like a leash. His baby girls, pushed to their knees, knives to their throats.

His wiping turns light when he arrives to his son’s knees. They’re banged up good. He pats, dried iron that makes Jake rethink the idea that the sight of blood doesn’t bother him anymore.

He lets out an illegible Tam Tam when he begins to hear poorly concealed hisses of pain.

“You’re okay boy, you’re okay…”

It’s automatic, when he reaches for the Paysyul. Crushing the flowers in his hand and pressing them to Lo’ak’s skin— letting the oily, meager bubbles that give a moderate clean in a pinch, wash away the evidence.

—and Neteyam, his sweet boy, having to go through the irreversible change. Jake knows he will never be the same— the natural, equal exchange. The taking of life equals the taking of yours, just different.

“Ma sempul?”

He blinks, and then looks down at his son, cleaner, but still flecked with things that’ll only really get out with an intense scrub down. He sighs, wrings out the cloth in the bucket, throws it over his shoulder, and turns to dump it into the drainage groove.

Lo’ak looks scared. Uncomfortable.

Jake doesn’t know what to do with that.

His hand reaches into his waist pouch. There is the gentle clicking of clay pots before he produces one— untying the mesh covering to reveal the strong scent of a common healing balm. Jake always thought it smelled like Vicks on acid. Works like hell on shallow cuts.

He swipes a finger through it, jellied and yellow, and begins to tap it onto the now clean wounds.

“Agh—“

Lo’ak twitches, and Jake wraps a heavy hand right above the knee he’s working on, letting the pressure steer the focus away from the sting.

“You’re alright.”

Soon, both are covered. He taps quickly on anything that catches his eye, and then he stands, rinsing himself of jellied fingers, popping the ointment back into his pouch.

“— Ngaru lu fpom srak?”

Jake blinks, and then nods, “Yeah, babe, just a lot on my mind s’ all.” he says, and then, he tugs the boy to his chest, placing a wide hand at the base of his kuru, comforting.

—like when he was young and had too many emotions in too little of a body, and he needed his daddy to ground him. Love on him.

What the fuck happened.

“Today was scary, huh?” Jake asks, soft and faraway, eyes focused anywhere but that look. He wants it gone, buried with what had happened at that stupid shack. But he knows, clear and cutting, that that’s not the sole reason why it's there.

Reckoning with that takes a strength Jake does not have– and he will have to muster it, someday, even if it takes the last of what he can give.

“…yeah.” Lo’ak shrugs, voice muffled and too nonchalant to not be forced. Then, it changes, morphing into a concern that shouldn’t be there, that he’s too young to harbor. Jake clocks it immediately.

“What about…” –The girl, Jake already knows where his mind is. Sweet boy. He hears his son swallow, trying to find the words.

—The image of her body, tied and eerily still, bathed in cool fluorescents, flashes into his mind. He feels the itch to check already. Take the short trek to Norm’s and peer through a window. His fingers flex.

In the end, he hums, rough, “We’ll talk about it.”

Lo’ak’s tail coils, ears perking, a swell of indignance he’s felt in the air since his son had opened his eyes the first time and Jake saw himself.

“But—!“

“Later, son.”

Lo’ak raises his head, face purple, and meets his eyes, looking like it physically pains him to not say more.

So Jake tucks his son’s face back into safety, resisting the urge to start rocking back and forth. He gives him a tight squeeze, instead– soothing the discontent– as if he tried hard enough, he could absorb it and add it to his own– just so his boy can breathe.

“Where’s everyone?” He asks, after a moment, when he feels Lo’ak’s muscles begin to slacken.

“Still with Grandmother.” He mumbles, and Jake feels his lashes flutter against the skin of his chest.

Jake runs a hand through his son's braids, which he knows Neytiri will end up redoing— he’s pretty sure it’s missing some beads. “Good. We…you should go there too, bud.”

For a moment, Jake feels Lo’ak press further into him, and it’s almost impossible to fight the urge to just take it back. Let him stay here, right under his hand, where he can see him. Safe.

Nowhere is safe, Jake.

But he knows that Lo’ak is just like him, a hider, and there are other scrapes and bruising and pains that can only be fixed by someone who knows what they're doing—Not him.

“C’mon.” He murmurs, slowly peeling him from his body, feeling all too much like exposing a flesh wound.

At the parting, he turns heel, ducking to reach for the half-full basket of freshly ripened Yovo fruit he’d foraged for a week ago.

Jake sniffs, and then, “Here.” He presses it into Lo’ak’s arms— who can only blink at him in response, tail swishing, feet shifting.

“Bring this with you. Make everyone eat at least one, okay? You’re all starving. It’ll hold you off until dinner.”

“Yes sir.”

Jake pauses, and then nods.

“Right. Let’s go.”

He goes to move, and Lo’ak stops him, a loose hand around his wrist, basket shifted under his arm.

He pauses and looks down, only to find his son tucking the silver, crinkly bag back into his hand. A soft, oh, almost leaves his lips— but Lo’ak is already out the door, flaps swaying behind him.

Jake stares after him for too long.

Then, he carelessly rips the top off and squeezes. It’s gray, disgusting sludge right down the hatch with detached efficiency. It flows into his insides and maps out the hollowness, just to remind him that it’s there.

“—ey Jake?”

Norm’s voice crackles into his ear, a jagged tear to the end of his lunch.

Jake takes a moment, letting the empty pouch wrinkle under the pressure of his fist. The resulting sound was sharp and ugly— a contrast to the lull of their makeshift Kelutral. He swallows.

Then, he raises two fingers against the sides of his comm. The acrid remnants of the slurry coat the insides of his throat. The resulting cough does nothing to rid him of it.

“What’s goin’ on?” He grunts, moving, already a foot out the door.

“You’re AB negative, right? Our friend is too. Need a baggie, just in case, if you’re up to it.”

“Yeah.” He says, weaving through the throng, “On the way.”

Lo’ak, under the precise but doting fingers of his grandmother, begins to question why he couldn't stop being such a pussy and drag his father along with him.

Maybe Dad hit his head or something. Lo’ak frets, flitting through the entire ordeal of his father washing him down—as if he were a little boy. Holding him, speaking softly. Tapping Paywll jelly onto his wounds.

Shoving fruit into his hands.

And he clung back, like a baby.

He should tell mom.

His eyes flicker to her. She’s pressed against his side, smothering, already prodding at his braids with a finger.

When he’d stepped in, basket in hand, washed and prepped, there was no tongue-lashing that awaited him.

Instead, his mother had nodded, beckoned him closer, and had begun to pick up where his father left off. She’s kissed his forehead no less than once every minute or so, and as much as he wants so desperately to act his age, the twitching of his ears says otherwise.

“Your father was with NormSpellman, yes?” She asks, barely a whisper in his ear.

He nods, almost caught out. “Yes mama.”

She hums in acknowledgement, eyes far, and then plucks a loose bead from his head.

“I will do your hair tomorrow, parultsyìp.”

“Mama.”

“Hush.” Another kiss, then, she’s turning away, a flutter of nerves, dutifully doing another re-check of her other children’s wrappings, leaving him to sit hot-faced.

Time goes quickly when he’s in his head. Soon, Mo’at is already tying the last knot, rubbing at his ears, and pulling him into a tight hug. Mumbling a prayer into his neck.

“Irayo, ma Eywa—fpi ngal srung sämi oeyä ayitranit.”

Then, she’s telling them to sit tight, dragging their mother out of the hut with whispered threats, and the Sully children are finally left to themselves.

His siblings are already hovering behind him, knees jutting into his back, itching at their wrappings. They all smell of bitter herbs and sweet soap, and still, Lo’ak finds comfort in letting it fill his lungs, letting it wash away the sharp, ugly, metallic bite that clung to him before his father had washed it away.

“So?” Kiri starts, expectant.

“So what?” He grumbles, throwing a look over his shoulder, already annoyed. His knee begins to bounce. He wants to both lean into them and shove them away– but he knows none will make it easier to gather his thoughts. They run around and trip and tumble off the edge and into each other, watering the growing frustration.

“What did they say?” She says, urging, already impatient, like it’s obvious where he’s been— ear pressed up against the side window of one of Norm’s metal huts, where the glass is thinnest. The lab he’d slunk to when his mother’s back was turned, speaking intensely with their stricken grandmother. Still, up to no good.

He tries not to think about how Spider would have been with him, head to elbow, on his tippy-toes, eyebrows raised like a moron.

“We need to know.” Neteyam cuts in, firm, sharp. “It is our responsibility. We brought her here, Lo’ak.”

Lo’ak, almost caught off guard that Neteyam isn’t already tugging at his ear, relents “Okay, okay.” He says, shoulders hiking, “I was gonna’ tell you, chill.” he huffs.

Then– “Did you take a bath?” Neteyam asks, blinking, sudden and surprised.

His face purples. Tail thumping, almost hitting the bowls still laid out around them. “Yes, now shut up.” – and Neteyam does, to his credit.

For a moment, Lo’ak squirms, stomach churning. Then he turns, scooting himself around to face the lot.

—And Tuk, sandwiched between the two, is rubbing at her eyes, looking like she’s fighting the urge to pass out. She got the worst of it—- slathered in god knows what, wrapped from head to toe. He softens, already grabbing at her, tsk-ing at the stubborn little idiot. She crawls into his hold, and he tucks her head under his chin, already beginning to rub her back, but still careful not to disturb his grandmother’s work.

“Sleep now, Tuk.” He urges, stern, brows furrowed. Lo’ak may be many, many unsavory things– but he knows this is a conversation he does not want her to hear. Inside of him, an aversion grows. A pressing need to preserve the Tuk that grew up in a large Kelku with many toys, and spent her days getting her feet wet in the nearby streams. Who laughs, has no fear.

“Nu-uh.” she whines–pitchy enough to make her siblings’ ears fold. Tuk is smart enough to see the trap for what it is, and she begins to try to wiggle out of his hold.

Neteyam and Kiri immediately take a foot each in hand and begin to massage. Tuk stills, but her face is still scrunched and stubborn. Fists balled.

“C’mon, Tuk.” Lo’ak pleads, “Neteyam will tell you a story, kay? How about that?” He looks to his brother and gives him a pointed look, only to receive an incredulous blink back.

Kiri is nodding, nudging Neteyam with her elbow, thumb working expertly into Tuk’s sole. “Yes, one of dad’s– your favorite one.” Tuk brightens, head lifting from his chest.

“Really?”

“Yes. Now close your eyes.” Lo’ak swipes a hand over Tuk’s face, and sends a prayer to Eywa when she listens. She cuddles further into his hold, pressing her face into the crook of his arm. Her easy silence is a pressing sign to continue, quickly.

They look at Neteyam.

“Oh. Uh. Yes.” He scoots closer, schooling his voice into something sweet, and Lo’ak puts much concentration into his back-rubbing pattern.

“One day, on 'Rrta, there was a small girl. Very small, with coily, large hair the color of a tsawksyul. One who loved to wander around places she should not–”

Her breathing evens out and– yeah, she’s gone.

“You did not even get to the part about the bowls of soup.” Kiri grumbles. Neteyam breathes a sigh of relief.

Then, they’re huddled in on each other, still soothing a now passed-out Tuk. A tight circle, less their audience of none hear them. Still, Neteyam keeps his ears on a swivel, eyes flickering to the entrance often.

“She’s staying with Norm n’ the others for now, and…that really was Spider’s dad.” He starts, and at the mention of the boy, they all sink into a sullen quiet, until Neteyam quirks his chin, urging him to continue. His face is serious, contemplative.

“Well, Spider’s dad is an asshole,” Kiri mutters, lashes fluttering in that way that tells her brothers of frustrated tears that refuse to fall. Neteyam presses his shoulder to hers, letting his skin give comfort.

“We will get him back, Tsmuke.” Neteyam assures, voice soft and strong in that way that makes you feel like he’s telling you the truth. Lo’ak does not know how he does that. Makes it better. It seems all Lo’ak knows how to do is make it worse.

“They’re gonna figure out what’s wrong with her– run tests or some shit.” Lo’ak continues, blinking away that nagging feeling of guilt. Of his stupid ass deciding to press that button on the Uniltíron’s body the first time– but she isn’t a dreamwalker. Norm said as much. Something called a re– recom…?

“But…she’s– she’s like dad.” He settles with, and the two perk up, a million questions already behind their eyes.

“Huh?” Kiri blurts, leaning forward, halting her foot massaging. Neteyam forgoes it altogether. Crossing his arms and tilting his head. A heavy brow. Simmering.

“She doesn’t get into that machine that the Avatars do. She’s like dad– except she didn’t pass through Vitraya Ramunong. She was…made. With her spirit already inside.” He explains the best he can. He might be the best at speaking Taw’tute, but most of what Norm said made Lo’ak’s eyes begin to blur around the edges, and Norm talked a lot. “All of them were.”

Kiri’s face contorts, a knot beginning to form in her chest. “This does not sound good.”

“No, it’s not, because that means they can just take people’s souls, and use them over and over again.”

“Pxasìk! They would deny their dead their right to rest?“ Kiri whispers, voice raspy and appalled, echoing what they are all thinking. The room turns cold.

This is a greater evil than they had thought.

It is inevitable, then, to begin to rethink all of the times they had been given vague, ominous reminders about the limits the Sky People so lacked. It is startling to see how their imaginations had lacked. Held so far back from the way their parents had dutifully protected their ignorance– up until a year ago, when stars turned to ships, turned to fire, and, as it always follows with them, turned to death.

Their parents had left that night with the most disgusting smiles on their faces, holding each other close, kissing. Lo’ak had thought it the worst thing he’d seen, at the time. He’d gagged at least once, he’s sure.

It is different, now. They are all different. And sometimes Lo’ak longs for things so great it is better to forget they ever existed.

The ever-looming shadow morphs and swells. It speaks of horrors that can even overcome death itself. Escape Oma. Lo’ak stills in his petting of Tuk’s braids, feeling the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

These people have Spider.

“Then that is who she is? Someone who has died, or has given their soul?” Neteyam questions, fingers pinching his chin, looking so very intense, it makes Lo’ak even more uneasy. He continues his questions, each more pressing. “Does father know her? Norm?”

Lo’ak shakes his head. “No— they kept trying to decide who she is, but couldn’t.”

“And Tuk will play with Popiti soon.” He adds, completely irrelevant, shoulders slumped. They look at him strangely, and then wave him off.

“Okay, and then what?”

Lo’ak’s ears flatten, chin already tilted to the side.

“You were caught?” Kiri hisses, all too knowing of her brother’s specific brand of pouting. Her tail thumps behind her. “Is father upset?”

Neteyam is already pinching the bridge of his nose, pressing hard. “Lo’ak.”

“He’s not!” Lo’ak gripes, loud, indignant, and irritated. At their shushing, a hot flash of possessiveness fills him. The instinct to protect the small moment he had with his father is so strong, it shocks him.

He forces his hackles down, embarrassed.

“He just told me to clean up.” He mumbles, and Neteyam immediately raises a brow.

“That’s all.” Lo’ak huffs.

“Okay.” Kiri rolls her eyes, “Hurray, you kept your skin.”

After that, the mood dwindles even further into nothing, and everyone seems to soak in it, without choice. Chewing at their lips, lines of thought with no clear end. Tuk’s soft snores fill the gaps, and Lo’ak continues to rock her.

Then, Lo’ak’s eyes land on the still full basket right at his hip.

The Yovo fruit.

“Fuck.” He leans over, panicked, grabbing and tossing them at his siblings haphazardly, “Eat this–”

The fruit does not, unfortunately, land in their hands.

“Wh–! Skxawng!”

“Lo’ak.”

“Eat it! Now!” Lo’ak takes his own, peeling it so quickly that juice begins to dribble onto Tuk’s hair. He does not notice, too busy stuffing ripped-out pieces into his cheeks.

The resulting swallow hurts, but he’s already tossing the empty skin back into the basket, reaching for another.

They stare, one that, if to be described by anyone who was not shoveling fruit into their face, would be resigned to the acceptance that they will, in fact, have to deal with him for the rest of their lives.

Neteyam’s resulting sigh rivals any one Na’vi many, many years his senior could make— but he is nothing if not a dutiful brother. So, he begins to peel. Neatly.

Kiri grabs hers, the one that had hit her in the face, and tosses it into her eldest brother’s lap. He takes it without question, letting her gather Tuk— lest she wake up with more seeds than braids in her hair.

“Lo’ak! Stop that. You will choke!”

By the time he sees his children next, they’re huddled in mom’s hut, shoulders slumped and eyes heavy. Cleaner and half-mummified with herb wraps— of which he knows are not all necessary.

He finds little issue with it.

His ankle grazes the now-empty basket, sans the weirdly ripped up peels. He catches his youngest son’s eyes. He sends him a pleased nod, of which he returns, mouth stained a dark purple, flat and so very serious.

He presses a brief, warm hand over each of his children’s heads, and then relieves Kiri from Tuk’s deadweight. Gathers her into his arms and tucks her face, drool and all, into the crook of his neck. He presses a kiss to her squishy cheek, humming at the swell of relief of having a one baby snug in his arms.

“Fill their bellies, and then take them to bed, Ma’itan.” Mo’at had said, right before he’d swept in, a hand on his arm, voice low and somber. “And let your mind ease. Children recover well— with rest. “

Jake had dipped his head, “I will, mother.” His face hot with shame.

Mo’at, though, had had none of it. She’d cupped his cheek and gave him a look– one that had always reminded him of where Neytiri had got it from.

“You and my daughter are truly evenly matched, especially in this.” If the situation were not so dire, Jake knew it would have sounded jesting. Instead, it lands firm.

“Your mind. Ease it. Tam tam.”

–Then, she’d let go, and turned to usher her grandchildren out with a particular softness he has never once seen her use with anyone else.

Eclipse swathes High Camp, dim. The lamp bladders are lit low, and the ritualistic decompression begins. Families reconvene, lovers slip into deeper fissures, restless teenagers fletch baskets of arrows during bouts of gossip.

–and the Sullys skulk through the rivers of tents like a living, slow, irritated bruise. Following along their father’s heels instead of actually using the precious energy to look at their surroundings, they bump into each other more than once, but none can spare anything more than a disgruntled huff.

And Neytiri– who, earlier, had been threatened by her mother in every sort of way– Returns bathed and redressed. Courtesy of her mother nearly drowning her in the communal pools by the scruff of her neck. She slips into the Kelku behind them, quiet, lips in a flat line.

At her appearance, the irritating buzz at the base of his neck finally begins to quell. A heavy, full basket rests at her hip, balanced out by the bulk of kindling strapped to her opposite shoulder.

And Jake balks, already rushing over to help her, adjusting Tuk into a single arm.

She dismisses him with a silent, quick step-around, shucking everything by the fire-pit with a dull thud. His eyes follow her, brow pinched.

Then, once everyone under the age of thirty collapses onto the nearest passably soft surface, Neytiri, having unpacked her swathe of things, begins to cook dinner.

Jake’s hackles rise, his ears pinning. He has to physically stop himself from laying Tuk down in the middle of the room and taking over. However, before he can even begin to protest, her eyes meet his.

He feels it, deep, right where their bond is strongest. The part of him he never knew existed until he’d met her, but has always been there, waiting. Her efficient, practiced movements serve as a leash to the writhing from within. A necessity in the presence of those who look to them for guidance. Those who should be able to cling freely, without her buckling. Strong heart. Even when you don’t feel it, especially when.

He dips his head, low. An unspoken apology. The urge now replaced with the sudden, intense need to wrap her in an embrace. His fingers flex.

The sharp crack of flint makes his ears ring. The pile of teen bodies does not move, but their tails twitch in surprise. It stirs Tuk as well, whose little head rises from his shoulder with slow, sleepy blinks. Another crack, and then a hiss of displeasure from Neytiri when the sparks fizzle out too quick.

“Daddy?” Tuk asks, fist rubbing against an eye. The wrapping on her wrist begins to loosen with her moving, and he adjusts it with an efficient tug, smoothing it down flat.

He gives her the best smile he can muster. Close-mouthed and lopsided as it is, the one she gives in return is sluggish and sweet. He swipes away the drying trail of drool with his thumb.

“Hey, baby girl, you feelin’ a little better?”

She nods, stretching in his hold, yawning. Then, the sudden, soft orange glow of their now-lit fire pit sends the Kelku into the familiar, end-of-day wash.

“Did you get hurt, too, daddy?” She asks, soft and concerned. There is a second of confusion, before Tuk begins to run a finger along the edge of a comically tiny strip of medical tape, holding a cotton ball flush against the crook of his arm.

He shakes his head, “Daddy’s fine baby, s’ nothin.” he assures – plucking the tape between two fingers, and tossing it into the wicker basket they use for scraps.

His words, though, are so far from the truth that they must have landed flat– or at least they do to Neytiri, whose ears twitch, her fingers momentarily pausing where they have begun laying meat on the flat rock of their cooking slab.

The truth is that Jake has yet to even check. It is hard to differentiate between pains when there is so much of it. Constantly. Jake is of the philosophy that– if he can walk, and he can shoot, then he’s right as rain– Right, Marine?

Right, Marine?

Tuk responds with a tiny m’kay, and then lays her head on his chest, content where she is, beginning to trace the weaving of his choker. It’s something that all of his kids did when he held them throughout the years. Inevitable, since he never took the thing off.

Her fingers press against the center river stone– one of three.

“Why did you choose these ones dad?” Neteyam had whispered, so tiny and curious, then. He tugs at the braided necklace, body smushed flush against his own– alongside the rest of his family, who are treating him like a mattress– and enjoying it too, telling by the snores.

They were the only two still awake, and the comfortable silence had prompted small, sweet stories between a father and his eldest son, who, as of today, was now as tall as his hip.

Jesus, who’d let that happen?

He hums, the rumble making his son press closer, enjoying the comfort. “When I was still learnin’ how to hunt, I said somethin’ that pissed your mother off so bad that she threw a handful of rocks at me.” He flashes a toothy smile, sappy and fond. “I pocketed a few and carried them around for a while. Found good use for them, though, when she started teaching me how to weave.”

He glances toward his boy, who stares at him, rapt. Jake frowns. “Matter a fact– she threw something at me then, too.” Neteyam giggles, loud, and then slaps a hand over his mouth, eyes flickering to check if he’d woken anyone.

Jake sighs, endeared, tucking the boy's face into his shoulder. “I should’a kept whatever it was. Then I’d have two necklaces.”

“Better than one.”

“Yup.”

“...But you would have too much jewelry if you did that with everything Sa’nu threw at you.”

“Mh. And I’d wear ‘em all.” He says, almost too pleased at the thought. He scritches between his son’s braids, and then presses a kiss to his temple. “ ‘N don’t go giving me such good ideas, boy. C’mon. Bedtime.”

“Oeyä nìsoaia.” At their mother’s voice, the children rise. Their exhaustion slowing them, but not so much so that they forget their respect. They all but crawl toward the room’s center, dragging themselves into a cross-legged sit, hunched over like they’re well into a midnight bender.

Jake drags Tuk and himself to sit next to his mate, letting his shoulder press against hers. Now, in the proximity of her mom, it’s magnetic. Tuk peels herself from his hold, and begins to crawl into her lap, who takes her youngest easily with a whispered coo.

Jake presses a hand to the small of her back, just to feel her. The reaction, though invisible to anyone but him, is immediate. The air around her, buzzing, dulls into a gentler wave. She exhales, soft, eyes flickering to him. He nods, wanting nothing more in this moment than to make Tsaheylu. It would be so easy to connect– to sit next to each other, and eat with their children, and let the strength of their love soothe the impossible.

“We will eat, and then, we will rest.” she says, her words law– but gentle. In a way that wraps around you, soothing you from within. At that, she pushes the large platter of Salted Yerik forward with her fingers, wood scraping softly between them, and the reaction is almost instantaneous.

They grab. Faces stuffed before they themselves can register. Groans of relief fill their Kelku, and the children seem to forget they are even of this world, with how intensely focused they are on licking the grease from their fingers.

–and Neytiri? Who would scold them any other day for such a display, can only allow herself to thank the Great Mother that they are alive and well enough to do such a thing.

She nods, the first true swell of warmth of this long, arduous day filling her chest. She looks to her Jake, who is now quiet in the way he gets when his mind is very heavy, whose soul reaches out with a desperation that matches her own. Their bond, though unlinked, begins to call to each other’s halves.

He takes a piece of Yerik, only to rip it in two and press it into their youngest’s mouth, who, at the taste, begins to hum. Jake takes another piece, tearing it again.

She looks away, and continues, “And when everyone wakes, we will eat again, and wash. Then, and only then, will we speak of what has happened today. Together.” Her eyes dart around the circle of faces. Some of whom have frozen mid-chew.

“All of it.”

Neteyam, seeming to remember himself, swallows. He straightens, and then inclines his head. “Yes, mother.” He pauses, his face growing purple.

“And Ah—Thank you, as well, for this meal. It is…” his eyes dart down, seeing the very much diminished serving. “Was, very good.”

The others, caught out, begin vigorously nodding. Fully abandoning the responsibility of speaking to their older brother in favor of soothing the ache in their stomachs.

“Go on, Ma’itan.” She says, quickly softening, when Neteyam hesitates to continue. At his mother’s encouragement, he does, albeit slower, restrained. He pretends to chew slow, letting the younger bellies stuff themselves to burst.

And that’s that.

“Here baby.” Neytiri hears, low and just for her. She turns her head, and her teeth part when Jake presses a piece of Yerik into her mouth. She chews, dutiful, and does not have the heart to tell him that she is so very nauseous. That anything, be it the finest cuts of 'angtsìk or the ripest of Yovo, will sit wrongly, and will make her sleep restless, should she get any at all.

Still, it begins to soothe the pains of hunger she’d have ignored otherwise.

So, her husband sits, feeding her and their daughter until one is slumped over and the other is turning her chin, feeling too full for comfort. Eventually, their children slink into their hammocks– not without her beckoning them over for a kiss each, her fingers pulling and prodding at their wraps one last time.

Try as they might to seem unaffected, the tightness in all their shoulders loosen when her lips press against their cheeks. Her youngest boy, who has brought it upon himself to stew in an unnecessary guilt, wraps his arms around her in a sudden, but fleeting hug.

She can only just manage to wiggle one arm from beneath Tuk’s body to hold him back before he’s pulling away, his heavy gait leading him into what Neytiri knows to be one of the greatest comforts to a troubled heart, sleep. Still, it takes all of her quickly draining strength to not tug him into her lap. To demand all of them remain in her arms until all that remained of the Taw’tute were ash– lost to Eywa’s winds. Only a horror story, told in whispers during the night.

She stares openly at her children. Even when their snonivi envelop them whole and no longer sway with their adjustments for comfort. She drinks in the sight with greed.

Distress hits her with the force of a fall from Ayram Alusing.

Her greatest loves, who have known nothing but joy and peace from their conception, whose souls are pure and good and worthy only of sweetness–

–whose they have scrambled to shelter, as much as they could, from the great ugliness particular to the Taw’tute. Of an evil so horrendous, that it is unfathomable to those who have been untouched by their particular insanity. Her children, thrust, forced to the feet of a demon– under hands and eyes of vrr’tep that had no right to touch, to look upon, to defile their innocence.

To no fault of their own. No. This is their forest. Their home. Their birthright.

Had her mother not covered them in wrappings, and she’d have to look upon the nicks and scrapes inflicted upon their smooth skin, she would have taken up arms and returned to that wretched place. Reduced their remains to something not even Eywa’s creatures could feast upon– saving their stomachs the ache– and disallowing the demons’ souls, if they had any, to taint Eywa’eveng any further.

Many were killed. She thinks, with great satisfaction. Subdued by the fact that not all had been, and not him.

The undying creature. Quaritch. The one she knows is destined to fall to her arrow once more. She would craft a bundle and save them for him. Yes. Seeped in a poison that equals the potency of her loathing.

“I’ll take her,” Jake whispers, gathering Tuktirey from her arms. Neytiri has enough of a mind to kiss her goodnight, too– right on her still brow. She lets her go, her daughter taking all the warmth with her. She almost wants to ask for her back, so she can lose herself in the steady beat of her heart. Proof of life.

Neytiri watches her mate press her gently to bed, and her face falls. Her hands, now empty, yearn for the weight of her bow. To grab her husband and steal him away into the night– to find where they rest, where they think they are safe, only to have their throats slit by her hand. A knife of her people’s make. Choking on their own, dirty, rotten blood. Her children, tucked away, dreaming sweetly, never to be harmed again.

A fantasy, she knows. Should anything ever be so easy, they would have won the war with fervor alone.

In the lull, something swells. Naked. Free to be shown, now that there is no one awake who relies on the unwavering strength of a parent. It roils, makes her whisper a prayer between her grit teeth, eyes fluttering to a close.

When her Jake returns to her, he sits behind. Quiet. She does not doubt that he is aware of her affliction, her anger, her fear. Nor does she doubt that he mirrors her in it, too. But he has always been one to soothe pains, not share– and even if she admires the might of his roots, great enough to weather almost any storm– she does not think he has to, nor should.

And though she adores his fire, for it matches her own, Neytiri has proven that, over years, time and time again, that his vulnerability is something she prefers. Loves. Will hold with a gentleness he had not been privy to before her, not to be wielded against him like a weapon.

Another thing to mourn, she thinks, suddenly, his smile, his laugh– how long has it been since I’ve heard my husband laugh?

His presence is a balm, soothing the worst of it, but not all–for it is so much that only the great mother could handle the brunt of it, she is sure. Again, the base of her kuru pulses, demanding, greedy for comfort, for the envelopment of love and assurance. She almost turns, then, to ask, but–

“Gah–!” she chokes, stomach dropping like a stone. She turns to him, but cannot fully, as he grips her shoulders in alarm, keeping her in place, already whispering questions of concern. Her eyes are wide, ears pinned to her head, tail beginning to sway.

“You did not eat.” She fights the hiss that builds. The frustration that mounts. It bleeds through anyway, a flash of pain in her already sore, dry throat. She tries to shake away, to rise and dig through their preserves to find something to fill him–

—she is engulfed.

Arms, large and strong, press her to his chest. It is almost too much, too quick. His heat reminds her of the sun. Of fire used not to raze– but to feed, to fend, to soothe.

A pressure behind her eyes builds. “Jake.”

He hushes her, placing a firm, aching kiss to her hair.

“You hurtin’?” He asks, quiet. Mindful of the sleeping, littler bodies not so far away. His ears flicker, noting the slow rise and fall of their breaths.

She looks away, eyes to the floor. He doesn’t abandon her to her shame, though. Instead, holding her chin between his fingers, pushing her head back until it rests against his shoulder. At this angle, their eyes finally meet, and she feels stripped bare at how he looks, and sees.

Her breath catches.

“Yeah, I know you are, angel.” his voice is so soft, so gentle. The hand that had cupped her face moves to rest on her clavicle, grounding, letting himself feel the way her flesh refuses to give. He fixes her fair, tucking the stray braids behind her flickering ears. Adjusting her Kuru so it sits comfortably over his shoulder, brushing against his own. He feels the pump of her heart, and he knows his own is of the same rhythm.

Jake’s mind catalogues all he’s found within the time she’d served dinner to now. Each a mirror pain to his own flesh, tenfold. A scrape on her elbow, another on the base of her spine. Scabbing nicks peppered across her back, dug in from puckered, hard bark. She has a nasty bruise, already a deep purple, on the side of her thigh. His hand automatically reaches for it, palm flat, pressing warmth and love into her skin.

His teeth clench– his anger hot and broiling, but useless when he is a husband first.

By the firelight, Jake holds his whole world in his arms; He rubs that same Paywll jelly into her wounds until its all used up; Smooths his hand over her hair and heart until her breathing levels out, well into the night; Works a thumb over the crease in her brow when she begins to dream of things Jake longs to rid her of.

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҂ AUTHOR’S BRAIN WORMS ⫿ 

Lo’ak: *Experiences a sliver of affection from his father, who is too much of a mess to keep up the misguided front he puts up in order to keep his children safe* Oh god he has head trauma Norm: *Sees Jake show that he’s acc a person with feelings* God we’re all gonna fuckin die arent we Jake: god i SUCK. i should get SHOT Also, yall think Neytiri’s Salted Yerik is bussin like that or? 🤔

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҂ TAGLIST ⫿ @retired-lady-knight | @zzpotatoessszazll | @hot15936 | @tweakerbitc98 | @mavieesttriste16 | @tawa321 | @saltedcoffeescotch | @persesphonestears | @minnyer | @b1tchinauniform | @idkimjustbere | @cloud1bliss | @chaotichurricaneoffandoms | @seawavesss | @pitypinkabyss | @snawblade | @miniaturemartian | @meth0 | @trlalelotralala | @sueamoluakta2022 | @dumpster-heroin | @karacaroldanvers | @flover4ever | @marvlelover25 |

This is the first line from a very different draft in 2023-

Six years after one brother is funneled into an urn, the other becomes a war criminal.

It was born from this ravenous hunger I have for Sully Fam content. There is a severe lack of gen fics of them. Like, seriously, I need a 500k of them just existing. James Cameron release the 10-hour cut of each movie now or I'll hide in your walls.

Not just within interactions with the reader, but between themselves! Jake and Neytiri, them and their children, the kids amongst each other-- which will all funnel down into very rich, hopefully realistic interactions with the reader. I want the integration to feel as natural as possible, and really keep your suspension of disbelief.

And! To kind of create that very slow, arduous, insane process of integrating into an alien world and its culture. The scenarios it would create send me into orbit. Learning Na'vi, adapting to their beliefs and lifestyle, all the while coming to terms with the fact that you are out of time, out of body, out of world-- you are literally helpless. No knowledge of how to fend for yourself AT ALL.

And how the Sullys react to you! When it gets to that point where Jake discovers that you are his sister and the absolute mayhem of that aftermath, everything changes. Not only does Jake have to take care and make decisions for the clan, the resistance, and his family-- but his very vulnerable sister who he basically has to teach how to survive. Everything is chaos, and you all have to cling to each other to make way. Hijinks ensue.

The way you're going to be THE auntie. You don't play abt them kids.

Also, god, the relationship dynamic between you and Neytiri is something I am so excited to write. Genuinely. Especially because even if Jake can teach you the ropes, it's Neytiri who taught him, and nothing is better than the source. Sisterhood means so much to me, and therefore I'm going to write so much about the Sully women idgaf 😭Them creating her songcord.!!! (I just learned its called Waytelem, purr.) Neytiri teaching you how to cook!!! Neytiri teaching you how to shoot a bow!!! Neytiri there for your first Na'vi period HA!!!! (Which, If I recall, happens only a few times a year?) Them just having small talk and creating the sweetest bond ever while Jake gets sappy spying around the corner. There are so many brain worms I have for this, which, if ever, I might break up into side pieces just to fill the ache, since we're so early into the story.

I've been an Avatar fan since I was like, 10. This was bound to happen at some point. It's written in my future. I'm so avatar-pilled HELP ORJMNOJNTRJO

Again, thank you so much for the love! It really gets me all giddy n silly knowing people care <3 LOVE UUU ANON

The alien bellows into the thicket, sending a flock of birds fleeing. It garners a laugh from the tatted-up, blue woman with a tail and an AR— a sight so bizarre, that it is only cushioned by the cool flush of its barrel against her temple, not digging in, but relaxed in a way that is nonchalant, unbothered.

That makes it worse. It makes her feel disposable, like garbage. Like cattle, drawn and quartered and minced without precision.

Her parts have been chopped and scattered to the wind. Her soul, drifting from an unteathered line. Her body, a calcified shell. Her flesh, both tender and numb, still working out what to feel when there is no reference. No blueprint to follow. Nothing to link where, to what, to how.

—and so, she defaults. Allows herself the fleeting comfort of surrender when no other choices present themselves. Perhaps in another life, one that was known and lived, she would have fought for the right of breath— but now? When all seems lost to the hole, blown through the middle of all that she is? The little meat that remains begins to inch toward one another in a desperation to preserve, even if they are mismatched. A silent process not known, but pulled from how ever many millions of years of biological scripture.

Still, even encased in the safety of paralysis, when the choice to fight or flee is impossible, the world bleeds through.

Green. Dense. Varied. When has there ever been so much of it? Never. Something tells her so. Screams it at her with bitterness and melancholy. There is more than she can see, vision reduced to a pinhole as it is.

Her mind grasps at fleeting tendrils of memories to supplement the events that follow. Some, she manages to brush against, barely. Most, she overshoots, or lets tumble into the dark, the possibility of their recovery unknown.

But this realization is rooted in something ancient, too. Her body tells her as much in the way it finds comfort in something she knows she has never been in the midst of. Seen, maybe, through a lie of red, blue, and green pixels from a time long lost.

Her eyes, once slitted in an attempt to quell the pain of so much light, widen. Not truly seeing, not yet— but clinging. Like a baby to its mother, wailing to have its distress soothed.

“It’s come to our attention that you had yourself a little loose-end back home—"

Her heart beats, weak, unpracticed.

"—Well, we did'ja the mighty kind favor of tyin’ it for you!”

Suddenly, there is a five fingered vice on the base of her neck, rattling her like bait on a line, searing. Her pieces flop and shudder— but, somehow, the strength of it forces air into the empty sacks of her lungs.

The breath of life.

It is the purest thing that’s ever filled her, surely. The thought feels so right that it must be true. So strange and scary in its goodness that she feels like she’s going to choke on it.

Then, a hand on her jaw, brusing, personal, twisting pliant flesh to-and-fro, her face puckered “You know this face!” Smug, assured. “An' we saved you a trip and brought it all the way to hell, jus' for you!”

A beat.

"C'mon now! Don't be a stranger!"

Her ears ring, still so sensitive.

"Y'know, me, I'd hate to ruin a pretty face! Seems like you took all the ugly with you, Corporal. Wonder if she gets all this from her mama!"

Another—

The alien— alien! An alien!—peels back with a bone-deep sigh, gesturing to another— another? How many are there? Too many— “Cross this one off the list.” voice gritty from strain. Weary. Tired. Annoyed.

The pattern will only be realized later. Now, she is manhandled into arms that are the first to hold her in years. They are large and rigid and carry her with an impersonal clinicality that she feels familiar with.

She has not the mind to hate herself for enjoying the comfort of a stranger's flesh. It is warm, and she is so very cold. She molds against them with a softness that makes the chest beneath her ear grumble in discontent.

She is hefted and strapped into the back of a helicopter, of all things— or the shapes and sounds of one— Whose whirring brings only pain to newborn ears, drowning out a cacophony of curt, aggressive conversation. Restraints purple and cut into untouched skin. It gets hard to breathe.

Then, she is in the sky.

So overwhelming in it's existence that it pierces through her stupor and forces recognition of its beauty. Blue. Purple. White. Clear. Clouds. Birds! Flocking and dotting and swooping. A green sea, as far as her eye can stomach. A million sounds that strain under the whoop whoop whoop-ing of a rotor blade. She’s flying. Jake, Tommy, I’m flying! Look! Look!—

“Prick her.”

A pinch on her arm, and her hard earned clarity sloughs off. Again, she is encased— will be, until the basest parts of her, and then some, are solidified enough to not be washed away with each re-run. Slowly, painfully, she builds upon herself until she knows her name, what her storage unit should look like, what classes she's taking—

—that she is so far from home. Could tell even if she were been blind and deaf. It's a matter of a single inhale and just enough cells in her brain. It is the first time in her life that she has left New York— but she remains inbetween the precipice of sanity, and has yet to categorize anything as real.

The dream is long.

For hours, she is cargo. Brought out, shoved down, picked up, and strapped in. The more it happens, the more she is convinced this is a strange form of purgatory. They fly, they land, the man does his spiel, and when the forest fails to respond, the scene repeats.

More than once, a rustle, raised guns, only for a strange silhouette to slink past, the wrong one, if the mounting frustration that begins to buzz throughout the air they share tells her anything. They hold her tighter, shake her harder, knock her about enough that she begins to feel it, the ache, even between arm pinches.

They call to Sully, Sully— But the last Sully is already here, kneeling at their feet. She wades through a fog, never sharp enough to connect the dots, unwilling to form, to react—just observe.

She feels the passage of time in the strain that begins to press down, strong enough to begin to coax her from her cocoon— just enough to begin to entertain the bud of concern. One that is clipped each time they stick her with the needle, but continue to sprout regardless.

“Colonel, request for data retrieval. Three clicks westbound. How copy?”

“Solid Copy.” The man, blue and big and mean, grunts and looms. The clink of dog tags. Cool metal brushing against brush her hair. Over her head, he signals to the man in the pilot’s seat.

A person, she knows, even under the mountain of gear. She wants to call to them, ask something, anything, but she can’t speak, can’t move. Whether it’s cowardice, or self-preservation, or the way that your throat locks up in your nightmares when you scream, she does not know.

Her addled mind has yet to question why he looks so small from where she sits.

Grunts of reluctance, but they end up landing anyway, and this time, here, she sees something so distinctly human that she feels almost spiritually drawn to its presence. The fleeting sight of metal, of geometrical structure, grips her soul tight. It begins to nudge her into a level of consciousness once lost in the green and blue fever dream.

The pinch in her arm returns.

The spindle of her mind unspools into frayed, uneven strings of yarn.

The one with sunglasses— whose worn her like a backpack more times than she knows— goes to undo the million buckles that hold her together. The alien they call Colonel, the loud one, the mean one—who shakes her by the neck and goads shadows in the green—tells him to leave her there.

With a nod, he backtracks, and with the final click of a sealed restraint, he follows his team into the brush, all of them swallowed whole by the thicket. The rhythmic beat of rotors slows to a halt.

And then, in the deafening silence, too loud for the strange, unfamiliar titters of nature’s peace, she is alone with the only man who looks like her.

She does not know that her hands, if she had the facilities to move and process the sight, are as blue as the ones that'd pressed that gun to her temple, the ones that strained her neck and tied her like a hog.

It’s a time— how long, she doesn’t know. It feels momentous, as told by the labor of her breath, the pulse behind her eyes. Everything feels primed to rip and tear from the effort.

"…help."

And It takes everything. All she'd stored, little it was. The man in the front seat hears her; she knows he does. He shifts, head turning, but not enough to reassure her of his attention. No. He denies even that comfort. Instead, he resumes his position with no fanfare. Her existence filed as an afterthought.

Her eyelids grow heavy, and it becomes so enticing to let the dark take her once more. Perhaps then she could try her chance at a different dream. A different hell. Maybe it would suit her more than this.

—But it’s nice here. Would be nicer without the aliens.

The man begins to hum a song, lax, unknown to her. He taps to the imagined beat with gloved fingers.

—Deep breaths. Deep and slow. Three things you can hear, see, smell—

Kid.

Jake?

Mh?

I’m scared, Jake.

A shot rings out.

It doesn’t so much startle but slowly, painstakingly, coaxes her attention towards where she thinks it might have come from. Maybe from where the aliens—the blue aliens—Not aliens, something else? The word slips through like most—Had parted the leaves like the Red Sea, and left her to her insanity.

It brings the pilot more concern than her plea, though, because he’s barking something loud and fast, a gun already in hand, head half out the window.

More follow, and more, and more— shouting, rustling— enough to get the pilot to start the helo up again, sending the foliage that surrounds them into a loud dance.

She watches the sway of color, of earth, and can only think pretty. She figures that whatever is to happen next is fine, because she doesn’t think she’s ever seen flowers this close before and is okay to leave now, happy to rest.

She wonders if Tommy knows the names of each one and the bugs that live in them. Maybe she can ask him soon.

They’re back, she thinks, when a bright flash of tall and blue bursts into the clearing— but no, because the pilot raises his pistol, and pulls the trigger.

There’s shouting, movement, nothing she can understand— but what she can is that the man in front of her has died, because he is now skewered— once, twice? with poles? No.

Arrows?

The death startles, but her body fails to react. Doesn’t so much as twitch. She has no time to process, can’t, because suddenly, in the corner of her eye, she sees them.

Right at the side door, poised as if they were about to throw themselves in. Two sets of eyes, staring, blinking, confused, huge and yellow, like the sun. A million things that filter into incomprehension of the scene they just stumbled upon.

She doesn’t know what does it, will never know, but the words leave her lips without effort or prompt, as if possessed.

“Help.”

Strained, painful, horrifically grating— but, ultimately, enough. She doesn’t feel anything after that, just a sudden calm that soothes her heart, that tells her to lie back and let whatever should happen happen.

“Help me.”

They blink and exchange looks and biting words she can’t understand— but then—Hands, blue, but smaller and more nervous than she’s seen from the others. Pulling and tugging at the straps, jostling her, checking, frantically whispering/

“Please. Help me.”

Is she still talking?

The other one, the taller one, keeps his head in a fervent swivel, looking back at them with greater frustration the longer the smaller one takes. He sounds urgent, pleading— eventually he tosses him a knife, and she closes her eyes, and waits.

There is no pain. No metal sluicing through her gut— only snapping, clunking, and relief from a great pressure she didn’t realize was suffocating her. She breathes deep and full, letting a smell so very strange fill her nose. It’s nice, she thinks, sweet. It doesn’t bite back or feel thick and sludgy. Nothing you can get at an air bar.

Then, she’s a backpack again, except the body beneath her feels smaller than hers, younger. Still, it compensates for her dead weight, harried and with the helping hands of the one who’d cut her loose.

Then they’re moving.

There is no sudden fade. Instead, she grows. The skin of her legs begins to sting. It becomes less of a simple pain and more pointed, more recognizable—if not from experience, then from ideas. From concepts of things that she can only conjure from her imagination. The prick of thorns, the scrape of bark, the brush of nettles. Somehow, she feels fond, happy to know what existing amongst life felt like. Not flat, smooth, and bent around her. Rather, unyielding, unrepentant, and loud in its existence.

The noise comes second.

The loud tremors of a heart pushed to its limits, right up against her ear. Things she’d only hear through busted laptop speakers. Bugs, rustling, crooning, the flap of wings, the titters of life. The slap of leaves as they carve a nervous path into the earth.

Then Nausea, full and hot in her throat.

Injection recommended. Please press and hold.

Injection recommended. Please press and hold.

Injection recommended. Please press and hold.

Beeping, loud and urgent.

It makes them panic, running turns into a flurry of hands patting her down, following where the sound is loudest. They land on the right side of her arm, and at the sight of whatever they find, they begin to argue.

She doesn’t understand, but it’s a good sound, a fond one, a very strange thought forms—her brain wondering if the aliens are brothers, somehow.

Injection recommended. Please press and h—

She feels it, the pinch, and can only be glad they figured out how to shut it up.

They readjust her, the blip over, and continue. Pace quickened. Silence loud.

Everything lulls into blotches of light and color, her tongue thick in her mouth, her face tingly, and her skin sensitive against belts that pin her arms to the small of her back. Just feeling, with no fight to react to it.

For some reason, she wants to hum, wants her headphones. Maybe a coffee.

Then, there is so much noise. Talking. They’ve stopped moving. She’s satisfied enough to ignore it. Complacent with her tingly face shoved into skin.

Then, she’s somewhere else.

On her back, lying on top of bound wrists and elbows, itchy, uncomfortable with the sharpness of her bed? No? Definitely not her bed.

When the itch amalgamates with the rest of her pains, she is met with the sky again. The Beautiful sky.

When Lo’ak and his brother burst into the clearing, heaving and sweaty and legs caked in mud, from following the sounds of their mother’s song, Lo’ak does not think he’s ever seen them so relieved.

Across the way, she cries to the great mother, running to them with Tuk still in her arms. The pound of her feet a comforting rhythm. Their father, so hard and stoic, different now in his love, now calls to his sons with a reverence and affection and worry that makes his chest hurt.

Lo’ak savors it; their fleeting ignorance of what he knows is going to very quickly turn into a situation.

And it does.

Explanations spill from their lips before their dad can pull out his knife. It’s disjointed, rushed, harried, and addled with events they have yet to truly grasp. They’re not even done talking before he’s grabbing the woman off Neteyam like she’s a disease, shucking her into the grass, checking them over, their heads, their backs, their limbs. When he finds nothing major, he presses their foreheads into his chest— just like when they were boys— and they fold so quickly that they would be embarrassed if they had not almost died.

He chances a look up, and his mother has tucked his sisters behind her, bow drawn and so very still. Lo’ak startles then, because if they’d just give him the chance to really explain—

“Neteyam.” His mother rasps, her throat hoarse. “What is this?” It’s weary and confused, from a body that has already begun to drain the adrenaline, only to have it spike again.

“Mother—“ he begins, breathless, almost. He looks like doesn’t really know where to start. Doesn’t know what to say that’ll make sense or make them understand. “Ah. She— she—“ he gestures to her, weakly, and he can only exhale a defeated breath.

“We— ah— found her on the way here—“

Lo’ak, loud, jumps in, looking up at their father, nearly vibrating. “In a scorpion, dad— she was all tied up and shit— fuck— I mean, sorry— and she, she was asking for help. I mean, we couldn’t just leave her…” he trails off, momentum gone, once he realizes that that’s all they really have.

He begins to panic.

They saw her, took her, and ran like hell— back to their parents so they could make everything better. Ask them what happens now. Try not to think about how maybe if they’d saved one life, maybe things wouldn’t be so bad.

A pressure behind his eyes. He shakes it away. Hand itching to grip at his dad’s cummerbund like a baby. But he wants to, so badly. His heart flutters loud in his ears, knuckles aching for the familiar cling of leather.

His dad’s jaw sets hard, like it always does when he has to decide something when he has no good choices. Which is every day, now.

He locks eyes with their mother.

“Baby.” His dad says, heavy. It’s a look, just one— but it raises their hackles, sets them on edge. They’ve seen their parents have entire conversations without even needing to speak. Whatever he tells her to do has her squeezing Tuk in her arms, closer, and ushering her children to follow.

The air changes, becomes foreboding— just like at the shack. Lo’ak doesn’t know why he feels like he knows what his father is going to do— but actually, maybe he does. The evidence is miles away now, in a place they were forbidden to go to, but Lo’ak went anyway. Dragged his whole fucking family with him. Where Spider was taken, and their parents took the lives of many to save them. Their dreamwalker bodies were left for the great mother to decide what to do with.

No one to place Atokirina to guide them home, to visit them at the spirit tree, no memories to relive but violence.

He and Neteyam share their own glance— and he looks…troubled. Torn. Different. Doesn’t know whether to trust his father with the life they’d just hauled ass to save, or push. His big brother, the mighty warrior, the pillar of the Sully children, whose hands are trembling.

Lo’ak presses closer, just enough that their shoulders brush.

Later, he will tell Lo’ak it’s because he had to carry a grown woman half across the forest on his back, with an assurance that does not reach his eyes.

He doesn’t want his brother to see more death, to feel it on his hands. To reep what Lo’ak had sown. That alone makes Lo’ak speak before his brain can catch up.

“Dad, please don’t kill her.”

—And what a thing to ask your parent.

Lo’ak thinks it is too much. What if she were with them? Then what? They’d just saved an evil sky person? One who has killed Na’vi? Burned their homes and destroyed Eywa’s gifts? Killed his aunt Sylwanin, his uncle Tsu’tey, his grandfather, Kiri’s mother? Erased generations of his Omaticaya heritage in a single afternoon, to steal the precious metals of Eywa’s flesh?

Still, it presses on him. He feels his stomach curdle and his heart race at the thought of it. It feels wrong. It doesn’t make sense because he does not feel this way about the people his parents just killed. That Neteyam—God, Neteyam too, huh?—Had to kill.

When they burst into the clearing, Lo’ak hadn’t even noticed the sky person aiming for them before Neteyam had shot an arrow, then another, and then he lay dead in the front seat of a Scorpion. Where they expected to find guns, a chance at a level playing field, they instead found a woman bound, unable to move, whispering for help.

“She looked scared. I don’t—“ he pauses, doesn’t know why he’s so choked up about it, he feels bile in his throat, and a pressure behind his eyes. “She doesn’t even look like she knows what’s going on—“

“Son.”

It’s soft, coaxing, and that scares him more.

“Dad, she begged us.”

Silence. Mulling. The flicker of ears, the work of a jaw.

A soft inhale, then–

“Lo’ak, go with your mother.”

He panics, heart racing because that isn’t an I won’t.

“Dad!”

“Lo’ak.” His mother steps in, leveled, but unrelenting. “Ma’itan. Your father will be fair in his judgement, and do what is best for our safety.” She lets out a breath, and a hand suddenly presses against his heart, her lip quivering, before she bites it down. “My good boy. My sweet, soft-hearted boy. Please, come. Trust.”

And that does it.

Like the final give of a bowstring, he takes one look at his mother’s face and relents— buries his head into her neck and tries not to feel ashamed when he lets her comfort pull him away. He tells himself it’s the exhaustion, a coercion greater than him.

He glances at the woman, lying in the grass, eyes half-lidded, looking so…helpless. Like a Palulukan could come and start gnawing at her ankles, and she wouldn’t mind, nor be able to do anything to stop it.

Eywa, please give this woman the chance to die with honor.

He turns away, teeth already gnawing on his lip.

Jake’s wife, his other half, catches his gaze and nods, eyes hard and permissive– to do what needs to be done, if he has to. It is okay. It is right.

A father protects.

She walks away with their youngest son tucked under her chin and their baby girl at her hip. The others follow like lost ducks, dragging their feet, exhausted, changed. Still, she will shield their ears, their eyes, their hearts. Preserve— even if they’d just been hostages. Threatened with death, their own and their siblings. Leverage, to get to him, to make him pay for choosing good, for once in his goddamn life.

Even if Neteyam, his baby boy, not even an hour ago, shot a man clean through for aiming a gun at his mother. Saved her life, had no choice, no time to think on it.

It’s the sharp, sudden realization that nothing will ever quite be the same. Jake knows this because Jake has been to hell and paid every price. Aware of the rot that takes hold and never really lets go, just hides until it decides to remind you of its existence when you’re at your weakest.

And he fucking hates it with every ounce of his being.

It should be him, him only, doing the dirty work. The things that the Na’vi don’t want to fucking do, never want to do.

His kids should be singing, dancing, beading, being silly and sweet, and being utter nightmares. Living, loving, and giving their parents a hard time without the fear of a greater consequence.His family, his babies, still so small, still growing into themselves and the world, have no choice— because of who their father is. What he is.

He glances behind his shoulder and sees the last flash of blue disappear behind the thickest tree. As if it changed anything to cover more of what they knew their father might do on the other side.

He pulls the pistol from his hip, heavy and scuffed, checks the mag, and presses forward.

She’s staring down the barrel of a gun.

It’s different, at this angle— more intimidating, she thinks. It was easier to pretend when the colonel pressed it against the side of her head, just out of sight. Her face, she feels, doesn’t move. Just a slow, automated blink and the blurred edges of metal, and a steady, circular dark hole that her eyes begin to focus on.

“Name and rank.”

If her mind was here, if she wasn’t more drugs than person, she would hear how it’s bitten out, ground in a way that seeps into the air, makes your baser self, your animal self, prickle with fear– making you afraid before you even know why, because your body knows that it’s going to die before you do.

And it’s in English.

She chops the question in two. She doesn’t have a rank. She has a name, but can’t bring herself to move anything but her eyes, and still, they are not truly looking anywhere.

To her now-self, his voice is mean. Way meaner than the first man. Yet, the cadence, the tone, the texture. It wraps around her and holds her tight. She feels years of confusion, of loneliness, slough from her back. It makes no sense. None of it does.

She feels the sudden, cool press of it against her brow, soothing in the unnatural heat that begins to burn her from the inside. She leans into it, feels like it’s okay to do so.

“Answer the fuckin’ question.”

Her eyes wobble, her ears starting to ring. She wonders why an alien, of all things, would speak English and have that accent. So distinct, so personal, straight from the slums of The Bronx, of all things.

You sound like my brothers. She wants to say, to laugh with the huge blue man that shields the sun from her eyes so she can keep looking at the sky without it hurting too much. Laugh like it’s the funniest coincidence in the world, and then cry her heart out until she follows wherever her family went, so everything can be okay again.

A hand grips the sides of her face, the smushing of her cheeks together. She lets him. It feels better than when it was by the scruff of her neck. This feels more personal, like she’s a human.

Over his shoulder, the beautiful sky. Blue. A blue that she’s never seen before, but is suddenly in abundance now. On skin, on plants, above her, in the water she’d seen in the haze of the helo to this place she’s in now, surrounded by alien strangers who saved her from the other alien strangers.

Oh yes, the water. Loud. It flowed free and bountiful, unconnected to a meter that racked up bills she couldn’t afford.

The man is pressing her into the itchy grass as if he tried hard enough it’d save him the effort of digging a grave. It's okay. She keeps her eyes on the blue. It’s okay.

So pretty she thinks, again, for the millionth time, and how she wishes she could reach up and touch the clouds— they’re white, not black, or brown. They swirl into each other in a way she never thought clouds could do.

One of the things that Jake had always been assured of was whether or not he needed to pull the trigger.

Because hesitation in the face of death will have you at the end of someone else’s. Your wife, dead, your children, dead. Your village, burned.

But right now, watching this woman, this girl— all the avatars come out young. Who knows how old she is? Maybe they made her young on purpose—stare down the barrel of a forty-five Cal without even a hint of how close he is to blowing her brains out? With his children tucked away behind a tree?

And the thing is, Jake isn’t stupid enough to use a gun, give away their position, lose the anonymity that the forest provides. Those grunts were trained to raid homes, buildings, concrete, and iron— Not the Na’ring. Not Ayram Alusing.

When did green ever stop us, Jake?

It’d be with his knife, clean, or with his arm around her neck, squeezing until he heard that familiar clean click. No mess for his family to see, a body dragged into the brush, and a dip of his hands in a stream.

He looks into the eyes of the stranger below him, wrapped up in RDA-issued restraints, looking too innocent, too docile. The stranger his sons saved because she asked for help– tied up in the Scorpion they had used to come down here and threaten his children. Make them hurt, make them beg for their lives, make them feel fear like a child never should.

He looks at her and sees all of them.

“Name and rank.”

He’s quiet, both for the sake of the tiny ears behind that tree. Ears that are too sharp for their own good, and because Jake knows that volume does not get through to people. Words do. The conviction behind them.

And he lets the anger, the hate— putrid and so utterly human, seep into his inside voice. A steady volume that his endless list of foster fathers, teachers, and drill sergeants worked so hard to get him to learn.

He presses the pistol further, letting her head tilt back, her lips part. Not with fear, no, just reflex. Jake looks, really does, mouth a hard line. A time of being on the other side allows him the knowledge that there is nothing these people wouldn’t do. His babies, his mate, they don’t get it. They really don’t understand that nothing is sacred. There is no line, no horizon, no ‘surely, not this.’

Not when money is God.

They could’ve trained her for this—the sole purpose of getting a mole into all he holds dear. Get his guard down through the goodness of his sons’ hearts. They could’ve drugged her, stuck a tracking chip where no one could reach. Laid her out on a table, gut her, put a bomb in her fucking stomach— a long distance detonation. Pumped her full of bags of Sarin so when she threw up, all she had to do was poke a baggie, and they’d all die. Slow. Of chemical sickness— something Jake could not defend them from.

They know the people have rules, integrity, humanity– more than they ever will— And how they love that, knowing the Na’vi will only go so far.

So he fights back the human way, the way they understand.

“Answer the fuckin’ question.”

Whatever light is in her eyes begins to dim, and he finds himself reaching out to pull her from wherever she thinks she’s going, because he has questions. Important ones that will decide how this lady’s story ends, how he and his family move on from this grove. Go home and rebuild themselves from the ground up.

“Hey.” He bites out, instinctually, and her eyes refocus. Still unbothered by the fact that he’s grabbing her face with a kind of disrespect people like him could never tolerate. She stares beyond his shoulder, far, far away into the skies he knows and loves.

He wants to hiss and tell her not to look, to stop looking at where she is, charting a mental map in her head right back to his home.

He stares, searches for what feels like forever, and sees…

Nothing.

Just two, dilated eyes that wobble when the light hits them.

Is there anybody even in there?

A husk, maybe? An avatar without a driver?

Lo’ak said she asked for help. Pleaded for it.

She could’ve disconnected, severed the link when she realized things didn’t look like they were in her favor. Went to report something to someone who had the clearance to initiate a strike, the positioning of the attack was enough to give them a search box.

But her eyes are open.

Why else could she talk then, and not now? Not when he’s about to——

Jake is unsettled.

He takes a deep, deep breath and then lets her go. Her head hits the ground like a stone. He tucks the pistol back into his holster, hand steady. Eyes on her, alert, even if she’s got her arms flush against her back in a way he knows is painful. He grabs her by the strap that digs into her shoulders, and is met with no resistance, no fight, when he maneuvers himself behind her. His chest pressed against her back. Her breathing is slow. It doesn’t hitch. Her eyes remain on the sky.

He waits, again.

She blinks, again.

Then, the crook of his arm slides over and hooks itself under her neck.

—-and nothing.

He doesn’t press down; rather, looks to her side profile, as if it would change anything from this angle.

He also begins to ask the only fucking person who’d know what to do right now.

He never really knew how to start these things, but he meant them. If you got him to get on his knees and beg to a god he couldn’t even see? There’s a desperation there, raw and ugly. It’s taken the entirety of his children’s lives for him to even get to the point where he asks her for stuff in his head, simple things. A good catch, good weather, time with his kids when there’s none to give.

Eywa.

A prayer, a ridiculous concept twenty-odd-something years ago. Still is, sometimes, because he’s nothing if not walls built upon eachother in the shape of a man. He clears his throat and steels himself.

Great mother– he starts, deep inside where the doubt is, eyes searching, looking around the grove already before he’s even asked the question. I need a sign. Anything.

His ears flicker with the sudden, loud chirping of nantang. No, that can’t be it.

He continues, knee pressing into the earth, keeping the small of her back straight. This woman cannot defend herself, and I need you to do it for her. He feels the conviction so strongly. Something not just for his son, but for him, Jake’s own conscience.

His bicep flexes, instinctual, wondering why it hasn’t moved yet. He exhales, clearing his head. He grounds himself, loosening the knots that rile him up. Neytiri promised his son that he would be fair. The Olo’eyktan Jake, and not the angry, distressed father Jake.

Another breath, Guide my hand. He urges, begging. The arm he holds feels less sure the longer she makes him wait.

A minute passes, and then another, and another, and Jake finds himself continuing to add time to the counter.

The thing is, Neteyam does not expect the silence.

If he couldn’t smell his dad, and the distinct, strange, sickly-sweet cloy of the woman, he would think that nothing was happening. His mother’s ears flicker now and then– to check, bow in hand. She looks beyond the tree more than once, growing more concerned as time bleeds on. His father is not a lingerer; He decides with discipline, efficiency, and experience. Every second wasted is another life at risk.

But he doesn’t even hear talking.

Just the wind, the Na’ring, and the titters of their Ikran that wait for them in the trees, alert sentinels.

Then, the rustle of the grass, and the drag of tired footsteps that make him so very afraid to look at what he left behind.

His brother, who stands beside him, who, too, has also brought out his bow. Even if mom told them both that they did not need to, that they needed to rest with their sisters. He has that same hesitation. It shows when Lo’ak, the one he’d expect to charge toward the mess, attempts to meet their dad halfway around the tree, but can’t bring himself to do so.

Then, Dad appears. His gun, holstered, his knife, too. There’s no fresh iron on the wind, no bite of steel. Dad looks exhausted, so unsure. For a moment, all he can do is stare at the ground.

Then, he crosses over to their mother and gently ushers her around the tree, murmuring. She relents, ears flickering, tail swishing, and places a sleeping Tuk into Kiri’s arms. Gripping her mate’s arm as he leads her to where their children can’t witness.

What happened?

It is only in their absence that he feels safe enough to look up and lock eyes with his baby siblings. There could be a discussion if they knew what to discuss, but there are no clues, no hints, just shots in the dark of what became of the strange, silent, bound woman he’d hauled on his back like a fresh kill, adrenaline thick in his veins, and left in the itchy grass that always leaves his ankles bothered.

He looks into his sibling's eyes and sees fear, uncertainty. The sight itches more than any grass could.

He makes himself get up. Even if the blood rushes to his ears and he has to fight not to sway– in an effort to soothe them with answers they could not reach for themselves. To soothe himself and smother the images of the arrows he’d fletched for an Angstik hunt buried into one dream walker, one human. The beginning of a list he knew he would have, but did not think…it would be so…

Neteyam steels himself, stands without a word, and goes to disappear behind the bend where their parents had only moments prior. He hears the faint, worried calls of Kiri and Lo’ak and silences them with a gentle, raised hand.

He presses forward.

When he rounds, he looks fully, eyes straining to see across the berth. There is a moment where he’s so sure he’ll see her dead, or somehow worse, just gone– the only memory of the strange woman a divot where her body had lain. He tries to prepare himself for it, in the moment but pushes himself to just look.

–And she’s where they’d left her.

Adjusted, now, so that her limbs are less awkward, more dignified, but she's there, her chest still rising and falling with fragile life. He sees his parents’ forms looming over her, weapons holstered—

And then, something small, so much so that he almost misses it—

A single, newly sprouted Atokirina perched atop her nose.

Huh.

Then, a shrill, ear-piercing wail. Familiar. One that has everyone’s ears lowering, his mother giving a startled hiss, bow knocked, his dad with his rifle already in hand, and Neteyam rushing over before his parents begin to rescind their decision of peace.

INJECTION RECOMMENDED: PLEASE PRESS AND HOLD

“Son, stay back—!“

“Kehe Ma’itan!”

“No–I got it! I got it!“ He already feels breathless. He strings his bow around his chest on the way, the itchy grass already irritating his feet. He slides near the end, tail swishing, crouched.

INJECTION RECOMMENDED: PLEASE PRESS–

He’s lifting up her shirt sleeve and pressing on the bright red, obnoxious-looking circle that had previously silenced the yelling from the woman’s arm. It had freaked him and Lo’ak out so much earlier, and it is only because of his brother’s impulsive need to touch everything and act first that they’d gotten it to stop so quickly.

“Neteyam— son, what?”

He lets out a breath, gesturing to the device. “It stops making noise when you press it—“

“Yeah, but—“ his father is squatting, rucking up the shirt sleeve past the woman’s shoulder, and giving the now uncovered device a long, inquisitive stare, his brow furrowed deep.

It’s a thick, grey, and yellow, flat brick glued flush to the side of her arm– Reminiscent of some kind of fucked up Insulin pump. Jake pinches his brow, massaging into the cartilage. He exhales heavily, his gaze flickering to his eldest, who looks like he’s trying his best to look okay. God, his kid is exhausted; he should be at home, stuck in his Grandmother’s tent until she drills it into Jake’s head that he’s fine.

“D'you even know what it’s saying?”

“To…press the button?” His eldest gives weakly, shrugging, unsure now. He starts scratching at his ankle, eyes darting from the device to her father’s stare.

“Yeah, but it’s asking you to do that so it can—-” he shakes his head, sighs, and places his AR back in its holster, adjusting. He points to the device “Injection.” He says, slowly and in English, “It means there’s probably a needle or somethin’ hooked up to her bloodstream. Every time you press it, I reckon that’s what’s making her all—“ Jake gestures to all of her “Y’know.”

His ears drop, and all the remaining energy seems to sap from him. The way his shoulders slump, Jake has to stop himself from slinging an arm over his shoulder, pressing his head into his chest. “We were hurting her?”

“What, really?” He hears over his shoulder and looks to find that the rest of the kids have come running over, too. Neytiri, the only thing keeping them from joining the fray, has her hand pressed against Lo’ak’s chest, keeping him from surging forward– and the look on his boy’s face…Jake works his jaw.

He sets his voice hard, “No, no. Listen, we don’t know that for sure. Even if it is like that, then it’s nobody’s fault but the people who put it in there, got it?”

“But…”

“Got it?”

Two, poorly unison-ed yes sirs is the response. Jake nods, even he if can still see them chewing at their lips, thinking too hard. He takes a moment to look at the device again, committing it to memory, before he pulls her sleeve down. Then, his eyes flicker up on their own, and he is once again surprised to see that hers are still open, cross-eyed, staring at the floating seed like it's her entire world.

Might as well be, it did save her a whole lotta trouble…n’ gave it to us.

“Alright.” He starts, coughing, standing, ignoring the crick in his knee. “Family meeting.”

The kids start converging on him, but he shoos them– “Away from the body, away.” he walks a couple of feet, his little ducks on his heels, his wife corralling them, Tuk in her arms once again. He shrugs on the pelt of the marine, Olo’eyktan, letting it settle— just to see this through. Let them get home.

“Alright. One, no pressing that button again. We’ll wrap the arm, stifle the sound until Norm and Max can either disable the sound, or get rid of it.” They all nod– Kiri already pulling off her poncho, bunching it up in her arms.

“Two, straight to your grandmother– all of you. I don’t wanna see you walkin’ in any other direction but her tent, y’ hear me?” Nobody has the fight to refuse– Just silent nods, sloped shoulders, and Neytiri triple-checking her children with her eyes, letting out a click when she sees something she doesn’t like.

He sighs. “Okay, good. Three. We’re…we’re gonna talk about…this. Okay? Today was hard– just– jus’ c’mere. C’mere.” He relents, opening his arms and reveling in how they all pile in, and how it feels like his first real breath of air in hours.

It’s all limbs and elbows and suffocation, and he loves it. He’d never let go if he could, lest it slip away.

He holds on tighter, eyes shut. Just a little longer.

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҂ AUTHOR’S NOTE ⫿ Feel free to reply if you want to join the taglist!