#jake sully

Jake had been here for a while now. More than a month.

He continued his training with Neytiri. He was actualy learning really fast

Like the other day, he came up to you and tried to speak to you in full Na’vi. It was still a bit broken but he knew what he was saying, and you could tell what he was saying and you couldn’t help but be proud.

One night, you were eating when Jake and Neytiri walked past. You watch them walk over to Mo’at ard Eytukan. You perked your ears, tying to easvedrop. You heard somethung about him being ready, ikrans and Iknimaya. You look over, watching Jake.

Iknimaya?

Jake seemed to sense you because he looked over at you. You look away, stuffing more food in your mouth.

A bit later, Jake sits in front of you. He smiles.

“Whatcha eating?”

“Tìhawnuwll and fish,” you say. Jake gasps softly.

“Ooh, can I have some?” He asks, pointing at the fruit. You nod and he takes some, biting into it.

“Mmm…” he wipes the juices off his chin, a little smile on his face.

“Is that your favorite?”

“Mhm. They’re so good,” he mumbles.

This was another thing. Every free moment Jake had he was with you. He’s moved on from simply staring and now he comes up and talks to you. You’ve never had this kind of attention before.

“So…Neytiri thinks you’re ready?”

He nods, tail swaying behind him.

“Yeah. I’m gonna get my own ikran,” he says with a smirk.

“Well, good luck,” you tell him, smiling.

“Good luck?”

You pause, looking up at him.

“Yeah?”

“They don’t just…line up and let me choose?”

You scoff, tilting your head in confusion.

“No! You gotta work for it! It’s hard, but I think you can do it. I believe in you.” You place your hand on his heart. He looks at your hand, then at you. He smiles softly.

“Yeah?” He tilts his head, looking at you directly. You nod, looking down, away from his gaze. He was so cute when he did that head tilt.

You take your hand off his chest, eating more fruit.

“Are you gonna come?”

You shake your head, swallowing.

“I can’t. But Neytiri will be there. She can help.”

He sighs softly, ears twitching down slightly.

“I know that…but…it’d be nice to have you there.”

You pause, huffing softly. You smile slightly.

“I’d love to go, but I already have my ikran,” you say.

“Can I see?”

You look up, scanning his face. You nod.

“Okay,” you quickly finish the last bites of your food before standing up.

“Cmon,” you say, taking his hand without thinking and dragging him up to the canopy of Hometree.

Your realize halfway there that you’re actually holding his hand. You get flustered, your heart beginning to pound. But you didn’t want to pull away suddenly. So you swallow your nerves and keep walking.

You get to the top of the tree, only then letting go of his hand. You wipe your palm on your thigh, as if you were wiping off the nerves. You already missed the warmth of his hand.

The sun is setting now, causing the bioluminescence to start to glow.

You look up, calling for your ikran, your yip echoing. Jake looks up as well, trying searching for your ikran.

You hear him screech, and he comes down, landing on the thick branch. You smile. You walk up to him, petting his hand.

“Hey, boy,” you say softly, greeting him. You turn to Jake, who walks closer to admire.

“This is Ìeyo,” you say, watching Jake come up to him. The ikran tilts his head, making small noises. Jake reaches out to pet his nose. Ìeyo pulls his head away, making you chuckle.

Jake smiles softly, tilting his head to admire the coloring. His eyes scan Ìeyo’s wings. He was a pretty teal with yellow spots and patterns.

“He’s pretty,” Jake mumbles.

“Yeah, I think so too,” you say, watching him. He touches Ìeyo’s wing, making him twitch. He chuckles, looking over at you. His eyes scan your face, and that’s when you look away. You let out a breathy chuckle, shifting so you were almost hiding behind Ìeyo. He nudge you, making you look up again. Jake is still staring. Your stomach flips.

“You should get some rest,” you murmur, letting go of Ìeyo.

You step closer to Jake.

“You’ll need the energy.” You keep your gaze on the ground, only glancing at his face for a quick second before looking down again.

“If you say so,” he says, slowly making his way back inside Hometree. “I’ll make sure to eat a nice big breakfast too.”

─── ⋆⋅ ♰ ⋅⋆ ───

The next day, you’re simply sitting around, carving some arrow heads when you hear the yipping of Neytiri and Tsu’tey.

You look up, seeing three other ikrans with them. You smile.

Jake did it. He got his ikran

You jump up, abandoning your stuff to run up to the canopy.

You get to the top, watching them land. Your smile gets wider when your eyes land on Jake.

Neytiri notices, smirking slightly and tapping Jake to get his attention.

Jake looks over, the biggest smile appearing on his face.

“You did it!” You exclaim, rushing over.

“I did!” He laughs, petting his ikran. “I almost died, but I did it!” You laugh as well, your eyes scanning Jake before looking at his ikran.

“So…what’s his name?”

“Name? Uh…Bob”

Your gaze snaps to his face, confusion painted all over it.

“Bob?” What kind of name is that?

“Yeah. It’s…an Earth name,” he says, chuckling awkwardly. You nod slowly, tilting your head.

“Okay…what does it mean?”

Jake scratches his head, laughing softly. “I…I don’t know,” you scoff playfully.

“Wow. You let him name him that?” You turn to Neytiri. She laughs.

“I couldn’t stop him. Though I would’ve chosen a better Earth name…”

“Hey! Stop with the hate now,” he says, putting his hands up, shaking his head. Both you and Neytiri laugh.

“So…are you gonna get off anytime soon?” You ask, noticing he’s still in the ikran, still binders

“I wanted to take a fly with you,” he says, tilting his head.

“Oh!” You gasp softly. “Oh, yeah, okay, hold on,” you say, forgetting how to act for a second before going to grab your visor. You rush back up, calling for Ìeyo. He comes immediately and you hop on, making the bond.

You take a deep breath, and Ìeyo shrieks, almost fidgeting in place, he can feel your nerves.

You look at Jake. He smirks softly.

“Ready, set, go!” He says quickly before flying off. You blink and he’s gone.

“Hey!” You exclaim, flying off as well. You catch up to him.

He smiles at you, pushing his ikran into your space. You move away, chuckling before pushing back. He laughs, going higher.

You follow him, going higher than him so you can fly over his ikran before diving under him, popping back up on his right side. Jake watches in awe, laughing. He turns, heading towards some mountains.

You knew exactly where he was going.

You fly next to him, occasionally twirling and weaving the ikrans with him.

You and him fly as high as you can, looking for that spot of flat mountain side.

Neytiri had taken you here when she went on flights with you. You assumed she must’ve shown Jake.

You and him fly over the top, turning downwards.

No matter how many times you did this, it still twisted your stomach all up. But it was fun. You laugh, feeling the wind rushing against your face. You look over at Jake, who also started to laughs.

Whenever you and Neytiri did this, it was like a race of some sort. You push your ikran to pass him, smirking. Jake looks over, returning your smirk as he tries to pass you as well.

The two of you go as far down as you can before jerking yourselves up.

You scream playfully, pulling yourself up so high that you do a flip. Jake tires to copy you, but he almost falls off.

“Woah—shit!” He shouts as he catches his balance, wobbling before straightening his ikran out.

You laugh, covering your mouth with one hand.

As you stare at him, you feel your heart ache. He was so pretty in the sunlight. His smile was the cutest thing you’ve ever seen. He was nice and playful. You just wanted to be next to him, wanted to feel his warmth. You could do this forever with him.

Your laugh lightens, feeling this overwhelming feeling in your chest that makes it want to burst.

“Are you okay?” You shout, trying to ignore it for now.

“Yeah, I’m fine!” He shouts back, smiling at you.

“Good! You skxawng!” You nudge your ikran into his space before rushing ahead of him, making him chase you.

─── ⋆⋅ ♰ ⋅⋆ ───

You fly until the sun goes down, only then returning to Hometree.

You land on a branch, giggling, your body still jumpy with adrenaline.

“That was so much fun,” you say breathlessly, hopping off your ikran. Jake nods, stretching.

“Yeah,” he grunts, sliding off Bob.

He takes a deep breath, looking over your face. He pushes some hair off your face, putting it back into place with a soft smile.

“I’d love to fly again with you,” he says. You look up at him with wide eyes, your face flushing at the little touch he gave you. You take a deep breath, nodding.

You smile shyly.

“Yeah…yeah we should do that again soon,” you tell him, snapping out of your daze.

He chuckles.

“Good. Maybe tomorrow?”

You nod again. “Yeah.”

Jake smiles at you. For a moment, he just stands there, unsure what to do.

He nods again, “Yeah. Okay. See ya,” he says,ingesting for a moment before disappearing into Hometree.

You stand there for a while, taking in everything.

Fuck.

You were in love with Jake Sully.

The sound that came out of Neytiri was not a sound she thought she would ever make again. It tore up through her chest and out of her throat, and then there was another behind it, and another, until there was nothing but sobbing, until she was no longer standing but held up, her whole body folded into the unbending frame of her mother.

Mo'at spoke above her. Not in Na'vi now, but the clipped human words she used when Grace needed them.

"Outside. For a little while."

Grace answered low. Neytiri did not hear the words, only the agreement in them. Then Mo'at was guiding her away from the glass and fluid and wires, one arm hard around her shoulders, the other keeping Neytiri's head against her as though she were very small again and fevered and being carried from a bad dream.

The night air struck her wet and green.

The shack fell behind them. Its light dragged across the mud and broken roots in long white slashes, then thinned as Mo'at led her toward the treeline. Behind them the machines kept their small mechanical vigil — the hum and tick that had become the whole shape of the day, the tank's cold blue glow, Jake's body suspended in the fluid like a question no one could answer aloud. Now the forest opened in front of her instead, dark and wet and living. Her feet remembered ground better than her mind did; they found root, moss, stone. At the treeline the chemical tang finally loosened from her throat, and the first true breath of forest entered her.

It hurt.

Everything living hurt.

Mo'at lowered her to the moss with a tenderness that cracked Neytiri open. Her knees folded, her body gone lighter and less her own than it once was, the child a low steady weight that pulled her earthward. She sank down, and her mother came down with her, facing her in the dark where the leaves roofed them and rain collected in the high branches before falling through in silver ticks.

"Look at me."

Neytiri tried. Her eyes would not hold still. Tears made Mo'at's face swim and double.

Mo'at cupped her jaw. Thumb under one eye. Fingers at the throat. Palm over the quick-panting chest. Then lower, to the place where her child grew, small and warm and sleeping.

The frown came.

It was small. A tightening between the brows, a stillness at the mouth. Her mother's hands had stopped over her stomach, where the child lay low and sleeping under the skin, and they did not move on.

Neytiri's chest tightened.

She has found it.

The hole where he was. The empty room at the center of her. Of course her mother could feel it — of course it was written in her pulse, in her breath, in the flesh of her. She had carried it into her mother's arms like a body.

A thin sound left her. Not a word. Not even a cry. She bent forward as if struck, but Mo'at held her upright, hands steady, brow furrowed.

"Something has changed," Mo'at said, voice low.

Neytiri shook her head.

"You are worse than when I last read you." Mo'at's voice stayed level; that was how Neytiri knew the fear in it was real. "What has happened, ma'ite?"

The question split her open.

"He is gone," Neytiri choked out, the words were too small for what they held. Her hands shook as she grabbed onto Mo'at's wrist.

"He is gone, sa'nu. I have killed him."

Mo'at lifted one hand from her grasp to touch the crown of her head.

"Calm yourself, ma'yawntu, tell me what has happened."

"I cannot hear him." Neytiri folded down until her forehead pressed against Mo'at's thigh. The moss was cold under her knees. Her tears soaked into her mother's cloth. "I cannot feel him. There is nothing where he was. I woke and there was nothing. I did it. I looked at him and I—"

The memory rose, bright and ugly: his human body, broken and small under the harsh light; her own disgust moving through her before she could name it; the rage; the words; the fire.

"I drove him out. I doubted him. I hated him. I killed him."

"No." Mo'at did not say it sharply. She said it the way she might steady a bowl filled to the brim — a hand placed so that nothing in it was lost. "No, child. You will breathe first."

Neytiri tried sucking in a breath, but it choked out of her with another sob.

"I cannot."

"You will."

Mo'at bent until her brow touched Neytiri's. Then she breathed in — slow, deep, patient — and because she was Mo'at, because she was sa'nu, because before Neytiri had been anything else she had been a body tucked against her chest learning the rhythm of the world, Neytiri's breath went looking for hers. It stumbled. Broke. Found it again, and then slowly it followed the pattern.

When the sobbing no longer threw her whole body forward, Mo'at drew back, hands staying pressed against her.

"We will see together," she said.

A sickness rose from her stomach like fear.

Her braid lay against her shoulder, heavy as a living thing. At the thought of giving it over, terror ran through her so cleanly that for one blink all the grief went white.

Mo'at saw the recoil. She did not reach.

She only drew her own braid forward and held it in her palm like an offering.

The forest waited around them. Rain ticked from leaf to leaf. Somewhere in the dark, a night insect called once and fell silent. But for Neytiri, everything seemed to freeze.

Her hands moved as though they belonged to someone braver. She brought her braid forward. The violet tendrils stirred, seeking. Her fingers shook so badly that the ends brushed Mo'at's palm twice before they found the tendrils in her own braid. Mo'at did not move, she let Neytiri come to her, slow and patient, and when the ends met, her hand moved to press against Neytiri's cheek to steady her.

The bond opened.

Mo'at entered the way water enters dry ground — without force, spreading into every crack, every dark corner of Neytiri's being and filling it.

Neytiri pressed her teeth against her cheek and did not pull away.

Her mother reached the child first. The touch moved through her, soft and exact, to the life curled beneath her heart. The child slept, small and stubborn and continuing. Mo'at lingered there long enough for Neytiri to understand: this is safe; this still lives.

Only then did her mother read the rest.

Pulse too fast. Blood too thin. Body spent. Mind frayed to threads. Grief eating what food had not replaced.

"You must care for this body," Mo'at said aloud, though she did not need to. The words moved through the join as well, heavier there. "Not only because it is yours."

Neytiri turned her face away.

Mo'at did not let her hide inside that. Through the bond, Neytiri felt her mother move toward the place she herself could no longer bear to touch: the empty room, the wound where Jake had been, gone cold and silent.

Her whole body braced for Mo'at to confirm what she herself already knew.

For the clean absence. For Mo'at's breath to catch. For the truth to become larger because another person saw it.

Mo'at went still.

The join narrowed to one point of listening.

There was nothing but her mother's attention and her own terror beating against it.

Then Mo'at opened her eyes, and a soft sigh pressed out of her chest.

"He is not lost," she said.

Neytiri could not fit the words into her own understanding. She flinched when Mo'at pulled her kuru away, severing the join gently.

The world returned in pieces: wet moss, leaf-shadow, her own mouth open around no sound. Mo'at placed both hands on her face.

"He is still there, my daughter, you have not killed him."

A broken sound came from Neytiri's chest, almost angry in its grief.

"No. No, I cannot feel—"

"I know." Mo'at's thumbs pressed her cheeks. "He is far from you. Weak. Something has wounded the bond very deeply. But he is not gone."

Neytiri's hands clawed into her own thighs, her body rocking forward. "It was me." She sobbed, bowing her head.

Mo'at's face changed then — not softened, not hardened.

"Tell me."

So she told her.

It came out of her in pieces, out of order, the way the dream had come.

"There was a voice. His voice — in the machine." It scraped the back of her throat. "It would not stop. It played back what he gave them: the high paths. The roots. When the clan gathered. When we scattered. Where to strike so we break." Her hands opened and closed on nothing.

"I ran. The hallways had no end. Then I was in a room of dead light. He was in the chair — the one that held him because his legs would not. So small. So unlike him."

Her voice thinned to almost nothing. "His face. And he looked at me like he already knew what I would do."

"And what did you do?" Mo'at asked. Not gentle. Not cruel. Only there.

Neytiri could not say it to her mother's face. She turned into the cloth at Mo'at's thigh.

"I refused him." She choked out, "Refused his body, his name, his touch."

Mo'at's hand came down over her head gently, and Neytiri pressed her eyes closed against the sudden urge to cry.

"When I woke," Neytiri whispered, "he was gone."

Mo'at listened until there was no more.

"No," she said.

Neytiri looked up.

"I do not think your anger did this."

Neytiri pushed up, looking at her mother.

"But I—"

"I do not think your anger did this," Mo'at repeated. "Anger is heat. It burns, yes. It can wound. But what I read in you is not a thing burned away by anger." Her gaze sharpened. "It is a thing nearly cut loose by doubt."

The words struck.

"You and Jakesully were bound in a way neither of you understood," Mo'at said. "His spirit took shelter in you when his body could not hold him. In the dream, something made you question whether that shelter was real. Whether he was real. Whether the one you loved and the broken human before you were one soul."

Mo'at paused, looking at Neytiri. "That disbelief came close to severing what held him."

Neytiri covered her mouth.

Mo'at let the truth sit. She did not soften it into comfort, and for that, Neytiri loved her with a child's helplessness and a woman's pain.

"Can it be mended?" Neytiri asked.

Mo'at looked toward the shack lights between the trees.

"Wounds are mended by tending," she said. "Not by tearing them open with fear, and they will not be tended by a body already pushed to its limit."

Neytiri swallowed, shaking her head.

"I cannot sleep."

"You must." Mo'at pressed, her hands coming up to touch Neytiri's shoulders, "You cannot do anything if you do not have your own strength."

"The last time I slept, I lost him."

"The last time you slept, you doubted what you knew." Mo'at touched Neytiri's brow. "This time, you will go believing."

Neytiri laughed once, the sound like ash on her tongue, her eyes watering, her chest suddenly tight with hope and fear alike.

"I do not know how." She whispered.

Mo'at nodded. "I will hold you until you remember."

Neytiri let her mother draw her down. She had no strength left to argue. Her head found Mo'at's lap, her hand wrapping tightly into the cloth at Mo'at's hip. Fingers moved through her hair gently, pulling the loose strands from her sweat-streaked face and tucking them back.

"I will not leave you," Mo'at said, gently. "When you wake, you will see me first."

Neytiri held that promise like a bead between her teeth, her hands shaking.

She did not want to close her eyes.

She fought sleep, the way she had once fought deep water — chin lifted, breath held, some animal part of her certain that to yield was to drown. Each time her eyes slipped shut she dragged them open again, back to her mother's face, to the grey light coming through the leaves, to anything that was still here and still hers.

But her body was no longer waiting on her permission. It had been spent past the place where will could reach it. Her lids came down and did not rise. Her limbs went heavy as wet earth. The last waking part of her strained upward like a swimmer toward light, and could not hold, and began to sink.

Then Mo'at began to sing.

Low. Almost without sound, more breath than voice. It was a song from before — before the tank, before Jake, before Neytiri had a name for any of the things that could be taken from her. The song her mother had hummed into her hair when the dark had been only dark, when fear had a shape small enough for a song to cover it. The melody moved through Mo'at's body and into Neytiri's cheek where it rested, and her breath, without asking her, went looking for the rhythm of it. Found it and slowed.

She stopped fighting and let herself fall.

☾─────•──•°•𖥸•°•──•─────☽

For a moment there was only dark, and in the dark the terrible habit of reaching — the automatic turn toward Jake, towards the light that always led her to him, to the distant sound of his breath inside her.

There was nothing, only dark, only silence.

Then the dark changed under her feet. Falling away until she stood on a path she would've known blindfolded.

The path to Utraya Mokri opened up around her, the bright light of moss and leaf glowing bright and filling her vision with light.

No machine spoke here. No empty dead light. No flat voice following her.

Only the hush of hanging tendrils far ahead, the old living whisper of the sacred place, and the path beneath her feet remembering every step she had ever taken on it.

She had walked this way as a girl. As hunter. As daughter. As woman going to choose. The last time she had walked it like this, Jake had followed her beneath the Tree of Voices with all his clumsy courage and all his lies, and she had loved him enough to see past both.

Now she walked alone, each step slow, searching as she let her eyes move along the landscape, hoping that he would be waiting.

She did not call his name.

The silence had become a creature to her. She would not feed it a name and hear it swallow. The hope was a fragile thing in her chest, and his silence would be enough to shatter it.

The tree came into view slowly: pale tendrils moving like breath, violet light gathered in the roots, the whole place alive with memory.

For a moment she stopped, staring into the swaying vines, eyes catching on every small hint of blue, breath catching at every possible shape that could be him waiting. She could almost picture him waiting, like he had all those days before, when his face had not been marked with guilt, and he had looked at her like she was the most beautiful thing he had ever been permitted to touch.

He wasn't waiting now.

Neytiri stopped.

The hope she had been holding died so suddenly that she made a sound and went down to her knees.

Mo'at had been wrong. Or Mo'at had seen a fading thing, one last ember, and the dream had come too late. The moss received her hands. She bent over them, shaking, and the voices of the ancestors moved around her in soft endless threads that did not include him.

She pressed her palms flat against the moss, as if she could hold herself together through the ground alone. The ancestors' voices threaded past her, layered and murmuring, old joys and old griefs that were not hers to carry, and none of them wore his shape. She listened anyway. She listened the way she had listened for him every hour since she woke into the silence, straining after some fold in the sound that might turn out to be him after all.

Nothing turned.

Grief came up through her in waves that had no rhythm to brace against, arriving and receding and arriving again before she had found her footing from the last one. She thought of his hands cupping her face beneath the branches. She thought of the wrongness of the other hand, small and pale, reaching for her in that dead room, and could not tell anymore which memory was punishment and which was simply what remained of him.

She had come all this way to be too late.

Her body curled lower over her hands. The moss was cool and gave nothing back. Somewhere above her the Tree kept singing its endless names of the dead, indifferent to which name she had come to find.

Something in her let go.

The grief that hope had been holding back now had nothing to press against, and it came out of her all at once, wave on wave, until it was not weeping so much as a body trying to survive what it could not hold. She keened into the moss. She broke her own rule and said his name — once, twice, a dozen times, flung it out into the grove as if she could throw it far enough to reach him — and the silence swallowed each one and gave nothing back. She clawed the earth. She curled and uncurled around the child while her stomach heaved on nothing. She cried until the sound cracked and thinned and lost its shape, until there was only breath dragged raw across a throat gone useless.

And then, slowly, it wore itself out — not because the grief had eased, but because there was nothing left in her to spend on it.

She lay where she had fallen, curled into the moss with her cheek against it and one hand still open on the roots, too spent now even to weep. Her breathing came shallow and even, the emptied quiet of someone worn down to the floor of themselves. The tendrils stilled. The sounds of the forest emptied. Little by little the whole sacred place settled around her, until she could hear the wet earth beneath her palm and her own heart knocking slow and tired against the ground.

Which was why she heard it at all.

A footstep behind her.

Small. Almost nothing. The wet press of moss under foot.

Neytiri froze, her eyes opening and staring at the moss beneath her, terrified that if she moved, it would disappear.

The world held its breath with her.

Another step.

She could not turn. If she turned and saw nothing, the last part of her would go. If she turned and saw some dream-made trick wearing his shape, she would not survive that either. If she turned and it was him—

"Neytiri."

The voice broke on the middle of her name.

His voice. Not the flat silence she had been living inside, not the memory she had worn thin with listening — his, broken and close and real, the first sound that had come from him and not from her own desperate reaching. It went into her like warmth into a body left too long in the cold.

She turned, breath catching in her throat.

Jake stood at the edge of the roots.

Not as he had been in the room of fire. Not small and human and hurt under white light. He stood in the body she had first taught to breathe the forest, tall and blue and trembling like a sapling after lightning. Violet light lay across his shoulders. One hand gripped a low branch beside him, not for grace but for need. His mouth was open. His face had no defence on it at all.

He tried to say her name again and failed.

Neytiri was moving before thought could catch her.

She struck him hard enough that his breath left him. His arms closed a half-beat late, then fiercely, around her back and shoulders and head, gathering whatever of her could be gathered. She buried her face in his chest. His skin was warm — warm, when everything of his had been cold since she woke to the silence: the glass, the fluid, the silence she reached into and drew back from as though from something dead. His heart beat under her cheek. Not a number climbing on Grace's screen. A heart, quick and uneven and his. His hands shook where they held her, and even the shaking was a mercy, because it meant there was something left in him that could tremble.

All that day she had turned inward and met nothing — the reaching, the silence, the recoil, over and over, until the emptiness had begun to feel like the truth and everything else the lie. Now there was nothing to reach for. He was simply here, all around her, and the hollow she had carried so long she had stopped believing it could be anything else closed over him like water over a stone.

"Jake—"

She cried with her teeth in him, with his name somewhere in the wreck of her throat, with one hand clutching the back of his neck and the other fisted so hard in his side she was sure she would see bruises forming if she looked. He tried once to draw her back to see her face. She made a sound so wild he stopped at once and sank with her instead, sitting among the roots, pulling her into his lap because distance — even the width of looking — was too much to ask.

"I've got you," he said. Again and again. "I'm here. I'm here. I'm sorry. God, baby, I'm so sorry."

She could not answer until there was no crying left, only the aftershocks of it moving through her ribs. Then she lay against him empty and alive, nose pressed to the hollow of his throat.

"I thought I killed you."

His arms tightened.

"You were gone," she said. "I could not hear you. I could not find you. I thought—"

"No." He pushed her back then. Only enough that she had to see his face. His eyes were wet. "No, Neytiri. You don't apologise for being angry. Not ever."

"It was more than anger."

"I know."

The words were quiet enough that she stilled.

Jake swallowed. "I felt it. Not all of it, maybe. Enough." His gaze flicked away, then came back because he made it. "The way you looked at me. In that room."

Her shame rose so fast she could barely breathe.

"I knew it was you." The words came out cracked. "I was just so angry, Jake, I still am, but—"

"I know, you have nothing to feel sorry for, Neytiri," he said, voice fierce. "I earned that look, I earned all of it."

For a long moment she had no words to give him.

The Tree whispered overhead.

"I am sorry," she said. The words were too small. She put her hand against the side of his face because there was nothing else large enough to say.

He leaned into her palm with a weariness that looked older than the war and shook his head.

"Don't be sorry, I lied to you first," he said. "For a long time. About the mission. About myself. About what I was scared you'd see if you looked too close." His breath moved unevenly. "I deserve your anger. Don't bury it to spare me. I can take the anger. I can't take you disappearing inside yourself again."

"I do not want to be angry anymore."

The answer came out of her before she knew it was ready.

Jake's face folded.

"I know," he whispered.

She came back against him. He let her. For a few breaths they pretended the statement could be enough, that truth had been named and maybe that would be enough to wipe the wound clean. His chin rested against her hair. Her ear lay over his heart.

Then he moved.

"We still have to talk."

Her whole body went tight.

"No."

"Neytiri—"

"No." Sharp. Too sharp.

She felt the dream around them and waited, terrified, for the tree to shudder and tear him away as punishment for her anger.

Nothing happened.

The tendrils swayed. Jake remained under her hands. Anger moved through the dream and did not kill him.

"I'm not going to force you," he said, gently. "But we can't avoid it forever."

She stared at the small bright marks on his chest. Her hand moved, almost without thought, down to the curve of her belly. His followed more carefully, asking in the pause before it settled there.

For one breath they held the child between their hands.

"Someday," Neytiri said. "Not tonight."

He breathed slow against her.

"Okay."

A flinch cut across his face.

It was gone almost before it came, but she had learned the cost of missing such things. Her hand snapped to his side. The dream did not split. Still, his jaw clenched so hard the tendons stood out.

"I'm okay," he said.

The words were too quick.

Neytiri did not move. She held his gaze and let the silence gather weight until the lie curdled in it.

"Do not lie to me anymore."

Something in him resisted. She saw it. Then his shoulders dropped.

"I'm scared," he said.

It was so naked she forgot to breathe.

He closed his eyes. "I don't know if the tank holds. I don't know if this bond holds. I don't know if there's a version where I get all the way back to you." A faint, ugly little laugh tried to rise and failed. "And I don't know what happens to me if I don't."

Neytiri pressed her forehead to his, her own chest tight with the same fear.

"Then be scared here," she said. "Just do not go."

His arms came around her as though those words had undone him.

After that, they lay down in the roots. He pulled her against him with the same stubborn tenderness Mo'at had used, refusing to let her hold herself up when there was nothing left to hold with.

"Sleep," he murmured.

"I am already sleeping."

"Then rest."

She held him tighter.

Around them, the dream began to thin, the edges of her vision beginning to shudder as sleep began to fall away.

"No." Panic sharpened through her. "No, I just found you."

"You can come back."

"What if I wake and there is nothing?"

"Then you remember this." His hand came up to the back of her head. "You listen with that stubborn heart of yours and you come back."

She tried to answer and could not. The grove was going soft at its edges, the tendrils losing their line, the violet light bleeding out of the roots the way colour bleeds from cloth left too long in the sun. She could feel the pull of it now — that same downward drag that had taken her the last time, only turned the wrong way round, hauling her up and out and away from him.

She fought it the way she had fought sleep in her mother's lap, chin lifted against the current. She fixed everything she had left on him: the warmth of his chest, the uneven knock of his heart, the tremor in the hands that held her. She tried to press it all somewhere deep enough that no waking could reach in and scrub it away.

"Stay," she said. "Stay until I am gone. Do not let go first."

"I won't." His arms tightened — and even tightening they were already thinning, losing their weight, becoming light and then less than light. "I've got you. I've got you. I promise."

Above them the Tree sang on, vast and indifferent, and for once its endless names of the dead did not frighten her, because his was not among them.

"I will listen," she said. "I swear it. I will find the far side of the silence."

"I know you will."

His voice was already going soft at its edges, thinning the way the light was thinning, until it was less his voice than the memory of it laid over the sound of the grove.

"Jake—"

The roots faded. The violet light broke apart. She clutched at him until there was no him left to clutch.

And then even the clutching closed on nothing, and she was rising through grey water toward a surface she did not want, still reaching back down into the dark after a shape that had already let the current carry it under.

☾─────•──•°•𖥸•°•──•─────☽

Mo'at's face was the first thing she saw when she opened her eyes.

For one suspended breath Neytiri did not know which world had kept its promise.

Then her mother's hand stroked her hair, and the moss under her cheek was real moss, and dawn had come bright and grey through the trees.

Her breath came out of her broken.

"You stayed," Neytiri whispered.

"I said I would."

Before she could stop herself, Neytiri reached inward.

Silence.

The dream's warmth vanished so abruptly that her throat closed. Grief rose. Frustration. A loneliness so flat and wide it seemed to have no far edge. She pressed her eyes closed, fighting the urge to go back to sleep where she could see him again. Her hands, trembling, pressed against her stomach.

Mo'at watched her face.

"He will be silent in the waking world for a time," she said. "Do not mistake silence for absence."

Neytiri dragged in a breath, her eyes opening and shimmering with new tears.

"How do I listen, then?"

"With what believed him in the dream."

That answer was not enough.