Archive of Our Own ^beta

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Lo’ak used to think he was the only one who was affected by it. That he was the only one who knew when Kiri was feeling bad, because he felt bad, too, right down to his bones. He used to be proud, almost, because even when his sister was the most annoying person in the universe she was still his, and he was still hers, and this bond proved that.

Later on, of course, he’d see it wasn’t just him that was affected. He saw the way Mama rubbed her head with a tension headache, the way Daddy had trouble remembering Na’vi words, the way Neteyam stumbled over his own feet, the way passersby in the village seemed to grow tired more easily. And nothing had changed except that Kiri had had a bad day; it’d be back to normal when she was feeling better, and no one would notice.

Lo’ak would notice, though. He could be proud of that, at least; he was the one who showed Spider how to spot the pattern, even, since Spider couldn’t feel any of it himself. Sometimes he thinks he might have noticed it before Kiri–after all, this stuff had always been normal to her, the way she’d lived in the world.

Other times he wondered if maybe it took her so long because she didn’t want to figure it out–maybe she knew, even then, that once she saw what was going on, there’d be no end to what she could see. And that would be a beautiful and terrifying thing in equal measure.

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Kiri is four when she has a fight with Lo’ak and he starts throwing up halfway through. Her hands buzz funny for an hour afterward and she doesn’t tell anyone.

Kiri is five when she has a fight with Neteyam and she doesn't even punch him, but blood is pouring from his nose and staining the ground anyway.

Kiri is seven when she has a fight with Spider and he ends up being chased through the woods by a nantang. Everytime she looks at the scar on his leg she thinks that the only reason her parents let them be in that part of the woods was because it was far, far from nantang hunting grounds.

Kiri is eight and hiding in a tree, because she’s been having nightmares about doing something bad to the baby growing in Mama by accident. She’s got her eyes squeezed shut and she’s reaching for that sharp bright thing in herself, ripping it away from the rest of her, burying it deep, deep where it can’t hurt anyone.

Kiri is fifteen and her head hurts so bad where her kuru is being pulled on and she wants them to die, she wants to hurt these not-Na’vi with every fiber of her being, but the sharp edges in her brightness have been tampered by long burying and all she can do is stand there, grass trembling helplessly around her feet.

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Being locked down in High Camp for so long has put her on edge, and everyone can see it. But they don’t know how the stress will make things louder, how the hum of energy through People’s veins will make her nauseous, how conversation will wear her out and silence will make her want to scream, how the ikrans will be more skittish and the stores will go bad quicker and the babies will find it harder go to sleep and she’ll know it’s tied to her, to something in her bones.

Lo’ak and Spider are the one who come closest to understanding; they're the ones who give her an excuse to leave, to slip out into the forest together. Tuk doesn’t get it like they do, but she still tags along on their little sojourn outside, the sound of her laughter not adding to Kiri’s headache for the first time in weeks.

Alone in the woods, she breathes deep, feeling the plants hum and shiver under her hands. She still feels the energy, now, but it’s quieter out here, away from the fear and worry that haunts High Camp. Easier to bear, a balm rather than a curse.

Welcome home, the trees say. She lies down, lets herself sink deeper, deeper into the earth, into her third mother’s arms, letting herself sink into the threads of connection and for a moment, everything is okay.

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“If you say anything about the Force, I will shoot you,” Jake says calmly.

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Norm raises his hands in surrender, although his wide eyes are still locked on Kiri. She’s kneeling in the water before them, facing away with her head bowed in concentration, fish of different sizes swirling around her outspread hands.

Metkayina pass back and forth around her, carefully avoiding getting in her way, but otherwise not paying that much attention. They seem more interested in Norm, standing there in his human clothes on his Avatar body, than anything Kiri’s doing right now. Or maybe they just know better than to make a fuss.

“She sends them out as sentries,” Jake explains. “Keeps watch for oncoming RDA.” Kiri flexes her fingers and some of the fish shoot away, glinting in the water like tiny bullets.

“Interesting.” Norm clears his throat. “You know, The Phantom Menace was obviously one of the great atrocities of the twentieth/twenty-first century, but considering the whole virgin birth aspect–not to imply Grace was a virgin, she’d shoot me for that–just the general atmosphere, and of course our lives would probably seem like galactic science fiction from the critical perspectives of that era, although obviously I’m not suggesting that anyone is this scenario is going to end up a Darth Vader–”

“Norm.”

“Right, right. Shutting up now, sir.”

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It's That Day again, Kiri knows. Not the day Hometree or the Tree of Voices fell, the day all the People remember with terror and grief--no, this is a different Day. She feels it whistling through the air around her, digging into her bones and making her teeth hurt. Branches crack against trunks like gunshots, wind yanks painfully hard on Kiri's hair, and in the distance she can hear running feet and wheels rumbling, even though the vehicles are all long gone.

They have to be quiet, Daddy says, and they have to be patient with Mommy because Mommy is very sad today. Kiri doesn't need to be told that Mommy is sad, she can feel it pulsing, dripping like water under her skin.

Later on Mommy and some of the other People will gather and mourn for the dead, and Grandma will lead the people in a mourning ceremony, and then Grandma and Mommy will go off to cry together all night. But right now Mommy is alone, and Kiri can feel that too, like a thread in her tummy tugging her up through the branches of Hometree.

She finds Mommy sitting on a branch in a tucked-away place, looking out over the tree line and crying. Mommy stiffens when Kiri comes near, wiping at her face, but Kiri shakes her head–she doesn’t want Mommy to be scared to cry in front of her, same way she’s not scared to cry in front of Mommy.

Kiri snuggles up against Mommy’s chest and wraps her arms as far around Mommy as they can go, tucking her head under Mommy’s chin. A pause, and then Mommy’s sniffling, sobbing, big wet tears landing in Kiri’s hair.

“Sylwanin,” Mommy whispers, voice trembling. Kiri closes her eyes and she can see a girl running, laughing, playing, fighting, bleeding, dying. “Sylwanin. Oh, Sylwanin.”

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Okay, so maybe Spider and Kiri are out a little late. Just a little. Jake and Neytiri were gonna be out much later, though, it’s not like it’s a crime. And there are plenty of berries that are easier to gather at night, everyone knows that. Sure, they’re doing a lot of laughing and talking and standing around, but they’re gathering stuff, too!

Really, it’s all going fine. Well, it was going fine until Kiri came to a dead stop, almost sending Spider crashing into her. She’s looking up, towards the stars, with that look in her eyes that she gets sometimes.

“Kiri?” Spider asks softly. And then he sees it–a little dot of light growing brighter than the others, glinting in the night sky. A shooting star?

“Oh, coo–” He’s cut off as she drops her basket and seizes his hand, breaking into a run. Spider yelps, struggling to keep a grip on his basket without falling behind. “What the fuck, Kir?!”

“We gotta go.” Her voice is shaking, eyes huge, darting across the horizon like she can see terrible things looming there. “It’s coming, it’s coming, we gotta go–”

“What’s–” Spider’s cut off with a yelp, dropping his basket, as Kiri grabs him and throws him over her shoulder, picking up speed until she’s practically flying. He has to cling on for dear life, frantically knocking branches away from his face as she swerves and leaps through the trees.

And all right, that bright light in the sky is coming towards them very fucking fast. Spider can’t look directly at it now, but when he yanks his eyes away it follows, ugly white light shining everywhere.

“Come on,” Kiri rasps, words coming between gasps. “Come on, come on, where are you, come on–”

Dark wings blot out the light overhead, the ikran–the riderless ikran–crashing to earth in front of them with a ground-shaking whomp. Kiri slings Spider over the back and climbs on after him, twsin sliding into place like she’s done this a million times before.

“Hang on,” she barks, and Spider flings his arms around her shoulders right before the ikran’s wings snap out, slices of shadow in the face of oncoming fire. They hurtle up, straight up, rising as quickly as the light in the sky is falling, wind snatching at Spider’s hair and he’s going to throw up his own fucking stomach–

Animals scream as the fireball explodes with a boom to shake the world, orange mouth opening to swallow them up. But Spider, Kiri, and the ikran are sailing clear of the inferno, rising on a tidal wave of smoke, hell-bright fury screaming in their wake.

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She can't shoot.

Maybe that's not quite right--she can shoot, but it's awkward, ugly, arrows skidding off into the foliage or crashing to the ground at her feet. Long after her brothers have gotten the hang of it, and most of the other children her age, and even Spider, she struggles.

Norm says it's a problem to do with her hand-eye coordination. Grandmother says that if Eywa wanted every single Na'vi to be a hunter they'd all be born with bows for arms; she's just grateful for a student who won't slip off to hunt the way Neytiri did. Her parents say there are exercises, practices, she'll get better with time.

Kiri thinks of her mother, the Omaticaya's greatest huntress, who took down the Sky Olo’eyktan during the battle of the Soul Tree. She thinks of her father, a warrior born on his home planet and this one. She takes a deep breath and tries not to cry.

Her brothers suggest going off to practice some more, just the four of them, away from her parents and the judgment of passerby. Kiri suspects that's not really the problem, but she agrees anyway, hoping against hope they're right.

They're not. She shoots until her fingers are numb and it doesn't work, it doesn't work. She stomps through the woods to collect her arrows, hands shaking as she rips one from a bush.

"Kiri--" Neteyam says softly.

"Don't." She rounds on him, pointing the arrow his way, voice shaking as she struggles to keep from breaking into tears. "Don't say it's okay, 'Teyam, it's not okay, none of this okay, this is stupid, I'm so st--"

The wood cracks between her fingers, earsplitting, green shining through the gap. Kiri drops it with a yelp and it hits the ground, roots sprouting from one end to sink into the earth. The former arrow lurches upright, petals unfurling to wave at them as it sways gently in the breeze.

Learning to shoot feels just a little less important, after that.

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Neteyam doesn't have a heart anymore, not exactly. He has something that works like a heart, he's pretty sure, something that pulses green and heavy inside him, something that makes his breath smell like trees and his blood flow like sap, that makes the skin over his chest tougher than the rest of him, bark-rough.

Max and Norm squint at his readings for hours, exchanging wide-eyed looks over their screens. Mom, Grandmother, and Ronal take turns poking at his chest, watching the leaves ripple under his skin with something like awe–rare for women who’ve seen as much as they have. Kiri takes his hand, five fingers weaving with four, and asks only if he feels comfortable.

He does, more or less. He gets a little listless on cloudy, sunless days, and normal food doesn’t interest him quite as much, but he’s still more boy than tree in the places that count. His pulse may beat in tune with hers, perfect time, but hasn’t it always? They’re twins, after all, in every way that matters.

Sometimes he considers it, but he never gets around to asking what’ll happen to him and his heart if she dies. It just doesn’t feel all that relevant.

Neteyam doesn’t have a heart anymore, but he has a sister, and he knows which one he values more.

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"Where is he." Jake's caught off guard by the way Kiri's voice lashes out like a whip, uncompromising as Neytiri on the battlefield or Grace in the lab. She stands at his side, eyes burning into Aonung like twin points of pure fire. "Where's. My. Brother."

Aonung swallows, glancing at his father. "I..."

"Tell me what you did." Kiri steps forward, cocking her head. Her hair ripples, and it takes Jake a second to realize the wind isn't blowing. "Tell me what you did to Lo'ak."

"Kiri--" Jake warns.

"It's just a question," Kiri says lightly. "One little question from the little freak." Her hand twitches at her side and Jake gets a very bad feeling, "Is that too much for you?"

"It was..." Aonung scratches the back of his head. "It was just a prank, it's not my fault he's stupid--"

She lunges for his throat with an earsplitting scream.

"Kiri!" Shit-shit-shit-- Jake grabs her by the shoulders and hauls her back, pulling her close before she can even touch Aonung.

That doesn't stop blood from gushing out of Aonung's nose for the second time that day, doesn't stop him from collapsing to the ground with a cry of pain, thrashing and clutching his head. Tonowari drops down by his side, shouting for Ronal.

"Kiri." Jake turns his daughter to face him, the bottom of his stomach dropping out at the sight of her eyes: pupils blown out, big and lost and strange. "Kiri, sweetheart, breathe." He smooths his hands through her hair, willing his voice to stay calm. "Babygirl, come back to me."

She blinks at him once, twice, and then she gasps like she's coming up for air, slumping into his arms. Aonung's thrashing comes to an abrupt halt and he collapses against the beach, panting.

"Dad," Kiri rasps, clutching onto him with shaking hands. "Dad, Dad, Dad..."

"It's okay." Jake holds her tight, willing himself to believe what he's saying. "It's okay, babygirl, it's all right. It's all right."

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Spider slams his fists against the glass and screams, louder than Kiri's ever heard him, loud enough to make her ears twitch. He rears back and hits again, again, face twisting with hate and fury and terror in a way that looks impossibly wrong on him, a mask stitched awkwardly, painfully, into his skull.

"Kid's completely feral," the Sky Man sitting at the desk says, tapping at his computer screen. She can see images flashing by--Spider staring hollowly into a camera, a shot of the Sky Woman whose picture lives above his bed, side-by-side pictures of his father's face in two different bodies. "He thinks he's one of them."

Feral. It makes her skin crawl, even more than the contempt in them. Spider's not feral, none of them are feral, just because he dresses and behaves differently and wants them to fucking let him go doesn't make him some kind of thing, how dare they--

Something shatters in her hand, warm liquid splashing across her palm.

"Shit." Colonel Quaritch looks down at the broken coffee cup, shaking dripping pieces into the nearest trash can. He hadn't even heard or felt the fucking thing break.

"You all right, sir?" the tech asks, blinking up in that twitchy little way all the techs seem to have around him.

"Fine, fine. Still adjusting, I guess." He grabs the offered towel and wipes his hands, rolling his shoulders in an attempt to head off the headache that's suddenly started to pulse at the base of his queue.

The kid starts trying to break the window with the chair again and Quaritch sighs. At this rate, he'll be lucky if he doesn't end up with a full-blown migraine.

Kiri gasps, eyes flying open. Her siblings crouch in front of her, three sets of wide yellow eyes, gathered in the little corner of High Camp they'd snuck off to when Mom and Dad talking about leaving had become too much to bear.

"Did you See him?" Tuk asks, low and breathless. "Did you See Spider?"

"I--he's okay. He's alive. I don't..." Kiri shakes her head; she can't talk about the way Spider looked, how terrified he was in that bare little box. How easy it had been to slip into the skin of the man who'd put him there, the monster who'd hurt them all, to blend with him until their bones were the same.

She sags and her siblings gather around her, pull her into a tight hug. The absence of who's missing from their cluster is palpable, but she's grateful for their arms anyway, the weight of their bodies a much-needed pressure on her aching, oversensitive skin.

"We'll get him back," Lo'ak whispers. "We'll kill them all if we have to. We'll get him back, Kir." She can feel his heart beating fast and wild.

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Mom's here.

They all know it, of course, they'd all heard the call, only Kiri had felt her coming before anyone else had. And now she can feel Mom getting close; Dad's farther off, it's harder to grab onto his location, but Mom is closer, hunter's concentration zinging over Kiri's skin.

Concentration, yes, but also frustration. Kiri and her family are being held in a circle, living shields, Spider pressed up against her so the man holding them at gunpoint can keep his gun on them both while hiding behind their bodies, messing up Mom's shot.

If it was just Kiri, maybe she could pull it off--Kiri thinks of that video with her parents from fifteen years ago, the day they killed Spider's dad (a video that Spider's dad had also been watching, and she doesn't know how to wrap her mind around that, the way this presence of a man she's never met scratches against her consciousness like a familiar nail), how Mom had made two shots past Dad without flinching.

But Spider is standing next to Kiri and whatever Mom thinks about him, she'd never deliberately put him in danger, not in a million years. So Kiri has to help.

She tilts her head back and prays to the Great Mother, words spilling from her like water. She can feel the soldier behind getting more tense with each word, caught off guard by a language he doesn't understand, by a power he'll never be able to feel even when She's written into his very cells. His anger builds higher, higher, higher--

"Shut up," he snarls, lurching upwards to grab Kiri by the hair. Pain bursts, but not so loud she can't hear the whistle of an arrow through the air, the thunk of wood into skin, his faint grunt as he topples backwards. Blood washes across her face, droplets like rain on her skin.

In the second afterward, before the world explodes into gunfire and she has to close her eyes against the muzzle flashes, Kiri feels her lips quirk up into a smile.

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"I'm a scientist," Grace Augustine tells the camera. "I'm supposed to stay objective. I'm supposed to respect local customs without getting swept up in them. I'm supposed..." She pauses, lights a cigarette, reflections of the flame dancing over her face as she breathes deep.

"When I came here, Mo'at and I made tsaheylu," she says. "It was our first steps in understanding each other's language. It was a process that she--she's not comfortable repeating, or having others repeat before they're ready. I don't know if it's what she saw or if it was just the rareness of the situation, but I agree. What I felt, it was--" She lets out a breath. "And that was just bonding with one person.

"On Eywa'eveng--no, I mean Pandora. No, I mean Eywa'eveng, fuck--on this planet, you can feel the energy in the air, if you concentrate hard enough. The power. It's always been nothing more than a whisper for me, something I only picked up one after years of studying and waiting, but it's here. It's in the animals, the ancestors, and in...in something else. Something vast. Something that's part of them, and they it, but at the same time..."

She takes a puff of her cigarette. "Maybe Quaritch is right, maybe I am a crazy old bitch, but I don't feel crazy. I feel--iy feels real. Something greater than the atom bomb, the hydrogen bomb, any weapon of destruction created on any other world. The power to create, and to undo. Godhood, twining through the roots, pulsing under the ground, in the air."

Smoke weaves through the air around her, flickers red for a heartbeat. "It scares me shitless," she murmurs. "That power, it scares me and I love it and that scares me more. If my so-called employers knew it was here, they'd rip the world apart trying to harness it, but they don't believe it's here, people like them never believe in anyone's gods but their own.

"Except that a war's coming. We all know it. And I'm not sure She will give them a choice to believe or not believe."

A beat, and then she shakes her head. "Fuck, I need to get some sleep. Doctor--no, Corporal, fuck's sake--Sully is coming in with the next ship and I want to have a modicum of energy left over for that shitshow." She takes a last puff of her cigarette and taps the keyboard, her face freezing still on the screen.

Kiri lowers the datapad and slips off the modified headphones, slumping back against the wall. Around her, the lab is quiet, machines buzzing sleepily, scientists breathing in her beds. Lo'ak snores in a corner, buckled into the Atmo mask even though he bitched about how the air tastes, not quite ready to go home after Neteyam got hurt in today's disaster. Spider's tucked up against him, hair falling over his face in messy gold waves.

Across the room, Kiri's bloodmother floats in her tank, eyes closed in sleep, dreaming of gods and cigarettes and things Kiri can't even imagine. Five fingers drifting, five fingers that Kiri had put her hand against more times than she could count from the other side of the glass, watching her hands grow bigger as her mother's stayed the same.

Kiri closes her eyes, rests her hand against the wall. She can feel energy pulsing through her fingertips, steady as the wind, a song that never ends. She can feel power gathered in her palm like a hurricane, curled up tight and waiting to explode.

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Dad asks her what Eywa's heartbeat sounds like, and Kiri doesn't know what to say.

She wants to say that it's the sound of pa'li hooves running, of branches rocking together in the wind, of waves crashing on the shore, of ikran wings pounding the air. She wants to say that it sounds like things she's never heard, but knows intimately: snow howling on the ice caps, lava rumbling on the fire lands, desert sands singing and the great fields rippling and water rushing through the caverns where the underground People live.

She wants to say it sounds like the pulse of a small heart echoing inside the womb, the echo of a big old heart reaching its end, feet of all sizes tracing the ground. She wants to say it sounds like the thump of People dancing, singing, fighting, laughing, living, the rush of their combined blood booming as one.

She wants to say it sounds like other things, too, darker things: the crack of bones breaking under sharp teeth, blood splashing earth, the impact of trees hitting ground, the scream of gunfire, the echo of engines, the thud thud thud of a spinning machine as someone she loves howls within, agonized. Bad memories are carried along with the good, and their marks run deep.

She wants to say that Eywa's heartbeat carries notes of the First songs and the newest, more fragile ones being sung over fresh songcords right now, an endless lullaby stretching to the very beginnings of their world. She wants to say it sounds like secrets she should not know, hidden truths carried from both worlds, the depths of a mind that the ocean is a single drop besides.

She wants to say that it sounds like her dad's own heartbeat, her mom's, her grandmother's, that it sounds like the pulse of life in her brothers and sister's veins. That it sounds like the hum of spirits twining through the air, the ripple of energy gathered under her hands, the twitch of power as she bends Eywa's creatures to her command.

She wants to say, it's the sound of my third mother loving me.

She wants to say, it's a heartbeat like anyone else's.

She wants to say, it sounds like my own.

But the thought of saying any of that feels like ripping a dam inside her, a flood that will twist the air around them, push her father's suspension of disbelief to the breaking point. Besides, she could describe it for an hour, a day, a century and she's still worried about getting it wrong, a thought that scares her almost as much as not being believed.

So she just says, soft and awed, with the faintest shiver of hunger: "Mighty."

And somehow, that feels right.

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For Kiri, it's never been anything as simple or foolish as deciding which mother matters the most. Neytiri te Tskaha Mo'at'ite raised her, Grace Augustine made her, Eywa's power run through her veins and shape the fabric of her world. Without any one of them, she would be lesser, unrecognizable to who she is.

She is the girl with three mothers, yes, and she is also the girl with a grandmother who showed her how to save lives and stands with her as Eywa'eveng pulses under their feet, she is the girl with millennia of dangerous women standing at her back. Daughter, they call her, each and every one, their voices endless as the stars.

Motherhood has never been as simple as love for her--and yet, it is precisely that simple, and love is precisely that complex, that endless, that fierce, that dangerous. Kiri has been forged in it, grown with it, saved by it time and time again, and now it makes her stronger than any man could ever understand.

Below her, she can see Sky People picking their way through Eywa'eveng, convinced that their guns and soldiers in false Na'vi bodies can protect them. They don't see her standing on an outcropping overhead, they don't feel the creatures gathered around them, above them, below them, waiting for the signal to tear them apart.

Kiri can feel Neytiri at her side, tracking the precise movements of her mother's hands as she notches an arrow to her bow. She can feel Grace at her back, distant pressure of hands on her shoulders, be ready babygirl. She can feel Eywa's fingers laced through hers, showing Kiri where to reach, how to move, where to lead Her creatures into a new day.

I love you, she tells them all, and she knows each one hears her. They breathe deep as a whole, her lungs working in time with theirs, and together, they leap.

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"Did the old hag grow you out of a petri dish, or what?"

Quaritch is standing in front of her, gun resting loosely at his side--you so much as tickle my brain and I'll fucking blow yours to bits, little girl, he'd said. Kiri stops tugging on the cuffs to raise her head, gazing at him levelly.

"I asked you a question." He jabs the gun in her direction as emphasis, metal flashing off the barrel. "Ain't you supposed to respect your elders?"

Kiri grits her teeth and wills herself not to flinch; her parents brought this man down once upon a time, Spider survived months under his control. She can endure this, she will endure it, without breaking.

Quaritch shrugs. "Augustine--the original, that is--always acted holier-than-thou about the immortality shit, but she was as interested as any of us. You know her work was a big part of putting the Soul Drive into action?" He pauses, studying her carefully. "Or should I say your work?"

Kiri swallows and licks her lips, trying to force her dry tongue to work. "I'm not a recom," she says.

"Maybe not, but I saw your DNA scans. You're about as much Jake Sully's blood as my boy is." Kiri hisses, bioluminescence flaring like a warning; Quaritch barrels on. "Hell, you're barely Na'vi. The eggheads don't know what the fuck to call you, they didn't even know whether they were looking at an animal or a fucking plant."

He takes a step closer, looming over her, forcing Kiri to crane her neck up to look at him. "So tell me, little witch," and his voice is so soft, "What the precise fuck are you supposed to be?"

The answer rises up like a wave rippling over her tongue, a voice deeper and fiercer than hers snapping out of Kiri's mouth like a bolt of fire. "I'm the person who's going to watch you bleed the fuck out, Miles." The air around her ripples as she speaks, the tips of her hair rising and sparking with light.

Their eyes meet and whatever Quaritch sees reflected there makes him back up a step. "You do that, sweetheart." His voice is casual, mocking but his knuckles are white on the barrel of his gun. He turns away, barking more orders into his comlink.

Kiri lets herself sink to her knees beside the rail, breathing gently, heart pounding so hard it hurts. She can feel the ocean stirring beneath, the water rippling as if stirred by distant breath.

Soon, my love, the Great Mother whispers, echoing as a pulse in her ear. Soon.

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"Easy," Spider says, hands pressed to either side of Kiri's head. His fingers move soft circles, almost lost in the black waterfall of her hair. "Easy, Kiri. It's okay." His palms are cool, quiet weights, the faint pulse of blood so quiet without the accompanying rush of Eywa's energy.

Not that Spider doesn't belong to Eywa as much as she does--Kiri had chosen him, after all, had taken his hand and led him into her world when they were young. Eywa lives in the calluses of his palms and the braids in his hair and even the rasp of filtered air in his lungs, Eywa watches him like She watches all her children.

But Eywa does not burn in Spider's body, does not coil through his veins like lightning, does not biologically link him up to the web that Kiri feels pulsing around her every second of every day. Some days, like the months they had lost him and she had only been able to catch fractured glimpses of him through cruel eyes, this fact had made her feel a little insane.

Other days, days like today when the air around Kiri trembles and the animals move anxiously around her and she flinches when People come near and Spider has to guide her somewhere private, helping her sit down and resting his hands on her head, it feels like a blessing. It feels like another gift from the Great Mother, come in a strange form to balance the weight of their baffling, beautiful world on Kiri's shoulders.

"Deep breaths." His hands curl around her temples like a circlet, flesh shields blocking out the noises noise noise, the cavalcade of sights and smells and sensations and sounds and tastes and feelings for which there are no words. Over the years he's learned how to press in just the right way, lightly enough not to hurt while still heavy enough to turn the dial down, to give her room to breathe.

Kiri does, in and out, Spider breathing with her. Step by step, breath by breath, the world slowly shrinking down to fit just the two of them. And it is, just for a little while, as quiet as she needs it to be.

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Mansk has to admit, the original Grace Augustine was an uptight old bitch, but her...clone? recom? is quite the little looker. She stiffens as he draws near, shoulders drawing tight, like she can feel his eyes crawling over her body even through his sunglasses.

"Easy," Mansk murmurs, voice low like he's trying to soothe a horse. "I'm not gonna hurt ya." And he won't, not really, not unless she makes things rough for herself.

He reaches out, scratching a single finger along her collarbone. Her skin ripples at his touch, blue-velvet soft...

...and then pain, raw screaming pain, hits him like a lightning bolt. He falls to his knees, clutching his arm and screaming at the top of his lungs because it burns it burns it burns. His glasses slip down his face and he thinks that must be messing with his vision somehow, fucking it up, because there's no way what they're seeing is actually happening.

The finger that touched her is turning green, all of his fingers are turning green, slamming together as the skin fuses and shifts, taxing on the waxy sheen of his leaf. The rest of his arm is thickening, hardening, skin darkening into rough bark as his bones twist in on themselves, fresh green shoots tearing free of his flesh.

He can hear the others shouting, running, Colonel yelling at them not to shoot the hostage. Somebody points a gun right between the girl's dead-calm eyes, screaming at her to make it stop, but it's too late. Mansk's already rocking back on his heels, staring at the branch cutting from his shoulder where his arm used to be.

The pain is his arm abruptly cuts off, leaving nothing but the heavy, heavy weight of wood, of life pulsing in that wood's depths. Sweet green leaves wink at Mansk, waving hello. His eyes roll up in his head and the girl watches him collapse to the ground at her feet.

Chapter Text

The last thing he remembers is closing his eyes on a rock, blood bitter in his mouth as his parents' broken, trembling voices melt away into the black. Then his sister is kneeling in front of him in a green wood, brushing dirt away from his face.

"Hey, 'Teyam," she says easily, crouching in front of him, reaching up to run her fingers through his hair. Rich, dark soil spills through her hands, falling from him like water.

"...Kir?" He coughs, throat aching with the memory of airlessness. "What--I--" He wriggles, feeling grass tickle his neck. "My arms, something's wrong with my, my..."

"I know." She presses her hands lightly against the ground, five fingers spread wide, lights dancing over her skin. "Give them a minute."

Something rolls through him, a wave like the sea, and he's rising, shoulders nudged up out of the dirt. It comes again, again, his arms curving up out of the dark until his hands pop free and he's sitting there with his torso sprouting out of the ground like a bush, the rest of him...he's not sure where the rest of him is, exactly.

"Kir, what..." More coughing, petals sputtering out of him, the pale shine of an atokirina' bouncing off his tongue. "What happened?"

She shrugs. "I missed you." Her fingers wrap around his, energy buzzing off her hands and rocking up through his arms, through his bones. "Ready?"

Neteyam's not sure what to do, so he just nods, holding on to her as best he can.

Kiri stands with a grunt of effort and Neteyam follows, air ticking his skin as he slowly, steadily unfurls from the ground. It dawns on him that he's naked as the day he was born, save for a thin layer of dirt over his skin, but he doesn't feel shame or fear, just a strange sense of wonder.

His feet quiver as they pull themselves free, slipping awkwardly across the ground. He stumbles, legs quivering and fragile like a newborn pa'li's.

"Easy." Kiri catches him, pulling him close, and it dawns on Neteyam that she's taller than him now, her hair crackling slightly as it brushes his face. "I've got you." She helps him stand, settling back onto his heels with her hands still woven through his.

"C'mon," she says, her breath smelling of flowers and blood and green, growing things. "Let's go home."

Chapter Text

"I'm not crazy," she says slowly, calmly.

"Kiri," Dad says just as slowly, just as calmly. "Your seizure, the symptoms of epilepsy--"

"Don't automatically include religious experiences!" Kiri tangles her hands in her hair, fingers shaking, resisting the urge to pull it out. She glances at the door, wishing for Mom to come, Ronal, even, someone Dad will actually listen to. "I looked it up on Norm's pad, I know--"

"But babygirl," and she never thought that nickname could piss her off, "it's something we have to take into account. I don't think you're crazy, only there are correlations, we can't be sure--"

"Sure that I'm not making it up?" Kiri rubs her head, willing away the signs of an oncoming headache. "That I'm not a fucking liar, is that it?"

Dad rubs his head the exact same way, looking tired. "You know very well I'm not accusing you of anything like that, I just want to keep you safe."

"Then keep me safe by listening to me! Believe me, like you said you would!"

"I..." He sighs, and she can't look him in the eye anymore. "I'm trying, babygirl, it's not that simple."

What the hell have you people been smoking out there, huh? The voice echoes at the back of her head, tinny and derisive and decades old. Who knows, maybe she's just imagining it.

"I don't want to talk about this anymore." She turns, stalking towards the entrance of the marui.

He follows, hand landing on her shoulder. "Kiri, we're not done--"

Five fingers scratch her skin, sending fire rushing through her already stretched-thin nerves. We got ourselves some half-breeds--

"Get the fuck away from me!" Kiri whirls, hand lashing out and slamming into his chest.

She feels it happen before he does, the wave of fear-betrayal-rage slamming through his chest like a lightning, hitting the lumbar region dead on, severing collections as cleanly as a bullet. Her father drops to a stone, crashing to the floor of the marui as his legs sprawl limply across the floor.

"What--" Dad stares up at her, looking younger and more panicked than she's ever seen him. "What, my, my fucking, my legs, Kiri, I can't find feel my--my--" He's gasping, chest heaving, eyes wild like a hunted thing's.

"Oh shit." Kiri falls to her knees beside him, hands prodding frantically at his chest. "No, I'm sorry, I'm sorry--" Her hands find the tendril of caught, snarled power and she yanks with a grunt of effort, snapping his legs back online.

Dad's legs immediately snap back under him and he launches backwards, scrambling towards the corner of the marui--away from her. His back presses against the wall as he wiggles his toes and feels at his flexing calves, eyes huge.

"What's going on?" Mom cries, dashing into the tent. "What's happened?"

"I'm sorry," Kiri rasps, pushing herself up on shaking feet. "Eywa, fuck, I'm so sorry."

She turns and runs, shoving past her mother and sprinting out of the marui. Then she's hurling herself into the ocean, the crash of cold water drowning out the sound of her parents frantically calling her name.

Chapter Text

"Breathe." Kiri's voice is low, intense, as she leans over him, her hair brushing his face "Monkey Boy, you gotta breathe."

I'm trying, Spider wants to say, but all that comes out is a strangled rasp. The cut on his throat is relatively small, more of an inadvertent jerk of Neytiri's hand as horror and heartbreak warred with clarity than a deliberate slice. But "relatively small" still means a lot for human boys and Na'vi blades, and he can see his blood glistening on Kiri's fingers as they press to his throat.

"Keep his head steady, Tuk," Kiri orders. Tuk whimpers, but obeys. Nearby there's a scream and a clatter of metal, the sound of their parents all trying to kill each other.

"In, out," Kiri says. Kiri says, even though...even though Spider is not the only one who was cut tonight, not even the first. Even when he can see vivid red crusting her chest and knows it's not his.

"It's okay," Kiri whispers, and as she speaks something around her throat ripples with light. For a second Spider thinks it's a necklace, but no, he can see the ragged edges of the cut his father left in her throat, a deep, deliberate slice. Clean enough and steady enough she should be long dead, not kneeling over him as her eyes literally blaze with concentration.

Except that the cut has been filled in with...something, some strange blend of fungi and coral that glows a steady soft, deep green. It's taken the place of tattered ruin, dancing with power like something out of a dream, like a fire that can't be put out.

"Come on, now," Kiri whispers, the light dancing with each word. "There we go." Across her hands, gold light suddenly flares, outshining the blood. She lifts her hand away and Spider expects pain, shadows crashing down, but it doesn't hurt at all.

"Breathe, Monkey Boy," she commands, and it strikes Spider all of a sudden that he's not wearing his mask anymore, it's been knocked off. But he looks up at Kiri, eyes glowing overhead like twin fallen stars, and he breathes.

Chapter Text

After I got hurt, Dad tells her once. I dreamed of flying, soaring over the woods. I...I was so far from Eywa then, it was probably nothing. But when I saw Pandora--I mean, Eywa'eveng--it felt like that, like my dream.

Kiri dreams of flying, too. On the wings of an ikran, yes, but also on the wings of smaller birds, even insects, soaring over lands she's never seen. She dreams of the whine of a Samson in her ears, the hum of a ship passing under her feet. She dreams of being a leaf swept along in the breeze, the planet unfurling beneath like a rich green map.

When she was little, she would catch herself scratching at her shoulder blades, complaining to her parents that her wings hadn’t come in yet. They would laugh and ruffle her hair, and she never told them that she could see the wings in her mind, big green things that felt more like leaves and wood to the touch, but as light and powerful as any set of feathers and scales.

When she’s twenty years old, falling in a death spiral after the RDA tries to shoot down the woman who’s gotten higher on their hit list than Jake Sully ever did, she can feel that same tingling again, mixed in with the searing pain and grief of losing her ikran. She disconnects tsaheylu with a final whisper of goodbye and stands, feeling the skin on her back start to ripple and shift.

Jump, daughter, her third mother hums in the back of her mind, and Kiri does. But she does not fall.

Chapter Text

It starts, like so many things do, in the water. A ripple of grief-horror-pain rolling through the deep, sending plants shuddering and convulsing, coral flashing wildly, fish trembling and tearing at each other senselessly. Some of the smallest, weakest beings curl up and die, lying limp on their stalks or drifting aimlessly through the water.

In the sky, one ikran is already shaking, overwhelmed with the loss, as is the way of ikrans. But it is not the way for the others to follow suit, as they do, wings shaking and flapping wildly, eyes rolling in their heads.

As they help each other up on shore, Aonung and Roxto sag and shudder, hands flying to their temples. They both can feel the power rippling around them, over them, the same power that had saved them not so long, now convulsed with soundless agony. They shoot each other looks of terror.

Across the water, where the Metkayina have brought the fury hardened in burnt villages and broken hearts down upon the Sea Dragon's soldiers, their warriors suddenly jerk to a halt, hands flying to their temples. Tonowari rubs the space between his eyes, confused by the sudden spike of pain, the accompanying ache in his heart.

Nearby, Ronal drops her spear with a gasp, vomiting off the side of the boat she's boarded. Tonowari cries out and rushes to her side, pulling her close.

"Teyam," Ronal gasps, eyes staring into nothing. "Teyam, I can feel it, something has happened to..." She coughs, vision clearing, staring up at Tonowari in horror. "Oh, Eywa," she rasps. "Oh, that poor boy. The poor family..."

On their bloody little rock, the Sully family barely feels the wave, so overwhelmed they are by the far more searing waves of their own grief. Tsireya is the only one who's caught off guard, letting out a yelp of confused pain, hands flying to her forehead.

Her foot slips, but Spider Socorro (the only one who doesn't feel the wave physically, even as he pulls his eyes away from Neteyam's body to see water boiling around him and thinks Kir) lunges to catch her as quickly as his father had shoved her away not so long ago, keeping her from falling back into the ocean.

Curling around his family, clinging on like an invisible blanket, Neteyam te Suli Tsyeyk'itan shudders all over at the vibrations from his sister's agony. Kir, he thinks, reaching out futilely. I'm here, I... But his aunt and grandfather are shaking their heads slowly, sorrowfully, taking him by the hands and leading him away--there is nothing he can do for his sister, now.

On the dying ship, the members of First Recom Unit clutch their heads as their knuckles whiten on their weapons and their tails swish around their legs, eyes watering with a pain they will never understand. They are not people with an instinct for grief, but some of them almost have to choke down sobs.

"Sir?" Lyle Wainfleet asks, staring at his Colonel anxiously.

Miles Quaritch grits his teeth and rubs his head one last time, turning away to face out across the water, towards the distant glimmer of blood around a rock. "Let's get this shit over with," he barks.

Tuk doesn't understand what's going on, only that her head hurts and her heart is worse, everything feels like she's dying while still being alive. She presses up against her sister, clinging to Kiri because Kiri's family, Kiri's safe, and she barely even notices the way her sister's skin ripples with light before her eyes like a wildfire.

And at the very center of it all...at the very center, Kiri's head simply slumps forward, tears sparking in her eyes and dropping to the cold steel deck. Her lips move silently, tracing her brother's name over and over again without the slightest noise.

Chapter Text

The little girl runs through the field, waving her arms and laughing as the kenten spiral and flash, startled by her presence. But instead of flying off the way that do for other Na'vi children, they fly closer, circling around her head like a crown of stars in daytime. She laughs harder, the grass trembling at her choice.

She does not See the figures standing, watching from a distance. Neither does her mother, although Neytiri might have the faint sense she is not the only one keeping watch over her daughter this morning.

"Kiri's so much like Neytiri at that age," Sylwanin says, a fond smile on her lips. "She'll be a troublemaker too, I'm sure of it."

Tsu'tey crosses his arms over his chest, biting his lip as he watches energy arching off the girl's back like wings, energy only the dead can see. "It's too much power for any one person to bear," he says, trying to sound stern, even though his companions know full well that's just a cover for his worry. "And she is so young..."

"Peace," Eytukan says, placing a hand on Tsu'tey's arm. "My granddaughter is strong, in more ways than one. Even without Eywa's gifts, she will become a force to be reckoned."

"And besides," Sylwanin adds, eyes tracking Kiri as she spreads her eyes wide and sends the kenten soaring away, "She will never have to face it alone.”

Chapter Text

Miles Quaritch is a pillar of ice at her back, cold light burning through Kiri's skin, cold blade tucked neatly against her throat, cold voice growling threats in her ear. Before her eyes, her mother burns, light racing through her skin where no one else can See it, convulsions of anger, horror, grief, earth-shaking fear.

Kiri's not sure how the blade she's holding to Spider's neck isn't singing his skin. She's not sure how her mom isn't burning alive, skin sloughing off before her eyes, mirrors to the pain shredding Kiri's own heart in two because Neteyam is dead, gone, and the only chance she'll ever get to see him again is if she joins him.

Between them both her father stands, a swirling emptiness, dull shock and helplessness numbing her from a distance. Tuk at his side, a little star drowning in the dark, holding on his hand and tugging, begging for him to do something, say something, anything to make it stop.

Spider doesn't shine with light the way the others do, but Kiri can still see the flash of light off his mask, the shine of his blood down his chest. It's the first time she's heard his voice in months and he's begging for her life, voice raw and cracked, pleading with the thing that calls itself his father to let her go, please let her go. 

And Kiri's begging, too, begging like she's never begged for anything in her life, like she's never had to beg for anything in her life, not from one of her parents. There was childish, inconsequential begging when she was little, but this is different, this pain and fear ripped out of her like a small death.

"Don't kill him," she rasps, trying not to let the blade slice her neck. "Mom, don't kill him, don't--"

Don't do this to yourself, she wants to beg. Don't do this to us. Mom will break something in herself if she kills Spider now, something irreparable, something Kiri knows her mother would never break if Neteyam's blood wasn't fresh in the air, if pain and terror weren't spilling from her body with every breath and singeing Kiri's skin with every heartbeat.

In her bones, the ice sinks deeper, Miles Quaritch's stinking hate and sick love spilling under her skin. He wants her father's blood as badly as he wants Spider broken under his hand, cold gears spinning under his head as he tries to figure out how to get everything he wants, his hunger sharper than any knife.

The fire is drowning her from one direction, the ice from another, and Kiri wonders if this is what Sky People mean when they talk about hell. She coughs, the world flickering dizzy and monstrous before her eyes, inside her head.

"Stop," she rasps. And then louder, clearer, clinging to the worlds like lifelines, "Stop it."

It doesn't work. The blade's still pressed tight to her throat and the air is still hissing on her tongue; all their minds, their hearts, their fury keep boiling down on her head like the end of the world.

She tries to push, tries to make something happen, but when she reaches out with her mind everyone's else feelings are so much harder to get away from, and now she can feel the ikrans tearing at each other overhead, Lo'ak's guilt and fear twisting somewhere in the dark, a burning knot of anxiety that she thinks is supposed to Tsireya, Payukan on the hunt, the distant echoes of blood and death from across the water...All of it, all of it crashing down on her head.

It's like knives scraping down her skin, too much too much, it's the kind of thing that would send her skittering away into the dark to spend a few hours alone on any other day, but he still refuses to let her go.

"Stop," Kiri repeats, breath hitching, willing herself not to pass. "Stop!" Nobody's looking at her--Mom and Spider are staring at Quaritch, one with blazing determination and the other with steady bleeding, Quaritch is looking at Spider, Tuk gazing up at Dad as her father stares into nothing.

"Stop it." The words drag up her throat like splinters and Quaritch growls, digs the knife sharp and cruel into her skin. Mom raises the blade high, knife shining like a meteor in her hand, blood mixing with the tears tracking down her face.

"Go on, bitch." Quaritch snarls in Kiri's ear. "You don't have the fucking guts--"

Spider gasps "Dad, please," and Kiri doesn't need to feel him to know the words are like hot coals on his tongue, terror and shame at naming this monster that way.

Tuk screams and Dad opens his mouth but nothing comes out--

Mom makes a twisted, guttural sound, and through Kiri's eyes she is wreathed in flame, falling to pieces--

The world twists hot and dark and mad around them, stretched thin and bloody, cold hands pulling tight until everything twists and breaks with horror, too much, something has to give, something has to give--

And Kiri does.

STOP IT

She knows the sound rips out of her throat, but it hits something deeper, too, ripping through every one of their brains, maybe even Spider's. Tuk screams, but it's small, fragile compared to the sound opening Kiri up from the inside out like a great black hole.

The knife on her throat vanishes and then Quaritch is falling, Mom is falling, Dad is dropping to the deck like a stone. Ikras crash to the ship around them, shuddering, and the fire twists like it feels her, too, tendrils of heat curling in one themselves.

Spider crumples to the ground, heaving. Tuk staggers backward, eyes huge. Their parents lie sprawled across the deck, eyes clothed, breathing gently as if they've just fallen asleep.

(No one has shattered an Avatar link-in-progress in almost two decades, and yet Kiri knows exactly what she's looking at).

"Kiri?" Tuk asks, voice small. "What happened?"

Kiri can barely hear over the sound of the quiet pressing down around them, the silence of an entire planet holding its breath. Silence like nothing she's ever known fills the air, slipping in to fill every splintered gap, every noisy, buzzing tear.

She closes her eyes, and sighs with something like relief.

Chapter Text

At first, Jackson thinks the problem is static. He's swooping over the trees, towards where mech suits have been sent to try and outflank Na'vi forces in the woods, only for their efforts to be stymied by a sudden influx of hostiles.

Only, the word they keep using is hostile. As in, singular.

He zeroes in on the trail of smoke rising from a freshly made clearing, trees shuddering and smoldering on the ground, animals sprinting through the wreckage. Flashes of blue lie bleeding on the earth--only they're all in RDA gear. Shit.

The recom security details that were supposed to protect the mechs from Pandora's immune response have been shredded by eager red fangs or distorted by the plants growing through their skulls or ripping from their backs like wings. Or else they just lie there, untouched, no sign of injury except for the red-gray matter leaking from their eyes and mouths.

The mech suits are in trouble, vanishing under growing columns of vines or buckling under the weight of more fucking creatures. One staggers free, lurching towards the single blue figure standing, a weaponless female in Na'vi garbs.

A steel arm raises, flashing in the sun...and then the woman throws up her own arms, tree branches leaping to her command. They wrap around the suit, stopping it mid-blow, no matter how much it struggles and pushes.

What. The. Fuck. Jackson flashes back to the briefings, discussions of a Na'vi combatant performing miracles--but that was just a fucking story, propaganda from the locals in a desperate attempt to boost each other's spirits. It can't be real, she can be real. 

But it sounds very real when she screams--the recoms in the plane with Jackson all clutch their heads in pain--and the branches twitch spasmodically, sending the suit flying through the air, the driver shrieking as he hurtles directly at the oncoming planes. Oh Jesus--

Jackson banks hard, stomach swooping as the suit flies past their plane. The other two Samsons aren't so lucky; the suit slams into one and it crashes into the other, all of them falling to earth in a blazing tangle.

He comes around and they're all yelling for a gunner, but he's already firing, bullets chewing up the crown towards the woman. She breaks right, raising her fist, and a tree sprouts where there was no fucking tree a second before, bullets bouncing off its toughened bark.

For a second she's gone, and then Jackson sees a flash of blue as she sprints up the trunk, wood curving beneath her feet as the tree curls around, giving her a straight shot towards them. The gunner is yelling at the top of his lungs and one of the recoms' eyes are bleeding while the others vomit and Jackson's pulling with everything he's got, trying to give the gunner a decent shot in time.

He doesn't make it. The demon woman jumps, hair rising up behind her like a black cape. She slams against the windshield, palm smacking glass an inch from his nose, and he's as struck by how young her face looks as by the fury glowing cold and ancient in her eyes. Lights blaze across her skin like a walking city, like the cosmos weaving itself into her bones.

"Oh, god," he gasps. And through the glass, he can see her lips move, silently spelling out words in English.

No, she replies. At least, not your god.

Her hand comes up, holding a clump of--soil? The soil smashes against the windscreen, leaves unfurling on impact, dirt flying into his face as he gags and chokes for air. Vines unfurl through the ship, thorns gleaming bright as glowing flowers unfurl and spew something that makes the recoms collapse, gasping.

Jackson grabs his mask and hits the ejector, launching out of the dying plane--only for her five-fingered hand to seize him as he soars up, pinning in the air. Her face is inches away from his and the noise is far too loud to make out anything, but again, her lips move.

Tell them that Ewya is no fairy tale, she says, and lets go.

As Jackson hurtles up into the crisp blue sky, fire singeing his boots, he watches the woman leap gracefully off of the dying plane and hurl herself back to earth. The forest reaches up to catch her, a soft green embrace welcoming her home.

Chapter Text

Bridgehead, like any city, has its myths and legends. The story of the lieutenant who saw a red smile in the mirror over his shoulder a week before he died, the lights in the southern mess that never stop flickering no matter how often the bulbs are changed, the long-dead pilot with blue paint on her face who flies a burning Samson over the field, cackling.

And of course, there's the story of her . The girl with the dead doctor's face glimpsed outside Bridgehead walls, gone before anyone can even think of shooting her down, a blur of motion on silent feet. There and then gone, but when she's sighted, strange things happen.

Green sprouts in freshly poured concrete, fronds turning to watch people go bye. Animals wriggle through barriers that should be able to keep every single one of them out, leaving shattered glass, stained doors, and the occasional body in their wake. Recoms, particularly the newly awakened ones, look at you strangely, and you're not entirely sure what's staring through their yellow eyes.

The recoms have their own stories, strange headaches, visions, impulses they keep quiet about so the doctors won't come calling. Glimpses at the corner of their as a young woman in Na'vi garb that is somehow also a white lab coat, flickering through the gaps between imagination and reality.

In the morning, of course, it's all easy enough to see that this is just stuff and rumor, ridiculous nonsense. There probably wasn't a girl outside the walls at all, and if she was it was just a frightened, fleeing local.

If the walls of the strongest structures feel a little less sturdy after that, if the enemy strikes with razor precision from plans seemingly known in advance, if work and training has to be halted to clear an influx of weeds, if a body is discovered dead in a mysterious fall...well, there are explanations for that. They're rational people, after all, beyond such stories of ghosts and goddesses.

This city is theirs, and it will never fall. If the RDA is sure of anything, they're sure of that.

Chapter Text

It's become a tradition to take children back to the old Kelutral, to pray to the spirits of the People lost in the attack and ask them to watch over them, the new generations. The children clutch each other's hands and try to act brave, sniffing until their heads ache as they chase down the faint aftermaths of smoke, staring around with wide, curious eyes at the place they've only heard stories about.

Mo'at has had a lot of experience handling children, enough to know that sometimes experience is useless and you have to hope for the best. The "best" isn't what she gets when she turns around and realizes her granddaughter has disappeared.

"Kiri!" she calls, leaving the other adults to watch the children as she picks her way through the creaky, fractured bows, murmuring a quick prayer for her lost husband's hand to guide her steps. "Kiri te Suli Kireysi'ite, you will answer me right now or I swear--"

"Grandmother, look!" A tiny head pops up in front of the trunk right at Mo'at's feet, Kiri beaming up at her through a mouthful of missing teeth. "It's growing again!"

"What do you mean--" But she cuts herself off as she leaps down to her granddaughter's side, because Mo'at can see the tiny green sapling that Kiri's kneeling next to. She swallows hard; she'd known things would start growing here eventually but to see it is another thing entirely, a vision layered with pain and beauty in equal measure.

"I heard it singing, grandmother," Kiri says softly, brushing a gentle hand along one curled leaf. It trembles and straightens at her touch, stretching to gather more sun. "Isn't it beautiful?"

"Yes." Mo'at can't quite keep her voice from trembling as she scoops her granddaughter up, feeling the little heart beat so close to hers. "Yes, it is." She clears her throat. "Now, we thank the Great Mother for the gift, don't we?"

"Thank you, Great Mother!" Kiri calls, waving--one of the habits she's picked up from her father--as Mo'at carries her away. The sapling's leaves quiver merrily, as if waving back.

Chapter Text

She's on fire, she's on fire, apocalypse teeth tearing at her skin and ripping her open, ashy guts falling at her feet. She's running, blood pumping molten in her veins, screaming louder than the end of the world. She's a marui gone up in flames, she's a bird caught in the searing draft, she's howling in fury as her sandy skin is scorched raw.

There's an earsplitting hiss as she slams into the water, the ocean like a freezing gut punch after the inferno. She thrashes deeper, deeper, opening her mouth to let the water in, desperate to cool her smoldering insides.

"Kiri-- shit!" Strong arms lift her from the deep and she coughs, yowls, raging at him like the Sky Boy in Na'vi garb had raged at the demon soldiers when they dragged him away. She claws at his arms, his face, three nails ripping down the side of his skull, fucking corporal all his fault that the kid's mad stupid fucking

She twists out of the grip and hits the water again, the second time shocking her back to something like clarity. Kiri sits up, heaving for air, stars and fire swirling in front of her as she scrabbles for a gun, for her mate's hand, for her daughter's shoulders as she heaves for air in the shallows.

"Kiri, honey." Dad's hands warm on his shoulders, his eyes peering gold into hers, huge with terror even though Dad doesn't get scared. "It's okay, you're safe."

"Fire...." she whimpers. Behind him, she can see Mother and the others running their way, seeing other villagers coming to gape at them yet again.

"No fire, babygirl," he promises. "Not here."

Not here no. But far, far down the shore, she can feel it, the rasp of waves as the Ta'auni stagger from their burning village, seeking desperate refuge in the sea as their world goes up in flames.

Kiri doesn't know how she knows, but she knows, and deeper than knowing. She can feel the raw scrape along her wrists the cuffs had dug in, can smell the fresh blood of the dead ilu, can hear a child sobbing at burns along his back, see the marui she built with her mate vanish into heat, smell the soot and smoke clogging the water.

And at the same time she's adjusting her gun as she looks down at the carnage with her ikran, she's scuttling across the shore as her shell starts to melt, she's the ocean shuddering with the weight of filth, she can feel it, she can feel everything--

"Sweetheart," Dad whispers. "What's wrong?"

Kiri opens her mouth and feels something start to bubble in her gut. She twists out of her father's grip and vomits, ashes and bullet casings spewing out of her throat to mix with the murmuring surf.

Chapter Text

Sometimes, Neytiri looks at her eldest daughter out of the corner of her eye and sees-- Sees-- someone else, standing there. It's a fractured glimpse, gone when she blinks or turns, but she has not lived as long as she by doubting her vision.

What she Sees changes from time to time, moment to moment. Sometimes it's a redhaired woman in a lab coat, sometimes it's a tree swaying in the breeze, sometimes it's a nantang with teeth flashing or an ikran spreading its wings. It’s a hand tighten around a gun, a bow, a flower and a handful of seeds, palm slick with blood or water.

Sometimes it's a flicker of her sister's face, her mother's, her father's, her own, people with whom Kiri shares everything save blood, or at least that's what the scientists say. Sometimes it’s a sky’s worth of faces contained in a single gust of wind, humans and Na’vi and creatures for whom there are no names passing back through the ages.

Sometimes what–who–she sees is deep and green and endless, threaded with starlight and ocean waves. Sometimes she sees a person who dips their head, smile certain the way only the eternal can truly be, I See You rippling from hands that have infinite fingers, and four, and five.

Then she looks at her daughter dead on and Kiri smiles a little nervously, says Mom, is everything all right? And Neytiri smiles, brushes a strand of hair out of Kiri's eyes, and says yes without the faintest flicker of hesitation, her voice soft with wonder, because nothing she could ever glimpse would awe her as much as staring directly into her daughter's face.

Chapter Text

Separating your own tswin from each other hurts, of course it will. Kiri's more Na'vi than anything else, after all, and that will never change.

But she is almost more than Na'vi, and for her, the pain is not so bad that she can't grit her teeth and bare it as her kuru undoes itself, glistening filaments arching up through the air. The recom freezes at the brilliant, impossible flash of nerves, hands tightening around his gun as he tries to figure out what he's seeing.

And that's when she buries herself in his face, each dot of bioluminescence serving as another a perfect target for each wicked nerve. They scream together, Kiri lurching to her feet as he crashes down, blood pouring from his open mouth.

It's over before he hits the ground and Kiri staggers, grunting with effort as she pulls herself free. Blood drips from her tswin, splashing her feet while her kuru reassembles itself. It swings back around behind her head, tugging the cuffs off up her wrists.

"That was gross," she mutters, stalking away from the body, rubbing the back of her aching skull with one hand. The other hand gestures towards the woods, the greenery rippling with her call.

The palulukan emerges, just like it did for another warrior all those years ago, but unlike Neytiri Kiri doesn't hesitate before climbing on. She gives her kuru one last soothing rub, grateful she doesn't need to form tsaheylu for this, and together they head off into the forest.

Chapter Text

It takes some time to decide where they want to have the birth--Mo'at and Neytiri don't like the idea of the child being born away from the forest's green heart, but since this is going to be a collaborative effort with Sky People, they need their equipment on hand. So it takes place in a refurbished awakening room instead, carbon-rich air hissing through the vents as scientists don their masks.

It's taken months of practice to be ready for this: Mo'at and Neytiri rehearsing with the scientists, practicing on CPR dolls and whatever they could find or make, preparing for all the eventualities they could think of. They compare notes on Avatar and Na'vi biology, carefully noting all the places where they converge and diverge, everything they need to be careful of.

Mo'at takes point, as the one who has the most experience with C-sections. While her tools dry after sterilizing in hot water and Grace's avatar finishes her journey out of stasis, she leads the scientists  in a prayer to the Great Mother, asking that they shepherd this little miracle into the world.

Then they enter, one by one, Neytiri squeezing her mother's hand until the door closes. They finish prep and the work of new life begins.

Jake waits outside with Neteyam, passing the atmo mask back and forth between his mouth and his son's chubby face. Somehow, he also ends up watching over the baby nobody wants to refer to as Miles Jr., too, who peers over the edge of Neteyam's basket with curiosity in his big dark eyes.

Time drags on for the three of them, until both boys are asleep, Jake pacing back and forth with their small bodies in his arms. He whispers his own prayer to the Great Mother, to Grace's spirit, to anyone who is listening. Please, please, please...

When he finally hears the faint cry of an infant, echoing through glass and steel, he almost thinks he's imagining it. He turns, ears swiveling, and doesn't see the way the trees outside Hell's Gate shudder, trunks waving and branches lashing.

If he had, of course, he probably would have just assumed it was a particularly strong wind. He'd have been standing outside to realize there was no breeze at all, or to hear the distant howls and cries of a forest full of creatures stirred into something like celebration.

For now, though, Jake's too busy rushing down the halls, nearly crashing into Neytiri as she emerges from the birthing room with a mask held carefully over her daughter's face. Her eyes are soft with exhaustion, relief, and pure love as she dabs their baby's skin clean, murmuring prayers of welcome.

Later on they fly home together, Jake and Neytiri each carrying a baby held tight to their chests, Mo’at in their wake on her own ikran. They're just rising up over the trees when they see a cloud of pure white light heading their way, glowing like a moon come down from the sky.

It hurtles towards Neytiri and she sucks in a breath, bracing herself against the pure presence of more atokirina' than she's ever seen in her life. They gather around her--or no, not around her, around her ikran.

The little lights drift over her daughter's sleeping body, brushing her skin, and she gurgles sleepily, shifting in her sling. Neytiri can't see it, but under the blanket the baby's tiny fingers wriggle and the lights dance in response, drifting and spinning to their little tune.

Then they're gone, scattering off into the distance as quickly as they appeared. Soon, they're impossible to distinguish from the stars, and then even those little fires have vanished.

They all come down at New Kelutral with tears in their eyes, even Mo’at. Jake reaches out to stroke his daughter's hair, tracing the outline of her little head, and knows almost before Neytiri has to say it.

"Kiri," she whispers, and the forest around them trembles with acceptance, with welcome, with bustling pride. The trees loom over them protectively as they put their children to bed, leaves whispering a lullaby older than the stars.