Archive of Our Own ^beta

The Suli family gets out last.

A few other families had their own dead, had their own ceremonies to perform, but the Suli family had the only fallen child, and so they left the water last.

Jake gets out first, aided by the hands of other clan members who bow their heads in both respect and discomfort at having to look into the eyes of a grieving father. His wounds have reopened and blood was collecting in droplets over the cuts, but he doesn’t move to wipe it away. No one can tell if he notices at all.

They watch him crouch down on shaky legs and pull Tuk up from where Neytiri is helping lift her out of the water. He pulls Tuk into his arms and she curls up like an infant, silently weeping into his chest. He reaches a hand out to help Neytiri and she accepts it, climbing out and curling into him, head pressing into his shoulder. She raises a shaking hand, gently pets over the back of her daughter's head.

The human boy hoists himself up and lands in a crouch, with much of the clan quickly backing away before he lands. He disregards their stares and turns to pull Kiri up. He holds out an arm and she grabs on, not letting go even when she’s upright, shifting their arms to link their hands together instead - locking perfectly together with their ten fingers. She’s staring at the water blankly and the human boy stares at her in what seems to be worry, but they exchange no words.

Lo’ak gets out last, pulling himself out on his own until he’s standing on shaky legs. He doesn’t wait long enough for anyone to offer him help.

Kiri reaches out and grasps his shoulder gently, but he flinches, and then she flinches too. She lets go.

And then together, the family walks away, heading to their marui like the other families before them. They move slowly and sadly, and they leave a gap in the center of the group.

—

Kiri scrunches her hair up over the tightly woven basin she’s hunching over, squeezing out the water, Miles doing the same on the other side. Her hands are rubbed raw and they won’t stop shaking.

The water in the basin is tinged a reddish-brown. It was probably dirt.

“Kiri,” Miles says, worriedly and quiet enough that no one will hear. Lo’ak was on the other side of the room, leaning against the wall. He wanted to give Kiri privacy, even if that privacy’s from her family. Not that it seems to really matter, honestly. Lo’ak hadn’t moved in a while; Miles’ barely sure he’s blinked. “Kiri,” he grabs her hands and detangles them from her hair. “You’re yanking.”

“Sorry,” she says shakily.

He shakes his head. “It’s fine.” He waits a minute before he speaks again, very hesitantly. “Kiri, I - I’m so sorry that he did that - my dad. I - I hate him so much. I never want you to get hurt.” He stumbles over himself, “I mean, none of you, but never you,” he says, and he hopes she understands.

She hums softly, taking a moment to collect her thoughts in the way she always does - wisest person he knows, even at her age. “I know. And I know that mom,” she winces. “I know that mom hasn’t always been the nicest to you. She shouldn’t have done that. With,” she takes a deep, shaky breath, and swallows, “with the knife.” He shakes his head, but she leans over the basin and reaches out to touch him, brushes the back of her knuckles against the wound on his chest that’s only just started to scab.

He wants to pick at it, but he knows Kiri would just slap at his hands.

“I’m sorry, Spider,” she whispers.

He kind of wants her to call him Miles, wants her to acknowledge that that’s who he is, to say his name like it doesn’t matter who his namesake is, really needs the reassurance that that can be his name and he can do everything wrong like he has and her mother can hate him enough to want him dead, and she’ll still hold his hand through it all.

But he knows that that’s not fair.

And she hasn’t called him Miles in years. No one but Quaritch has. Because he told her to, that’s what he wanted, that’s who he was.

Is.

Was.

He doesn’t know.

He doesn’t understand why it’s upsetting him now. When it didn’t before. Everyone’s called him Spider since he got back, and it’s bothering him.

It’s not as bad when it’s her, though.

“I know, Kiri.” He reaches up, lightly touches the cut on her throat with his fingertips. “I know.”

Everything between them falls still for a moment, a peaceful moment, and Miles can’t believe he’s about to disrupt it, but he can’t, he can’t deal with it, it’s hurting his chest.

She’s gonna want him dead too, just like her mother, and he’s going to deserve it. He deserves it.

He watched Neteyam’s death, watched his face fall flat and expressionless, watched his body relax into the jagged rock that he couldn’t feel anymore. He watched Quaritch hurt innocent people, let people hurt him, hurt his friends. And he still pulled him out of the water.

Maybe it was some weird sense of obligation? Some fucked up father/son thing? Quaritch wasn’t nice, exactly, but he wasn’t cruel either. Not to him. Usually.

Maybe it was Stockholm syndrome; maybe he’d been left with him a little too long. Maybe he couldn’t remember what life was like before, couldn’t remember if it was better or not. Everybody liked it when Miles left them, but Quaritch didn’t. He wanted him to stay. He can’t tell if that means anything, a horrible person wanting him the way no one else really has. No adult, at least: someone who can decide to take care of him like he didn’t just get left here and they had no other options left except to raise the random, orphaned infant or just let it die.

Maybe it was the wound on his chest, still healing. Maybe a small part of him understood why he did what he did, when he arrived to the Metkayina village with the Suli’s and the Tsahik refused to check him over like she did the others. And maybe it was that Neytiri didn’t defend him and Jake was too out of it to put in much effort.

They don’t know what he did, they don’t know that he’s horrible, that he’s betrayed them. They just don’t like him.

And Kiri.

He took her brother and he took her spot in his last moments, sat where she should have sat and cried tears that he can still feel dried to his face because he can’t take the mask off long enough to scrub it, can still feel the way the tracks have crusted over and pull at his face when he moves it.

They weren’t even allowed to go out into the water with Neteyam. Maybe because they weren’t blood related to him; maybe that’s why they were separated, why they didn’t get one last moment to press their hands to Neteyam’s body and weep with the others. Or maybe it was just him, maybe he wasn’t allowed to be with them and Kiri didn’t want him to be alone.

Miles feels sick. His chest hurts.

Guilt, fear, his wound. Only Eywa knows.

He opens his mouth, “Ki-”

“Spider,” Kiri whispers shakily. “It happened again,” she says, pulls away from him so suddenly that he pulls away too.

“What? What happened?”

“It happened , it happened again,” she whispers, frantic. She holds her hands up, stares at them with wide, teary eyes. “I killed someone. More than one. With, with no weapons at all,” she says. “I barely had to move.”

His eyes are wide now, too. “Did you feel it? The way you usually do?”

“Stronger. It felt like it had a pulse.” She closes her eyes, takes a deep, steady breath like she’s imagining it. “It, it felt good,” she whispers. She sounds scared and ashamed and thrilled, and Miles wonders if he should be scared, too. But he’s not, he’s just awed. “I don’t know how to control it.”

“Well, it did what you wanted it to, right?” She nods. “Then it sounds like you do know how to control it.”

“I don’t know if I want to control it.”

“Eywa gave it to you. It’s yours,” he whispers, and her eyes blink rapidly. And very slowly, she nods.

“Eywa gave it to me. Eywa doesn’t,” she starts, and then her face falls, “Eywa doesn’t make mistakes,” she says, and then she starts to sob softly, pulling her hands to her face so she can hide in them.

“Kiri.” Miles scoots himself around the basin, pulls her into a hug that a small part of him expects her to balk at, to flinch away from. She doesn’t, she just hugs him back. And he’s so, so relieved, even though he feels bad that her whole body has to kind of slump down so that she can lean on him.

Her face is wet with tears and her hair is wet from water.

“I,” she takes a small gasp for breath into his shoulder, “I wasn’t there, I could’ve helped,” she cries. “I could’ve done something, I, I could’ve-”

He wishes he could, but for some reason he can’t cry. He wants to, wants to cry with her, feels like he needs to. He just can’t.

Miles looks to the side, trying to signal to Lo’ak to help, but Lo’ak isn’t even looking at them, he’s staring at the wall. Spider doesn’t think he’s noticed anything going on around him.

He sighs. He pulls her up, makes her look him in the eyes. She’s the strong one between the two of them, and he feels off balance. “No, you couldn’t have. There was nothing any of us could do. The bullet went through, it was-”

“But I could’ve! I-I feel her, everything listens to me! I would’ve been,” she chokes up, “would’ve been able to do something!”

Miles takes a second to think over his words. “Your, your mom - Grace -, she was too hurt, right? By the time they got her to the tree?” She nods a little. “She was too weak. Eywa couldn’t save her. And Neyetam was . . . really weak. When we got him to the rock . . . I don’t think even Eywa can fix something like that,” he says to her, and he doesn’t give her the details. Doesn’t tell her about how Lo’ak and him celebrated at first because they didn’t know, about the blood that he could feel leaking onto his chest as they held him up, about the crack in Jake’s voice when he figured out the bullet went through, about Neytiri’s screaming and Lo’ak’s bloody, shaking hands and Tsireya’s sobbing as they left.

She crumbles again, falls into his shoulder to cry, arms wrapped around him.

She’s heavy, but he doesn’t mind. He’s strong enough to hold her up; he’s made sure of that.

She cries into him - very quietly, probably because of her parents outside - and he tries, tries to make himself shed a tear so he can join her, but it doesn’t work even when it feels like he’s crying with her.

It briefly crosses his mind that he hasn’t drank anything in probably a couple days and that he could just be really dehydrated.

Eventually, though, she stops, and they don’t move for a while.

And then, “Come on, let’s get ready for bed.”

She nods, pulls away from him with tired, tired eyes and a wet face. She shuffles back over to the basin again.

“Wait, turn around,” he says.

“Hm?”

“Just do it,” he says, and she does without further hesitation, trusting him like she always does. She twists, wiping at her face as she turns around. “Lean back,” he says, and she hums in understanding. She unfolds her legs and lies down on her back, bracing on her elbows and letting her head tip back to hang over the bowl. He sits to the side, cupping water in his hands and then bringing it up to pour over her hair and run his fingers through it, trying to get everything that isn’t water out of it. He does it over and over until the water from her hair drips clear in the firelight and her elbows start to wobble under her.

“Come on,” Miles says, wiping his wet hands over his dry legs. “Let’s lay down.” He grabs her arm and she nods sleepily, sits up again.

“Okay,” she manages to get out, voice rough. They get up together on sore legs, and Miles can feel the past few days hitting him. None of them have slept in at least two days.

They stand up and get the bed rolls stacked against the wall, laying them all beside each other in a neat, overlapping line to basically form one giant sleeping space.

“Do you guys always sleep like this?” he asks, because he knows she prefers to sleep with space around her to move about.

“No. We’re usually more spread out,” she says, and leaves it there, and he hums.

They lay out all the bedrolls. It feels like there should be an extra one, like there should be this hole where Neteyam is, but now that one would be for him, he guesses. He knows no one is particularly happy about that. Even himself.

They lay down, Miles on the mat second closest to the wall. She doesn’t cuddle close to him, but when she leans her head on her arm to rest, she uses the other arm to grab his hand. They curl their fingers together between them and don’t say anything for a while. They don’t close their eyes to sleep, either, just blink groggily at one another.

But then Kiri leans up on her arm a little, peeks over Miles’ body to look past him. “Lo’ak,” Kiri whispers. He glances up briefly. “Lo’ak, come lay with us,” she says, but he just shakes his head a little. “Please,” she says, voice breaking a little, and Lo’ak’s shoulders come up, curve in on himself, but he still shakes his head and Kiri just sighs, tucks her head back into her arm.

“Spider?”

“Yeah?”

“Can you grab Tuk? I think my parents need a minute,” she says. She looks apologetic, but he just nods.

“Yeah, I’ll grab her.”

“Thank you,” she says, and she squeezes his hand tight before she lets go.

—

“Tuk,” someone whispers. Spider slowly comes out of the marui, eyeing Neytiri uncomfortably, and reaches his hand out for Tuk to grab from where she’s curled against Jake’s chest. “C’mon, Tuk, time for bed. Kiri’s lying down, too.”

Tuk whines a pained whine, sniffles a little bit, then begins to climb out of Jake’s lap, grabbing onto Spider’s hand and letting him pull her up. She would usually say goodnight, hug and kiss each of them before laying down for the night, but tonight she’s silent, and she clutches onto Spider’s hand with both of her own. He pats her head and leads her away with a softly said “goodnight” to Jake.

Jake almost replies back with the same, out of habit alone, but nothing about this night is good and so he stays silent, unable to round up the energy needed to even hum in acknowledgment. He makes sure they get a couple feet inside, for his own peace of mind, and then turns back to stare at the sky.

Jake is exhausted. He hadn’t slept in two days, at least. Probably more like three.

His legs hang over the side of the netted walkway and he lazily kicks them once, but that also takes too much energy.

Ronal had delivered the medicinal pastes earlier that day, helped apply them to the worst of the wounds.

She had also delivered the ceremonial pastes. The pastes for the funeral. For Jake’s family to wear. To his son's funeral.

And so they’d all helped each other, applying it to one another like they do with every ceremony, except this time Kiri couldn’t stop shaking and Tuk couldn’t stop crying and Lo’ak was almost completely unresponsive.

He wished he could say he did anything, but he didn’t, really.

Jake wants to wash it off, the paint, but he’s too tired, even if he knows that he’s going to get up in the morning and forget it’s there, leave the marui, walk outside and see his face in the water, and then he’s going to cry. Again, he’s going to cry, like he can’t seem to stop doing. He’s shed more tears in the past day than he’s shed in about twenty years. More than when his parents died. More than when he came to in the hospital and realized he’d been discharged from the war with two useless legs on his body. More than when Tommy died, or Grace, or Tsu’tey, or Trudy.

He knows he’s going to need to get up soon, walk back into the marui and comfort his children, pet their heads until they fall asleep. Hugging his children has never felt like such a daunting task.

Jake inhales shakily, hating the feeling of his chin wobbling. He looks to the side, towards his mate. Neytiri was curled up, arms and tail wrapped around her legs. She was in the same position that he saw her in when Kiri wouldn’t wake.

It hurts a little, the way she seems to become more childlike when something like this happens. When they’re not actively in battle, she handles pain and fear like she’s been reverted back to childhood.

Jake reaches out, rests a hand on Neytiri’s shoulder.

She recoils from his touch. She recoils, and then he does too.

“Sorry, I am sorry,” she says, and reaches for the hand he’s left hovering in the air.

She holds on tight, overlaps their fingers like she usually does, even though it can’t be particularly comfortable with the way their hands are. He’s always been too nervous to ask. And then that felt ridiculous, because what a stupid thing to be nervous about, especially since they were married, but he’s always been just the slightest bit scared she’d stop holding his hand if he brought it up.

He was so unbelievably relieved when Neteyam was born with four fingers instead of five. No one would dare say anything to Jake about his human qualities - or, no one would dare say anything to Toruk Makto about his human qualities. Not after everything - though Ronal is an exception. But he knew that his children wouldn’t be afforded the same respect. And he was so happy that, of all the things that his son would have to deal with, discrimination because of his human features wouldn’t be one of those things.

He remembers the birth: sitting in the privacy hut with Mo’at and Neytiri and a couple elderly women because Neytiri demanded his presence even if men were generally expected to not be present, holding Neytiri’s hand even when she squeezed so hard that she bruised his fingers, Mo’at’s calm instructions, Neytiri’s screams - and then Neteyam's.

He was the first to hold Neteyam. Not the first to touch him - that was Mo’at -, but the first to cradle him to their chest and pet his hair and rock back and forth, then side to side until he calmed. Neytiri was exhausted and Mo’at’s primary concern was her daughter, so he took Neteyam. One of the elder women had shown him how to brace his head properly, and Jake had wanted Grace there so badly it hurt - even if there was a good chance she didn’t know how to hold an infant either.

He held Neteyam’s small, curled hand in his own and counted the little fingers: one, two, three, four. And then he’d smiled, probably a bigger smile than he’d ever smiled before, and he’d bent his head, kissed each of Neteyam’s little fingers.

Of course, none of that mattered when his other children were born.

But, now that Neteyam’s gone, Jake’s happy that he was able to spare him at least that one hardship. Even if it never mattered. Even if it didn’t help with anything substantial, obviously. Anything that mattered.

Jake pulls Neytiri’s hand towards him, lifts it up to his mouth, and kisses her fingers, turning their clasped hands to the side so he can get each one. Just like he used to do to the kids. To Neteyam.

She smiles a thin, nostalgic, watery smile, and then her face crumbles. She pulls their clasped hands up, presses them to her forehead as she cries. She cries quietly, and he knows she’s trying not to upset the children, sobbing with little whimpers and short, body-jolting gasps.

He pulls her in by their clasped hands, scoots in until their sides are pressed together. He rests their hands on his leg, rests her head on his shoulder.

When he kisses her head he does it with his eyes closed, because Kiri looks like Grace, Lo’ak looks like him, but Neteyam looks like Neytiri.

Looked like Neytiri.

She’s shaking, but Jake can feel that her sadness has somewhat switched over to anger. Anger at who, though, Jake can’t be sure. Quaritch, Spider, humans in general, Payakan, Lo’ak, herself, himself. All of the above?

But Jake - he’s too afraid to ask.

He’s scared, like he always seems to be now.

Neytiri fell in love with him because he was brave and reckless and fearless, but he’s not that man anymore. Strong heart, no fear, but that doesn’t apply anymore. He hopes she doesn’t realize that.

He’s scared of everything now, and his fear brings him shame.

Jake wonders if she feels the shame that he does. For not being able to protect the kids, for bringing the war to the Metkayina, for everything with Spider.

Maybe he’ll ask tomorrow. Or just later. At some point.

Every bad feeling he’s ever felt is heightened today. And he doesn’t want to think it, but he feels Neteyam’s death more than he feels all the others combined: Eytukan, Tsu’tey, Trudy, Grace. More than his parents, more than Tommy.

He’s feeling so much that it doesn’t seem possible to all come from him, and he wonders if he and Neytiri are blending together.

Jake can’t completely tell if everything he’s feeling is his own. Usually he’s able to tell pretty well, is able to separate her from himself. But he’s filled with this overwhelming feeling of grief, of dread, of self-hatred, of apprehension, and he can’t imagine she feels much different.

They say ‘time heals all wounds,’ but Jake thinks that’s bullshit.

“I hate them,” Neytiri says suddenly, voice unwavering even with the drying tears on her face. She’s not speaking to Jake, but just out loud. To the air, to the water. “I hate humans. I hate humans, I hate the RDA, I hate the Metkayina, I hate Ronal, I hate Tonowari, I hate Spider,” she says, and Jake is so happy that she’s speaking quietly, and he just hopes - prays to God, prays to Eywa, prays to whoever the fuck is out there - that the kids are too tired, too damn traumatised to press their ears to the walls and listen to them right now. They hide it well, but he knows the kids get uncomfortable whenever she badmouths humans as a whole, and he doesn’t want Spider to hear her, even if Jake’s sure he already knows. “I hate the water, I hate this way of life, I hate, I-” she takes a shaky inhale to catch her breath.

“I hate-” she cuts herself off, abruptly and sharply, sounding justified and suffered all at once.

Jake takes a deep, forcefully steadying breath. He has a couple assumptions as to what she might’ve been about to say, and he really doesn’t think he’d be able to deal if she said it out loud.

He can’t stand himself right now, and he’ll break if she voices the same.

He waits a few seconds - slow, drawn-out, silent seconds - to see if she’ll finish her sentence, but she doesn’t.

She doesn’t say it, but Jake can feel himself shake a little anyway.

He doesn’t say anything, even when he thinks he should, just nods like he understands. “I know,” he says, reaching out to hold her even when he almost doesn’t want to, when he’s not sure she’ll be able to take any sort of comfort from his touch the way she’s always been able to. “I know, baby,” he whispers to her, pulls her closer even when he’s pretty sure she doesn’t want him to. He lightly tugs at one of her legs until she swings them both over his own, laying sideways over his lap. She tucks in closer, nose pressed to his collarbone, and there they rest.

Their hands are still interlocked, sitting atop her knee.

They sit together for a long moment, minutes of quiet and ease, everything so quiet and motionless that he can’t even see ripples in the water below, until Jake feels the movement of the netting under them indicate that someone’s walking near them.

Jake lifts his head from Neytiri’s, looks to the side. Tsireya is there, hands clasped in front of her. She looks at him and gives him a small, slightly awkward, gentle smile - the one that he keeps seeing from everyone who’s brave enough to look him in the eyes. Hers is particularly kind.

Jake sighs, deep and heavy, and nods his head to the entrance of the marui, and then in she goes.

Neytiri doesn’t lift her head off of him through the whole interaction, and Jake carefully twists his head, glances down. She’s asleep.

Jake shifts to settle Neytiri a little more firmly against him, and waits out his last few moments of relative, guilt-soaked and depression-glazed peace.

It lasts two minutes, maybe. Two minutes of Jake staring into the sea, truthfully not thinking of anything - of which he’s grateful for. None of his thoughts as of late have been of any subject he wants to dwell on.

And then Tsireya comes back out, his son on her hand.

“Would it be alright if Lo’ak stayed with me and Aonung for the night,” Tsireya asks, soft and quiet - likely more for Lo’ak’s sake than Jake’s own.

Jake should say no.

He wants to. He wants to politely decline Tsireya, tuck his son beside his siblings to sleep like he’s five again. Tsireya would nod. Nod and pull Lo’ak to the side to give him a sweet, not-very-platonic goodnight and a hug warmer than Jake’s given him in over a year.

But Lo’ak doesn’t lift his head, and she can probably help him better than Jake could. A few months with his son and she’s doing a better job raising him than he is.

Jake sighs, tries not to make it sound too frustrated and isn’t sure if he succeeds. “Yeah, that’s alright,” he says to her, and she nods to him respectfully. He turns his head to Lo’ak, “I’ll see you tomorrow morning, okay, son?”

Lo’ak nods. He doesn’t look up once.

“Lo’ak,” he tries again, tries , tries to make his voice not come across as scolding.

“Yeah,” he responds after a second or two, voice quiet and low and very, very blank, even if it’s still drenched in sadness. “Tomorrow.”

Tsireya hums her assent gently, and then opens her mouth. She stutters a bit, likely about to tell him goodnight and then decides that she shouldn’t. And then after a brief moment, “We will see you in the morning, sir. I hope you sleep well,” she says, voice soft and layered with good intentions.

He nods to her and her hand flexes, clenching onto his son’s limp one until he squeezes back.

And then they’re gone, Tsireya pulling his son away until they round too many corners and Jake can’t see them anymore, and Jake knows he needs to get to bed now. He can’t keep postponing it, and Neytiri can’t sleep on his lap all night.

They’re getting older; their backs would not be happy in the morning.

Jake sighs and, very carefully and with a good amount of maneuvering, lifts Neytiri up and stands up on his wobbly, aching knees.

He steps inside the marui, where the fire’s gone out and only the light from the other planets is leaking into the space, and there his kids are, lying in a row together.

The three of them are asleep, and Jake feels the guilt almost overwhelm him when he’s happy about it, purely because he doesn’t have to take care of them, comfort them like they deserve.

There’s two free mats, then Tuk, Kiri, Spider, and then another free mat. Kiri, in the center, has Tuk tucked into one of her sides and Spider’s hand intertwined with hers on the other side.

Jake can’t tell if the free mat is left open for Neteyam or for Lo’ak, but it feels like Jake’s missing a son either way.

He doesn’t touch that mat.

Jake lays Neytiri down beside Tuk and, like she always does, Neytiri tucks in closer to Tuk like she can sense that her daughter’s there.

Jake carefully lays back, curls up on his side and gently tosses an arm over Neytiri’s side.

Jake lays there and he thinks.

Tommy had never approved of him going into the military. He’d never approved of the war and the fighting and the going into the middle of nowhere to fight battles that weren’t theirs and were for things that neither of them really believed in. Jake wonders if he’s ashamed of him, wonders if he resents Jake for what he did with his body, what Jake turned him into: a father, a machine, a coward.

But none of that probably mattered anymore.

Jake did wish, though, that Tommy had died on Pandora. That he’d gotten there long before Jake did and had connected to Eywa and poured all his thoughts and emotions and memories into her so that Jake could see him, could feel him.

Because Jake’s pretty sure he’s starting to forget. And Jake wants to forget a lot of things, but Tommy’s not one of them, even when he’s not sure they ever fully understood one another.

And maybe, if that were the case, he could rely on Tommy to be there, to take care of Neteyam where Jake couldn’t anymore.

And Neteyam’s with Grace and Tsu’tey and Eytukan, and even Sylwanin. And that’s what he wants, of course. He’s grateful for that.

But Tommy was always the more nurturing brother. Maybe he could’ve done a better job, maybe he could be a better comfort to Neteyam than Jake would be: a kinder man wearing his father’s skin.

—

Tsireya goes into her and Aonung’s marui back-first so she can face Lo’ak, reaching her free hand up to block his head from the braided coverings in the opening.

His body moved like it didn’t have a destination, like he didn’t care what was going on around him or what happened to him. He just let her pull him along.

It was very dark, the coverings keeping most of the light of the above world from entering with them.

Tsireya sighs at herself a little bit. She’d set everything up: picked up anything that could be tripped over or that looked messy, laid out her bedroll so they could sit on something soft, changed into more comfortable clothing to sleep.

But, in all of that, she’d forgotten to start a fire.

“One moment,” she says, and when she lets go of Lo’ak’s hand, he just stands there. She would think that maybe he doesn’t move because of the dark, but she’s quite sure that the glow of his eyes makes it easy for him to see in the dark. He can likely see a lot more than she can.

She lights a fire as fast as she can and then fills a bowl with water through their fishing hole for when it needs to be put out later, if it doesn’t die on its own. Lo’ak doesn’t so much as hum or exhale loud enough for her to hear, doesn’t shuffle once, and the silence is making her nervous.

She’s gotten used to quiet moments with Lo’ak, but not like this. Lo’ak’s very rarely still. He’s constantly shifting his shoulders and adjusting his posture like he’s not comfortable any other way. It’s worse when they’re around other people. And he can be quiet, that she sees a lot, when he’s anxious being around others or when it’s just them and the day drags on too long to the point of fatigue, or when they’re meditating and everything around them is serene and relaxing. But now he’s motionless and inaudible and it’s almost like he’s gone away.

She gets the fire lit and hums as happily as she can manage - which is not much - just so she has something to do. “Alright,” she says, and her voice has fallen to a whisper. She walks back over to him, where he’s looking down again, and reaches out to grip his wrist as gently as she can manage.

Unlike Neteyam, he’s warm to the touch.

Tsireya flinches a bit, shakes the thought off.

She pulls him over to her mat, helps him sit down because her whole body aches after the last couple days and she assumes that he feels the same.

He sits down, legs crossed and hands in his lap, and slumps against the wall of the marui. The fire casts odd shadows over him, making his face look even more expressionless than before. The glow of the ocean life and the glow of the above world make it so that fire is not usually needed at night unless there is a ceremony, a festival, or something bad happening, and she’s never seen Lo’ak in this lighting before, with fire as their only real light source in the darkness of the enclosed space.

He looks pretty even when miserable, with the fire highlighting different parts of him at random and with the way his eyes were brighter in the dark, and Tsireya feels gross thinking that.

Her and Aonung’s marui is just about in the center of the village, unlike the Suli family, as their parents wanted them to be safe and surrounded at all times, but right now it feels like it’s just them. She can’t hear anyone else. The entire clan is quiet tonight, even the children.

He hadn’t cleaned the paste off his face, the white of it just barely starting to flake.

She knee-walks back over to the fire, grabbing the bowl of water and then shuffling over to her things, grabbing a cloth. She could get more water for the fire later.

She turns to Lo’ak, and he’s finally looked up. He watches her as she comes back over, settles in front of his crossed legs. She sets the bowl to the side of them and then uses that hand to grab his arm lightly, pull him up a bit until he’s actually sitting up.

She places the cloth into the bowl of water, soaking it, and then pulls it out, squeezing it to rid it of excess water.

“Here,” she says, as quiet as she can. She pulls the cloth up, gently rubs it over the skin of his forehead, even when he shivers, until the paste starts to give. “Sorry, it is cold.” She wipes over the length of his nose, over and over. She re-wets the cloth, rubs some of the paste off of it, and then continues.

He doesn’t say anything, gives no protest. Just blinks at her.

She leans in closer, trying to see the paste over his lips and chin through the shadows. She’s closer to his face than she thinks she’s ever been.

There are tear tracks down both sides of his face.

She’d seen them before the ceremony, before he’d gotten in the water, but those would’ve been washed away. These were new.

She moves the cloth to the side, and softly wipes over the skin of his cheek. The marks disappear quickly and she switches hands, rubbing at his other cheek until the only evidence of his tears was the puffiness of his eyes and his blank stare.

“There you go,” she says, and his bottom lip starts to quiver for a few seconds until he takes a deep breath and manages to get himself under control again.

Lo’ak was always, always full of expression. Even when he wasn’t trying to be. His face gave everything away; he always felt so much. How disconcerting it was, to see him not show anything.

She wipes the last of the paste off of the length of his nose, and then starts under it, rubbing under his nose and over his upper lip.

She could feel his breath brush over her hand, uneven and warm.

She cleans off his lips as best as she can, but she doesn’t do it as thoroughly as the rest before she moves into his chin, wiping over the curve of his jaw carefully.

This would usually be a more sensual experience. If the paste was for anything else, a festival or an iknimaya or a celebration, this moment would mean something completely different. It would be a completely different experience.

But it wasn’t sensual at all and Tsireya knew that the shakiness of his breathing had nothing to do with her this time and everything to do with him forcing himself not to cry.

As she begins to wipe down the skin of his throat, new, fresh tears start to slip down the right side of his face. She tries her best not to really acknowledge the fact that he’s crying, just in case he’ll get embarrassed or something, just carefully wipes them away when they fall, rinses the cloth, and dabs at his throat again.

Minutes later he speaks, startling her into jumping the slightest bit. “I can’t do anything without fucking up,” he says, suddenly and quietly, with a voice that made it obvious he’s said only a handful of words that day.

Tsireya looks up, goes to say something even if she has no idea what would have come out of her mouth, but he continues before she can, “I don’t think I’ve ever done something right, or something to be proud of, or something respectable. Even when I try to. It never works,” he says to her, and his eyes remind her of Neteyam’s - dead.

“Everything I say comes out wrong; everything I do goes wrong; everything I want isn’t right. Even when I try to be good, to do something good, I end up being bad,” he says, and Tsireya hums a little in what she hopes is a comforting way, setting the cloth on her leg so she can reach up, brush the back of her fingers against his cheek.

She’s never met anyone who’s hated themselves this much. It doesn’t feel right.

“They hate me,” he says, matter-of-fact, like it’s just something that’s true, something he knows. “The clan, your parents, my parents.”

“They do not.”

“They do,” he says, whispered to her like he’s begging her to believe him, like he’s asking her to trust him, please. “They do, they all do!”

“Not me, I do not hate you,” she says, and she grabs his face, a hand on each cheek. She positions him until he’s staring her in the eyes, though he doesn’t even attempt to go against her whims - not that he ever does. “I do not hate you. And even if you are right, which you are not, you say I am always right, correct? Then I must have a good reason,” she says, as playfully as she can muster, and he smiles the saddest smile she’s seen someone force on their face, for her sake. She sighs, “Lo’ak. They do not hate you, and anyone who does has no good reason,” and then , “I do not hate you,” because if he can be sure of everyone else’s hatred, then he can be sure that she lacks it. And she wishes that that was enough, her care, her affection, but everyone needs people, everyone needs community. She knows she can’t solve this on her own, but she’s not sure she trusts anyone else to do so right now without causing any lasting damage.

They sit for a moment in silence, her thumbs grazing his cheeks every so often until his mouth opens again, “I think my parents want me dead.”

Tsireya blanches, gasps reflexively, and almost flinches backwards so hard that she lets go of him. “Lo’ak, no-”

“Or, maybe not want, but prefer or something,” he says, like that makes it better, like he’s saying it to comfort her, and his eyes have dropped the vacant expressionlessness that they had before, but now there’s this hysteria in them that she doesn’t know what to do with. “They’d prefer me dead. I know they want Neteyam back.”

“That is-” she starts to say, but he continues to speak as if he can’t hear her - and maybe he cannot.

“Neteyam, he’s always been better. It’s not even that he does things better than me, but he’s, he’s just a better person. He’s better at helping, he always knows what to say or do or how to - how to react. He’s, he’s so much stronger than me and kinder than me, and I - I don’t know what-” he cuts off, gasps for breath like he’s been hit in the stomach. “I don’t know what to do without him,” he says, and she nods like she understands, even if she can’t possibly fathom.

She wants to put herself in his place, wants to completely understand him and what he’s feeling, where he’s coming from, but she can’t even bring herself to try to imagine a life without Aonung. She and her brother bicker a lot, maybe more than they should, but he would do anything for her, even things she refuses to think about. She knows that. She would die for him; he would die for her.

And in Lo’ak’s case, she supposes that that’s exactly what happened - which terrifies her to think about, but Lo’ak has no choice.

“I think, I think everyone would prefer it if I were dead. It would,” she hears his breath catch in his throat, “it would make everything so much easier,” he says, and she pets over the side of his face as gently as she can in her desperation to help, because what else can she do when she knows that nothing she does will actually, truly help. She can’t help.

And then he whispers, as quiet as he can, like it’s something to be ashamed of, “Maybe if I died, they’d be proud of me,” he says, pauses for a moment, “because, because I did something good. I would’ve gone out doing something good,” he whispers, eyes closing and body slumping like he’s relieved he got it out, and she has to get up.

Tsireya rises to her knees, shuffles over to lean into him. She moves her hands from his face, grabs the back of his head with one of her hands, pulls him in until he’s tucked into her throat, away from everything else. The other slides around his back to stroke over his skin. There’s little cuts she can feel, little welts and healing scabs across his skin.

His arms curl around her back and she sits sort of to his side. He lets her pull him in, rests his forehead on her shoulder.

She wants to climb into him, settle into his lap so she can wrap herself around him. He’s quite a bit bigger than her, which she assumes will only increase as they get older, but right now he seems small enough for her to engulf him completely, and she wants to at least try. He doesn’t like to be seen sometimes, at rarer times even by her, so maybe it would help.

She wants him to be able to tuck himself into her and cry without fear that people will see or that he’ll get in trouble.

She knows it would be too much. They’re not mates. They’re not even courting; not really. They touch often; they likely touch more often than socially acceptable, even. In her mother's eyes, at least. But she’s not sure if she’d make him uncomfortable and she doesn’t want to overwhelm him.

Or maybe she’s overthinking it and everything would be fine.

But right now she’s not sure she wants to chance it.

She rocks side to side slowly, like she would with a child, and pets over the back of his head, fingers following the fine lines of his braids.

“He’s so much better than me, Reya,” he says into her skin, with the voice of someone who’s seen more than they should’ve had to. “What am I gonna do?”

She can’t tell if he’s being rhetorical or not, but she has no answer for him, she has nothing to say, so she just hugs him tighter.

“I . . . I do not know.”

He makes absolutely no noise when he sobs, but she can feel it, the way his body jolts periodically against hers, and she wonders if he’s cried so much and felt so ashamed of doing it that he’s learned to do it silently, his family unaware of it all.

She wants to say that he’ll be fine and that everything will be okay, but she has an uncomfortable, thick feeling in her throat that makes her think she’d be lying. And so again, Tsireya says nothing and just hugs him tighter.

Everything does not feel like it will be okay. Nothing’s okay, everything’s falling apart.

Tsireya is supposed to be the next Tsahik. She’s supposed to help lead, she’s supposed to take over, she’s supposed to be strong and trustworthy and reliable, but she’s not sure she’s proven herself to be those things.

Tsireya is scared of blood now. She was fine with it before, because blood was a part of life: seasonal bleedings, births, injuries, tattoos. Blood flows through the body like her body flows through water. But she doesn’t like it now. The way it feels against her hands, tacky and slick, and then itchy when it dries. The way it looks, a sharp contrast against a person; the way it’s so dark that she can see when it’s there even in low lighting.

She knows that blood can mean many things, but right now it only means death. And though Tsireya believes that Eywa has a reason for everything she does and that Neteyam is now safe and happy with his ancestors in the place that never dies, she’s still scared for some reason.

She swears she can still smell it, the way it clings to her skin. It’s slippery. It’s warm.

And then Tsireya is crying too. And she knows Lo’ak won’t fault her, won’t be upset, but what right does she have to cry like this is her brother, her pain?

“Sorry, I am so sorry, I do not,” she says, and he pulls his head back to look at her even when she doesn’t want him to. “I am so, I-”

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” he says, even though he’s still crying too, and then he’s wiping at her tears with his thumbs and she’s wiping at his - and none of it is doing anything because they’re both still crying and can’t see straight and haven’t slept in days.

He wraps her back up in a hug, arms tight around her - for her sake or his, she’s not sure -, and she does the same back, as strong as she can manage when her muscles are exhausted.

And they cry.

They cry until they’re barely awake any longer and they’re partially leaned against the wall of the marui, slumped over together, and then she pulls back.

Lo’ak blinks blearily at her, tired and sad and sweet, and she wipes the last of his tears from his face with the back of her fingers, tries her best to smile at him.

“Come on,” she whispers, pulling on his arm. She tosses the cloth she was using earlier to the side. She hasn’t finished getting the paint off, but she decided she’ll finish in the morning because their eyes are already falling closed.

She lays back on the mat and pulls Lo’ak down with her when he doesn’t seem to get it quick enough. His tired, half-open eyes are bright yellow slits in the low lighting and she presses closer, nervously wrapping an arm around his back until he does the same. His arm is strong and she can feel the shape of it, so different from hers, where it’s wrapped around her back.

They lay side by side, legs naturally tangling together with such little care from him that it kind of makes her feel dumb for overthinking so much earlier.

Her eyes slide shut, the exhaustion and the quiet and the warmth pulling at her until she’s almost asleep.

And then she remembers.

“Mmm, wait, wait, wait,” she mumbles, and sits up, pulling out of Lo’ak’s arms even when he makes an annoyed little humming noise. She squints at the light and then grabs the bowl of water she was using earlier, tossing it over the fire and sliding the bowl away from them. The fire sizzles loudly as it diminishes and a plume of smoke rises, but Tsireya lays back down, this time laying over his other arm too, and the smoke settles as she does, dissipating over the two of them.

She wraps her arm back around him and pets over his back, trying to keep it up as long as she can so he can sleep well.

—

Aonung doesn’t think about the water much because it’s always, always around him, but it was truly beautiful. Tonight though, it seemed especially beautiful.

It was still - much calmer than it usually seemed, but maybe that was just him. With the lack of anyone wandering as everyone recuperates, the village was dark and silent, and it felt like he was alone, floating somewhere with no tether.

Aonung was really, really tired. He assumes that everyone was probably exhausted; there hasn’t exactly been enough time for anyone to nap over the past couple days. But the stress and guilt over everything is keeping him up.

He hadn’t known Neteyam too well.

He knew him. He watched his progress, marveled at his strength - becoming a warrior so young was an impressive feat, one that Aonung hated him for on the days where he couldn’t stop messing up and his parents wouldn’t stop giving him that look they give him sometimes. He’s not even sure they notice they do it.

Other days he was someone Aonung, though he’d never tell anyone, aspired to be.

Neteyam was kind and good with children. He was protective of those he cared about, but somehow managed to not be dismissive of those he didn’t know. He was an adept hunter and a fast learner, picking up what they taught him quicker than he’d expected. He’d proven himself to be a good warrior, even when he’d had to learn a completely different way of life.

But those are all base-level things, things that everyone had probably known about him. Aonung didn’t know anything substantial. Anything real. He didn’t know the things that made him cry or his favorite memories or his greatest fears.

Aonung doesn’t know anything.

And maybe he didn’t like that there was a new family around, a family that was like his own, with powerful parents and children that could take Aonung’s place in the clan.

He takes a deep, shuddering breath and wipes a hand over his face.

His head hurts, and he wonders if he’s drunk any water that day.

The netting of where Aonung’s sitting shakes subtly and when the person carefully, slowly sits down beside him, legs dangling next to his, he knows it’s his mother.

He doesn’t say anything to her and they stare at the water together for a while.

“It is quite late,” she says, voice softer than usual.

He nods, but doesn’t voice a reply. He’s not sure she was looking for one. He’s never been good with words, and now it seems like he doesn’t have words at all.

“Are you alright,” she asks, and he shrugs.

He takes a second. “I just . . . I wish I had been kinder,” he says. It’s been quite a while since he was so outward about his feelings around his mother. They always seemed to butt heads. She just seemed so embarrassed of him, and so he’d tried to be like her, to do what she did, but that didn’t work out either. So he just kind of ended up avoiding her.

“I wish the same thing,” his mother replies, and Aonung’s head snaps to the side to look at her for the first time since she’d sat down.

He didn’t think his mother had regrets. About anything, honestly.

She sighs. “I had my reasons for not wanting the Suli family to settle with us, and I stand by those reasons. But I did not have to express them so cruelly. Especially to children. I do not know why I did so,” she says, and then pauses for a second. “Maybe it was fear.”

Aonung blinks at her. Realistically, he knew his mother felt things like fear and horror and sadness, but it all felt so distant. He loved that his father was Oloektan, that his mother was Tsahik. He was proud of them. And more selfishly, he liked that no one would bad mouth him to his face because of it (except the Suli kids). But sometimes their clan roles mixed into their family roles. His mother couldn’t show fear to the clan, and so she never showed it at all.

He nods. “I understand. I could have . . . approached them as potential friends or something. But I approached them as enemies. Or problems,” he says, and she hums in acknowledgement.

Aonung hadn’t apologized once.

Aonung and Lo’ak had somehow struck up some partial, seeing-ourselves-in-each-other- based friendship where Aonung’s apology had been unsaid, but still understood. He doubted he’d be close close to him anytime soon, but they were fine. When Lo’ak wasn’t making love sick eyes at his sister, mind you.

But Aonung didn’t even have that with Neteyam. They just ignored everything they had done to make each other angry. Neteyam apparently just shrugged everything off and let go of the things that Aonung had done and said to his family. He hadn’t seemed to hate him. He hadn’t seemed to even dislike him. Aonung could even say they were friends of some sort - the kind that gravitate towards one another in a group, but don’t really share the personal, rough details of life and growing up and war, apparently.

He talked to him about gossip and their siblings and the differences between the forest and the sea, but not about how he feels like a failure in the eyes of the clan, or of how he’s scared of falling in love and then mating with someone and feeling that they don’t care for him as much as he cares for them, or how both of his parents seem to prefer Tsireya.

Even though that’s what he wanted to say. Even though he wanted to be able to talk to someone his age that he didn’t grow up with, that had the ability to see him in a different light to the image he’s grown up to present and maintain.

“I want to apologize tomorrow. To the others,” he says, and his mother reaches out a hand, pets over the back of his hair that was down for once.

“That is a good goal, but do not go tomorrow. Give them a while to grieve,” she says, and Aonung remembers again that Neteyam died.

Neteyam was dead and his parents and siblings and friends were grieving him. His body lay with Aonung’s ancestors, cradled by the sea. Right near where he sits.

He knows that, but he doesn’t really. It doesn’t feel like it actually happened.

“Yeah. Okay.”

His mother pets over his head again, soothing. “I am glad you are here,” she says, and he inhales, goes to say thank you and chokes on it. He nods gratefully, hopes she can understand what he’s saying.

“You should get to sleep,” she says eventually, and he bobs his head again.

“I know.”

She pulls him in for a hug and he hugs back, more to the side of her so he doesn’t hurt her belly. She’s warm.

He slowly pulls away and she smiles, cups his chin with one of her hands. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” he whispers back, and pulls himself up.

He plods along in a tired daze for barely a couple minutes as he walks to his and Tsireya’s marui, then he brushes the coverings of the marui to the side. He stops.

Huddled in the corner, only partially revealed by the dying fire light, was his sister and Lo’ak. They were sitting on the ground facing each other, sort of collapsed against the wall together, arms wrapped around one another.

They were crying. He could hear it.

Aonung lets the braids fall back into place and turns, walking back towards where he left his mother. She’s not there though, so he walks to his parents marui and gets there just as his mother is beginning to head inside.

“Mom?”

She stops, turns back in surprise. “Aonung?”

“Can I stay with you and dad tonight?”

Her eyes widen, but she just smiles. “Of course, but should you leave your sister by herself?”

Aonung thinks for a second. “I . . . think she would rather be alone tonight.”

His mother makes a little noise of understanding, and then pulls the braids open further for him, and Aonung steps inside.

—

When light starts to peer through the trees, Tonowari leaves his marui to collect fruit, as he does every morning, for himself and Ronal. This morning, he leaves a little early. Ronal needs extra nutrients for the babe and Aonung stayed with them the night before, choosing to sleep between them for the first time in quite a few years, so he collects for him as well. He pauses on his short walk and peeks into his children's marui.

Tsireya’s back is pointed towards him, as it usually is, but Tonowari blinks rapidly for a moment because she has large, dark blue hands spread across her back.

His daughter’s laying over Lo’ak, leg thrown over him and head pressed into his neck. He’s on his back, hands holding Tsireya to him, head tucked into her hair. They’re both completely, deeply asleep.

Tonowari’s not stupid; he knows nothing untoward happened between them last night, after everything, but this was still wildly inappropriate.

Wildly inappropriate, Tonowari mumbles as he lets the coverings fall and continues his morning stroll.

His next stop is at the Suli’s marui, just for a brief check up. Him and Ronal will hold more formal meetings with the families of the fallen later in the day, but Tonowari feels particularly compelled to check on the only family in the village that’s down a child.

Thankfully though, they’re all asleep, laying together in a line with everyone touching in one way or another. Jake cuddled close to Neytiri, who held onto Tuktirey, who was tucked close to Kiri, who was clutching onto Spider.

It would’ve been comical if it wasn’t so tragic.

He watches them for barely a moment before moving on.

He walks, walks to the other end of the long beach to gather the little red fruits that grow there in a bowl for them to skin and eat that morning, and then he walks all the way back.

He steps back into the marui, where his much-too-big-to-do-so-now son was currently trying to climb into his mother's lap in his sleep.

Aonung was cuddled into Ronal’s side, breathing deeply with his chest pushing into the air every second or two.

He was breathing.

Tonowari crosses the marui, setting the bowl down to the side of them, and pets over his son's face lightly. He sits there for minutes, long enough for Ronal’s eyes to begin to blink at him slowly.

“Everything alright,” his mate mumbles lazily, words slurring.

Tonowari sighs. “Everything’s fine, dear.”