Chapter Text
"There you are," Neteyam, Neteyam, smiled at Lo'ak, with his smile that could hold the power of the entire sun in it. "I was looking everywhere for you."
Lo’ak opened his mouth trying to say something, anything, to his brother but all that came out was a weak whimper.
"Hey, what’s wrong," Neteyam asked, brows furrowing, ever so caring, so attentive.
Lo’ak finally felt some sort of life return back into him and he found he could get a hold of his breathing again and squeeze out the words, tearing through him, leaving bleeding holes in his chest.
"I just miss you."
"So much."
Neteyam's face suddenly darkened and he was being pulled away, as if into the the light but Lo'ak had the chilling feeling it was actually more like darkness.
"Bro, help," Neteyam shouted, desperately reaching for his younger brother’s arm to hold onto.
"I-," Lo'ak choked out before he too was swept into what felt like a hurricane of darkness.
The next thing he knew was water filling his lungs, a scream dying in his throat.
Right. He was at the tree.
He started kicking his legs, swimming up as fast as he could manage with the little air he still had left in his lungs.
Finally, he reached the surface, Payakan helping out a little bit with the last few feet still hovering above Lo'ak and yet all his strength was already gone, trapped in the water forever.
Lo'ak coughed violently as his face got out into the open air.
"Thank you, buddy," he murmured, as he caressed Payakan’s dark blue fin.
Lo’ak looked up into the empty sky.
It was so calm. So dull.
He couldn’t brush away the feeling of wanting to immediately go back to Neteyam, see if he was doing okay, see if he could help, somehow, just, he would do anything to make his mistake right.
With that being said, Lo’ak knew perfectly well that in the tree, that image wasn’t Neteyam.
That wasn’t his big brother.
I’m never getting him back, the thought washed over him like dark poison, engulfing him and settling down onto his chest triumphantly.
The reality of it hit him in waves, squeezing out sob after sob from his aching chest.
"I'm – okay," he signed to Payakan once he managed to get himself together a bit. The Tulkun was worriedly singing to him, his voice filling the motionless vast infinity that surrounded them.
Then, Payakan must have decided that it was time to take Lo’ak back home, because he nudged Lo’ak's side with his fin, surprisingly gentle, as always, telling him that he should move up to his back so he could rest up there while they crossed the bay.
Lo’ak looked like he wanted to protest but then just gave in and moved up to the Tulkun’s back, laying flat out on his back, staring up into the emptiness.
No matter how many stars and planets were in the sky, not even all of them together was enough to bring back Neteyam’s smile.
"I’ll never hear his laugh again,” Lo’ak said, now out loud, just a whisper on his lips, seemingly so soft and gentle, when in reality saying the words felt like daggers tearing through him.
He turned to his side on Payakan’s back, hiding his face against the majestic creature’s cold skin, letting his body do what it needed to do, so he could have a couple of hours of oblivious bliss once he cried himself to complete exhaustion.
---
When Lo'ak got back to their hut, Kiri, Spider and Tuk were already asleep. Kiri woke up to him coming in, despite all his efforts to put down his stuff as silently as he possibly could.
"Hi," Kiri greeted, her voice a bit raspy, rubbing at her eyes with her slim hand.
"Hey," Lo’ak breathed as he flopped down onto his mat.
"How was it?" Kiri asked, and Lo’ak wanted to be mad, angry at her for sounding excited but he found he didn’t have the energy to be.
"I-," he started, but once again the words died in his throat.
"Goodnight, Kiri," he ended up saying quietly as he rested his head down on his mat.
---
The next day Lo'ak remained in bed, laying motionlessly, unable to get up.
Spider tried to come and cheer him up, but his efforts were in vain.
Lo’ak couldn’t get out of bed today.
Sure all of them had rough days every now and then, but not like this. Lo’ak looked like every breath he took felt like to him as if it was a waste of energy, his chest barely raising and falling, he's just been staring at the top of the hut, occasionally trying to rest his eyes but then almost immiditalty forcing them open again.
So Spider decided to just sit down next to him and he hesitantly touched his brother's arm, caressing it gently.
Tuk soon came to join them, having finished her diving lesson with Tsireya and the other metkayina kids.
She nestled herself close to Lo’ak, pressing her forehead against the tight muscles of his back. They just stayed with Lo’ak, bundled up together, not saying anything, just sharing the silence and the unspoken memories between them.
Lo'ak knew how much they were all hurting too. He wasn’t special.
---
Lo’ak couldn’t feel anything. He wouldn’t let himself. It was always like this after an intense night of weeping so hard he sometimes worried his throat would slit open from the effort of it. Maybe this was his body telling his brain to shut the hell up already, unable to take all the emotions wrecking through it anymore.
"He's my brother!"
"Oh, he's your brother?! No, I'm your brother!"
Lo’ak startled awake, gasping loudly, clutching at his chest, feeling disorientated and out of place.
Just a dream. We’re okay. - He tried to calm himself before a small pale hand rested against his chest. Lo’ak jerked back instinctively.
"Just me," Spider said, apologetically, pulling his hand away quickly.
"Sorry, I-, sorry." Lo'ak did that a lot lately. Not finishing his sentences. He was so tired of himself, how did the others still put up with him despite how insufferable he was, remained to be a mystery.
Lo’ak took Spider’s hand into his, shooting the boy’s masked face an apologetic smile. He squeezed gently, then turned to his side still holding onto the pale hand as his back was now turned at the boy.
Jake and Neytiri are out at the tree right now. It's not healthy what they're doing. Lo’ak thought bitterly. That’s not Neteyam in there.
They should all work on moving on, only it's impossible to move on like this.
But suddenly a thought came crashing into him as terror-filled realization dawned upon him.
"What if he's stuck in there?" Lo’ak asked, voice coming out raspy and scratchy from the lack of speaking.
"What?” Kiri asked from where she was sitting next to the fire.
"When I disconnected from the tree he- he was screaming at me and reaching towards me."
"You know that he, what you saw," Kiri paused, her face suddenly filled with pain. "He's not really there," she said looking away, the words heavy, her usually so steady voice now coming out hoarse. "Everything we see, everything Eywa lets us see of him, are just memories."
"Hey, Lo'ak, Lo'ak," "Look at me!" She put her hands against his sunken cheeks, looking into his eyes.
"I know it hurts, it hurts so much sometimes you wonder if it's possible to live another day in this pain, but he is with Eywa now," Kiri pushed when she saw Lo’ak’s face crumbling at the words. "He is okay. He is loved. He is safe. But he’s not Neteyam anymore."
Her voice was so soft, so gentle as if she could feel all of Lo'ak's regret and guilt.
Lo'ak felt like he could never overcome this.
He can never recover. He can never forget.
He curled in on himself again, slowly pushing Kiri's hands away from his face so he could lay back down again.
Yeah, he's not gonna get up anytime soon. Spider wrapped an arm around him protectively, and Lo’ak found, he didn’t mind.
---
When Jake and Neytiri returned later that day, Lo’ak felt like he was still in the exact same position. His lower back started to ache about an hour ago, and his head started throbbing from all the unshed tears, he couldn't let out anymore.
Spider tried to get him to eat, but he found he couldn't even think about putting anything into his mouth without cringing and his stomach tightening into an even more impossibly tight knot.
"Mom and Dad are back," Kiri said slowly as she crouched down in front of Loak's still form.
"Okay," the boy whispered, though didn’t move to push himself up. He lay with his eyes open, too scared of what he would see when he closed them.
He put his hands under his body so he didn’t accidentally look at them either.
Empty eyes.
Scarlet red.
The red of Neteyam's blood - drying on Lo'ak's hands.
Neytiri always used to say when Lo’ak and Neteyam were little, fighting all the time, that they should cherish every single second they got to spend with each other. She didn’t elaborate back then, and now… now she didn’t need to anymore.
Neytiri lost Sylwanin.
Jake lost Tommy.
And now they both lost Neteyam too, their star in the sky, their favorite son.
Left with a son like Lo’ak who couldn’t even gather himself up enough to get out of bed and eat something.
What a cruel world - Lo’ak’s mind provided, seeping its poison and spreading it through his weak body.
There was only darkness with smothering grief and no way out.
Lo’ak could feel his chest tighten and his face contort in pain.
It’s not even real pain, he thought to himself mockingly.
Real pain was what Neteyam felt before the light left his eyes forever, while Lo'ak could only sit there by his side and watch.
Useless and pathetic.
"Hey, hey," a soft voice brought him out of the pit of anguish that his mind had become.
"Lo'ak?" Someone put a hand to his exposed sides, trying to stop him from digging his nails into blue, stubbornly thick skin.
No matter how much you try and hurt yourself, you'll never understand Neteyam's pain. The pain of a bullet cutting through your chest.
The pain of the realization that you have to leave this world before you even get the chance to truly live.
Lo'ak couldn’t take this anymore, he wrapped his arms around himself even more tightly and started drawing blood from his skin by the sheer force he was scratching himself.
Someone desperately tried to make him stop, though in vain. Lo’ak’s eyes were unseeing, trapped in the tree of Eywa, the tree of Life, showing him the greatest blessing which turned out to be the heaviest burden.
Seeing his brother, in that tree, trapped in between their memories, did not help ease Lo'ak's agony. It did not make breathing and getting up in the mornings easier.
It just made him relive the past even more vividly, making it impossible to even allow himself a glimpse into his future.
His future without Neteyam.
"Jake, Majake," Lo'ak registered someone’s desperate cry.
Was that mom?
The next thing he felt was a much stronger and larger hand wrapping itself around his middle, pulling him up from the claws of his bed. He wanted to resist, but his hands had a more important job to do right now.
He felt a sharper pain rise in his left arm, the one you hurt on the reef, his hazy mind provided. He dug in hard, needing the pain to become even sharper to make him feel like he was real again.
"No, no, Lo’ak, baby, stop, look at me, please, Lo'ak," and something about how broken this voice was, begging him to get out of whatever the hell he was so deep in right now, made him focus his eyes, and raise his head the slightest bit, away from the warm, strong chest it was resting on.
"There you are," his dad murmured because now there was definitely no mistaking it that it was him.
"I’m going to look at the wound okay?" Lo'ak started to shake his head, not wanting to be looked at, assessed, hissed at.
"Hey, look at me?" Jake took his face into his hands and raised it gently, his worried expression meeting Lo'ak's broken one.
"You're okay," his dad whispered. "You're going to be okay." He started to pull the now bloody bandage off, inspecting the reopened wound.
Jake could feel something cold and icy spread through his veins as an ugly thought popped up in his head.
"Did, you…" he cleared his throat not sure he could finish that sentence without his voice breaking completely. "You didn't do this wound on purpose, did you?"
Lo'ak looked confused for a second then a wave of recognition washed over his expression.
"No," he said, quietly. Speaking was exhausting.
"I'm going to need something here, buddy, something we can work with. What's going on in there?" Jake prodded as he touched a blue warm hand against Lo'ak furrowed brow. His body was radiating warmth and a feeling of safety that nothing could ever replace, making Lo’ak subconsciously relax his tensed muscles.
It was evident how this topic was a tough one for Jake too, him not nearly healed from the emptiness his son's death left in him either. But he couldn't let this go. Not when another one of his sons might be in danger too.
"I just cut it when Payakan dropped me off on one of the rocks."
That doesn't explain why I found you digging into it and reopening an already painful, ugly wound. - Jake thought but decided to keep it to himself.
"The pain helps," Lo'ak said softly, almost too quietly to hear.
It was so unlike him. - the usually so energetic and cheerful boy lost somewhere deep down, in the shadows of his grief and mourning.
Jake took in a deep, shaky breath.
"Tell me more about that. So I can understand," he added gently, though his flickering tail betrayed how anxious he felt.
Scared for his boy. Scared for their family.
Scared for Neteyam.
Even though he wasn’t with them anymore, Jake never truly accepted the fact that he wasn't part of their family anymore.
He didn’t think he ever could.
"I just thought..." Lo’ak tried, though his face crumbled as the weight of his words caught up to him.
"I just thought that, if I, did something," he gestured weakly at his wound, from which the blood was still gently flowing. "Then I could somehow feel his pain," his last few words came out in a rush.
"I'm so stupid," the boy sighed, his voice watery. Though what scared Jake the most was how he sounded like he had already given up.
Lo'ak pushed the heel of his hands into his eyes, fighting another wave of tears streaming down his face.
"You're not stupid," Jake said once he could make sure that there would actually be some kind of sound that manages to escape his throat.
"Do you hear me? You are so smart and witty and yes, yes," Jake paused as Lo'ak started to shake his head, unable to accept the reassurance.
"You are loyal and brave and you have a strong heart." Jake finished, now his own tears threatening to spill, putting his hand over Lo’ak’s chest, feeling his son’s fluttering heartbeat.
Lo'ak looked up, glancing through his wet lashes, scared to avert his gaze from his dad's face, like he could also just disappear if Lo’ak wasn't careful enough.
"I want to see him," Lo'ak admitted voice small, eyes wide and so childlike.
"You went to him yesterday, right?" Jake asked sympathetically as he got up from his squatting position and sat down next to Lo'ak on the mat.
"No I..., that isn't him, dad," Lo'ak grunted, unable to keep the built-up frustration out of his voice.
"I want to be with him, to see him. I always want to see him, I want to be with him" the boy confessed, lower lip wobbling.
Jake could feel his heart break all over again at those words.
Who would have thought that after he lost Neteyam even more painful would be to see his own pain reflected in his children's eyes, just helplessly watching as they suffered as much as he did, unable to take their pain away?
"Lo'ak," he breathed. "You're making me afraid. Did you, do you-," Jake fumbled around the right words, not knowing how he could even ask such a thing.
"No I- I would never cause you that kind of pain," Lo'ak said, gently taking his dad’s hand while he wrapped his tail around his leg in reassurance.
Relief hit Jake right in the middle of his chest as he took in his son's words.
"I just want the pain to stop. Can you make it stop, please dad?" Lo'ak begged and Jake couldn't do anything other than pull him into a bone-crushing hug.
"We'll get through this, we'll get through this one day at a time. We'll take it slow, okay?" He tried to pull away to check Lo'ak's expression, but the boy tightened his hold on him, body trembling and suddenly seeming so so small and fragile like they were transported back in time to ten years ago when their biggest problem with Neytiri was how to get Kiri and Lo'ak to fight less with each other and to somehow persuade all the kids to pose together for a family picture.
They can go back to that. There still exists happiness for their family, Eywa still has happiness stored for them in her plans.
Or at least Jake refused to believe anything else.
"I'm here, I'm right here, baby boy" Jake murmured, the reassurance and affection once again sounding comfortable and familiar in his deep, strong voice.
They’ll just have to take it one day at a time.