Chapter Text
Spider wakes before the alarm. He always does. Ten years of training will do that to you.
The McCosker house never truly sleeps, and neither does he. For a few seconds, he lies still and lets the room exist without engaging with it—white ceiling, sealed vents, the low, constant hum of climate control that never quite reaches silence. The house is good at pretending nothing happens inside it. No scuffs on the walls. No clutter. No evidence of raised voices or broken routines.
It is immaculate.
It is a lie.
Spider stares blankly at the ceiling, shifting stiffly in his bed. The same bed he had at six years old, only he’s not six anymore. At 16, the bed is narrow. Intentionally so. It discourages turning. Discourages lingering. Discourages the kind of comfort that might make someone forget where they are.
He breathes shallow and counts.
One.
Two.
Three.
His body reports in whether he wants it to or not.
Left ribs: sore, deep ache, worse if he twists too fast.
Shoulder: stiff, usable.
Thigh: bruised, contained.
Hands: fine. Always important.
Good, he thinks distantly. They were careful.
Careful means functional. Functional means today, and all the things he needs to do can proceed.
He swings his legs off the bed, placing both feet on the floor at the same time—balance matters. The cold tile bites into his skin, sharp enough to keep him present. He prefers pain that announces itself. It’s easier than the kind that waits until you relax.
There is no mirror in his room.
There used to be, once. There used to be soft things as well – pictures on the wall, personality around the room. It’s all gone now. It all disappeared about six months after he arrived—around the same time “Mom” decided it would be easier for him to just call her by her official title – easier for who he was never explained.
Spider stands and stretches just enough to loosen what needs loosening, not enough to provoke anything. His body is not his. It’s a resource. A liability. A thing that must remain usable.
That’s the rule. Miles follows rules.
Spider exists somewhere quieter. Smaller. Folded in on himself, where no one can reach.
He showers fast. Lukewarm water. Minimal steam. He keeps his face turned away from the metal reflection in the fixtures—not because he can’t look, but because there’s no point. He already knows what he’ll see. Gone was the boy with wild hair and blue streaked skin, who smiled too wide and talked too much. That has been erased with military like precision. Now stands a boy with close cropped hair and a neutral expression – eyes that remained guarded and didn’t show anything the mind was thinking. A boy who honestly looks older than sixteen, held together by routine and restraint and the careful absence of reaction.
His blue stripes have been replaced with a different shade that held more painful consequences. Bruises bloom beneath his skin in places only clothing will hide. He dresses with intention. Long sleeves. Thick fabric. Nothing soft. Soft things invite questions. Boots instead of bare feet—heavy, grounding, human. The boots remind him where he is.
Where he is not.
Miles Socorro laces them neatly.
Spider remembers mud between his toes—warm, alive, forgiving—and shoves the thought away before it can turn into something dangerous.
The hallway smells faintly of disinfectant and recycled air. Helen is already awake—she always is. She doesn’t look at him when he enters the kitchen, just slides a nutrient bar across the counter like it’s an obligation, not an offering. She is dressed neatly, hair coifed in a perfect French twist. Spider cannot remember one time she hasn’t looked outwardly calm and collected – voice and appearance immaculate, even when she’s tearing someone down from the bottom up.
“Eat,” she says. “You’ll need the energy.”
Miles eats. He doesn’t taste it. He learned early that showing appreciation for different flavors is considered wasteful. That rations are calculated. His input was not wanted or appreciated. He is an expense. Something taken on for reasons that had nothing to do with love.
They stopped hiding why they agreed to be a “family” for him relatively quickly. Its hard to maintain a lie like that for long with you have a child actively seeking affection from you. The McCoskers are not fond of children.
They are not fond of him, in general – child or not.
No, the truth came out within a year of his placement here.
The McCoskers were not well-liked.
They were brilliant, yes—but sharp-edged, insular. Their views on Pandora were… unpopular. They spoke about the planet like a specimen tray. About the Na’vi, like an obstacle. Other scientists noticed. Whispers started. Quiet distance. Questions from the administration. Warnings that they might be recalled back to earth, their projects rejected and forced to be abandoned.
And then Spider came along. A human child on Pandora— whose very existence was banned – in need of a family. Preferably a married couple who could be singular parents for the boy.
It was not like there were many people lining up for this position. Not many lining up for him. This offered them something that they had been searching for. Quiet leverage. Not something they would ever use outwardly or hold over the community. That would ruin the image: the benevolent adopted parents, the moral counterexample. But behind closed doors, Spider understood his role perfectly.
He made them untouchable. And in exchange, he was tolerated at best. Used at worst.
Richard’s chair is empty this morning. That’s neither good nor bad—it just is. Absence doesn’t mean safety. It just means timing.
Spider finishes his bar, nods to Helen, who doesn’t even look up before heading to the door, shouldering his pack as he goes. He quickly glances at his watch as he leaves.
On schedule.
He remembers the first weeks after he was left here. How quiet it had been. How he waited by the door long after Norm and Max should have come back. How he told himself it was temporary. That his family would return. That surely they would come check on him (he was their “little chaos assistant” they needed him. They would come check on him and see he needed to go home. That the forest and his friends were the better place for him.
He didn’t want a family anymore. Maybe over time, Mr. Sully and Neytiri would let him stay longer with their family. He wouldn’t be a member, but he could still be present with Neteyam, Lo’ak, and Kiri. Maybe Neytiri has had her baby by now. He could help. He would help when Norm and Max come and see him, like they promised they would. Max and Norm never break promises. They would come.
They never did.
He remembers trying—really trying—to be good. To anticipate Helen’s moods. To earn Richard’s approval. To become whatever it was they wanted him to be. It took him less than a year to understand there was no version of him that would ever be enough.
Six months in, Helen corrected him when he called her mom.
“You will call me Doctor McCosker,” she said coolly. “It is just easier this way. You are a big boy, do try and sound like one.”
Richard agreed. After that, everything had a title. A boundary. A consequence.
Spider learned quickly.
Miles leaves the house without being told to.
Outside, the airlock seals behind him with a sound that settles something heavy and familiar in his chest.
This part he understands. He may be out of the house, but nothing really changes.
There are still rules.
The are still limits.
They will still be waiting.
There is no way out right now. He learned that years ago—learned it so thoroughly it lives in his bones. Running would get him caught. Fighting would get him pain. Telling anyone the truth would get him erased.
So he waits.
He first came up with the plan when he was 15. Richard had been complaining about a new laboratory trainee over dinner. Spider had been eating silently, carefully cutting his food with his utensils. There is no eating with hands in the McCosker household.
“The kid is useless. Twenty-one is the approved age for cryosleep, but obviously, that is too young. Seriously, Helen, I watched this moron destroy a 6-week experiment in 5 minutes – absolutely useless …”
Richard had continued his tirade for at least 30 minutes after more than once comparing Luke to Miles even though Miles had just turned 15 and never ruined any experiments because he, you know, valued having meals presented to him. However, the rest of the tirade was lost because Spider’s attention had snagged on one singular thing.
Twenty-one.
The number sits in his head like contraband hope. Richard had mentioned it once, offhand, irritated about a younger lab tech who’d just transferred.
Twenty-one is the approved age for cryosleep.
Twenty-one means cryosleep. Cryosleep means Earth. Earth means distance. Distance means freedom.
Getting to work with Norm and Max in the laboratory again when he turned 13 had helped. The forest gives him air. Relief. The temporary escape when Norm and Max take him out on short day trips—borrowed freedom that smells like green and feels like remembering who he was.
But Earth? Earth is an exit.
On Earth, no one would know him. On Earth, no one would own him. On Earth, he could disappear into a crowd and be nothing at all. And nothing sounds like peace.
Twenty-one. Five more years.
Spider is very good at waiting.
After a series of long hallways and several airlock entryways, he finally arrives near the lab complex, boots echoing loudly off the metal floors.
He is always surrounded by metal.
He reaches familiar laboratory doors five minutes early. Like always.
He badges in, drops his pack in his designated corner, and starts setting up for the day—cleaning surfaces, organizing tools, making himself useful before anyone asks. Contribution matters here. That was the only reason he was allowed back around Norm and Max at thirteen.
“All humans earn their keep,” he’d said. “This will count as your education.”
Because organizing equipment really stimulated his mind, but they didn’t want a smart child. Smart meant questions. Ideas. Independence. No that’s not something they wanted at all.
Still—Norm and Max had been a reprieve gratefully received by thirteen year old him.
Not saviors. Never that. But once—once—they had been something close to family.
Spider remembers hands that caught him when he jumped before thinking. Voices that laughed instead of shouted when he climbed somewhere he shouldn’t. Norm pretending to be stern while lifting him down from a beam he’d had no business reaching. Max sitting on the edge of his bunk at night, rambling softly about sample yields and soil acidity because Spider slept better when someone talked.
He remembers being tucked in. He remembers being wanted.
That’s the part that still stings. Because they left.
They didn’t fight. They didn’t come back. They didn’t ask enough questions. They handed him over and told themselves it was the right thing to do—and then they stayed away long enough for it to become permanent.
He was left with demons – the word still rings in his mind in a familiar hiss. One that belonged to another person he wants to consider safe in a strange way. He doesn’t know if she meant the McCoskers when she said it back then.
But she wasn’t wrong. The throbbing pain radiating from his ribs point that direction.
Norm and Max are far gentler in comparison. Harmless as Hexapedes. They act kind. The kind who give you water before they ask you to keep going. The kind who don’t raise their voices, who don’t touch unless they have to. The kind who let him breathe.
Which almost makes it worse because even if they are kind, he doesn’t trust them.
Not fully. Trust is what gets you left.
Still—over the years, the bitterness that clouded every interaction he had with them when he was thirteen had dulled. Sanded down into something quieter. Less sharp. More dangerous, because it almost feels like hope.
The lab door slides open again with a soft hiss.
“Morning, Spider,” Norm says, voice warm and familiar in a way that still catches Spider off guard sometimes.
He doesn’t look up right away. Keeps aligning trays, precise and unhurried. Control where he can get it.
“It’s Miles, and you’re late,” Spider says. No one calls him Spider anymore.
Not accusing. Just factual.
Norm blinks, eyes flashing, then lets out a surprised laugh. “Wow. Good morning to you, too.”
Max slips in behind him, coffee already in hand. He takes one look at Spider and grins. “Early as always, huh, bud?”
Spider finally glances up. “Am I early? Or are you both late again?”
Max glances at his watch and raises his brows. “I stand corrected.”
Spider shrugs, mouth twitching despite himself before he can stop it. “Some of us respect schedules.”
Some of us learned what happens when you don’t.
Norm smiles at him, soft and automatic—and Spider hates how much that smile still works on him. Hates that part of him still wants to lean into it. Still wants to believe it means something unbreakable. For just a second, the lab feels like it used to. Like a place where he wasn’t measured by usefulness. Like a place where he could talk too much and climb too high and be gently scolded instead of corrected.
Almost normal. Almost safe.
Spider turns back to his work before the feeling can settle. Before it can dig in and make promises it can’t keep.
Because normal didn’t last. And neither did they.
The crack is there now—thin, barely visible—but once you know where to look, you can’t unsee it.
Norm Spellman does not love many things.
He loves his lab—the quiet hum of equipment, the order of data, the way answers can be coaxed out of chaos if you’re patient enough. He loves his avatar, the way it moves through the forest like it belongs there, the way Pandora feels right through borrowed skin.
He loves Pandora itself. The richness of it. The way the planet is alive in a way Earth forgot how to be long before it started dying. The people, too—the depth of their culture, the way nothing is wasted, the way grief and joy are allowed to exist side by side.
And once—once—he loved a kid.
They find him by accident.
That’s the thing that still gets Norm, years later. Not in some dramatic last stand or hidden bunker, but in a quiet room that should have been empty.
A dresser drawer.
They open it looking for misplaced equipment.
Instead, they find a baby.
Six months old. Wrapped in blankets sewn together from standard RDA T-shirts—logos cut out, fabric softened by wear. Tucked beside him is a stuffed bear, clumsy and uneven, made from leftover sleeves and collars, stuffed with the remnants of someone’s pillow.
Miles. They don’t know his name yet. They know he’s alive because he’s crying.
Norm remembers the way the room went silent.
Children were illegal. That was standard RDA protocol. The air was toxic. The wildlife lethal. One cracked seal, one mistake, and a human child would be dead before anyone could reach them.
Pandora was no place for something so fragile.
They find the letter next.
Hastily written. Folded too many times. Sergeant Paz’s handwriting—tight, precise, careful even in desperation. An explanation. An apology. Instructions, if the worst happened.
She had known she might die. She had planned for that.
Quaritch hadn’t. That part still surprises Norm.
Quaritch—the villain, the monster, the man who burned Hometree and hunted the Na’vi—had no intention of dying. He hadn’t made a bear or sewn blankets.
But his presence was there all the same.
Dog tags tucked near the drawer. A childish sketch carved into the wood in his rough handwriting: Little Mile Man. His things scattered through the room.
He had lived there. With Paz. With the kid. No one likes this discovery.
Not really.
Quaritch is the enemy. That’s the story everyone agrees on. He isn’t a father. He doesn’t get to be softened by this.
And yet—
No human is entirely bad. And they have proof of that in a crying infant who knows how to grip a finger and is quiet when spoken to gently. They can’t send him away.
Children can’t survive cryosleep. Everyone knows that. His body is too small, his systems too fragile.
Miles is stuck on Pandora. A planet that will kill him with its very air if they make a single mistake.
So, the scientists do what they always do when faced with an impossible problem.
They adapt. They raise him together.
Someone is always watching the kid—passing him from arm to arm, rigging cribs from storage containers, learning to warm bottles with limited resources. It isn’t easy. Miles learns to crawl and then to run like he’s been trying to escape gravity since birth.
He’s fast. Too fast.
Norm swears the kid learned to scamper before he learned to walk—on all fours, laughing, darting between legs while half the lab chased after him.
As he grows, Miles starts choosing favorites. To Norm’s surprise, that includes him. And Max.
Miles trails after them constantly—asking questions, tugging on sleeves, trying to show them bugs and rocks and anything that caught his attention. Always climbing. Cabinets. Shelving. Equipment he absolutely should not have been on.
Norm is the first one to call him a menace.
“You’re like a little spider,” he mutters one day, exasperated.
Two-year-old Miles grins from the top of a cabinet and parrots back, delighted. “Spider! Me Spider!”
The name sticks.
Max, usually anxious and tightly wound, becomes soft around the kid. He talks to Spider like he’s another scientist, explaining things in simple terms, setting up harmless little experiments just to keep him engaged.
They become Spider’s people.
They make sure he eats. They tuck him in at night. They learn which lullabies work and which don’t.
He is their baby.
Not everyone feels that way.
Some scientists see him as a nuisance. Sticky fingers. A distraction from work that matters more. A reminder of rules broken and risks taken.
Norm doesn’t see that.
Norm sees a wild, funny child who hates walls.
Spider is kept indoors for safety—Pandora’s air will kill him, after all—and he hates every second of it.
When Spider is four, Norm and Max finally solve the problem.
They rig an adult mask to fit his smaller face. Test it fifty-five times. Adjust seals, filters, pressure. Max nearly has a breakdown the first time they let Spider wear it.
Norm is in avatar form that day.
Just in case.
They start with thirty minutes.
Spider is unstoppable.
He takes to Pandora like he was made for it. Runs, climbs, laughs so hard his mask fogs. Soon, he’s climbing higher than Norm can reach in his avatar.
Then he meets Jake’s kids and all hopes of keeping that child inside are lost.
It happens by accident.
Jake stops by a marked sampling site one afternoon, children in tow, laughter carrying ahead of them before Norm even sees the movement through the trees. Norm remembers looking over from the base of the tree that he was trying to coax Spider down from and seeing his Avatar friend. He felt his stomach drop—not in fear, exactly, but in the way you feel when something irreversible is about to happen.
The kids recognize Norm and Max instantly.
They run straight for them, no hesitation, no caution. Uncle Norm! Uncle Max! Hands grab, voices overlap, joy uncomplicated and loud.
And Spider—
Spider freezes on his branch for half a second, eyes wide behind his mask.
Then he lights up.
Norm watches it happen in real time: the way Spider’s whole body tilts toward them, the way he speaks with them and eventually the way he jumped in Neteyam’s arms with no hesitation. This is when things changed. Soon his feet were carrying him forward before his brain can catch up. He doesn’t hesitate. He doesn’t think about rules or walls or airlocks.
He just runs.
Any hope of keeping Spider indoors dies right there, beneath the open sky and the sound of children laughing like the world has always been kind to them.
Complications follow, of course. They always do.
Jake is busy in those early years—busy in the way leaders are busy, with a thousand invisible weights pressing down on him. He is learning how to be Olo’eyktan, how to lead a people who are still bleeding, how to prepare for a war that has not yet fully shown its teeth.
He knows Spider exists. But knowing and seeing are very different things.
Jake sees everything.
He sees how small Spider looks next to Jake’s children—human-boned and narrow, breakable in a way the Na’vi are not. He sees how Spider stumbles sometimes when he runs too fast, how his laughter turns breathless quicker than it should.
One bad fall. One cracked mask. That’s all it would take.
Jake’s concern never really leaves after that.
Neytiri is worse.
Her pain sits close to the surface, sharp and unhealed, and Spider—through no fault of his own—is a living reminder of everything she lost to sky people. Norm watches her eyes track the boy too often, watches the tension settle into her shoulders whenever Spider laughs too loud or moves too freely among her children.
But Spider is happy.
That’s the part that makes it impossible to pull him back.
He has friends his own age. Even if Lo’ak is younger, he’s taller. Even if Spider is different, they don’t treat him like it. They don’t flinch at his mask. They don’t slow down for him unless he asks.
Soon, Spider is everywhere.
Running through the village. Laughing too loud. Sleeping in strange places because he followed someone somewhere and forgot to come home.
Norm starts dropping him off before sampling runs, heart in his throat every time. Sometimes Spider stays overnight with the Sullys—extra batteries packed, protocols reviewed three times, Norm lying awake half the night imagining everything that could go wrong.
Jake agrees to look out for him. Neytiri does not.
She never forbids it outright. She never raises her voice. But she doesn’t welcome it either. Her acceptance is stiff, conditional, a compromise she makes for her children’s happiness—not for Spider’s.
Years had passed. And Spider had changed.
He became more Na’vi than human in ways Norm didn’t fully notice until it was already true. Barefoot whenever he can get away with it. Wearing Na’vi coverings instead of human clothes. Hair wild or clumsily braided by Neteyam or Kiri, beads clicking softly when he runs.
He learned Na’vi faster than English.
He moved through the forest like it knew and recognized him.
The kids never saw him as different. Just smaller.
So, when Jake brings up the idea of finding Spider a family—a real one—it feels like the ground giving way beneath Norm’s feet.
Because they already are his family.
Norm. Max. Jake’s kids. Jake himself, in all the quiet ways that mattered.
But Spider had been asking questions. Simple ones, at first.
Why doesn’t he have a mom and dad like Neteyam?
Max nearly breaks. Norm feels it too—that sick, hollow realization that loving someone doesn’t always mean you’re enough. That wanting to keep a child doesn’t automatically make it right.
So they agree with Jake and Neytiri’s reasoning. They find him a family. They tell themselves it will be fine. They’ll still see him. They’ll still be part of his life. They promise to visit him, but then the McCoskers ask for space.
One week becomes two months. Two months become years.
Every time Norm reached out, there was an answer ready.
Mile’s needs time to settle. Miles needs time to adjust. Mile’s needs stability. Their presence would just confuse Miles and backtrack his progress.
They never called him Spider.
Life just kept moving. Labs still needed running. Pandora still had to be studying. The work piled up, and it was easier—so much easier—to bury themselves in work than it was to sit with the ache of absence. To focus on how quiet the lab had grown.
Spider is with a family now, Norm tells himself. He’s loved. He has what we couldn’t give him.
The reminders come anyway. Mostly, from Jake’s kids.
The questions slow over time. Kiri stops asking, eyes expressing such pain at any reminders. Lo’ak stops pretending he doesn’t know the answer.
Neteyam, Jake’s oldest, was the only one who never stopped asking over the years. Although his questions change.
Can Spider visit? Can he come climbing? When can he come practice bow with me? Became simply, How is Spider? Is he doing okay?
Norm always answered yes. He had to believe it.
Then, when Spider is thirteen, Richard McCosker walks him into Norm’s lab like he’s presenting equipment.
“I’m sure you remember Miles,” Richard had said, hand firm on the boy’s shoulder. “He’ll be assisting this lab five days a week. Inventory, prep work, basic support. We heard from a couple of your lab techs that you could use the help. It’s time this one learned some responsibility.”
Spider stands where he’s put. Not stiff—but careful. Weight balanced. Hands in his pockets like he’s afraid of what they might do if left free. He looked so different. He’s all long limbs and half-grown angles, hair controlled in a military cut and clothes all heavy and human, sleeves pulled down even though it’s warm.
His sleeves were always pulled down – always to the wrist, buttoned smartly.
Norm smiles anyway. His heart had felt full; it had been years, but Spider was here with them.
“Hey, kiddo,” Norm says gently. “Been a while.”
Spider gazes up at him. Eyes flickering between Max and Norm. Quick. Assessing.
“Dr. Spellman,” he says. “Dr. Patel.”
Max outwardly flinched at the impersonal way he spoke their names. Norm did too, just a little.
“You don’t—” Norm starts, then stops himself. “You don’t have to call us that.”
Spider shrugs, eyes flicking to the door Richard just exited through. “It’s polite.”
It’s not a correction. Just stated like a fact.
Max clears his throat. “We’re… uh. We’re glad you’re here.”
Spider nods once. “I’m happy to help out. What can I do, sir?”
That’s how it starts. Cold. Distant. Impersonable.
At a loss of what to do, they give him simple jobs—actually simple ones. Sorting samples. Cleaning glassware. Carrying crates that are definitely too heavy for a kid his size but that he refuses help with anyway.
He’s not especially fast. He’s not especially precise. But he’s observant. And quiet.
Too quiet.
Norm tries conversation like he’s approaching a wild animal.
“So,” he says one afternoon, leaning against a counter. “You still climbing everything that doesn’t move?”
Spider pauses mid-wipe.
“No,” he says calmly. “Seems more fun to climb the things that do.”
Norm huffs a surprised laugh before he can stop himself.
Spider’s mouth twitches. That’s the first crack.
Max tries next.
“You remember the enzyme project we used to do?” he asks carefully. “The one you—uh—knocked over?”
Spider snorts before he can stop himself. Actually snorts.
“I was four,” he says. “You put it on a rolling cart.”
Max blinks. “Okay, yeah, that one’s on us.”
Spider rolls his eyes—full, dramatic teenager eye-roll—and then immediately checks himself, shoulders tightening like he’s gone too far.
Norm watches the moment happen. Files it away.
Over the weeks, hell months, Spider loosens in inches.
Not trust—space. He starts answering questions without being asked. Starts making faces when equipment malfunctions. Starts sighing loudly when Norm overexplains something.
“You know,” Spider mutters once, “you could just… not do that.”
Norm turns. “Do what?”
“That,” Spider says, gesturing vaguely at the mess of cables Norm had left tangled on the floor. “It stresses me out.”
Max stares at him, and Norm grins. “Oh. There you are.”
Spider scowls. “Don’t make it weird.”
They don’t push.
They joke around him instead—light, harmless stuff. Norm complains about paperwork. Max pretends he hates fieldwork. Spider listens, arms crossed, expression unimpressed.
“Wow,” Spider says one day, deadpan. “You’re telling me you chose this career.”
Norm laughs so hard he nearly drops a tray. By fifteen, Spider’s humor has teeth.
He’s still guarded, still careful—but now he mutters commentary under his breath.
“That’s not gonna work.”
“You’re gonna regret that.”
“Oh good. Another meeting. Thrilling.”
He never initiates physical contact. Never sits too close. But he leans against counters now. Kicks at chairs. Taps his fingers when he’s bored. They begin to see the teenage boy who is hiding deep in there.
But the moment Helen or Richard appears, he snaps shut. Voice flattens. Eyes drop. Hands disappear into sleeves.
Norm notices the clothes first.
Always long sleeves. Always boots. Even when everyone else is in light gear. Even when it’s hot enough to make the air feel thick.
Max notices the flinches.
Not big ones. Just… pauses. Sudden stillness when someone raises their voice. The way Spider tracks exits automatically.
They don’t have proof. But they know.
By sixteen, Spider will occasionally forget himself.
Like the time Norm spills a tray, and Spider says, without looking up, “Wow. Nailed it, Einstein.”
Norm freezes. Max freezes. Spider freezes too—eyes wide like he’s just stepped off a cliff.
Then Norm laughs. Actually laughs.
“Wow,” Norm says. “Don’t stop now, Chris Rock.”
Spider exhales, shoulders loosening just a bit. “Yeah. Well. Don’t get used to it.”
They don’t get their baby back. But sometimes—sometimes—they get this kid.
The one who rolls his eyes. The one who complains. The one who laughs when he forgets he’s not supposed to. And every time they do, it hurts worse. Because it makes one thing painfully clear:
Whatever happened while Spider was gone didn’t make him grow up. It made him hide.
And if they don’t get him away—just for a little while—they might lose him for good. That’s where the plan first starts.
Norm doesn’t say it right away.
He lets the thought sit in his chest for days, pressing heavier every time Spider flinches at a raised voice, every time his jokes vanish the moment Helen’s heels echo down the corridor. Norm watches Spider tuck himself smaller, disappear into politeness and sleeves and boots, and something inside him starts to fracture.
Max is the one who finally breaks the silence.
“This isn’t normal,” he says one night, lab lights dimmed low, Pandora’s glow bleeding in through the viewport. He’s pacing—short, tight steps, hands worrying at the hem of his jacket. “You know that, right?”
Norm rubs his face. “Yeah.”
“He’s sixteen,” Max continues, voice sharp with anxiety. “Sixteen-year-olds don’t move like that. They don’t—” He gestures helplessly. “They don’t shut down like a switch.”
Norm thinks of Spider freezing mid-eye-roll the moment Richard appears. Of the way his humor snaps back into hiding like it’s learned the cost of being seen.
“I know,” Norm says quietly.
Max stops pacing. “Then why aren’t we doing anything?”
The question lands hard. Norm opens his mouth. Closes it. Because the answer is ugly and cowardly and true.
“Because if we push,” Norm says, “they take him away again. Completely. No lab time. No trips. No access. We lose him.”
Max exhales shakily, and it ends in a scoff, “Lose him – we gave him away. We haven’t had him for years. We still don’t.”
Norm doesn’t argue. How can he? The truth in that statement rings out for all to hear.
They sit with that for a long time. Bothare contemplating the situation.
Finally, Max speaks again, softer now. “Jake could help.”
Norm looks up sharply. “Jake?”
“He’s Olo’eyktan,” Max says, like he’s laying out a hypothesis. “He has authority. Influence. He and the Na’vi leaders have a say in what goes on at High-camp. Hell, they allowed us to stay. And—” He hesitates. “He was human. Once.”
That part matters more than either of them say out loud.
“If Jake sees him,” Max continues, voice picking up speed as the idea takes shape, “if he actually looks at Spider—the real Spider not “Miles” the polite, lab-tech version—he’ll know something’s wrong. If we see it that he will – He can help. ”
Norm’s heart stutters painfully. Jake has always had a way of seeing things Norm could miss. He might be late on the uptick – his mistrust in Quatritch and the RDA was a glaring proof of that but he was solid when he believed someone had been wronged. It is what has made him a good Olo’eyktan. And Spider had loved him. Had followed him and his children like a shadow, once.
“He’d help,” Norm murmurs, brain buzzing. “He wouldn’t—he wouldn’t be able to ignore this.”
Max nods. “Exactly.”
The hope is dangerous. Norm knows that. But it’s there now.
The problem, of course, is the McCoskers.
“His parents hate the Na’vi,” Norm says bluntly. “Not openly—but it’s there. The comments. The way they talk when they think no one’s listening.”
Norm grimaces as he speaks. He’s heard the whispers too. Chauvinistic. Dismissive. Savages, muttered under breath. Discomfort that curdles into contempt.
“They’ll never agree to let Spider near the clans,” Norm continues.
“No,” Max agrees but he’s grabbing a tablet and holding it up to Norm. “But they might agree to a deep sampling run – they already have several times.”
He moves closer to Norm, waving the tablet like proof, “We just present this like it’s a longer run, we need better samples, go deeper into Pandora. We ask for five days. We say Spider is necessary because he knows our equipment – our experiments.” Max’s voice is getting cautiously excited, “He’s worked with us for three years now! They would have to buy it!”
Norm’s gaze sharpens. “You’re thinking we bring him to the celebration.”
It was the anniversary of the battle. The village held a celebration every year with multiple tribes making the trip to celebrate with the Omatikaya. They were scheduled to attend the celebration later that week. It would be a five-day trip at least.
“Five days,” Max says. “Long enough to get him out from under them. Long enough for Jake to see.”
“And long enough to get punished for if they find out the truth,” Norm says, the words tasting like ash. They never brought up what they silently agreed had to be going on.
Max’s jaw tightens. “I know.”
They both do. Norm leans back against the counter, staring up at the ceiling like it might give him absolution.
“There’s another problem,” he says quietly.
Max doesn’t ask. He already knows.
“We’d have to lie to him.”
Max closes his eyes before setting down the tablet again, shoulders slumping.
They’ve only just started earning Spider’s trust back—slowly, painfully, in fragments. A lie like this could shatter it completely.
“He won’t come if he knows,” Max says, voice desolate. “Not if he thinks they’ll find out.”
Norm thinks of Spider’s panic at the mere mention of trouble. In the way he measures consequences like a survival instinct.
“He’ll feel betrayed,” Norm says.
Max swallows. “Yeah.”
Silence settles between them again. Norm breaks it this time.
“But if we don’t do something,” he says, voice rough, “we’re complicit. We already waited too long. I can’t—” He stops, breath hitching. “I can’t live with that. Live with this anymore.”
Max looks at him, eyes bright with unshed tears and terror and resolve.
“I’m scared,” Max admits. “I’m scared we’re wrong. I’m scared we're making it worse.”
Norm nods. “Me too.”
They look through the viewport together, out at the forest they’ve seen Spider watch like it’s a promise he’s afraid to believe in.
“But,” Norm says, squaring his shoulders, “I want him to be okay.”
Not functional. Not obedient. Okay.
Max exhales slowly. “Then we do it.”
They don’t call it a plan yet. Plans are neat. This is anything but. They call it a chance.
A five-day window.
A lie wrapped around hope and desperation and the belief—terrifying, fragile—that if they get Spider in front of the right person, someone stronger will step in. Someone who can do what they can’t. Norm closes his eyes briefly.
Please, he thinks—not to Eywa, not to science, but to whatever listens when people are this afraid. Let this be the right thing.
Because loving Spider quietly didn’t save him. Giving him a family didn’t strengthen him. And Norm is done being quiet.
Norm wants to say something, but he’s nervous. Spider can tell by the way his finger are tapping incessantly on anything they rest on. Its obnoxious but that’s also how Spider knows it’s important.
They finish the inventory first. Labels aligned. Samples logged. Max pretends very hard not to keep glancing at the clock. Norm asks Spider about calibration like this is a normal afternoon and not something coiled tight beneath the surface.
Spider plays along. He always does.
It’s only when the lab quiets—when the low hum of machines feels louder because no one’s talking—that Norm clears his throat.
“So,” he says casually, which is a lie Spider clocks immediately, “we’ve got a sampling run coming up.”
Spider’s fingers pause over a data pad.
A run. The forest. A reprieve from metal walls.
His stomach drops before his brain can catch up. Something is not right, they wouldn’t be nervous about a simple sample run.
“What day and how long?” he asks, keeping his voice neutral. Curious but not eager. “I’ll ask Richard and Helen.”
Max answers this time. “Five days. Maybe a little less if everything goes smoothly and we already asked them.”
Five days. Spider swallows. That’s… way way longer than usual.
Day trips are one thing. In by dusk, out before anything can go wrong. Five days means overnights. Means distance. Means being out of reach. Means consequences.
His mind jumps tracks fast, traitorous. The forest. Real forest. Sleeping with the sounds around him instead of sealed walls. Waking up to green instead of white. Air that doesn’t feel recycled and watched.
Hope flares—and he crushes it immediately. Hope is how you get hurt.
“What kind of run?” Spider asks instead, shoulders still, eyes on his work. “You don’t usually take me on multi-day stuff.”
Norm and Max exchange a look. Spider sees it.
That look used to mean surprise, and don’t tell him yet. Now he can only associate it with lying.
“Deep sampling,” Norm says. “Farther out than usual. Higher energy readings. We need extra hands.”
Extra hands. Not you. Not we want you there. Just a role. A justification.
Spider nods slowly, buying time. Five days means Richard will hate it. Means Helen will hate it. Means questions, scrutiny, why does he need to go.
Means punishment—before or after, maybe both.
He weighs it anyway. Five days is a long time to breathe.
“You already asked?” he questions.
Max nodded.
“What did they say?” Spider asks quietly.
Max stiffens. Just a little.
“They weren’t thrilled at first,” Max admits. “But-” He stops himself, scrubs a hand over his face. “We talked to them more at Seminar and they agreed. Seemed happy you have been such a help.”
Seminar. A meeting that happens twice a lunar cycle. It is where all the scientists gather and present/contribute the projects being conducted in each of the labs.
Everyone of interest attends. Meaning there were witnesses. There was leverage. Public approval.
Spider exhales through his nose, bitter amusement curling low in his chest. So that’s how.
Eywa, he is so fucked.
“They know it’s five days,” Spider says, fighting through his dismay. Not a question.
“Yes,” Norm says. “And it’s strictly professional. You’d be working. Learning.”
Contributing, Richard’s voice supplies helpfully in his head. Earning your keep.
Spider’s jaw tightens. This isn’t a choice. It never is.
He could say no—and spend the next week paying for it. He could protest and give them a reason to remind him who decides where he goes and why.
Or he could agree. He always agrees. Either way, the build up and let down of this trip was going to majorly suck balls for him.
“Okay,” Spider says finally.
The word tastes like copper.
Norm’s shoulders drop like he’s been holding his breath. Max smiles—too fast, too relieved.
“There’s a heli leaving tomorrow morning,” Max says. “Early.”
Spider nods again. “I’ll be ready.”
I’m always ready, he thinks grimly.
There it is again—that flicker. Five days. Five nights. No doors. No rules posted on walls. No footsteps outside his room. Just green and space and the illusion of freedom.
He doesn’t trust it. Not for a second.
But when he turns back to his work, he can’t quite stop himself from imagining it anyway: lying on the ground and staring up through leaves. Falling asleep without listening. Waking up without flinching.
It feels dangerous to want that much. It feels worse not to.
Spider finishes his tasks, precise as always, and doesn’t let either of them see the way his hands shake just slightly as he powers down the last console.
Five days. He tells himself it’s nothing. He tells himself it’s temporary. He tells himself not to hope.
And somewhere deep inside—where Spider still exists, quiet and watchful—something curls tight around the idea and refuses to let go. Just in case.
Five days.
The thought follows Spider all the way home, tucked tight behind his ribs where no one can see it. He doesn’t let it stretch. Doesn’t let it breathe. He’s learned better than that.
Hope makes noise.
Noise gets noticed.
The McCosker house greets him the same way it always does—sterile, quiet, wrong. The door seals behind him with a soft hiss that feels final in a way it didn’t this morning. Like the house knows something he doesn’t.
He sets his pack down by the wall and goes to his room.
Packing is methodical.
He lays everything out on the bed in neat rows. Rebreather components. Spare filters. Batteries. Field rations Norm insists on packing even though Spider knows the McCoskers will complain about “waste.” He adds extra socks, folds them tight, presses the creases flat with his palm.
Control where he can get it.
He leaves out anything soft.
He’s halfway through double-checking his mask seals when Richard’s voice cuts through the house.
“Spider.”
Not raised, which is definitely worse.
He stills, closes his eyes for half a second, then answers. “Yes, sir.”
He steps into the common area and stops where he’s supposed to—hands at his sides, posture straight, eyes forward. Helen stands near the counter, arms crossed. Richard is by the terminal, jaw tight, fingers tapping a rhythm Spider recognizes too well.
“You came home late,” Richard says.
Spider blinks. Processes. Adjusts.
“I came home at my scheduled time,” he replies carefully. “They let me out early to pack for tomorrow.”
Wrong answer.
Richard turns slowly. “Don’t correct me.”
Spider nods. “Yes, sir.”
The silence stretches. Helen watches like she’s assessing damage already done, irritation sharp behind her eyes.
“This trip,” she says coolly. “Was not discussed with us properly.”
It was, Spider thinks. You just didn’t like that you couldn’t say no in front of your peers.
He keeps his face blank.
“It was an embarrassment,” Richard continues. “being cornered like that.”
Spider swallows. How was that his fault.
This isn’t fair.
His throat feels tight.
“I didn’t ask them—”
Richard’s hand moves.
Not fast. Not sloppy. Precise. A blow meant to hurt without leaving obvious marks. Spider stumbles back a step, catches himself on the edge of the table.
“Did I say you could speak,” Richard snaps.
What happens next is a blur of sensation and strategy.
He goes limp where he’s supposed to. Tenses where he has to. Counts breaths. Counts impacts. Keeps his head down, his hands visible, his body compliant. Richard is careful—always has been. Knows exactly how far to push without breaking anything that would inconvenience tomorrow.
Helen doesn’t intervene. She never does.
When it’s over, Spider is on his knees, palms flat on the floor, breathing slow and controlled like he taught himself years ago. His ribs scream when he inhales too deep, so he doesn’t.
“Get up,” Richard says. “You’re leaving early.”
Spider rises carefully. No sudden movements. No signs of weakness that might invite correction.
“Yes, sir.”
“Pack properly this time,” Helen adds. “And don’t forget who you will be coming home with.”
As if he ever could.
They leave him there. Just like that. Frustration expended. Control reasserted. Spider stands in the quiet for a long moment after they’re gone, staring at the floor until the world steadies again.
Okay, he tells himself. Okay.
This is familiar. This is survivable.
He returns to his room and finishes packing with shaking hands he refuses to acknowledge. He adjusts his sleeves to cover what needs covering. Checks his boots. Sits on the edge of the bed until the pain settles into something manageable.
Five years till freedom.
Five days of reprieve.
The number pulses in his head, brighter now, sharper.
They hurt him because they can. They hurt him because he’s leaving their reach—even temporarily. That matters. That means something.
He lies back carefully, staring at the ceiling, and lets himself think one dangerous thought before locking it away again:
I can endure this.
Because escape—real escape—is still possible.
Because twenty-one is still coming.
Because no matter what they do tonight, they cannot reach him in cryosleep. He breathes shallow and waits for morning. He always does.
Morning comes quietly.
Too quietly.
Spider wakes before the alarm again, awareness snapping back into him like a held breath released too fast. For a second, he doesn’t move. Doesn’t test anything. He lets the pain register on its own terms.
It’s worse.
That isn’t a surprise.
His ribs feel tight, like they’ve been wrapped too close. Every inhale pulls sharp, shallow lines through his chest. His shoulder protests when he shifts, a hot warning that makes him still again immediately.
Okay, he thinks. Okay.
He catalogues it the way he always does.
Nothing broken. Nothing bleeding. Everything usable.
That’s all that matters.
He swings his legs off the bed carefully, pausing until the room stops tilting. The floor is cold. It helps. He plants his feet and pushes himself upright, jaw clenched hard enough that it aches.
The mirrorless wall watches him dress.
Long sleeves. High collar. Boots pulled on slowly so he doesn’t rush and make something worse. He adjusts his pack straps so they won’t rub his ribs raw during the hike.
Functional. Presentable.
Miles.
Down the hall, the house is already awake. Helen passes him without comment. Richard doesn’t look up from his terminal. No acknowledgment, no satisfaction—just the quiet certainty that they got what they wanted.
Spider eats the nutrient bar he’s given, even though it sits heavy in his stomach. Waste is punished. Appetite is irrelevant.
The transport ride is mercifully short. He keeps his head back, eyes closed, breathing shallow and even. Each bump sends a dull echo through his chest, but he doesn’t react.
Reaction invites attention.
The lab pad is already busy when he arrives. Equipment crates stacked. Heli warming up, rotors whining. Norm spots him first.
“Hey—morning, kid,” Norm says, then hesitates. His eyes flick over Spider in a way that’s too careful. “You okay?”
Spider nods. “Didn’t sleep much.”
True. Safer than the rest.
Max comes up beside Norm, coffee in hand. He takes one look at Spider and frowns. “You look like hell.”
Spider snorts weakly. “Good morning to you too.”
The sound hurts. He schools his face before either of them can comment.
Norm steps closer, lowering his voice. “You sure you’re good for this? We can—”
“No,” Spider says immediately. Too fast. He forces himself to slow down, adds, “I’m fine. Really.”
Norm doesn’t look convinced.
Max’s gaze flicks to Spider’s hands, then his shoulders, then the way he’s standing just a little too straight. Too careful.
“Something happen?” Max asks quietly.
Spider meets his eyes for a second, then looks away.
You already know, he thinks. You just don’t want to name it.
“It’s fine,” he repeats. “We’re leaving, right?”
Norm and Max exchange a look.
The kind that means we should stop this.
The kind that means we can’t.
“Yeah,” Norm says finally. “We’re on schedule.”
The heli pilot calls out for final checks. Equipment is being loaded. People are watching. Too many people.
The trip is already in motion.
Max squeezes Spider’s shoulder—light, careful, like he’s afraid of hurting him further. “If anything feels off out there, you tell us. Okay?”
Spider nods.
I won’t, he thinks. But thank you for pretending I could.
He shoulders his pack and moves toward the transport, every step measured, every breath controlled.
This is what strength looks like, he tells himself. Not standing tall. Just standing.
He climbs in the Heli with max, watching as Norm bounds off to the lab to connect with his avatar. He always goes in avatar form for trips. The rotors will be warmed up by the time he gets back. He settles in and shuts his eyes letting the sound of the engines and rotors block out all thinking. Soon Norm is back – giant and steady as he clambers in.
The rotors spin faster. The ground vibrates beneath his boots. There’s no turning back now—not without consequences that would follow him long after the forest fades.
Spider stares forward with not hesitation – watching the metal Heli pad fall away as the ascend.
Grim. Determined. Still breathing. And that will have to be enough.
The forest closes around them the moment the Heli drops lifts back off leaving them in the selected location. It will be back in 5 days. They watch it for a minute before Norm shoulders their gear and they disembark.
Spider feels it immediately—the shift in pressure, the way the air stops humming and starts breathing. Even through the mask, it’s different. Wetter. Thicker. Alive in a way the McCosker house never was.
The ground under his boots is soft, uneven. He hates the boots for it—hates the way they dull sensation, keep him separate from the world—but today he’s grateful for the stability. His ribs still ache. Every step sends a reminder up his spine.
Norm leads. Max follows, calling out readings, marking coordinates. It looks like every other trip at first. Familiar. Manageable.
Spider keeps his eyes on the path and his thoughts locked down.
This is just a run, he tells himself. Five days. In. Out. Breathe. Don’t think too far ahead.
They hike for hours. The deeper they go, the quieter the machines become until all that’s left is the forest itself—wings beating overhead, distant calls echoing between massive trunks, the soft give of moss underfoot. But something about the forest as they trek deeper feels different, off – where he normally would feel relief at being in the forest he feels the opposite. Something buried deep curling tighter with every step.
Spider feels it then. Tension at first. Then, slowly recognition.
The smell hits first—resin and damp earth and something faintly sweet he hasn’t let himself remember in years. His chest tightens in a way that has nothing to do with injury.
He forces himself to keep walking. Keep following safely sandwiched with Norms avatar leading the way and Max following behind spider.
Then the noise hits them—
Laughter. Not close. Not loud. But unmistakably there.
Spider stops short.
Norm takes two more steps before realizing Spider isn’t behind him anymore. “Hey—what’s wrong?”
Spider doesn’t answer.
His heart is pounding hard enough that he can feel it in his throat. He turns slowly, scanning the trees, the undergrowth, the path ahead. There. Half-buried at the edge of the trail—scratches in the bark. Not random. Deliberate. Old, but maintained.
A marker. His stomach drops out from under him.
No. It can’t be.
“No,” he says aloud, the word sharp and sudden.
Max looks between him and the trees. “Spider?”
“You lied,” Spider says. His voice doesn’t sound like his own. It’s too loud. Too raw – betrayal coloring every syllable. “This isn’t deep sampling.”
Norm’s blue face goes pale several shades.
“Spider—listen—”
“You’re taking me to the Omatikaya.” He laughs once, short and broken. “You’re taking me there.”
Norm steps closer. “We didn’t want to scare you. We thought—”
“You thought what?” Spider snaps, panic spilling over now, hot and uncontrollable. “That I’d be okay with this? That I wouldn’t notice?”
Max raises his hands. “Hey. Hey. It’s just a visit. We’ll explain—”
“I can’t be there,” Spider says, backing away. His breath comes fast, fogging the inside of his mask. “You don’t understand. They—my parents—they can’t find out. If they find out—”
They’ll kill me, his mind finishes, cold and absolute.
Norm’s voice softens. “Spider, nobody’s going to hurt you.”
Spider nearly growls, a familiar hiss building in his chest even though he hasn’t made that sound out loud in a decade. “It’s Miles – and you don’t know that.”
He turns, looking down the path they came from. It stretches on, impossibly long, swallowed by green. The Heli left after dropping them off. He has five days to make it back. His mind whirls doing panicked calculations, running through every scenario in his mind.
He could walk. He could make it – they wouldn’t have to know the difference.
“I’ll walk back,” he says, hands clenching on his pack. “Call the for the Heli or I will start walking.”
Max’s eyes widen. “Sp-“ he starts before visibly stopping at the boys glare, “Miles, that’s not possible.”
“Then I’ll try,” Spider snaps. “Because I am not getting in trouble for this. Not for something you did. A lie you told!”
Norm grabs his arm—not hard, just enough to stop him, his hand much larger in his avatar form—and Spider flinches violently, ripping himself free.
“Don’t touch me!”
The words echo. The forest goes still. And then the foliage ahead of them parts.
A tall blue figure steps into the clearing, movements easy and unhurried, bow slung across his back like it’s an extension of him.
“Norm,” Jake Sully says, smiling. “You made it.”
Spider freezes. The world narrows to a single point.
Jake looks older—lines at the edges of his eyes, more weight in the way he stands—but otherwise unchanged. Solid. Familiar in a way that makes Spider’s chest hurt. Feelings that he had buried so carefully threatening to come rising to the surface once again.
And then another figure steps out beside him.
Graceful. Still. Eyes sharp as blades. Neytiri.
Cold floods Spider’s veins.
Jake’s smile widens when he sees Norm and Max. “Been too long,” he says warmly. “You brought help?”
His gaze flicks to Spider. Slides right past him.
Spider’s breath catches. His chest clenches. Jake might not appear all that different but apparently Spider does.
Or he didn’t think you important enough to remember.
Norm forces a laugh that sounds wrong even to Spider’s ears. “Yeah. This is Spider – remember him?”
There is something in Norm’s voice that causes Spider’s jaw to tighten. Something pointed that had no business being in Norms voice because he made his priorities pretty fucking clear years ago.
“No,” The word bursts out of him, his hands still clenched into his pack.
Everyone looks at him. He regroups, swallowing his anger – swallowing spider – and lets Miles shine.
“It’s Miles,” he continues, voice flat, respectful, controlled down to the last syllable. “No one’s called me Spider in ten years.”
Jake’s brow furrows.
Neytiri’s eyes sharpen, locking onto him fully for the first time.
She goes very still.
Spider drops his gaze immediately, heart slamming against his ribs. He stands the way he was taught—straight, obedient, unthreatening. A human boy shaped into something smaller.
He can already feel the consequences lining up in his head. The explanations he’ll have to give. The punishments waiting for him when—if—he gets back.
He’s trapped. Completely.
The lie has collapsed, and now there is no path forward that doesn’t end in pain.
Somewhere deep inside him, Spider curls tight around the last dangerous thought he has left:
This wasn’t supposed to happen. Norm and Max couldn’t do this to him. Not again.
And the forest, uncaring, watches him realize it.
For a heartbeat, nothing moves.
Jake’s smile lingers a fraction too long, caught halfway between greeting and confusion. His eyes track back to the human boy standing stiffly beside Norm—too straight, too still, gaze dropped like it’s been trained there.
That’s the first thing that feels wrong.
Spider—Miles—doesn’t fidget. Doesn’t stare. Doesn’t crane his neck the way a human kid usually does around Na’vi. He stands like he’s waiting for instructions.
Jake has been trained to look.
To notice posture, tension, the way someone carries themselves when they expect violence even if none is coming.
He feels something prickle at the back of his neck.
Norm’s voice is off too.
Jake has known Norm Spellman a long time. Knows the cadence of him. The warmth. The way his voice used to soften whenever Spider’s name came up, like saying it out loud was a small, private joy.
“This is Spider – remember him?” Norm says.
But he says it carefully. Like he’s testing the word. Like he’s afraid of it.
The boy flinches.
Not dramatically. Not obviously. Just a tiny tightening through his shoulders, like a reflex he doesn’t even realize he has.
“No,” the kid says quietly – his voice bursting out of him.
Everyone turns to him. Jake watches the kid gather himself and start again. Voice flat, controlled.
“It’s Miles.” He keeps his eyes down, hands clenched around a ratty looking pack. “No one’s called me Spider in ten years.”
The silence that follows is sharp enough to cut. Jake’s breath leaves him slowly.
Ten years.
He looks at the boy again, really looks this time. At the clothes—heavy, practical, human. At the boots planted firmly on the forest floor like they’re the only thing holding him upright. At the way his hands stay visible, fingers relaxed but ready, like he’s learned that hidden hands are dangerous.
This is not the kid who used to run barefoot through his village.
This is not the boy who followed Neteyam everywhere, who talked too fast and climbed too high and begged Jake to teach him how to shoot a bow so he could be like his brother. This kid calls him sir with his whole body.
Jake feels something cold settle in his gut.
Neytiri sees it at the same time.
She has not moved since the boy spoke.
Her eyes are fixed on him now—wide, unblinking, horrified not by his presence, but by what she doesn’t see. There is no wildness in him. No brightness. No spark of the child she remembers, all sharp laughter and scraped knees and fearless joy.
The part of her that is a mother screams that this child looks… tired. So tired. And small, in a way that has nothing to do with size.
Neytiri’s chest tightens painfully. She had wanted him gone. She had told herself—told Jake—that the child would be better with his own kind. That distance would heal the wound his existence reopened every day. She had imagined him safe.
Happy with his own kind. The Skypeople.
Not this. Not a boy standing in her forest like a stranger, eyes downcast, spirit pulled tight and bound.
Her breath stutters.
Jake clears his throat, suddenly unsure of his footing in a way he hasn’t been in years. “Miles,” he repeats slowly, tasting the name. “You… decided to come along with Norm and Max?”
He watches the small hands clench harder. Watches eyes hidden behind a rebreather flash with barely visible anger in Norm’s direction, but that look lasts less than a heartbeat before his hands relax and he replies with a flat, “Yes, sir”.
Too fast. Too automatic.
Norm shifts beside him, discomfort written all over his face now. “He’s been helping us out in the lab,” he says, too quick. “Real good kid. Smart. Reliable.”
Reliable.
Jake’s jaw tightens.
He glances at Max, who looks like he wants to say something—anything—but doesn’t know how without making things worse.
“And you’re staying with them?” Jake asks carefully.
Miles hesitates.
Just for a second.
“Yes, sir.”
The pause is small.
Jake doesn’t miss it. Something clicks then—not all at once, but enough to hurt.
This kid feels trapped.
Jake sees it in the way Miles’ gaze flicks toward the path behind them and then stills, like he’s contemplating leaving, but Jake knows that Norm and Max arrived several hours ago by Heli. He had heard the rotors had seen it take off again in the distance. It would be a week of hard terrain to walk back. Yet it seems the boy is considering it. He sees it in the way his shoulders tense when Neytiri steps closer, not in fear of her—but in preparation to leave.
Neytiri swallows hard. She feels sick. She had pushed this child away to protect her family, her heart, her home.
And now he stands in front of her shaped by something far worse than proximity.
“Why,” she asks softly, voice trembling despite herself, “are you here, child?”
Miles stiffens.
Norm answers for him. “We’re here for the celebration,” he says, too brightly. “Thought it’d be good. Good for… reconnecting.”
Miles’ fingers curl slowly into his palms. The celebration. The village. The eyes. The questions.
His chest tightens with dread so sharp it almost makes him dizzy. He’s not getting out of this. Not today. Not without consequences that will follow him all the way home. If he ever gets home.
Miles lowers his head, swallowing hard, gritting his teeth, and forcing the next words out evenly. “Thank you for allowing me to be here.”
The phrase lands like a blow. Jake feels it. Neytiri feels it. Allowing – assuming he was not welcome.
And somewhere beyond the clearing, unseen and unaware, Neteyam turns at the sound of unfamiliar voices—his attention snagged by something that feels wrong in a way he can’t yet name.
Jake doesn’t say anything out loud. He doesn’t have to.
He catches Norm’s eye—just for a second—and lets his expression shift. The smile fades. The casual ease disappears. In its place is something firm and unmistakable.
We need to talk.
Norm sees it. Relief and dread twist together in his chest. He nods once, subtle.
Neytiri steps closer to Spider, lowering herself just enough that she isn’t towering over him. Her voice is gentle when she speaks, carefully so—like she’s approaching something that might bolt.
“You are welcome to stay in the visitors’ hut,” she says. “With Norm and Max.”
Spider nods immediately. “Yes, ma’am.”
The word ma’am slips out on instinct.
Neytiri flinches—just barely—but Spider sees it. Her jaw tightens as her eyes trace him again, slower this time, like she’s trying to find the child she sent away inside the boy standing in front of her.
“This way,” she says.
The walk is quiet. Too quiet.
Spider keeps a step behind Norm and Max, shoulders drawn in, gaze fixed forward. He feels the village before he sees it—the open space, the layered sounds of life, the warmth that presses too close to his skin.
This is the part he’s been dreading.
They round the bend—
—and Spider almost forgets how to breathe.
“Uncle Norm!”
Lo’ak comes barreling toward them, all limbs and momentum, skidding on the path and nearly wiping out as he throws himself forward. He’s taller—way taller—broad-shouldered and lean, movement loud and unrestrained. There’s confidence in the way he takes up space, like the world has never taught him to be careful.
Max laughs despite himself, catching his elbows even though the boy is taller then him. “Whoa—easy, champ.”
Kiri is right behind him, moving more smoothly, braids swinging down her back in a way that makes Spider’s chest ache. She’s grown into herself—taller, steadier, eyes bright and curious in a way that feels like sunlight breaking through leaves.
“You’re back!” she says, grabbing Norm’s hand. “You stayed away too long.”
Spider swallows. She used to grab his hand like that.
Neteyam slows. Not stops—slows.
He’s taller than Spider remembered—broader, stronger, the lean build of a young warrior settled into his bones. His posture is easy but alert, shoulders squared without effort. He looks like someone who knows exactly where he belongs.
Spider feels the difference immediately.
Neteyam’s eyes lock onto him. Really lock like he’s looking through Spider, into his very soul.
The others are already talking over each other, voices overlapping, excitement spilling everywhere—but Neteyam’s focus narrows, sharp and steady, the way it always did when something mattered.
He knows that shape. He knows that presence. Spider’s heart stutters painfully.
“Spider?” Neteyam says, uncertain but hopeful, stepping closer. He switches to Na’vi without thinking. “You came back.”
The sound of his name—Spider, said like it still fits—hits Spider harder than anything else so far.
For half a second, memory crashes in uninvited:
Neteyam’s hands catching him mid-jump, strong even then.
Neteyam standing between him and danger without asking why.
Neteyam laughing when Spider climbed higher than sense allowed.
Kiri turns, eyes lighting fully now. “Spider!” She smiles wide and reaches for him. “We thought—where have you been?”
Lo’ak tilts his head, studying him openly. “You got taller,” he says, then frowns. “You’re dressed weird.”
Spider freezes. Every instinct in him screams danger.
Na’vi words wash over him—familiar, beloved, forbidden. His chest locks tight. His mind flashes sharp and bright with warning:
Helen’s face, pinched with disgust.
Richard’s voice, cold and precise.
Don’t speak their language.
Don’t encourage that influence.
You are human, act like it!
“I—” Spider starts, then stops himself.
Too much. Too fast. He shakes his head once, small and deliberate, like he’s closing a door with shaking hands.
“I don’t understand,” he says in English, voice flattened into something safe. “Sorry.”
The silence lands hard.
Kiri’s smile falters. She looks at him like she’s trying to solve a puzzle that shouldn’t exist. “You… don’t?”
Lo’ak frowns deeper. “Since when?”
Neteyam doesn’t say anything. He just watches.
Spider feels their eyes on him—confusion turning sharp, hurt trying to form questions he cannot afford to answer. He forces his hands to unclench, his shoulders to stay loose, his face into something respectful and distant.
Miles.
This is Miles.
“I should go,” he says quietly, already stepping back. He gestures toward the hut like it’s a lifeline. “Thank you for… letting me stay.”
Norm moves fast. “Okay—okay. Let’s get settled, yeah?” His voice is too loud. Too quick. “We’ll catch up later.”
Jake steps in behind them, solid and unavoidable. “Kids,” he says gently. “Give him some room.”
They hesitate. Then they listen. Neteyam doesn’t look away as Spider passes him – in fact his focus seems to narrow.
The visitors’ hut is smaller than Spider remembers, but clean. Neutral. A place meant for people who pass through—not people who belong. He distinctly ignores the smaller hammock still strung across two corner beams. To small for Na’vi. Too small for an adult human.
Norm sets his own pack down before facing Spider, “We’ll—uh—we’ll be right back,” he says. “Just need to talk to Jake and Neytiri.”
Max lingers. His eyes flick over Spider’s face, his posture, the way he’s holding himself together. “You good here?” he asks softly.
Spider laughs harshly before he can control himself. He shakes his head and pulls himself together, answering with a flat “Yes, sir.”
The laugh and tone makes Max wince— which Spider cannot bring himself to care about. He watches Spider for a second before he too, leaves Spider alone.
What more did you expect, honestly.
The hut goes quiet. Spider looks up at the 6 swinging hammocks before lowering his pack and selecting the one farthest from the tiny one on the corner. He grits his teeth looking up at the hanging net – there was no choice, he was going to have to climb. Every hidden injury he had ignored up till this moment began to throb simultaneously.
It was a reminder. He was about to break a rule.
Kicking off his boots for the first time that day, he placed his foot on the groove that had been carved into the supporting pole. His toes curled into the rough wood, hands reaching up to grab onto the matching groves up high. It was slow going and his movements were awkward. Several times he cursed out the Na’vi and there need for sleeping high in the air, but eventually he makes it up. He pulls himself up into the hammock carefully, ribs protesting, and breath coming out in pants. His mask was getting fogged up, After making some minor position adjustments he stares up at the woven ceiling. The patterns blur as his breathing evens out but his eyes begin his eyes sting.
They all grew up. They grew strong. He didn’t want to see them again. Ever. He didn’t want to remember. Those memories had been dreams, now he was faced with the reality.
He had been left behind.
This is bad. This is very bad.
He closes his eyes and does the only thing that still steadies him.
He counts.
Five more years.
Five years of keeping his head down. Of not provoking anything he can’t survive. Of staying useful enough to be kept, invisible enough to be ignored. He counts over and over again.
At seventeen: maintain access to lab work. Lab work means credentials. Credentials mean records. Records mean he exists in systems that can be transferred.
At eighteen: keep his body intact. No permanent injuries. No flags. No “concerns” that might mark him unfit for cryosleep.
At nineteen: start asking careful questions. Not about leaving—about process. About requirements. About annual transit schedules. Never too curious. Never eager.
At twenty: paperwork. Quiet approvals. The kind that slide through because no one thinks to look too closely at a compliant kid who’s always done what he’s told.
At twenty-one:
Out. Distance. Freedom in the form of a dying planet that apparently doesn’t have much longer anyway.
He imagines the cryo chamber again—the cold, the silence, the moment no one can reach him—and lets exhaustion pull him under.
Neteyam watched as Spider disappeared into the hut. A hut that his uncles had stayed in many times over the years.
Neteyam has learned how to stand still. It’s one of the first things his father taught him—feet planted, shoulders squared, breath steady even when everything inside him wants to move. A warrior does not rush toward what he does not yet understand.
So Neteyam stands.
He was six the last time he had seen his pink-skinned brother. He is sixteen now. Old enough to carry real weapons. Old enough to lead his siblings when his parents are not watching. Old enough that people look at him and see not just Jake Sully’s son, but the eldest son of Toruk Makto.
That means responsibility. That means noticing when things don’t line up.
His eyes stay on the visitors’ hut.
What’s going on?
Because something definitely is. Neteyam doesn’t know how he knows. He just does.
Spider introduced himself as Miles. Spider didn’t wander. Didn’t hesitate. Didn’t look around at the village in awe and glee or glance at the trees like he was planning his way up.
Up, always up higher.
He went straight into the hut, like he’d been told. Like he could not wait to escape the people, the conversation, the forest. Like we was looking for a way out. That thought settles heavy in Neteyam’s chest.
Lo’ak shifts beside him, restless energy radiating off him. “If that’s Spider,” he mutters, arms crossed tight, “why didn’t he come see us before?”
There’s heat in his voice. Hurt twisting sharp into anger.
“He could have visited,” Lo’ak continues, louder now. “All these years. He just—didn’t.”
Kiri frowns, gaze fixed on the hut too. “That’s not right,” she says softly. “Something’s… off.”
Neteyam doesn’t answer right away.
He thinks of all the times he asked.
At first it had been Can Spider come climbing? Can you bring him next time? Then How is he?
Norm had always smiled. Max had always nodded.
He’s fine. He’s settling. He’s busy.
Neteyam had believed them. Because adults don’t lie about things like that. Because family wouldn’t.
He watches the hut again.
Spider — Miles—didn’t look busy. He didn’t look settled. He looked like someone who’d learned how to stand very still so the world wouldn’t notice him.
Neteyam presses his tongue to the inside of his cheek, grounding himself the way his mother taught him when thoughts start to spiral.
He is not angry yet. Anger is loud. Anger makes mistakes. This—this is something colder.
Neteyam has grown up knowing where he stands. His parents never hid the weight of leadership from him. When he failed, he was corrected. When he succeeded, he was praised. When he was afraid, someone noticed. He has always had people at his back. That is what made him strong.
Miles had looked so so alone.
Neteyam thinks of Spider—his Spider—the way he used to run without checking where he would land, trusting that Neteyam or hell, the forest itself would catch him. The way he used to talk too fast and climb too high and laugh like nothing bad could reach him. That boy trusted the world.
This one does not.
Kiri steps a little closer to Neteyam, voice low. “He didn’t look at us,” she says. “Not really.”
“No,” Neteyam agrees quietly. “He didn’t.”
Lo’ak scoffs. “Maybe he just doesn’t care anymore.”
Neteyam turns then, sharp but controlled. “No.”
Lo’ak blinks. “What?”
Neteyam looks back at the hut, jaw set. “If he didn’t care, he wouldn’t have been afraid.”
Silence settles between them.
Neteyam doesn’t know what happened to Spider.
He doesn’t know where he’s been or why he lied when saying he doesn’t understand Na’vi. Because that was a lie. Neteyam remembers teaching him words—remembers Spider repeating them back, proud and careful. Then barely talking in English when he became fluent enough to hold a conversation.
But Neteyam knows this:
Whatever shaped the boy inside that hut did not do so gently. Spider learned how to survive by himself.
Neteyam learned how to protect others. That difference matters. It means Spider will try to handle this alone. It means Neteyam cannot let him. Neteyam shifts his weight, settling it like a promise into his bones. His “little” brother is home and he seems to think he is alone – like time and distance just erases a bond like the one the four of them share.
His gaze flicks down the path a short ways just off human hearing distance from the woven hut. There his parents and uncles seemed locked in a deep discussion.
Neteyam doesn’t mean to listen. He really doesn’t. But when adults lower their voices, it doesn’t mean children can’t hear—it just means they think they shouldn’t.
He’s standing with Kiri and Lo’ak near the edge of the clearing, close enough that the glow from the visitors’ hut paints the leaves gold. Lo’ak’s arms are still crossed, jaw tight. Kiri hasn’t stopped staring at the hut, like she’s waiting for it to breathe.
His father’s voice comes first. Low. Controlled. The voice he uses when he’s holding something heavy very carefully. When there has been unrest between two brothers and the Olo'eyktan has been called in to settle it.
“—we need to slow down,” Jake is saying. “Let’s not jump to—”
“No, Jake,” Max cuts in.
Neteyam stiffens.
He’s never heard Max sound like that before. Sharp. Frayed. Angry in a way that doesn’t explode, just burns.
“No—we already jumped,” Max says. “We jumped ten years ago.”
Norm’s voice follows, hoarse. “Jake, we fucked up.”
Lo’ak’s head snaps up. Kiri’s fingers curl into Neteyam’s arm without her noticing.
“That kid is scared all the time,” Norm continues, words tumbling out now like he’s been holding them back for years. “He just hides it better than most. Better than we ever did and we got involved in a freaking war.”
Jake says his name again—quiet, warning—but Norm doesn’t stop.
“Jake, that boy turns into someone else when the McCoskers are around,” Norm says. “You should see him. He shuts down. Goes flat. Like he’s bracing for something.”
Silence.
Then Neytiri.
Her voice is tight. Controlled in a way Neteyam recognizes. “You chose them,” she says. “You said they would be good spirit parents for the boy.”
“We never wanted to give him away in the first place!” Norm snaps. “That was your idea.”
The words hit Neteyam like a physical blow.
Lo’ak sucks in a sharp breath. “What?” he whispers.
His mother hissed at the Norms tone, but his dad stepped between them, his voice is quieter now. He sounds… older. “Hey, Neytiri brought it to me, but I agreed. We all agreed. We thought—”
“We thought wrong,” Max says bluntly, his mask hissing louder with how fast his breathing had become. “And we let it slide, living in ignorance for years. Something is not right here Jake.”
Norm was running fingers through his hair pacing in short sharp circles before whirling back at Jake, “We have worked with him three years, three! We wouldn’t be here if we weren’t completely sure.”
He looked over at the hut before stepping closer and lowering his voice even further, “He’s not ok, Jake. This is me asking for help. I don’t know what is going on but it’s bad. I feel it, in here” he thumped his chest with his fist.
Max was nodding his head rapidly while his friend was talking.
Neteyam’s hands curl into fists.
He doesn’t hear everything after that. Pieces only. Enough.
Isolation. They will take him away. Restrict our access to him. We didn’t know how bad. We should’ve checked sooner.
Kiri’s grip tightens. “Neteyam,” she whispers. “This… this is bad, right?”
Neteyam swallows.
“Yes,” he says.
Lo’ak’s voice shakes with something sharp and furious. “They lied to us. They said he was fine.”
Neteyam doesn’t answer right away. He looks at the visitors’ hut again. At the place Spider disappeared into without a word. Without looking back. Like he’d learned that staying put was safer and he was hoping no one would follow.
Neteyam feels something settle in his chest—not anger. Not yet. Resolve.
Adults make choices. Sometimes they’re wrong. Sometimes they fix them. And sometimes they don’t notice the damage until it has settled in bad enough for someone else to point at it and say look.
Neteyam has spent his whole life being taught to protect—to watch the forest, his siblings, his people. To step forward when something is threatened, even if it’s uncomfortable. Even if it’s dangerous. To know that he will have people at his back to follow-through with him.
Spider is not just someone. He is his brother. Neteyam straightens, shoulders squaring without him thinking about it. He doesn’t raise his voice. He doesn’t interrupt.
He just decides.
Whatever happened to Spider is bad. That has been made stupidly clear by his family.
It is bad enough that the adults are arguing in the open. Bad enough that no one sounds sure anymore.
Neteyam is done waiting for them to handle it. He turns to Kiri and Lo’ak, voice low but certain. “We watch him,” he says. “We don’t leave him alone.”
Lo’ak nods immediately, anger flashing bright and ready. “Yeah.”
Kiri swallows, eyes shining. “He used to lean on us. We will help him remember.”
Neteyam looks back at the hut one last time.
I’m here, he thinks, fierce and steady. You don’t have to survive this alone anymore.
The forest hums around him, patient and listening.
And somewhere inside the hut, Spider sleeps with escape plans in his head— never knowing that the escape he’s been planning for years is already becoming obsolete.