Chapter Text
I used to think that stories were just that,
Set in stone, concrete as a fact.
It didn’t dawn on me
That I could change history.
- From MLP: Legend of Everfree by Daniel Ingram and Joanna Lewis
Jake expects to spend the next morning dragging Tommy’s ass out of bed the second the labs open at their admittedly ungodly hours - so he’s pleasantly surprised when he rolls out of the bathroom to see Tommy dressed and ready.
“Am I dreaming?” Jake raises a brow. “You’re up before dawn.”
“Couldn’t sleep.” Tommy admits, eyes bright. “I’ve been waiting for this day for years, how could I sleep?”
“Well, I can’t survive another few hours.” Jake nods towards the bathroom. “Hurry up. If we’re quick we can snag breakfast before the lines get too long.”
There weren’t too many other scientists that had been brought on the last trip. Jake knew with the joy of having lived it before, that it was because this set of scientists were intended to be the last. RDA higher ups hadn’t been pleased with the way Grace was running things, and they were less than impressed with the way she mouthed off at them given half the chance, but they couldn’t afford to lose a scientist with as much experience as she had. So, they’d taken their anger out on her program, shrinking its funding and personnel.
Still, there was still a decent crowd by the time Jake and Tommy found their way to the mess hall.
“Ugh.” Jake groaned at the sight of a long line. “Fuck this shit.”
“Just skip the line.” Tommy advised, before doing just that. He went up to the front, shooting a bright but fake smile at the man behind the counter before showing him his lanyard and something on his phone. The man’s scowl fades as he passes two bowls of food - ugh, oatmeal, really? - to Tommy.
Tommy raises a brow at Jake’s face. “What? Being Grace’s little teacher’s pet comes with benefits.”
“So that’s why I never got the special treatment.” Jake jokes, shovelling food into his mouth.
Norm joins them a moment later, a flurry of motion as he stumbles his way to sit next to Jake.
“Hey, guys!” He grins. “Oh my god, I can’t believe we’re here. Can you believe we’re here? I swear it feels like I’m dreaming and one wrong move’ll make me wake up again in university, ready to fail my exam with Professor Martin again-”
“God, don’t say her name.” Tommy mutters.
“-and I swear she rigged her exams, no one passed them, Tommy, no one, well, except you, of course, which you still haven’t told me how you did that-”
“I did.” Tommy deadpans.
“-don’t lie to me, it’s rude. Oh, I don’t care, as long as you’re not lying when you tell me we’re here, on Pandora, going to see our fucking avatars in less than an hour-”
Jake can see the moment Tommy’s patience snaps as he scoops a spoonful of oatmeal before shoving it in Norm’s open mouth.
“Shut it.” Tommy snaps. Jake snickers, ducking his head as Tommy’s glare is directed at him. Eywa, he’d forgotten how much Tommy was not a morning person.
Norm splutters, having half-inhaled his mouthful and subsequently half-choking on it. Feeling sympathetic Jake gives him a few hard pats on the back.
Tommy, however, seems to be without mercy that morning. “If you’re going to die, do it quietly.”
Jake laughs, Norm wheezing out a half-hearted retort beside him.
“Ready, guys?” Max asks when they finally make their way to the link room.
“Born ready.” Jake grins. He looks through the window where the avatars are laying on their backs - well, most of the avatars are on their backs. Jake and Tommy’s are on their side, still connected by their kuru.
Jake points at them. “What’s with that?”
“They get, uh-” Max searches for a word.
“Violent.” Grace supplies as she walks over to them, cigarette at her lips.
Max frowns. “I wouldn’t say violent.”
“I would.” Grace gestures to her face. “One of them gave me a black eye when I tried to disconnect the bond. I was lucky they were only teenagers then.” She nods at the fully grown avatars. “One punch now and they’d put a hole through my skull.”
Jake winces at the image, the memories it brings up. Grace had been so small in his avatar’s arms despite Grace herself being a very tall woman - she was taller than Tommy. Her breath had rattled, fogging up the mask. She’d been warm though - so, so warm - with her eyes as wide as she could force them. He hadn’t been connected to the Omatikaya’s communion with Eywa, having been too terrified of leaving Grace to face it alone, but he’d watched Grace’s gaze alight with wonder.
“I can See her, Jake.” She’d muttered, eyes hazy with what he had prayed was only reverence. “She’s beautiful.”
Then she’d closed her eyes and never opened them again.
Tommy’s hand lands on his shoulder and squeezes. Jake pastes a reassuring smile on his face, hoping it makes Tommy forget whatever turmoil he hadn’t been able to hide in the fresh wash of grief. Tommy doesn’t seem to buy it, but doesn’t say anything which Jake counts as a win.
“You’ll have to do it yourselves once you’ve linked up.” Max says. “Which ones do you guys want?”
“Does it matter?” Tommy asks.
“For the first link, no.” Grace says. “But we don’t want to risk your brains - or whatever the marine has between his ears - by switching between them, so once you’ve been assigned an avatar, you’ll stick with them.”
“Makes sense.” Tommy says, completely ignoring the comment aimed at Jake.
“<Come on, ma Grace.>” Jake pouts dramatically. “<Surely you can see I’ve got some brains in here?>”
“<I’m calling that a consequence of being this one’s twin.>” Grace deadpans, nodding at Tommy.
“Eh, I can live with that.” Jake says. He turns to Max. “Is there any difference physically between the avatars?"
“Not very noticeably.” Max says. “The bioluminescent freckles are a bit different but it’s pretty subtle. The stripes too.”
“One’s taller than the other.” Grace adds. “We don’t know why, but we’re thinking it’s ‘cause one of them got more nutrients during growth.”
“They’ve been bonded since the beginning?” Tommy asks.
Jake has better priorities as he bursts out with, “Dibs on the taller one!”
Tommy splutters. “What? No, Max, come on-”
“This is a first come, first served establishment, Tommy.” Max laughs as he high-fives Jake. “Besides, it doesn't really matter in the long-term, does it?”
Tommy’s eyes narrow. “You got any siblings, Max?”
Max grins. “Youngest of three.”
Tommy hums, unimpressed. “I can tell.”
The link pod is familiar, at least, the way an old, favourite jacket you haven’t worn in years might be: strange at first, but slowly easing into comfort as the familiar and nostalgic begins to outweigh the new.
Jake doesn’t know how he manages to empty his mind to go through the link, but one second he’s closing his human eyes and the next he can feel his tail twitching behind him.
Except-
Except nothing feels the same.
Memories of his childhood - things he’s long-since forgotten - come flooding back in a rush that overwhelms him instantly. He’s always known Tommy to be smart - he wasn’t one of the youngest people of his cohort to get a PhD for no reason, after all - but it’s another thing to see it in his own mind’s eye.
The memories of their youth are golden and hazy with warmth in the way all memories of that time are, bright with colours his adult eyes have forgotten how to see and filled with faces that Jake had sworn was lost to him forever.
His mother is perhaps the most prominent of those. He can remember dear, old Dad, of course, since it was pretty difficult forgetting the way his father had died a slow, suffocating death in the slums of his home city. His mother, who he’d lost even younger than his father, had always appeared in one memory and one memory alone: that of her death.
For an entire lifetime, the only true memory Jake could say with absolute certainty he had of his mother - the woman who loved and cherished him, who worked herself to the bone to provide for their little family - had been of her last moments. Her neck and side were covered in crimson, iron thick in the air. Her golden curls were drenched in the disgusting colour, her blue eyes - the same eyes Jake and Tommy had inherited, the ones Jake had given up to become Omatikaya - dull and lifeless when she’d finally bled too much.
Tommy’s, by comparison, seemed endless.
Through his twin’s eyes he watches himself sitting on his mother’s shoulders - Eywa, had he really been such a little thing? - or curled into her side. He sees memory after memory of his mother with his father, the sheer love on their faces as they looked at one another.
He can practically feel it when Tommy - small and precious, just like Lo’ak and Neteyam and Kiri, just like Spider and Tuktirey - presses his face into their mother’s side as she reads to them, or to the tucking his face into the crook of her neck as she carries him to bed. Jake doesn’t know if it is his own memories blurring in, but he swears he can catch a glimpse of himself held in his father’s arms beside his mother and twin, a final blurry silhouette of his parents haloed in golden light before his eyes fall victim to slumber.
Affection and fondness and love, love, love floods him.
Tommy.
It’s an easy thing to make tsaheylu with his brother, his twin. Tommy absorbs his guidance like a sponge, drawing his own mind back with an ease that would have had a younger Jake seethe with jealousy - now, all he can feel is pride.
A hand on his shoulder, small and five-fingered. For a moment he is lost to time, that hand belongs to his Lo’ak and his world is complete once more.
“Jake?” The voice breaks him from the reverie. “Hey, big guy, there you are. You and Tommy have to disconnect the bond now. We don’t want to accidentally hurt you by trying ourselves.”
There is a sudden rejection at the mere thought that is not his own. Jake’s own mind is reaching out, soothing and coaxing Tommy’s overwhelming panic until his brother understands it doesn’t mean Jake leaves forever.
Oh, Tommy. Jake thinks. He was so lost in his own grief he hadn’t even realised that Tommy was having to deal with this all- that Jake had dragged him into yet another mess that wasn’t his to clean up-
Enough. Tommy’s mind cuts through the spiral; evidently his overprotectiveness as an older brother overcomes any and all fear he has for his own wellbeing.
What a pair we make, one of them thinks, or perhaps it is both of them; the thought is indistinguishable between them.
The question of ‘Should we undo the bond?’ to the answer of ’yes’ and the following, ‘when?’, ‘now’, ‘together’ is so synchronized it might as well be a single thought in a single body.
Jake’s hearing suddenly disappears and fear sinks his heart before his ears twitch again, the sound of clicking fingers close to them. His hearing hadn’t disappeared - Tommy’s had just receded and now his ears had to pick up the slack.
Jake turns to the movement in his peripheral vision.
A face identical and foreign to his own stares back at him: golden-eyed and flat-nosed, with brilliant blue skin and dark stripes unique only to him. His sanhí seem to glimmer like stars as Tommy throws his head back and laughs.
“<We really never do anything by halves, hmm, little brother?>” Tommy smiles, happier than Jake can remember seeing him - in either life.
A broken piece of Jake’s heart slots back in place as he smiles back.
It’s somewhat strange having a bond that’s not Neytiri or his kids in his mind.
It was different with the pa’li, who didn’t make bonds to specific riders amongst the Omatikaya. It was different for the Olangi, whose steeds allowed them to thrive across Eywa’eveng’s vast plains.
The bond was nothing like the one he had with Bob, and nothing alike to the one he had with Toruk. The former had always been defined by the exhilaration of their first bond, the thrum of their synched heartbeats and the feeling of finally feeling like he could belong.
The latter had been mighty. Fierce and unyielding, a storm that would sooner bring down the heavens than falter. Toruk had a thirst for blood the likes of which Jake had never seen - and hoped to never see - before.
Neytiri’s had been safe and warm, his best friend and greatest love. After losing everything he had ever known, he’d chosen to give up what he had left - the body he’d had all his life, the face he shared with his brother, his mother’s eyes and his father’s hair - to be with her. It hadn’t been a hard decision, but it had been a significant one.
His children were different to the other bonds, and different in of themselves. Neteyam’s was the first, of course, steady and tempered. Kiri’s had been strong, a hidden depth to her mind that Jake had adored. Lo’ak’s had been the most like his own, a spark that he knew would grow well despite the growing pains. Tuktirey’s was bright and bubbly, as all his children had been at that young age; eventually that bond would grow and change as Tuk settled into herself as her older siblings had begun to.
These bonds had been made and cherished for sixteen long years. They were as familiar as the hair on his head, or the nails on his hand.
Tommy’s is nothing like them.
Tommy is familiar. Cool and soothing, a balm to his mind, careful and cautious but no less passionate.
“You are like the sun.” Neytiri had told him once, when he’d asked what his mind felt like. “Warm and passionate. Bright, like nothing else can be.”
Jake watches as Tommy - suiting the blue face and the pointed ears, the tail and the stripes - throws his head back in a laugh at whatever stupid joke Norm was saying. Tommy catches his eye and Jake watches as his face seems to brighten even more, as though the mere sight of Jake could make him that happy.
If Jake was the sun, then maybe Tommy could be the moon.
Today is the day Neytiri’s husband returns to her.
Even Tsu’tey’s grumbling at being dragged away from his duties - “Rama will take care of them! Do not tell me you don’t trust her?” - couldn’t damper her mood. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been this happy. Her Jake was coming home!
“Stop that.” Tsu’tey says. He pokes her cheek where the smile that hasn’t left her face all morning turns soft and fond at the thought of her mate. “It is disgusting to see.”
Neytiri rolls her eyes. “I am in love.”
“And?” He scoffs. “That does not make it any less disgusting."
“In another world, you would have been my mate.”
Tsu’tey’s face scrunches up in distaste. Neytiri takes no offence in it - after all, their betrothal when she had turned eighteen, a year before Jake had arrived, had been in response to the increasing threat of the sawtute. The Omatikaya needed the stability of united heirs to the clan, and Tsu’tey is her best friend. Being his mate would be no hardship.
“Are you certain?” He had asked her, the night she had decided to go through with the betrothal. His eyes had searched hers, looking for something he wouldn’t be able to find. “Ma Neytiri, you have always wanted to mate for love, if this is not it, please do not-”
“You are my dearest friend.” She had interrupted, refusing to meet his eyes which had been as good of a confession. But her clan needed her strength and if this was the form it came in, then she would give it. “How could I not love you?”
“That is not what I mean.” He had said.
“But it is what it is.”
He’d been devastated when he found out she’d mated with Jake. She'd thought it some arrogant protectiveness, perhaps even jealousy when she’d defended Jake against him in front of the whole clan.
The night before the Battle for Ayram Alusìng he’d found her, overlooking the camps of the gathered clans. They hadn’t spoken in weeks, beyond quick acknowledgments between war meetings and communal dinners.
That night - his last night, and if she’d known she would have sat with him longer, would have pressed her forehead to hers and told him that she loved him, that she Saw him - he’d told her he’d been angry because she hadn’t told him.
“At myself, more than you.” He’d admitted. Without the Olo’eyktan’s regalia and with his knee hugged to his chest, he looked as young as he had been. “You shouldn’t have felt like hiding this from me. We are friends, are we not? I have failed you in this.”
“In this I think we have both failed. After Sílwanín-“
They’d promised that night to do better, be better. For their people, for Sílwanín. For themselves.
She’d watched him die, shot full of metal, the next day.
“Stop that.” He says, pulling her back to the present. He cups her cheek, eyes searching her own. He takes her hand in his and squeezes. “You are here. Our family is safe.”
Neytiri breathes in and out, only somewhat shaky. She’s gotten better at it in the last six years.
“Let’s go find your mate.” Tsu’tey says, this time entirely sincere.
She squeezes his hand. “Let’s.”
Tsu’tey’s face hardens as they near the schoolground. By the time they wait, a few metres from the school itself and all the memories it holds, his face is blank and held so carefully expressionless. It reminds her of her sweet Neteyam in those later years of the war, where her son had turned himself from child to warrior long before he had outgrown the former.
She doesn’t try to offer him any words of platitudes - of all people she knows how hollow they can feel in the face of such grief - but crouches close to his side, their shoulders brushing together. His eyes flick to her in thanks.
They are not left waiting long.
The humans’ machine thunders through the air. Neytiri catches a glimpse of the pilot, remembers that face painted in her clan’s colours once and never seen again, and feels her heart clench.
The machine’s wings thrum for a few more minutes before finally stilling; Grace steps out of the back a heartbeat later.
Tsu’tey is incapable of hiding the gasp that leaves his lips, eyes wide as he catches sight of her.
But Neytiri’s eyes are not focused on Grace, though the sight of her is a wonderful thing. Instead she watches eagerly as three other avatars make their way out of the machine. One wears Norm Spellman’s familiar face, his eyes wide in a wonder that had never faded in the sixteen years he had spent on Eywa’eveng. The other two-
Neytiri pauses. Looks again. Pauses again as her mind refuses to understand how the sight beside her is possible.
Tsu’tey notices her hesitation and reluctantly tears his gaze from Grace.
“Ma Neytiri?” He whispers, eyes wide as he sees the two avatars that have caught her gaze. “Ma Neytiri, what is this?”
They have the same face, the same build. She had expected to see the younger version of her husbands, of course, but this-
A memory of Jake’s voice comes to her, abrupt.
“We were twins.” He had said, eyes awash with sorrow. He gestures to his own face. “Same face and everything. He was older, though, by ten minutes.”
She looks again at the dreamwalkers. One is slightly taller than the other and, though both of them are barefoot, this one is sure-footed, his gait steady. There is a gun strapped to his hip but a knife is held across his chest. He turns back to his brother- his twin - and when he smiles that roguish, crooked smile, Neytiri knows.
“They are brothers.” Neytiri breathes out in wonderment. “Twins. Born at once, from a single pregnancy.”
Tsu’tey’s eyes widen and then narrow. “That is…strange.” He decides, in the end.
Unfortunately, as much as part of Neytiri rankles at the implied insult to her mate, she can’t deny it. Such a thing as twins is very rare amongst the Na’vi; the last the Omatikaya had heard of it had been nearly ten generations before her father’s generation.
“Which one is yours?” Tsu’tey asks, at the exact moment Jake trips over air flat on his face. Laughter erupts from his brother and Tsu’tey sends an incredulous look in her direction.
Unbidden, she feels her cheeks heat with embarrassment. It seems Jake’s first impression on her best friend is doomed to be less than impressive.
“Ma Neytiri.” Tsu’tey says, eyes locked on the way Jake tackles his brother to the ground with all the grace of a toddler. “Him?”
“You do not need to sound so disgusted.”
“How else should I feel?” He mutters, incredulous.
Jake yelps from below, his brother having chosen to play dirty - literally, in this case, as he smushes mud into Jake’s face. Jake, who could never quite keep his mouth shut at this age, splutters at the mud in his mouth, blubbering all over the place.
Behind the pair, Grace rolls her eyes and pinches the bridge of her nose.
“Ma Neytiri.” Tsu’tey sounds pained.
“He is Toruk Makto.” She reminds him.
“He is eating dirt.” Tsu’tey corrects. He glances down at the dreamwalkers again, grimacing as he watches Jake attempt to sit on his brother in vengeance for the uncalled for meal.
“I love him.” She says simply.
Tsu’tey doesn’t have a response to that, and looks very disgruntled at the realization. He huffs, rolling his eyes.
“Come.” He says, nodding behind him. “If your stories remain true, he will find us eventually.”
Neytiri looks down at her husband - at her new brother. “What of his brother?”
Tsu’tey pauses. He looks down, eyes narrowing at the sight of Jake and his brother. A flurry of emotions rush across his face, a tidal wave that Neytiri cannot hope to understand.
“Jake used to say he was kind.”
“It is his brother.” Tsu’tey says, a newfound hardness in his voice. “How many brothers can call the other cruel? Grief blurs the mind. How do you know it did not blur his?”
Denial springs to Neytiri’s tongue but she holds herself back. As much as she wants to assure Tsu’tey that Jake would never lie to her, to tell him that Jake’s brother could be no threat, she can’t.
She can extend her own kindness to Jake’s brother - because he is now also hers - but Tsu’tey has never had the same luxury. He has been trained as future Olo’eyktan for nearly as long as she can remember. His life has been interwoven with their clan’s in a way hers never has been. After all, despite how much she hated it, she had left the Omatikaya before.
Tsu’tey wouldn’t have. He would have stayed, would have fought, even if it meant he’d be away from his mate and children’s sides. He would not abandon one duty for another and in this they had always been different.
Neytiri’s heart was to her clan; Tsu’tey’s heart was the clan itself.
“We must be careful with him, then.” Tsu’tey decides.
“Okay.” Neytiri’s eyes wander back to her Jake’s brother. For a moment, she can swear his gaze meets her own, gold on amber. Jake’s eyes, yet different. Younger and older all at once, without that familiar look of affection that Jake reserves for her.
Instead what she finds is something soft and brilliant in the way it brightens his eyes: wonder.
Yes. Neytiri thinks with one final look in the direction of the school. We must be careful with him indeed.
The Na’vi disappear into the underbrush before Tommy can form the words to tell Jake what he’s seen, but Tommy swears to all the gods he doesn’t believe in that the young woman smiles at him before the forest’s shadows swallow them whole.
Hello, Neytiri. He imagines saying to that smile.
After the bond with Jake, he can imagine her voice and widening smile, the way her eyes would crinkle and she’d take his hands in her own as she’d reply, Hello, ma Tommy. It is nice to finally See you.
Jake bumps their shoulders together, gaze questioning. “What’re you smiling about?”
Tommy grins. “You’ll find out soon.”
A few hours later Jake leads him to a palulukan and over a waterfall.