Chapter Text
They didn’t go straight to the archipelago. Spider had few belongings, so what he did have were precious to him; Jake asked if there was anything Spider needed and she shyly said yes, so back to High Camp they went.
Again, there was that thread of discomfort—or perhaps, reverence—that coloured the air. Spider ducked away from it all, avoiding Mo’at’s keen gaze as she approached, leaving her and Jake to discuss what they would. The compound where the few humans resided was blessedly quiet, so Spider slipped into his room easily enough.
He had one pack; into it he put his spare Na’vi coverings, a dagger his brother had gifted him, a book of photos that the humans here had made for him and that he had never considered as one of his most prized possessions, but which he stowed away now without thinking very hard about it. He had to go and find a spare exopack, not to mention a small pack of tools with which he could repair one should it break.
He thought he’d find Jake waiting for him by the opening, but apparently he hadn’t quite finished his business with Mo’at, as he stood with his back to her and she, knife in hand, carefully cut his hair, shaving his scalp until his had was bare and his braid hung straight, alone, down his back.
Spider thought he ought to look away. He could only stare, however, when Jake turned to Mo’at with his gaze cast deferentially down and she stepped towards him, cupped his face in her hands, and pressed her lips against his forehead. It was too intimate a moment, it seemed, to simply be had out in the open, in the middle of their settlement—but then, Spider had always lived at the fringes.
He stepped forward now, intending to sling his pack onto Jake’s ikran and wait there for him, when Mo’at turned and caught his eye.
They said you should not look the ikran in the eye. He never had but he was sure that doing so would feel the same as he did now; like he was caught, a small animal in the gaze of a predator.
And then she gentled, and when she beckoned him it was without trepidation that he obeyed.
He eyed the knife in her hand, as silently made him the same offer—and he thought about how he’d been held, his hair caught in their hands. He thought about new beginnings. He turned his back to her in answer.
She was careful with him. He felt lighter, after, and for more than one reason. He wanted to say something—felt that he should say something—except Mo’at and Jake clearly felt otherwise. So he climbed up onto Jake’s ikran and settled in front of him; he shook off the sense of déjà vu that threatened to bring Quaritch onto the ikran with them.
Then none of that mattered anyway as the world fell away around them with one beat of the ikran’s wings.
The ikran couldn’t fly as fast, for as long, as the machines and aircraft that humans built, and they needed to eat and sleep. For this reason it took days for Jake and Spider to reach the archipelago. They didn’t talk a great deal, but Spider thought that there wasn’t much left for either of them to say; and besides, he liked the quiet. He liked that he could sit in silence with somebody else—with Jake Sully—and have it be comfortable. It was a novel feeling.
Eventually they saw land. Jake’s ikran sang out, recognising this strange country, and picked their way over it to the reef where Jake had lived among the Metkayina for months now.
It was only once they had landed, and Spider had dismounted, that it occurred to him that he didn’t know these people. Sea people. He’d marked their differences, of course, when he had accompanied Quaritch on his campaign of terror and destruction through the archipelago—their skin, their eyes their tails—but they were just surface differences. They spoke the same language and breathed the same air. They all came from, and returned to, Eywa.
He hadn’t stopped to think that they would be as different to the Omaticaya as they were to him.
He slung his pack over his shoulder and tucked close to Jake’s side, eyeing the Metkayina just as they were eyeing him. The ikran gave a short cry, then leapt into the air, beating quickly away toward to the sparse foliage where it must keep its home.
Its absence left Spider suddenly feeling very alone.
Jake reached out and brushed a knuckle down the back of Spider’s neck, and that proprietary motion both warmed him and apparently said something to the Metkayina who approached, because they stopped staring at him quite so hard and transferred their gaze to Jake.
“Ronal,” Jake greeted the female, who glared.
“What is this thing doing here?” she demanded; she stood at the front of the group, heavily pregnant, derisive of Jake and clearly disapproving of the human at his side.
Jake bowed his head. “He’s mine,” was the only explanation he offered.
She hissed, then rested one hand on her stomach. “He is not welcome,” she told them, cold.
“My love,” the male behind her said, stepping up to her side and placing his own hand over hers, over her stomach. “You should be in bed.”
“If I rest now the males of this village will kill us all,” she snapped at him. “He—”
“Jake Sully has as much right as any of us to bring whomever he likes into this village,” the male told her gently. “He is one of us.”
“How can you say that?” Spider stared hard at the floor. This, at least, was familiar. “How can you say these demons are allowed, after everything they have done?”
“This demon has been claimed by Jake Sully. And I don’t think he has been killing our kin.”
Spider felt eyes on him, then, and Jake’s hand on his shoulder. The sand beneath his feet was gritty and the sea pounded at his ears, and he heard the wailing of the Metkayina he had seen while with Quaritch. He wanted, desperately, to sink into the ground.
“I don’t care,” the female—Ronal—said. “Surely they will come for him. And then we will have to fight, again.”
“They won’t,” Spider said, before he could catch himself. He had to raise his head, then, and look her in the eye. “They don’t care about me. They don’t want me. And I’m not going back to them.”
Ronal’s gaze was sharp, but the male beside her seemed kinder, so he stood his ground and eventually, she heaved a beleaguered sigh, bared her fangs at him again, then turned and swept away, regal. The male cast a commiserating glance at them both before following her.
Jake relaxed, barely, and when Spider looked up at him his jaw was clenched tightly and his eyes were flinty, but they softened when he glanced down at Spider.
“Come,” he ordered, and Spider trailed dutifully behind him as he led them into the village.
-
He heard them before he saw them, but he still wasn’t really for the shriek that Tuk emitted when she spotted him, lounging in their hut.
“Spider!” She launched herself at him and he fell heavily to the floor, wondering exactly when the hell she’d gotten so big; then Kiri was there, attaching herself to his side, and Lo’ak pulled him against him and he resigned himself to never freeing himself.
Then Kiri sat back, her face thunderous, and she bared her fangs and hissed.
“Kiri?” Spider asked, confused, but she flattened her ears and shook her head.
“You left,” she accused. “You left us! Neteyam was dead and everything was on fire and you were just gone. You didn’t even say goodbye!”
“Kiri—” Lo’ak tried, obviously wanting to keep the peace, but she wouldn’t have it.
“Why?” she demanded. “We lost our brother. And then you left.”
Spider felt horrible. He hadn’t wanted to hurt them; he’d assumed that his leaving would not cause such a stir. He felt that saying that was not the way to go, however.
He wanted to comfort her, however, so he tried giving her a little of the truth.
“I saw—I saw terrible things, when Quaritch had me. And the humans, they—” his throat closed around those words. He couldn’t say them yet. And he didn’t want Kiri to hear them, anyway. “I had to get away. I wanted to go home.”
Kiri was still pissed, he could see, but she didn’t seem pissed at him anymore.
“We are your home.” Her eyes dared him to disagree.
“You weren’t though, really. Because you—” He couldn’t say it.
“We left you,” Lo’ak finished for him. “Yeah. We left you, and then you left us. I’d say we’re even.”
They had left him to the hands of the RDA; he had left them to the ghost of their brother. He didn’t have enough in him to argue the semantics.
“Even,” Kiri repeated, her ears still pinned back, but she shut her eyes and threw herself against him again, pressing her face into his chest.
They remained there until Spider had to tell them to give him some room, he was only human, guys, c’mon—“Yes, even you, Tuk, you’re getting heavy,” he complained, and she laughed at him. Then they began to regale him with tales of their life here, and he settled in to listen.
-
The sky outside had darkened with eclipse by the time Jake returned, Neytiri in tow, bearing dinner. He was laying across Lo’ak’s legs with his head in Kiri’s lap, Tuk sprawled on top of him, and they were arguing about the time Lo’ak had been swallowed by a Tulkun and whether it was embarrassing or not, when Jake ducked into the tent and saw them sprawled about. Immediately his lips quirked into a smirk.
Spider tried to leap up, but he hadn’t been kidding when he complained about Tuk being heavy, and she was still sprawled atop him, apparently unconcerned with her parents finding them. She only smiled, even as Spider tried shoving at her, and it was only when Neytiri’s voice cracked across the tent like a whip that Tuk relented.
“Ma’am,” Spider greeted Neytiri, who scowled at him, then shoved a bowl of—something, into his hands. It smelt of fish.
Is this safe? He didn’t want to ask, not wanting to look ungrateful for their generosity, but he also didn’t begin eating until Jake caught his eye and nodded, so he took the bowl and went to route through his pack for the cannula.
He’d never eaten with the whole Sully family. It was their time, so he had always quietly slunk away when Neytiri began distributing dinner, and left them to it. She clearly was not happy with his presence now, but she didn’t say anything; rather, she pretty much ignored him, instead cajoling her children into discussing their days.
It was better than he had imagined it would be. Better than he’d hoped it would be. He settled in against the assorted blankets, his brother and sisters at his side, and let himself acknowledge that he was content.
-
That was not to say it was entirely easy. The Sully clan were of a different cloth than most Na’vi people; the rest of the Metkayina saw him and then discounted him, so he spent most of his days alone.
He could have joined his siblings in the water. Every day, they tried to encourage him to join them in their duties; he met all of their shrieking sea creatures, their mounts, and once he allowed Lo’ak to drag him away from the reef into the deeper water, where Payakan the outcast Tulkun regarded him with those cold eyes and then did not eat him. Spider couldn’t help but feel he would have, if Lo’ak hadn’t been there.
Kiri brought him down to the sea floor, and he watched with some sort of primal terror coursing through him as she manipulated the bioluminescence of the plant life there to pulse, over and over, like—like a heartbeat. After a few minutes he felt it in himself, a low throb, slower than a human’s—and then it pounded in his head, over and over and over, unrelenting. He had to beg out, then, and strike out for the surface.
Kiri apologised to him over and over, afterwards, when he had to keep taking his mask off and wipe away the blood that poured from his nose. She wanted to go fetch the tsahik, until he learned that the tsahik here was Ronal, and had to physically grab onto her to prevent her from running to get her.
“If you will not see Ronal then you must at least let Neytiri to look at you,” she demanded. “She might not be the tsahik, but she would have been, among the Omaticaya, and she trained under her mother. She will know what to do.”
He didn’t want to see Neytiri, either, but he couldn’t stop Kiri from leaving, this time, so he just had to sit there and keep spitting blood until they returned.
Kiri stepped through first, concern writ clear on her face. Neytiri ducked in after her, looking significantly less concerned, but she still clicked her tongue at the blood on Spider’s hands and settled her pack down on the floor with less aggression than he had come to expect from her.
“Foolish,” she called them both, having inspected Spider’s eyes and ears and tongue and already begun to search through her pack. “Foolish. Kiri—”
“I know,” she demurred, keeping her gaze down. “I just—Spider never comes with us into the water. I was trying to… I don’t know. I want him to love it.”
“And how much time do I spend with you in the water?” Neytiri demanded of her, extracting a leaf from her pack and beginning to grind it with perhaps more vigour than was needed. “He is human. His place is not in the water.”
“You don’t think our place is in the water, either,” Kiri accused her, “but we manage all the same.”
“Yes, you manage, my daughter.” Neytiri gave him the bowl of crushed leaves with an unspoken instruction to hold it while she went to the corner of the tent, where a small pit for fire was laid, but unlit. She poked the kindling there into place, then lit it, before she eyed the pot that was settled above where the fire would grow and apparently deemed it satisfactory. She added more wood to the small fire—twisting bark, bleached pale, collected from the beach, it seemed, and alien compared to the wood of the trees Spider had grown up around.
Kiri sat with her shoulders hunched. “The sea is our home,” she said, rather plaintively. “Eywa is here.”
“Eywa is also in the far north, where water freezes on the ground and Na’vi are thick-skinned and wear heavy furs to keep warm. Eywa is deep underground, where Na’vi have pale skin and pale eyes and do not look at the sun. Eywa is in the desert, where the sun scorches everything it touches. Eywa touches everything on this planet, my daughter; that does not make every corner of this planet my home.” It sounded like an old argument, one they have had many times, because Kiri only huffed and did not reply.
It wasn’t long before the water in the pot began boiling, and Neytiri took the bowl from Spider’s hands and went to it, then took the ladle and spooned hot water over the crushed leaves. The tea smelt of the sea and was a dark green when she handed it to him, and he watched the steam waft from the surface while he waited for it to cool.
It fogged against his mask, which also now was slicked with blood, and the heat and the smell and taste of hot blood made him dizzy, memories of those first days with the RDA when they tried painstakingly to break into his head coming back to him. He swayed, shut his eyes tightly, and rested against the hand that was suddenly at his side, spread across his ribs; distantly, noted that it was too big to be Kiri’s, as was the hand that gently removed his mask and brought the bowl up to his lips. He drank deep, despite how hot the water was, and then his face was being gently wiped clean and the mask replaced.
The tea made him woozy, though his thoughts and his mind settled, and he found himself being pulled against a warm body and held there as he drifted.
-
Spider didn’t realise he was sleeping until he woke, his face itchy where the blood had dried and his back and his side warm where he was resting against somebody.
The sky was dark, and he could see Lo’ak and Kiri and Tuk all tangled together, Jake sat beside them with a tangle of rope at his feet that he was apparently tying into a net. He was intent on his work, and Spider took a moment just to watch him.
Then it occurred to him that he had to be resting against Neytiri, and he tensed without meaning to.
A large hand curled over his shoulder, then, and carefully nudged him until he was sat upright. He wanted to take his mask off and clean his face properly—actually, he wanted to jump into the water and not reappear until he was sure Neytiri had left, because despite the fact that she had healed him he was still deeply wary of her, but before he could do anything of the sort she had curled her fingers under his chin and tilted his face up to hers.
She stared at him intently. He wanted to wither under her gaze, but she was still holding him up, so instead he fixed his gaze at a point over her shoulder. She lifted her other hand and rested it at the edge of his mask, so he took a deep breath and held it as she pulled it off.
She apparently had prepared a bowl of damp cloths and reached for one now. The water was cold, but it shifted the blood that had collected, and after half a minute of her ministrations she apparently deemed him clean enough and settled his spare mask on his face.
Then she let him go and he ducked away from her. She turned away as well, busying herself with tidying up, and a flick of her ears was the only acknowledgement she give him when he thanked her, as sincerely as he could. She took her rags and his bloodied mask and left the dwelling with them, leaving him behind.
“So,” he heard Jake say, behind him. “Want to tell me what happened?”
He turned to find Jake having put down the half-woven net, watching him intently.
“Kiri was showing me her connection with Eywa,” he explained, though by Jake’s raised eyebrows he knew that it was obvious he was leaving out a few things. “Eywa isn’t exactly… compatible, with humans,” he added.
“And that’s it?” Jake probed, and Spider nodded, confused. “Nobody’s been… hassling you?”
Spider understood, then, and hastened to reassure him. “Jake—everybody here ignores me. You and your kids are the only people who talk to me. Everybody else just pretends I’m not here.”
Jake didn’t look any more reassured at that, but he did open his arms invitingly, and Spider crawled over to him, shutting his eyes and pressing the embrace.
“I am sorry, kiddo,” Jake told him. “I know that it’s not—it isn’t ideal.”
“I’d rather be here than anywhere else,” Spider said earnestly, “and it’s way better here than it was with the RDA.”
Jake went silent at that, then scraped a hand over the blonde scruff that was beginning to cover Spider’s head. He twisted away from it, then tucked himself against Jake’s other side, still not used to being able to touch him whenever he wanted. To bask in this familiarity.
Of course, Neytiri chose this moment to return, and the flat disapproval on her face when she saw Spider tucked into Jake’s side as he was made him try to disentangle himself.
Jake didn’t let him. He kept a firm grip on Spider, and the look that passed between the mated pair made Spider hurriedly duck his head, hoping not to be caught in the middle of a domestic spat.
Neytiri went silently to her children, however, and curled up with them.
Jake nudged Spider in the side. “Want to learn?” he asked quietly, indicated the mass of coiled rope at their feet, and Spider nodded.
-
Spider had assumed that that would be the way of it. He was content. He still felt that it was what he deserved; the residual guilt over Quaritch clung to him like oil, insidious, and the waters of the Metkayina couldn’t wash it away.
He did make his peace with it. And he watched his siblings from the coast.
It wasn’t that he didn’t like the water. He went into it just fine, and with his mask he could stay submerged for as long as he liked, even if his family needed to return to the surface for air.
Spider remembered being on that boat as they hunted the Tulkun. He remembered how quickly the water had turned red; he remembered her calf staying by her side, even as the other boats surrounded her. Even as they dragged up her body and cut into her brain. And her remembered seeing it, still beside her butchered carcass, when they sailed away, still crying.
He remembered that last, awful fight. He remembered heaving Quaritch up to the shoreline. He couldn’t forget the way his father’s blood—Jake’s blood, Quaritch’s blood, both—stained the world red.
So. He liked the water just fine. But he wouldn’t go in it.
Neytiri didn’t really go in, either. Jake and Lo’ak hunted with the Metkayina on their mounts; they, Tuk and Kiri all swam with them; Lo’ak spent much of his time with Pakayan and Kiri would spend her whole life underwater, learning the secrets of the reef, if she didn’t have her duties on land.
But Neytiri seemed not to like the water. When she hunted, she did so from the back of her ikran, using techniques they clearly had had to adapt to suit their new prey. The ikran could swim, to a certain point, but they none of them seemed to like it very much.
When she did venture underwater, it was only when she had no other choice, and she was not comfortable on her ilu.
Spider wanted to ask her, but she barely looked at him.
Following that day he had spent tucked against her, however, his blood staining his face and her tea running its course, he thought that she was thawing to him. Or at least, she seemed to see him more clearly.
It was one evening when he had been playing with his siblings at the shore, and Tuk and Kiri both professed themselves too weary to walk home, that he thought he might have endeared himself to her a little more.
Lo’ak had picked Kiri up easily. She settled against his back and rested her chin atop his head and complained that his braid was uncomfortable against his front.
Spider eyed Tuk. “I know you’re a baby,” he told her, “but I’m a human, and you’re getting too big.”
“No I’m not,” she said serenely, and he did allow her to scramble onto his back, where he found that, no, she wasn’t too big. Yet.
She was mean, though. His hair was still just a scruffy mop on his head, bleached by the sun, and she wound her fingers into it and declared it too light in colour.
“At least we will always be able to spot you,” Kiri consoled him, hanging on to Lo’ak who was snickering beneath her.
“I hate all of you,” Spider told them.
And that was how they returned. That was what Neytiri saw when they traipsed into their dwelling, stomachs rumbling at the smell of cooking fish.
Neytiri smiled widely at all of them. When she handed them all their dinner, she smiled again at Spider, and it looked involuntary—like she couldn’t stop herself.
-
He did eventually get his chance to ask,
Spider was reclining in their home, attempting to repair the bracelet that Tuk had managed to break while underwater and had been disconsolate about, when Neytiri stalked in, eyes flashing and ears pinned and tail cracking behind her like a whip.
He fought the urge to run. Her ire was not for him. Instead, he dredged up all of the courage that he could, and asked her as nonchalantly as he could, “everything okay?”
Her gaze shot to him and he withered under it; she looked so much like Mo’at. The weight of her stare, again, made him think of the ikran.
Then she looked away and he heaved in a breath, then another. Neytiri muttered curses to herself, cutting, and then she set her jaw.
“The water,” she said after a moment. “I never see my husband out of it. And then he gets out of it at the end of the day with all of my children, and I never have a moment alone with him.”
Spider smiled despite himself. And then he got to ask, “why don’t you go in?”
She sat, and reached for her weaving, a half-finished blanket in her lap. Her movements were sure, but her whole posture was lined with irritation.
When he thought she was simply going to ignore him, Neytiri spoke. “I don’t like it,” was all she said, but it spoke—well, volumes.
She lived among the sea people. And she didn’t like water.
He had to bite his tongue to keep from laughing, but something on his face must show something of his thoughts, because when she next looked at him she pinned her ears back.
“It is not funny.”
“It’s maybe a little funny,” he countered, “that you came all of this way for your family and your mate and you don’t even like the water.”
She shook her head, ears still flat. “I will do anything for my husband, my family,” she murmured, and her eyes flicked up at him, and Spider was beginning to reconsider what he’d assumed Neytiri would do for him. Judging by the look in her eye, it seemed like it was the first time she was doing so as well.
“Jake will do anything for his family, too,” Spider said, and Neytiri nodded, eyes now back on her weaving. He looked down, too, Tuk’s bracelet in his lap, and his fingers moved deftly over the knots while he pulled his thoughts together. Finally, he said, “only, he can’t do what he doesn’t know you want.”
This time he avoided Neytiri’s gaze when she looked at him, intent instead on knotting Tuk’s bracelet.
She hadn’t looked away, minutes later, when he lifted it for her appraisal.
“What do you think?” he asked, showing it to her.
She didn’t say anything, but she smiled her approval.