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"Did you know that twins have different hands?"
Jake hung upside-down from the monkey bars, but Tommy wasn't looking at him, too absorbed in his book to care about his brother's gravity defying abilities. Jake pouted, but with a heave he swung around, jumped to the ground and moved to Tommy's side.
"How do you mean?" He dutifully asked, plopping down to sit by Tommy's shoulder. This time, Tommy spared him a brilliant smile, missing teeth and all.
"Look, it says here, even identical twins have different fingerprints! Isn't it cool?"
Jake rolled his eyes. Still, he grabbed Tommy's wrist and ruffled his hair with his free hand. "You're such a nerd!"
Tommy shrieked, squirming away. His book fell carelessly to the ground. When he was free, there was a moment of hesitation as the brothers regarded each other. With an impish expression Tom tackled Jake, sending them both tumbling to the grass. They wrestled for a few minutes until Jake shoved Tom away from him and to his right.
They stayed like that, laying down and watching the clouds drift lazily in the sky. Tommy reached out to hold Jake's hand. It was warm and uncalloused and despite its small size it fit perfectly in his.
Wait… small?
"Don't worry, Jake. We'll always be connected. I promise."
"What?" Jake asked, but there wasn't an answer. The park had grown dark and silent. He got up on one elbow, but when he looked around, there was no one else around.
"Tommy?"
— ○ —
Jake woke up.
It was the middle of the night and the light of Polyphemus bathed their alcove, tinting the sparse furnishing in muted gray hues as Pandora continued its rotation around the planet. There was a gentle wind ruffling the trees and extracting a beautiful, soft song from the flowers in bloom. And still, his heart threatened to pound out of his chest and his mind refused to settle.
Carefully he disentangled himself from Neytiri's embrace. She furrowed her eyebrows, but a soothing touch eased her back into her well-deserved sleep. Jake stood up, making use of years of stealth training, and left their bed behind.
The hometree was silent at this time of the night. Almost without needing a conscious input, his steps took him to the adjacent alcove, where Neteyam and Kiri were sleeping, curled around each other, their hands intertwined even in their sleep.
For a heartbeat, their forms wavered in his mind's eye and he was light-years away. If he concentrated, Jake could almost remember the smell of the cheap lemon air-freshener his mother had liked to use in a desperate bid to keep out the city smog, the foreign feel of synthetic sheets against his skin, the faded posters with creased corners.
And Tom, holding his hand, just as Neteyam and Kiri were doing.
How often had they sought each other, back then? Rather, how often had they been apart? There go Jake and Tommy, causing trouble like always… there had been a time when they had spent every minute of every day together, only to fall into an exhausted sleep tangled around each other.
High school was where the first cracks had begun to form. Tom had always been quiet and timid, too intelligent by half and it wasn't a good combination to survive the ruthless climate of a building full of teenagers. Jake had done his best to protect him, but in doing so they had stopped being equals.
They found different friend groups, had different interests and saw different futures for themselves. They had, subtly, grown apart.
After graduation, there came college and boot camp. That was what broke them. Tom resented the system and begged Jake to find anything else, something that didn't involve war. They fought like they had never fought before, and it took months to begin to mend their relationship. It was so much easier to drift apart. There always was an excuse to miss calls and cancel reunions, back when they thought they had all the time in the world to reconcile.
After Jake's first tour of duty.
After Tom defended his thesis.
After Jake got a promotion.
After Tom got into the Pandora program.
Until they ran out of chances. And then it had been just Jake, honorably discharged, directionless and alone for the first time in his life. The only thing he had left was making sure a part of Tom's dream lived on. To ensure Tom was more than just an inconvenient footnote, a failed investment of Government funds, even if he had to leave Earth behind to do it. Jake had vowed to make himself matter, so that Tom's death would matter.
In that first goal, at least, Jake had succeeded beyond all expectations. It hadn't changed the second.
In that vulnerable moment, the familiar sight of his children drawing comfort from each other sent a spike of pain through Jake's heart and he had to rest a hand on the wall to steady himself. Slowly, he dragged himself away, out of the living area and towards the open clearing at the base of the hometree.
The stars were bright, as they always were out here in a world free from pollution. Earth's sun was just another dot in the distance, nearly indistinguishable to the naked eye, and yet he sought it out with unerring precision.
A soft sound made his ears twitch, but before he could turn around, he felt Neytiri's arms gently enveloping him from behind.
"Jake?" She murmured, voice heavy with sleep. Her braids brushed against his collarbone as she shifted to sit by his side, resting her chin on his shoulder.
"I'm sorry I woke you up," he said.
“It’s fine,” she said, beginning to sound more awake. He slumped against her, drawing comfort from the familiar warmth of her body. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
“Memories. Regrets,” Jake admitted. Neytiri made an inquiring sound, gently battling a lightbug away from her face, and Jake sighed again. "I was thinking about Tom."
"Your brother?" Neytiri asked. There was a strange note of longing in her voice. Jake realized she was thinking of Tsu’tey, who should have been her brother, who Na’vi’s society had pushed into a role he shouldn’t have had, and who she had lost just when they could have regained that treasured bond again. He threw an arm over her shoulders in silent comfort and she shifted, gripping his waist.
He looked up at the distant stars again. So many lives had been lost along the way. So many dreams had been broken before they arrived here.
"You would have liked him,” he said after the silence started to become too heavy to bear on his own. He had never talked at length about Tom with any of the Na’vi, not even Neytiri. It had felt disrespectful, in a way, to bring up Earth when humans had harmed this world as they did. Or maybe it had been cowardliness instead. Maybe he had been too afraid, then, of losing a place he barely felt he deserved.
“You would have liked him more than you liked me back then,” he said, and now that he had started, he couldn’t find the strength to stop. It felt painful, but it was freeing as well, like an infected wound being purged and finally getting the chance to heal. “The people in the Avatar program, the ones that read his work, or studied with him, they all loved him.”
Back before he became fully Omaticayan, he and Norm had traded stories over a bottle of dubiously made alcohol once. The Tom that had been Norm's roommate at college, the young doctoral student, the rising star, had been nearly a stranger. Jake had still been able to predict his reactions, somewhat, but there were inner jokes he didn't understand. Music he would have never associated with Tom. Experiences they shared and never knew, differences that might have made them stronger.
Norm had even shown him the ring he had purchased just before shipping to Pandora, and hesitantly asked Jake if he would have approved of them. The mere thought that Tom had ever felt uncertain enough to question Jake's support had turned his stomach, so he had just toasted his companion and drank.
Grace had found them in the morning, so hungover they had barely been able to walk straight. She delighted in turning on every light she could find, all while directing them to the link pods with a strident, cheerful tone she had never adopted before and that had drilled a hole straight into Jake’s abused skull.
But she had shown him, privately, the e-mails she still kept, even now, of a student she had never met face to face.
“Kiri…” Jake sighed as he emerged from the memories, looking at the canopy of trees in the distance without quite seeing them. “Fuck, Tom would have been so good with her. He would understand her. He would help her in ways I'll never be able to."
His words trailed off, leaving behind only the sounds of the forest. Neytiri reached up, gently drying the tears that he hadn’t known he had been shedding.
“I mourn that we never met,” Neytiri said, openly and honestly. Jake loved her so much for that, for the way she listened and understood, and yet was never anything less than fully honest. She was the best thing that had ever happened to him. “But you are selling yourself short, Jake Sully. He wasn't the one who could have become Toruk Makto."
That image startled a laugh out of Jake. "He wouldn't have needed to. I was always the one who leapt before looking. He was the one who’d patch me up and give me an earful after.”
A wistful note crept into his voice. He looked away from his mate, and decided to live up to his words, baring his soul fully for her to see.
"I daydream, sometimes. That we both come to Pandora, him as a scientist and me as a soldier. He and Norm and Grace beat some sense into me, and we stand together against the RDA.”
“Do we still meet, in your dream?”
“Of course. You still hate me at first, don’t worry,” he said, aiming for levity and falling just short of it.
“But not for long,” she said with a small, reassuring smile.
“Not for long,” he agreed, looking out at the forest again. What would it have been like? If he had come as he had been, fully human, only seeing the danger and the duty he had sworn to uphold. If he had never had the chance to hear Eywa, never had the chance to see Pandora for the treasure it was.
There was a gentle wind ruffling the leaves and the grass. Pale pink flowers softly glowed in the distance.
His heart lurched at the beauty of the world, and he felt like screaming until his voice gave out. It was so unfair. Why had Tom had to pay the ultimate price, when it had been Jake who had been wasting his life, battle after pointless battle? Why was he here, when it was Tom who had always believed in something better? When he had always been the twin who was strong enough to hope?
Neytiri poked him in the cheek, bringing him out of his spiral of despair. When he looked at her, her beautiful yellow eyes bore into his with a determination that he knew well.
"What would he say? Would Tom resent you for living, Jake Sully?" She asked. And wasn’t that the crux of the matter?
"No… no. He would have been… proud. He… this is what he wanted for me. A future. A family," he choked on the last word, but he could feel the truth resonating down to his bones. "He would have said, 'I told you so' and he would have been happy for me. But he never got the chance to see it."
"He's not gone," Neytiri said, resting a hand over his heart. Automatically, Jake lifted his hand and laid it on top of hers. "He's not gone, because you love him. He gave you strength; he brought you here. You will always carry a part of him within you."
We'll always be connected, I promise, Tom had said in his dream, and the words echoed in Jake's mind again. Did they mean something? Was it just a random exchange of synapsis in his brain, or was a part of Tom watching over him, even here?
And did it matter, in the end?
"I need…" he started, but self-consciousness made his words stall.
Neytiri took both of his hands and squeezed them gently, focusing all of her attention on him, "Tell me how to help you."
"Neteyam and Kiri and… any other children we may have," Jake began slowly. He swallowed, marshaling his thoughts.
"Yes?"
"I don't want them to repeat my mistakes," he said, drawing circles with his thumbs on the back of her hands, because it was easier than to look her in the eyes. "If we can't do anything else, at the very least I hope we can teach them to hold onto each other, no matter what."
Neytiri disentangled her right hand and put it under his chin, gently directing him to meet his eyes. When he did, she smiled. Then she leaned forward, resting her forehead against his. Finally, Jake felt the tension begin to leave his shoulders, taking comfort in her presence.
"We will," she promised. "This family will be our fortress."