Chapter Text
He grew to love Pandora too much, almost forgetting how bitter and harsh she truly was. The sting of her danger and her tough survival.
Every songcord has its ending.
Jake knows this.
Even as they rest his son, his eldest , to lie with the ancestors, so far from home, he knows this.
Neytiri is clinging tightly to him, the water lapping at them.
He blinks and he’s back in the pod, the children curled up tightly, refusing to let go of each other, limbs tangled in a pile as Spider presses himself between Kiri and Tuk, Lo’ak tightening himself around all three of them like he refuses to let anything happen to the rest of the Sully children.
Jake watches as Tonowari leaves, the sea water still stinging against the cuts left from the battle. His knuckles are bruised and his lungs still ache. He knows there’s a large gash that’s yet to properly close up on his side.
It’s almost grounding.
He feels like he should’ve said more. Or at least talked about what they’re going to do next.
Jake is… he feels something.
It’s not the heart crushing guilt or sorrow he thought he’d feel.
He feels like he should’ve, could’ve, done more.
“<Ma Jake?>” Neytiri’s hands soften as she brushes his elbow, pulling him back to the moment.
She’s still wearing her paint, smeared now from the water. Her veil is gone now, but Neteyam’s necklace is still pressed against her throat.
“<I failed.>” It feels like a confession, a secret he’s been holding on his chest for far too long. “<I took us away to protect us and our son->” He chokes on the words, fingers moving to clench his mate’s smaller ones, free hand wandering to press against the beads of the necklace.
He remembers when Neteyam made it and it makes his sorrow worse.
“<I’m sorry, my love.>”
Neytiri moves to sit beside him as they sit crouched in the entrance, the children fitfully sleeping still. She places her free hand against his thigh, glancing at him with an unreadable expression.
Even after all these years, he still couldn’t quite figure out what she was trying to say.
“<My parents used to say that God always took his favourites first.>” He swallows, trying to convey his words but they come out croaked and sad.
“<Do you think Ewya took him for a reason?>” Neytiri’s voice was just as broken as his, wavering with little to stabilise it. “<It does not feel fair, ma Jake.>”
“<Ewya does not pick sides.>” He lingers for a moment, fingers brushing against hers again. “<You told me that. I know that.>”
“<It still does not feel fair that my son, that Neyetam->” She suffocates on her words. “<I wish to go to the Cove tomorrow.>”
“<Do you want me to->”
“<You came with me today. That is enough.>” She’s tender when she moves her hand up, clutching his cheek. “<You are enough, ma Jake.>”
“<I wasn’t enough to-I failed him, Neytiri. And yet Tonowari let me stay.>” He lets her pull him up, wrapping her arms around his chest. It feels comforting but Jake doesn’t feel as if he’s earned it.
His failure feels crushing, like an inescapable weight against his lungs that bruises more than the asphyxiation had.
“<Come, let us sleep and discuss this in the morning.>”
She pulled him back to their sleeping mat, holding him close. They curl up like that, as she starts to weep, soft and quiet tears leaking into his shoulder. Limps pressed tighter and held like life-lines. Jake just stares up at the ceiling, shaky breaths moving as Neytiri falls asleep.
She sleeps, but he doesn’t, watching the stars through the little gaps.
The quiet lapping of the water and his mate’s steady breathing keeping him in the moment.
He hates how he feels. How Neteyam’s death feels like another failure upon his shoulders.
Would things have been different if he had watched his kids a little more?
If that Quaritch clone had died earlier?
“<Dad?>” Tuk’s voice is small, her tiny fingers tugging on his arm. He glances over, seeing the kids awake, bleary eyed but awake.
He doesn’t say anything, opening his arms as the children , oh Ewya, they’re just children , clamouring into his arms and around him. Spider doesn’t say anything as he and Kiri tuck themselves between his and Neytiri’s legs.
Tuk snuggles in between his arms, the seven year old clinging to his torso like a little spider-monkey. Lo’ak is the last one to join his siblings, wrapping his arms around his mother instead.
“<Dad.>” Lo’ak voice is just as wavering as his mother’s, weighty and sad. “<Thank you.>”
Jake doesn’t respond, just nodding his head in silence as they fall asleep.
Sully's stick together even when one is gone.
Jake wakes up slowly, eyes adjusting to the light that seeps through. He moves to grab onto someone in the group pile they had clambered together last night to find no one around him.
His fingers grasp onto fabric instead, and in his half-awake state he grumbles about someone leaving their loincloth in a bad spot again.
He opens his eyes up to see grey. He always hated grey.
“<Huh?>” He blinks again, fluorescent lights upon a grey ceiling not the same as before.
The ceiling was stained in the exact same way as it was in his apartment back on Earth, the mold stain in the shape of Canada that never changed despite Tommy doing everything in his power to change it.
He realises for a second, in his half-awake state, that he hadn’t thought about Tommy in years. Sure, he had thought about his parents and his ailing grandmother he left behind on Earth. But not Tommy. Not since the RDA had left. Not since Neteyam and Kiri.
But he supposed children really made you change your thoughts around.
Jake blinks again for a third time, brushing a pale pink hand up to his face.
Wait a second-
He sits upright with a jolt, breath unsteady. He stares at the dingly little kitchen from his old apartment.
It looked just like he remembered before he left for Pandora.
Memories flooded back to him, of blood and Neteyam and-What was happening? Was this some kind of dream? Some kind of nightmare?
He glances around again, seeing pamphlets about Pandora strew around. His wheelchair is sitting right nearby. It had been years since he had seen it, the faded stickers still the same ones he had slapped onto the day he bought it from the second hand shop.
The 'Sully' graffitied on the back still there in the spraypaint he had applied with Tommy as they sat in Rehab together.
The holoscreen was chattering on about the extinct tiger they brought back from the dead.
It had been news for weeks he vaguely recalled, memories blurred still.
“<Neytiri? Lo’ak? Kiri?>” He started to call, only to get abruptly interrupted when someone entered the tiny shared studio area.
The second bedroom door opens and his old roommate from Earth steps out, half-awake and clutching his head in a headache.
When Tommy bought this apartment, before Jake got shipped back from Venezuela, he had lent out the spare room to Mark for some form of income.
And then he let Jake crash on his couch until they planned to move him uptown to their Grandmother’s apartment after Tommy left for his job on Pandora.
Mark was unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your perspective, most likely the one who inherited everything when Jake didn’t return from his one-way trip.
But here Mark was, stumbling into the kitchen and scrounging through the pantry cabinet like he was some kind of rat. He honestly was some kind of rodent, like a nantang if it was smaller and less hygienic, if Jake’s memory served him right.
“<Is this some kind of dream?>” He mutters, tongue far more used to Na’vi than English at this point.
Mark looks at him, puzzled. “Dude, what did you say?”
Why was he dreaming about Mark of all things? He wasn’t even that significant to him at all.
Jake shifts, trying to stand up, only to feel nothing.
Nothing from below the waist. He stared down at his legs for a moment, brain trying to work overtime why dream-him couldn’t move.
He just watches Mark shuffle back into his room without saying anything further. His gaze lingers, staring at the peeling paint and metal.
He tries to think back on ways to figure out if you were dreaming or not. This feels, no, it must be, a lucid dream of some kind.
He tries to glance at the pamphlets, staring at the smaller text before glancing away.
‘ Join the RDA today and make a difference on Pandora! ’ it cheerfully says.
He looks back again, and it's the same, clear as day.
He isn’t dreaming.