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The air burned.
Before her, Sev’iri’s hands were blurry where they groped across the wall for a release hatch–for anything.
She felt the bottom of the door with her searching hands and tried to slip her fingers under it, but it was no use. The massive door was meant for AMP suits and her weakened state would prove useless for getting it to budge.
Finally she sagged to the cold floor below, wheezing, and closing her eyes. She could endure this. It never lasted much longer than this.
There was a crackle over the radio then Mercer’s voice, amused, cut through. “That’s enough Harding.”
A loud beep sequence followed and the lights switched to green. Soft hissing filled the room, drawing out her pounding heart as stable air filled the space, replacing the human air Harding had subjected her to.
“Damn, Mercer.” Harding’s voice loomed over her, and Sev’iri’s eyes opened to shiny boots a few feet from her face. “Ruining my fun. Get up!”
With a harsh cough she pushed her hands and knees, then to a squat. Aware if she didn’t move any faster, regardless of her dizzy state, Harding would likely get physical.
She hacked and stood up shakily, feeling herself sway and shiver, finally focusing on the woman before her.
“Come on–back to the bunks.” Sev’iri turned, watching as the door she crawled to hissed and rose upwards. She rubbed her throat as she walked, wincing at each breath she drew in of proper air. Her lungs felt raw as though rocks had been rubbed throughout them. It would hard to rest tonight, and even harder to eat in the morning. If she even was permitted breakfast.
Harding ditched her in the hallway that led to the sleeping quarters for all the Na’vi children. She entered her room, alone and completely in the dark.
There were no more shared bunks after Aha’ri died.
She was accustomed to not going to bed at the proper curfew due to Harding's short temper and Mercer’s sick punishments and did not even need to feel her way to her bed. Simply took five steps forward and fell to her side.
Sev’iri watched Alma’s long blue tail swish. Back and forth. Twitch as she processed a question from Teylan, then continued in a rhythmic pattern. Alma paced up and down between the desks, hands moving in the air as she gestured again to the bright screen at the front of their classroom.
“Sev’iri?... Sev’iri?” She blinked, focusing on Alma’s concerned face. “Is everything alright?”
“Yes. I am just..tired today.” Sev’iri answered softly, waiting for Alma to return back to their lesson. She could see in the pained, pinched look on Alma’s face–and the way the others shifted uncomfortably in their seats– that Alma knew why she was tired. But she couldn’t say anything about it.
She was in deep trouble with Mercer. The day before, in their weapons handling class, harding had broken Nor’s hand during her demonstration of how to hold a gun. Sev’iri hadn’t meant to get angry, normally she could swallow back her emotions and wait like Ri’nela or Teylan. Shoulders slumped and eyes averted. But she’d felt so fiercely about Nor’s crying that she’d pointed her own gun at Harding, hissing and growling.
Harding hadn’t seemed bothered, Sev’iri thought about the look on her face. Harding looked as if she’d just confirmed something that pleased her. Class had been dismissed, and she’d spent most of the night deep cleaning all the guns Harding could find.
Mercer had shown up during their evening lecture though, and Alma had practically begged him to stop.
“Merc–John, please!” Alma had pleaded. “Just let me work one on one with her–it was a mistake! ”
“That's enough Alma!” Mercer’s voice was sharp and Sev’iri flinched, eyes closing to block out the harsh lights of the classroom. His cruel eyes had bore into Sev’iri’s. “You know what happens when you break contact.”
She shook her head, dispelling the memory, and focused again on Alma's swishing tail, now more angry and jerky in its movements. She even stopped talking for more than a minute and ignored Teylan’s questions about economics…huh?
Nor sat next to her, his injured hand hidden beneath the table, occasionally he’d give her an unbothered smile, which helped her relax a little. His hand would heal, it had too.
“Anyways,” Alma straightened, then pointed her hand at the display screen which now filled the entire front wall of the room. “Why don’t we switch to more fun topics.”
In front of their desk Teylan whined while Ri’nela perked up, staring at the loading icon of the RDA insignia. Sev’iri sat up a bit more, too. Alma wasn’t really allowed to show them much outside of Mercer’s curriculum–which was mostly combat or anything that furthered his own interests on Pandora. But sometimes Alma would show them pictures of the planet, or its animals, or clips of songs.
In a quick burst of light the screen loaded a brilliant picture of greens and blues and purples and pinks. Sev’iri stared at the image with open mouthed wonder. The tall trees, the hanging plants and darting insects.The sky was several hues of blue and orange–a sunset is what Alma called it– and so vast. The image slid to the next, showing thick forest, with lush trees and plants and a darting group of–
“Viperwolves!” Teylan shouted. Clearly over his pouting as he muttered the names for everything he could remember.
The viperwolves were moving in the photo and she realized it was because they were watching a camera recording of the forest, perhaps even at this minute.
“I cannot wait to go out there.” Sev’iri murmured and Ri’nela turned to smile at her in agreement.
“It will be such an amazing experience to see our home.” The other girl murmured. “To meet others like us.”
Alma looked nervous at the statement, her eyes darted to the doors like she half expected Mercer to break through. “J-just remember, you're here on behalf of the RDA to help us connect with other clans.”
They all just sighed contentedly, and with a soft smile Alma relaxed. The screen shifted again and Sev’iri’s mouth dropped open in shock. The picture had been taken from quite a distance away but the entire center of the image was cut through by a brilliant series of arches, bone looking rock that curved up out of the earth like a dome. Small specks dotted near the top, large enough that from the distance she knew they were the banshees the soldiers complained about all the time. She stared at the image as long as she could, committing it to memory and to heart.
Ahari remembered more of Pandora, after all, Sev’iri was so small when Mercer took them in. But her sister could gush for hours about what all she could remember from her years before the RDA. Her favorite thing had been the sky.
“It is the colors that never end!” Ahari’s voice creeps up from memory. Only three years before had she said that, and now she could only exist in their minds. She stared at a new image of the sunset ahead and tried to remember the words in their native language again. But since Ahari’s death they'd been too afraid to speak it with fear that Mercer was constantly listening in.
But hopefully, one day, they’d be permitted to learn Na’vi again and to finally see the never ending colors Ahari had promised.
Sev’iri watched as the soldiers stepped into the room. Slow, almost at ease movements, but behind their masks their eyes focused on all the Na’vi standing before them. Nor hissed, stepping before Ri’nela and Teylan, with a pivot the guns trained on her where she stood apart from them.
Then the doors opened again, and Alma tore into the room, her long legs covering the ground between her and the soldiers before they could turn fully and then Sev’iri saw the gun in her hands, then Alma aimed at the soldiers.
And shot them.
Sev’iri watched the blood seep from the fallen humans, too confused and nervous to understand what Alma was doing–or that in that moment she’d saved their lives.
“Come on! We have to go!” Alma screamed. Nor pushed the others ahead of him, and then tugged at Sev’iri–clearly he was the only one who could function at this moment.
She didn’t even know Alma knew how to use a gun. She’d always just been their kind, almost-Na’vi, instructor.
“Sev’iri!” This time Nor grabbed her and pulled. “We must run .”
The base seemed so foreign. The hallways were dark, save for disturbing red light that flared and spun, illuminating the hallway in disorienting flashes. They ran, following alma through parts of the base she didn't know existed.
Until finally, then doors slid behind them, cutting off the sounds of the alarms and the lights flickered on to reveal… a room full of tanks?
Alma raised her hands, shushing Teylan’s panicked questions.
“But mercer–” Teylan began, voice weak..
“Mercer tried to have us killed!” Nor shouted.
“But!”
“ Teylan!” Ri'nela and Sev’iri said in unison.
Alma waved her hands in the air. “Hey! I need you guys to listen–please! It’s the only way you make it through this.”
Nor challenged Alma back but Sev’iri couldn’t hear much; she focused on the clear chambers, whose doors were now sliding back–big enough inside to hold them.
Alma took her arm a few moments later and encouraged her to sit, and with one glance at the others she folded herself down into the tank. But her panic rose as the lid sealed and her breath fogged against the glass, meeting Alma’s teary eyes one last time.
She wished she could be with the others, because inside this machine she could only feel how far they’d been torn from their own planet–from each other.
Her vision began to cloud, easing the fear a bit, and finally she watched Alma mouth an apology before her five fingers trailed off of the clear pod door and Sev’iri fell into sleep.
Waking from the eternal sleep had felt like rising through a warm ocean. A gradual rise and bump from her heartbeat. She'd dreamed of something while she's been sealed away, but now it eluded her, sinking back down into the depths as light began to pulse into her world again.
Now felt nothing like that.
Sev’iri’s heart was in her throat for a long while after she narrowly escaped Harding and Mercer’s wrath. Fingers in her hair, breathing heavy, muscles both tensed and fatigued at her frantic running. She had been so strong before Alma had sealed them away, but her body had changed in her sleep. She crouched for a moment on the pipes, sucking in a shaky breath.
So’lek had not answered when she’d radioed him, when he’d saved her from Harding and Mercer just moments before. Without Alma or the others she felt restless and afraid, and So’lek had been the only connection to them. To her survival.
Carefully she raised up a bit, still needing to fold into herself in the maintenance tunnel, and moved into the room outside. It was quiet here, in the ruins of what TAP had once been and gunfire sounded no more than faint little ticks in the distance. Sev’iri rose, finding her legs a bit more shaky than before.
Eventually a hole in the concrete revealed a fallen ceiling and path into a tunnel, full of shafts of metal and flickering lights and to her shock, plants.
She quickened her pace. She could get out.
Sometimes, water puddles shifted and glowed. And strange colors and glimmers dotted the wreckage of TAP. She stopped her sprint at the sight of a gash in the ceiling, revealing a warm light that beamed down and illuminated the space.
The sun. She was seeing the sun.
When she was certain she was near her exit form the place she made a leap on to twisted tree roots, submerged in dark water. It squished between her toes, the moss on the bark soft and gentle, unlike the metal grating of the building she’d spent her life in. Barefoot, and forced to endure the cold sting and the sharp dig of vents. She trembled, not from exertion, but from some emotion she could not name, and could not swallow back down.
The tunnel beyond yawned on for a many dozen yards, and she could no longer hear the sounds of fighting from behind her. Ahead, a large hole had been ripped open in the hull of the TAP building, the jagged metal covered by foliage and the opening glowing with the light of the outdoors.
Sev’iri slowed, her ears collecting sounds she’d never been allowed to get accustomed to. She’d once memorized the sounds of different AMP's moving, different types of breathing, the whir that machines made. Things that drove the Na'vi children mad, but did not affect the humans. Unlike any of that, these sounds were gentle and kind to her.
Warmth radiated from outside, and her eyes did not yet adjust to the brightness. In that moment, she forgot she was escaping. She forgot about So’lek and Alma and the others. She craved to reach out and touch the plants near her, but the fear Mercer drove into them about how savage Pandora was restrained her. She halted at the opening, scarcely breathing. Waiting for him to snatch her back into the cold dark that was their home for so long. But Mercer did not.
Without looking back, Sev’iri jumped from the ruined place landed in cool water and on smooth rocks. Her tail twitched. Lungs filling with real air. She slid her feet forward step after step, refusing to let them leave the water and followed the stream on for some time. Shimmying her way through the water like a wonderstruck child.
She lifted her eyes, warmed by tears, to the world. She was home.