Chapter Text
“Lopez?” He was short on ammo, with one mag left for his M69, and none in his Zarkov-33R and short on manpower too. “Lopez, come in!”
The static was deafening in his ear . . . almost as deafening as the high chorus of chirps and whistles that echoed endlessly through the dense jungle. So, the assailant had jammed their comms . . . it made sense, Jake Sully’s load of Na’vi were now apparently tech-using gunslingers, they’d learn how to block comms as the first part of entrapping an enemy.
Quaritch span on his heels, looking around . . . where was the kid?
Shit.
Of course, the moment the opportunity was there, he zipped off, probably hoping whoever this was killed him and Lopez. For fuck’s sake, he gave the kid a little bit of leeway just once and he darted?
If I live, I’m giving that kid the whooping of a lifetime. And then he stopped himself. If? Hell, I’ve still got one mag spare, that’s enough for a score of natives.
He was fine. He’d find Lopez, get his comms back and get a pickup, and find that fucking kid. He just had one Na’vi to kill, one Na’vi who had somehow already inexplicably dodged multiple hails of bullets.
He leapt over a tangle of roots, his head never stopping its swivel as he landed and kept on moving, hissing Lopez’s name into the comms again, hearing nothing.
“Damn you,” he muttered, slowly turning. “Damn you all to-“ Oh.
There was Lopez. Still. Dead. Gone. Bruises marked his face and throat, but a stab wound was what had gotten him, right in the centre of his chest, one drive straight through to the heart.
Quaritch absently patted his own knife, knowing he had all the strength he needed. The Na’vi were creatures of grace and fluidity, as Spider told it . . . strength was a human trait, and it was why they would win. He looked down at Lopez again, scowling.
Where was your strength, then?
Bitterness and a dim regret swelled through him as he moved on and away from Lopez’s corpse, staving away the fear he knew was somewhere close . . . just like the Na’vi. He would not be bested so easily, not him, not ever, not by any one of them. No, he was tried and tested, and had more than enough strength to kill any one of those tree-fucking savages.
He just needed to catch a sight of any of them. He just needed to-
Oh.
---
It was a fortuitous day. Ever since that day in 2154 when her husband, Miles Quaritch, had murdered her fellow avatar pilot and best friend Grace, and gotten himself subsequently killed by Jake Sully’s lady love, Reka had cursed that she’d not been afforded the opportunity to punch him across the face just one last time. But now, she could do so much more than that. Miles had come back, and he had come back with a vengeance, kidnapping the son she had claimed for her own even though he was born of her own husband’s disloyalty . . . taking Spider, their child, and forcing Jake and his family to flee.
Reka had one single intention, kill Quaritch, as she had promised Neytiri, and save Spider, as she had promised Kiri, Lo’ak, Tuktirey and herself.
It seemed this day she would kill two birds with one stone. One of those blasted recombinants was already dead; he had put up a decent enough fight, but Reka was taller and stronger and she’d had the jump on him, knowing the terrain as he had not.
Mercy was not something to be afforded, not where the RDA were concerned, not anymore. This wasn’t the mining colony of old that they faced, but a full military operation, one seeking to entirely subdue the Na’vi . . . or to wipe them off the face of Pandora if deemed necessary.
And Quaritch now was a part of it again, as if he hadn’t been awful enough before...
I ignored too much, she mused, I saw in him what I wanted to, and didn’t see what I was afraid to.
Some affection remained in her heart, for the memory of who he had been before Pandora . . . but he had soured with the years of being forced to sit idle and act at the beck and call of corporate big wigs, and he had always wanted another fight. The Na’vi just happened to be the only ones he could plausibly set his warmongering ways on.
So, he had to be dealt with . . . and death was the most permanent solution to the problem he posed. The notion was a bitter and painful twist in her gut, but it was a necessary thing. His scent was cloying the air; it was the same fucking deodorant he’d worn all those years ago, but so much more thick and potent now that her sense of smell was dialled to a hundred and ten in her new body.
He was easy to find; loud and clumsy, reborn to a recombinant body, but possessing none of the grace and deftness that allowed the Na’vi to slip under roots and over branches with silent ease.
“Reka?”
Speaking of deftness, she thought, recognising Spider’s voice and spinning to see the boy she had taken for her own. “Spider,” Reka whispered, sliding her knife back into its sheath and smiling at him, “you okay?”
“Just about.” He leapt down and threw himself at her, wrapping his arms around her leg in a tight hug, one Reka assessed she had enough time to allow herself to return, squeezing Spider tight. “There’s a tracker in my mask,” he said.
“The flux vortex will be messing with it already a bit,” Reka promised, pulling away. “The old shack is near, wait inside it and I’ll have someone come to get you home.”
Spider quirked a brow. “Are you not coming?”
“I have something to finish,” she said, in a cool enough tone that her seriousness was conveyed. “You’ll be back at High Camp when I return. I’ll explain everything that has happened since.”
“Okay.”
Reka pulled him in, bent over and pressed a quick kiss to his brow. “Go on, I’ll see you soon.”
And, into the brush, Spider vanished.
“Spider’s safe and at the old shack,” she said quickly into her comm device, “someone pick him up and get him home, pronto.”
“Copy,” came the fuzzy response, and that was that.
Reka rose back to her full height and set her senses back to her mission . . . the mission she could hardly believe she was setting herself to.
It has to be done, she told herself. You have to do this. He can’t be allowed to hurt anyone ever again . . . ever.
So, finding his odour again, Reka set off, tracking a direct path to where she knew he was probably awaiting her with a fully loaded clip ready to empty.
She wondered what he would do when he saw her . . . whether he would freeze or whether he would spark into motion and unload his weapon at her.
Reka almost hoped it would be the latter; she didn’t want any more conflict to take root in her own heart about what she had to do than had. She wanted him to fight her; she wanted to have no choice but to kill him . . . not that she did have a choice now.
She had to, she had to, she had to.
And she remembered his young smile before that shipment off to Nigeria, she remembered how he had kissed her before they had gone into cryo so many fucking years ago, she remembered him leaving for his first recon mission, and she remembered him returning in a stretcher with his head slashed up by a set of viperwolf claws . . . and she remembered how he had turned cold and scathing thereafter, oft vacating the bed before she’d even awoken, always pushing the hardline approach on Selfridge, always leaping to put down any chances at peace with the Na’vi . . . ordering the attack that had killed Sylwanin . . . the attack Reka had witnessed with her own two eyes as she’d helped Grace out with the running of the old school.
You’d think it was one of the damn Na’vi that got him on his first day out there by the grudge he held against them, she mused.
It was part-sad, part-amusing, part-infuriating. He had always held a prideful spark of self-held superiority, but in his time on Pandora, it had only grown more and more dangerous. He despised being upstaged, outshone, or in the shadow of anyone or anything.
Damn you, Reka cursed in silence, slipping beneath a high tangle of sprouting roots. Damn you straight to hell and back. Why could you not just adapt? Why did you have to become this? It wasn’t enough to think the thoughts; she wanted to scream them out in his face, to demand an answer and not let him die until she got one.
She wanted to hit him. She wanted to hurt him. She imagined how it would feel striking him across the jaw, her fist closed, jabbing forth and slumping him with one hit.
Or maybe two, she thought, only slightly hopeful. One for Grace, one for me. And then there was to be a killing blow . . . Reka supposed that one was for all the Na’vi who Quaritch had hurt or killed, and there were a great many of those.
She followed the scent in silence, wondering for a moment if Quaritch had the nous to make use of his newfound sense of smell . . . probably not, else he’d know she was coming and light up her direction with gunfire. But there was nothing, nothing but the ever-intensifying smell of him.
And then there was the sight of him, looking around frantically, terror in his eyes. Of course, Reka thought. He watched his own death footage and then saw half his squad die at Na’vi hands . . . finally he respects the Na’vi . . . finally he fears them. Maybe he will finally fear me too…
Inexplicably emboldened, Reka left her cover, her blade in its sheath, and stepped out right before the man she had once loved . . . the man she so hated.
He saw her, and his eyes went wider, ears pinning back against his crew cut head. “Reka?” But, for all the fear he reeked of, his weapon didn’t raise.
“Miles,” she said slowly, not letting any emotion show on her face. “I want my son back.”
But his head still seemed to have not wrapped itself around the fact that it was her . . . as if it had even seemed so long as a few months for him, implanted as his memory was. For her, it had been sixteen fucking years of regret and alcohol-fuelled self-hatred.
“Reka . . . what?”
“I want my son back,” she said again, stepping closer; it was a pretence for her presence, one that might lower his guard, and she planned to use it. “You recall kidnapping him not so long ago, I presume?”
“Wait, wait.” His voice was hollow. “Lopez . . . was that you?”
She just kept advancing. “Miles, I want my fucking son back.”
And, just as she was barely twenty feet from him, he raised his pistol. “Hold fucking still,” he growled. “What the fuck are you still doing on-world?”
“Something you never quite got the hang of . . . living.”
“You’re with them, Reka? Are you fucking serious?” His eyes narrowed. “I never took you for a traitor.”
“And I never took you for a maniacal mass murderer,” she spat back, “but here we are.” She took a moment and considered him, letting her eyes narrow and lips peel back in a snarl. “And don’t ever speak to me of loyalty again.”
“Reka, I-“
“Shut it,” she hissed at the creature that, now she looked, did look so much like the face she had once fallen in love with . . . as long ago as that had been.
Slowly, she began to prowl around him, her eyes narrow and focused on the barrel of the pistol he had pointed her way.
“So, are you gonna kill me?” she asked. “You gonna shoot me like you did Grace? Or are you gonna take a Dragon and kill another two-hundred Na’vi in a single stroke, just because you can.”
Something in his eyes hardened. “I might just.”
She gave a quiet breath of laughter. “Of course you would. You never did care about anything that wasn’t yours.”
“I cared about you,” Quaritch told her.
“Because I was yours,” Reka drawled, giving a sarcastic impression of him. “But you were never mine, were you, colonel?”
He stepped back, the point of his gun lowering just a little. For a moment, she considered taking the opportunity to catch him off there and then, but no, he was sharp enough to shoot. She needed to get closer. So, she just kept prowling.
If she could keep him talking, she was sure she could get his guard low enough to subdue him. “So, now what? You come back, guns blazing, as ever, to wreak havoc and misery on good people?”
“To restore peace and order-”
“The Na’vi had that right until the moment you came back!” Reka hissed. “What? Just because they don’t have voting booths and a fucking oppressive class structure, you think it makes them anarchists?”
He said nothing and only scowled.
“Or is it that you think they desperately need our technological advancements? Because they suffer so greatly without us?”
“Reka, you’re being-“
“-unreasonable?” Reka watched the pistol point a little lower. “Miles, it was always you who refused to see reason at every step.”
“Jake Sully turned you, didn’t he?”
“Fuck you.”
“What was it? Did they promise you a pass to watch the viperwolves frolic day and night? Is that why you turned your back on us?”
You’re unbelievable.
“Did Jake promise you endless nights of savage revelry if you turned tail? Did he promise you that all of Pandora would be yours if you just turned your back on me?”
He thinks it was all planned, Reka realised. “He promised me nothing. I made that decision because I have principles.”
“Ha! What fucking principles are those?” Quaritch hissed. “You roll in the grass and fuck in the mud? You shoot an arrow and drag some creature home to roast over a spit and have a sing and a dance? Those principles?”
She didn’t even want to kill him in that moment; she just wanted to punch him in the face over and over and over again, once for every single word that spilled past his lips.
One step closer, she took. “And what are yours?” she asked. “Point and shoot, no questions asked?”
“Stand by your brothers and sisters,” he hissed. “You didn’t just betray me, Reka, you betrayed them all, everyone who died on that day, and everyone who died every day before that.”
There it is. That damn military mentality. “You could’ve saved them all and yourself by not blowing up their home and massacring their people.”
“They should’ve moved when we asked ‘em polite.”
Another step closer. “It was their home.”
“There were others they could go to, other clans, a million other trees.”
“And there are a billion other worlds you and your colonial cronies can go to besides this one.”
“Shame only one in a billion is habitable.”
Two, she thought grimly, taking another step. “This would all be so much easier if you just didn’t try to rob them of their homes.”
Quaritch cocked his head. “We don’t have much of a choice.”
“Hm?” Reka stopped in her tracks.
“You haven’t heard? Old Mother Nature’s close to kicking the bucket back home, ain’t gonna be much living over there soon enough.”
Play sympathetic, she told herself. “You’re serious? Earth’s actually dying?” She put on a tone of actual surprise, letting her eyes widen and her stance loosen.
“Yeah,” he said, loosening a little more, as she had hoped. “And that’s twenty billion lives about to be lost if we didn’t succeed.”
Taking all the menace from her stance, Reka continued forward.
“That’s all the kids you played with at school, and all their kids, too. Every little squalling baby and every curious, playful toddler, every moody teen and every new parent, little Annie in her cradle and old grandma Bessie in her rocking chair, all of them.”
It wasn’t that the prospect of Earth dying wasn’t awful, but it just wasn’t shocking anymore. All Reka knew was that Earth’s population couldn’t come to Pandora without dooming the Na’vi, and she couldn’t allow that, so she had to stop it.
Quaritch took a step closer. “Reka, don’t you see? We’re doing this for everyone, for all of humanity.”
Maybe you believe that, but you’re just lining the pockets of people who don’t care about you or me.
Closer, he stepped, close enough that he could reach out and caress her face with a painfully gentle touch. In his eyes, she saw hope, and she felt her gut twist. “Please . . . it’s not too late to turn back.”
A tear rolled down her cheek as she leaned into the embrace, craving the warmth she had once known. It is, my love, she thought, holding his armed right hand with her left. It’s too late for them . . . and it’s too late for us.
Thwack!
Her right hand flashed forward, catching him right across the jaw and sending him stumbling. A quick hook from her left hand connected with his temple and sent him thumping to the floor, out cold.
Now kill him, she told herself, resting a hand on the sheath at her hip. It’s what you came out here to do, just slit his throat and be done with it.
But as she looked upon his face, she couldn’t bear to . . . she hated him, but she loved him too.
So, after thinking for a short moment, she went for the rope wrapped around her waist and bound her husband, hands and feet.
Maybe, she told herself, just maybe, he will be more useful alive…