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There’s something wrong with Spider. Kiri knows there is. But there’s something wrong with all of them, right now - Tuk, crying herself to sleep; Lo’ak, itching to run away, eyes downcast; Dad, pretending his eyes aren’t red when he wakes up; Mom, disappearing to hunt every morning - so she pushes it away.
He’s just grieving, that’s all. Like the rest of them.
Kiri swims through the water. It’s weird, without Neteyam there to pull her back, with his sharp smiles and his sighs and his - Dad will totally kill us if he finds out.
But he’s with Eywa now. He’s not really gone, even though Lo’ak is sure he is, even though Lo’ak blames himself. She can feel him, sometimes: when Mom and Dad make tsaheylu, when they smile and sob, seeing his younger self; in the way the world pulses around her; in the back of her mind, telling her to be cautious. She can feel that indescribable tug in her gut - there you are, brother. Even if she won’t ever see him again, laughing at Lo’ak tripping over, or squeezing her shoulder during mealtimes because he knows she feels strange, voice low and urgent as he hisses to them to go home, already.
He’s still around. He’s just not here.
She starts spending time with Tsireya, helping her treat the wounded. Their methods are a little different than what Kiri is used to - air and wet pastes instead of bandages and sap - but it’s familiar, this work. And if Ronal minds, she doesn’t say it. Ronal is - a little weird, now, not quite as cold, not quite as sharp, but her eyes are still critical, watching Kiri like she’s trying to figure her out. Still, Kiri talks to Tsireya, between seeing people, walking two and from the marui, looks into those wet, warm eyes, that affection, that pity, that censured hope, and tries to pretend like she’s not seeing ghosts wherever she looks.
Some days she spends with Tuk, finding shells on the sea. “I think ‘Teyam would have liked this one,” Tuk says, occasionally, sad, and Kiri nods.
“Why don’t you ask him, next time?”
Tuk looks up, stares at Kiri. “When?”
“When you see him at Ranteng Utralti. When you make tsaheylu.”
“Oh,” Tuk says, quietly. “But that’s not really him, is it?”
Kiri laughs. It feels weird. “Of course it is, Tuk.” How can it not be obvious to everyone else, when it’s obvious to her?
They find the caves. Tsireya took me here a couple of times, Lo’ak says, and Tuk sniggers, and Kiri grins at him, bumps Spider’s shoulder.
“He’s in lo-ove,” she whispers, and he snorts, says it back. It feels, for a moment, like they’re all together again, until Lo’ak yells.
“Life is shit!”
Tuk laughs, wetly. Kiri swallows past the ache in her chest.
“Don’t say that sort of sh-stuff, alright, Tuk? Dad’ll have my head,” Lo’ak says. Tuk laughs harder.
Kiri breathes. Tuk is still laughing, and Kiri shouldn’t - shouldn’t make things worse. “She won’t,” Kiri says, keeps her voice light. She jumps into the water, lies on her back, floats. Stares at the roof: at its blackness, its silence, its warmth. Like an embrace from The Great Mother. Like hope. Like the knowledge that Neteyam is gone - that he will always be gone - but he remains in her heart, in her memories. In moments like these. “Try this. It’s beautiful,” she says, after a few moments.
“It just looks black,” Spider says.
Kiri rolls her eyes. “Just because you have no taste, Monkey-boy,” she says, past the lump in her throat, and Spider jumps into the water, splashing her and Lo’ak and Tuk, and they’re laughing, and for a moment, everything is almost okay.
“He didn’t kill Quaritch,” Lo’ak hisses.
Kiri looks up from her weaving. “What?”
“Spider. He didn’t - he had the chance to, and he saved him.”
Kiri stares at her hands, all five fingers, like her Ma. He saved him. “What do you mean?” Spider would have told her, surely. But maybe that’s what he’s been trying to do, voice halting in the middle of the night.
“Spider confessed.” Lo’ak bites the words out, walks away, tail flicking behind him.
Kiri’s fingers are gripping her weave tighter than she’d realised. She relaxes them. Spider - Spider’s Spider. He loves them like his own. He’s Kiri’s brother. He has a reason. He has to. She knows it, deep in her gut, firm and unyielding. He has to.
She finds Spider at the shore. He’s staring at nothing, into the darkness. She feels that familiar call: the lingpay, swimming silently through the water; the txampayse glowing, bright blue, the hum of life in the air.
“It’s me.” she says, sitting down next to him. “I’m angry at you, you skxawng.” She tries to turn her voice teasing at the end, like before. It doesn’t work.
Spider looks away, swallows. “I know.”
Something in her chest stutters, grows, hot and burning. “You should have told me! I’m your best friend, aren’t I?”
“Yeah.” Spider’s voice is quiet.
“You should have killed him. You should have. After what he did to Neteyam - after what he did to me, to you - you should have taken his life him where he stood.” Kiri’s voice is firm, choked. It’s what Mom would have done, she knows. What Dad would have done. What Lo’ak would have done. Maybe even what she would have done, with Eywa’s blessing, with that heady strength that comes with her gift, her curse.
“Yeah,” Spider says. His voice is small. Different.
She sighs. But she knows Spider. She knows him well: that sharp, cheeky grin; those fiery eyes; words like knives from his mouth. That strangeness, on those long nights, words he’s never said. “But that’s not you, is it?”
Spider doesn’t answer.
The words come. She can see Spider’s face start to even into something like thankfulness, something like guilt. “I know you’re not him, Spider. I know you can’t take a life so easily when death is staring you in the face, when there’s no fight around you. When there’s…when someone needs to be saved. You’re better than him.” Her voice sounds bitter, even if she doesn’t want it to. All she can think of is Neteyam, that gut-punch-jerk of losing him.
Spider’s words come slowly. “I didn’t go with him,” he says, finally. “He asked me to. I couldn’t.”
“Good,” Kiri says, finally. Thinks of Lo’ak, racing Spider, years upon years. Tuk, asking Spider to carry her - please, please, please? Her parents, abandoning him, no matter how hard she protests. “You have us.”
Kiri swallows, sits beside Spider, stares at the guilt and relief blooming on his face, and pretends like she is not lying.