Chapter Text
Beep… Beep…
Jake tried to blink awake.
Beep… Beep…
His eyes felt glued shut. Why was his body so heavy?
Beep… Beep…
And what was that insistent beeping?
Beep… Beep…
‘Spider!’
Jake’s heart immediately jumped up into his throat as he finally connected what that sound meant. The only thing it could mean.
But what he expected when his eyes snapped open was not what greeted him. He was not in the marui that had become their home. The sound of Spider choking on air not made for him didn’t reach Jake’s ears.
Beep-Beep…
He was in a pure white room. ‘Wh… where am I?’ He tried sitting up, but his body wouldn’t listen. ‘Okay, no moving…’ His eyes squinted around the room, trying to find anything familiar. He tried to calm his breathing. It was not working. Nothing looked familiar.
Beep-Beep-Beep-Beep…
Jake turned towards the sound. ‘Is that a… heart monitor?’
That was the thing beeping insistently. Not Spider’s mask. His son wasn’t suffocating. He could breathe without the mask now. That calmed Jake down enough to get his own breathing under control. ‘But, we don’t have a heart monitor in Awa’atlu. What happened?’
Jake’s eyes followed the cables of the machine as best he could while still laying down. He couldn’t see where they ended, but Jake was pretty sure the machine was hooked up to him. ‘Fuck, what happened this time…’
The last thing Jake could remember was going to bed after the Calf Communion. He and Neytiri had gathered all their — remaining — children and they had all fallen asleep in the swaynivi. What had happened for him to wake up back at High Camp?
Jake looked down at himself, trying to see what had ended him up hooked to a heart monitor.
He shot up, staring down at himself. He blinked. Hard. “What?” he croaked out.
Suddenly, a door to the left slammed open and in came a human he had never seen before. The woman looked panicked as she scanned the room before her eyes landed on Jake. He saw her eyes bug out the moment they made eye contact.
“Oh my God! Doctor!” she shouted behind her, “Room five ‘o seventeen!” Then she was advancing on him.
Jake tried to move, tried to get away. He only managed to fall back, head hitting the lumpy pillow. He didn’t know what was happening. Who was this human? How was he in his human body? His breath hitched at the thought. He needed to move! But not even his upper body would follow his frantic plea.
The woman was suddenly right beside him. The heart monitor was going crazy again. She paused for a second, pursing her lips. Jake stared at her in fear. The woman turned to the monitor and twisted a dial and suddenly it was much quieter.
“Sir.” Her voice was much calmer now and for a wild moment Jake’s only thought was about how good her bedside manners were. She smiled down at him. “Good morning, sir. How are you feeling?”
Jake was momentarily stunned. He stared at her face, studying her expression. Her face was filled with professional concern and compassion. There was nothing hinting at anything else.
“Sir? Can you hear me?” She looked more concerned now.
Jake swallowed before trying to speak. Both to wet his parched throat — it didn't work — and to give himself a moment to remember the English words he needed. “Yeah… I hear you.” His voice was weak and rough, but understandable.
She looked relieved.
Another woman came sprinting through the door. “What’s the problem?!” She was halfway across the room before registering what was happening in the room. She froze for a second before calmly standing up straight and walking over to them. “Good morning, sir. How are you?”
Did everyone here have good bedside manners? “Thirsty,” Jake responded after a second.
The doctor did a little side nod. “Right.”
“What is your name?” the doctor — Doctor Maji, she had introduced herself as — asked.
“…Jake Sully.” Jake said carefully, looking at her reaction. He was pretty sure every human on Eywa’eveng knew who Jake Sully was.
She just smiled and nodded. “Good. Now, Mr. Sully. Do you remember what happened?”
Jake looked at her suspiciously. “No.”
She just nodded and wrote something down. “Okay, then I will tell you. While you were deployed in Venezuela you suffered an accident.” Jake frowned, why was she bringing that up? It happened over 20 years ago. “Since then, you have been in a coma.”
Jake stopped. He couldn’t hear the beeping of the heart monitor anymore. He couldn’t feel the mattress and pillows holding him up in a seated position. Everything felt muffled. ‘A coma?’ He stared at her. ‘No, that- that’s not. That’s not possible. A coma… It has to be some ploy by the RDA.’ Jake refused to believe this woman. But… How was he in his human body? What would they get out of this?
“I understand this is a lot,” Doctor Maji said with pity.
She continued talking, but Jake heard nothing. The nurse from earlier moved around the room. His eyes followed the movement. She pulled a chair over to his bed. Tucked his bed-sheet in properly at the foot-end. Opened the window curtains.
Jake’s eyes widened. Earth… The gray smog-filled sky, broken up by concrete skyscrapers. How was he here? ‘Is what she said true? I’ve been in a coma? Was it all… all of them…?
“How… how long?” Jake asked carefully.
Doctor Maji stuttered on what she had been saying, but answered the question. “Three years and four months. Today is the 27th of March, 2148.”
Four months. It was four months before he’d left Earth. Four months before his life started. ‘Was it a dream?’ Had it all — all of it, all of them — been a figment of his comatose brain’s imagination?
Jake looked down at his hands. His small, pink hands. They looked wrong. They should be blue. They shouldn’t shake with the effort of holding them up off the bed! Tears started welling up. He didn’t want to believe this.
Before his tears could fall the door was suddenly thrown open again. Jake’s head snapped up to evaluate the threat, but froze at what he saw. Or rather, who.
Tommy. In the doorway — alive — panting like he’d run a marathon stood his twin brother. Tommy, who Jake had seen dead. Had seen burning. Had seen turned to ash.
No. This confirmed it. Those memories couldn't have happened. They were fake. Everything had been a dream. His heart shattered at the thought.
Jake’s mouth tasted like ash.
“Jake,” Tommy — alive — whispered into the silence of the room. Jake’s body twitched as if he’d yelled.
Tommy closed the door behind himself carefully, never breaking eye contact with Jake. Then slow and — alive — hesitant, step by step, he came closer to Jake.
Suddenly, as if Jake hadn’t watched him approach, Tommy — alive — was standing right in front of him. They still hadn’t broken eye contact.
Slowly, oh so slowly, like Jake would disappear if he moved too fast, Tommy placed his hand on Jake’s shoulder.
“T- Tommy?” Jake whispered.
Tommy’s face crumbled and tears began falling down his face. “You- you’re awake!” Jake was pulled forward into a crushing hug.