Chapter Text
Every day that Jake woke up, his heart was already starting to pound, it only slowed once he'd looked around him, counted heads.
And every day that Jake woke up, he remembered that there was one less head to count. Five, not six anymore.
No, not anymore.
"I... I want to go home."
Jake squeezed his eyes shut, raising up from the hammock carefully enough not to wake his wife.
He stumbled halfway out of the mauri and staggered to a stop to clutch onto the taut, woven fabric wall beside the entrance for support as he began to shake.
Neteyam's eyes.... it was something that he'd never erase from his mind, something that haunted him in sleep just as much as it did during his waking hours.
He'd been looking to Jake, looking to his father to help him, to save him. And all Jake had been able to do was stare down at him and tell his son they were going home.
To lie to him. Then watch the light leave his firstborn's eyes.
He could still hear Neytiri's wails, pleading with the Great Mother to not let it be so, while Jake hadn't said a thing.
He hadn't been able to, and he still hadn't. He hadn't sobbed, hadn't clutched onto his mate as she had him night after night.
Jake hadn't left that moment. His body moved, he did patrol, he searched below the surface for anything left from the RDA, tried to keep the kids they had left safe.
It was harder and harder every day with Lo'ak.
He didn't blame his son for his brother's death, he blamed himself. He punished Lo'ak, was hard on him because the kid reminded him too much of himself.
Reckless. Stupid.
He had brought them here, he was the one who Neteyam had wanted to save him....
A sob started to build in Jake's throat, his body quaking, and fought to push it down.
He'd failed his son, let his son's last moments show him that his father couldn't save him, couldn't save any of them.
It was just a matter of time before the rest of his family all came to the same conclusion, if they hadn't already.
Neytiri wanted to go home, go back to her people, her forest, but Jake couldn't. Not yet.
How could he face his people? How could he... how could he go back there without Neteyam?
He'd brought this on everyone. It'd started from the moment he'd first laid eyes on Neytiri.
All the people's deaths, Neteyam's.... it was because of him.
So, Jake kept quiet, he did what he had to do, because he couldn't... he couldn't let another of his family die because of him.
He couldn't look into another of their eyes, see them pleading, begging for him to do something and him be helpless to do a damn thing.
Not again. Not if it cost him his own life.
"Jake?"
Jake whipped around to find Neytiri raising up from their hammock, brows furrowed as she scanned him. "Are you-"
"I'm fine, baby," Jake quickly said, plastering on a reassuring smile that he knew didn't fool her in the slightest, but he did it anyways.
Swiping a hand under his nose, avoiding eye contact because if he looked into her amber eyes just once he'd shatter completely, he hurried on his way.
"I, uh, I'm gonna search for wreckage," Jake told her over his shoulder, continuing on even when she called after him, "Did you eat?"
No, he hadn't eaten, but he was alright. These bodies were a lot tougher than a humans' anyway, he could take it. He didn't have the time, he had to get to work or he was gonna go crazy.
Doing something was the only thing that kept the thoughts at bay, that kept Neteyam's last moments from replaying in his head.
If something was eating at you, you got moving. That's what they taught you in the Marines, and Jake had kept at it ever since.
Neytiri or her mother would say that he needed to let his emotions show, talk it out, but this was what worked. So he stuck to it.
"Hey, dad! Dad!"
Heaving a sigh, Jake turned to find Lo'ak rushing after him, and said in his head exactly what he knew his son was about to say.
'Can I come help?'
And just as he'd known, those words left Lo'ak's mouth three seconds later. "Can I come help?"
He took Lo'ak with him quite a bit on these trips, since they were one of the few things the kid could do where Jake could keep an eye on him, but.... not today.
It was loud nearly every moment, but today, memory of Neteyam was just.... it was just too loud. And, God love him, he couldn't stand to have Lo'ak babbling on in his ear about anything that popped into the kid's head.
Had Jake really been like that when he'd first came to Pandora? Neytiri said he was, but he found it somehow hard to believe.
Brushing the thoughts away, Jake shook his head, gaze scanning the horizon automatically. It was something he did so often that it came second-nature, even though Lo'ak clearly thought it was a tad paranoid, given by the eye-roll Jake usually received.
As he did that day.
"No, not today, kid," Jake told him, pointedly ignoring it, and bracing himself for his son's inevitable protests. "You watch over your mother and sisters."
Spider could take care of himself. The kid was almost more lethal than any Na'vi he knew.
He made to go, but Lo'ak's protests, as he'd predicted, had him halting. "Dad, wait! It's just searching for wreckage, what's the big deal with that?"
Again, as he so often found himself doing with Lo'ak, Jake held back a sigh.
"Nothing," he responded, his tone a bit sharper than he'd meant it to be. He just needed to get away, and do this. "Can't you just listen to what I tell you?"
Silence fell, fell so hard that Jake faced Lo'ak, and instantly wanted to hit himself by the look on his son's face. He never could say anything right to that kid.
Neteyam had never wanted it to show when Jake's words had hurt him, but Lo'ak did.
The anger building on that kid's face was familiar to Jake, he'd seen it in his own face too many times, as well as the hurt.
But what sent a stab of pain through Jake was that it was because of him. Always.
People might think it would be, but it wasn't easy talking to a carbon copy of yourself constantly. It was fucking irritating.
"Yes, sir," Lo'ak murmured, and before Jake could say anything more, ran back the way he'd came, leaving Jake to finally release that sigh and hang his head.
Lo'ak believed Jake blamed him for his brother's death, and Jake had let him believe it.
Now, he didn't know how to fix it, didn't know how to tell him, tell anyone, that he'd killed his firstborn son, that the blame was on his shoulders.
Neteyam hadn't been looking at Lo'ak, he'd been looking at Jake.
Every word that left his mouth towards Lo'ak was wrong, everything he did was wrong. Every choice he'd made for this family had been wrong.
Steps heavy, Jake continued on his way.
XXX
He hadn't managed to find anything, not even in the usual spots. Was there nothing left?
If Jake had been thinking straight, not struggling to keep thoughts of his confrontation with Lo'ak out of his mind, he would've called it a day and headed back.
It was late, he was swimming farther out, so far that he'd have skinned Lo'ak alive for it.
But he wasn't thinking straight, and he couldn't stop beating himself up for never knowing what to say to Lo'ak, so he went on.
'Always watch everything going on around you' is a sentence he'd said so many times to his children they could probably recite it in their sleep.
But this day, Jake didn't follow his own words, and in true Lo'ak fashion, didn't watch where he was going, didn't see the akula aiming straight for him until it'd knocked him square against a reef.
And he would've tried to fight back, as another thing he'd said to his children, 'Sullys never quit'. But today, they did.
You could say it was just because the hit had caused his head to slam into the reef, sending him hurtling towards unconsciousness, but it wasn't that truly.
He'd been going for so long. So so long.
When Jake had lost the use of his legs, his brother had told him not to quit. Then when his brother had died, he told himself not to quit.
When Hometree had been attacked, when Neytiri and the rest of the clan had left him lying where he was, he hadn't quit.
When it seemed the odds were against them, he hadn't quit, had reunited the clans.
When Quaritch had returned, he hadn't quit, had brought his family here, then forged into battle when there wasn't any other choice.
Then Neteyam had died in a foreign land, looking to his dad for help. Maybe that's when he'd truly quit.
Something had broke in Jake that day, what urged him to keep going had suddenly went quiet, something had snapped in him.
He'd went on and had kept busy, yes, but he'd quit the moment his firstborn's body had quit.
Quit life, quit hoping, how ever you wanted to say it, but he'd quit.
And now, Jake felt his eyes start to fall closed, the air in his lungs get replaced by water, felt his consciousness begin to slip away and didn't do anything to stop it.