Chapter Text
Lo’ak is genuinely considering running outside and throwing himself into the ocean. Sweat is still cooling down his spine from working through the intense heat of the day, and his stomach is aching with hunger. He wants nothing more than to shove whatever scraps of food are left down his throat and then collapse for the next couple of hours.
But as soon as he had walked into the marui and had seen Jake’s foreboding figure looming over the entrance, he knew he was in for trouble. He just hadn’t known for what.
“So what, boy, you’re telling me the gun grew legs and walked out on its own? Is that what you’re rolling with?”
Apparently one of his father’s guns is missing. Considering Lo’ak’s history with his father’s favourite weapons, he himself is almost surprised that he wasn’t the one to take it. At least, this time he wasn’t.
“I didn’t touch it,” Lo’ak reaffirms. He tries to keep his tone even, but he can’t help the slight tremor that escapes. It’s not guilt, though he knows his father will determine it that way.
He knows his father wouldn’t hit him. That’s not something that Jake Sully would do. For that, he has to give his father credit. Because even after all the times Lo’ak had been a nuisance, or had recklessly disobeyed him, or endangered everyone around him, his father had never struck him for it.
Even when Neteyam-
Lo’ak imagines grabbing the thought by the neck and pushing it beneath the water. He imagines holding it there as it thrashes and struggles for air, imagines watching it slowly stop fighting and opening its mouth, gagging and heaving until eventually bubbles stop rising to the surface.
Because if he lets it fester, he might actually end up with one of Jake’s guns in his hands again.
It’s kind of ironic to think about, because of course the one time Jake had noticed the gun was missing was the one time Lo’ak truly had nothing to do with it.
Sometimes he wonders what would have happened if Jake had noticed on that day over four years ago. He knows Jake would have immediately branded Lo’ak the culprit. Would he have gone searching for him? Would some part of him, the part from that distant planet among the stars, have intrinsically known what Lo’ak was going to do as soon as he realised that Lo’ak had taken a gun after one of their biggest fights?
Lo’ak will never know.
“Alright then, so who touched it, Lo’ak?” Jake snorts derisively. “Because I know neither of your sisters would, and neither would Spider, so explain to me how one of my guns is missing.”
Lo’ak feels his eyes begin to twitch from the sheer frustration of it all. “Did you even ask them if they took the gun, or are you just assuming it was me? Why do they get the benefit of the doubt?”
Lo’ak knows he shouldn’t argue back. He’s already in hot water for something he didn’t even do. Besides, it’s abundantly clear that Jake has made up his mind about the situation. But still, what else is he meant to do? Staying silent would only confirm Jake’s accusation. Arguing only gets him in more trouble. Lo’ak never even stood a chance.
His father takes another step closer. They are nearly chest to chest, and Lo’ak knows that Jake only does this because it forces Lo’ak to look up at him. “Because unlike when I think about you, I doubt them being this stupid.”
Embarrassingly, Lo’ak feels tears prickling at the corners of his eyes. No matter how placid and obedient he has become, no matter how many times he has pulled his punches or held his tongue or tried to live up to his father’s endless expectations, it would never be enough. Lo’ak’s word will never be enough against anyone else's.
At this point, there is nothing left for Lo’ak to do except to go silent and take the blame. He had thought at one point that whichever one of his siblings had stolen the gun might admit to it after seeing the unfair reaming that Lo’ak was currently receiving, but no such luck.
Just as Lo’ak suspected, Jake interprets his newfound silence as guilt. His lips purse together, and he nods his head slowly, in that infuriating way that makes Lo’ak feel like the scum beneath his father’s feet. As if his father had known all along that Lo’ak was a reckless, useless disappointment, as if he expected nothing more from his delinquent for a son.
“How many times? How many times have we had these conversations, Lo’ak? How many?” His father grips him by the bicep, fingers digging in painfully. Lo’ak automatically goes still, but Jake spins him around and hauls him towards the entrance of the marui.
“How old are you, again, Lo’ak?” Jake says more than asks, but Lo’ak knows he still expects an answer.
“Eighteen, sir,” Lo’ak mumbles. Jake snaps at him to speak up properly and Lo’ak repeats the answer again.
“That’s right, Lo’ak,” Jake remarks condescendingly. “You are eighteen years old. I shouldn’t still have to be telling you to not screw around with weapons.”
“Dad- sir, I swear to Eywa, I didn’t–”
“Enough with the lies!”
Jake shoves Lo’ak forward by the upper arm. Lo’ak’s feet skid on the woven floor, and he nearly trips over himself. His face heats with humiliation as he realises his whole family is watching. He doesn’t know what his father is planning to do to him, but he knows it won’t be good.
What he wouldn’t give for Eywa to strike him with lightning right now.
Neytiri rises as Lo’ak stumbles, her eyes wide with concern. She stands up and moves towards them.
“Ma Jake, enough” she says, glancing sharply up at him. She grabs his wrist in a futile attempt to stop her husband. She tries to loosen his grip on their son, but Jake doesn’t let go until they reach the entrance.
“He says he did not touch it. You will leave him be.” Her tail lashes behind her, and Jake’s jaw only tightens at her words.
“What, and you believe him?” He asks incredulously, raising an arm towards Lo’ak as if his mere existence is a testimony to failure itself. Lo’ak looks down and rubs at the tender skin around his bicep.
“We do not know that he did it. Do not punish him just because you are angry.”
Lo’ak wishes desperately that his mother would stop arguing. He knows she means well, and normally he would appreciate the support. But now all her words seem to do is make Jake more determined to prove that he is right.
“Dad, come on-” Spider starts, only to immediately get shot down.
“Stay out of this,” Jake barks, and then rounds on Lo’ak. “You think you’re a man, now? Think you can take my guns without asking?” Jake spits, not waiting for Lo’ak’s response. “If you’re so tough then, you can spend the night out in the forest and fend for yourself. How about that?”
For a moment, Lo’ak truly believes that his father is not serious. He will take a deep, exasperated breath, and he will tell Lo’ak that he’s grounded for a month and to get his ass to bed, and that will be the end of it.
But Jake only doubles down. “What the hell are you waiting for? Bug out.”
Neytiri snarls at him and says Lo’ak will do no such thing. Lo’ak’s siblings pipe up in a chorus of anger and disbelief, but Jake raises a hand and barks at them all to be quiet.
“This is not a democracy,” he growls. And any hope that his father will change his mind shrivels up and dies.
“Jake, you are being ridiculous. It is nearly dark out.” Neytiri snaps, lowering her voice as though giving her mate the option to reconsider before he embarrasses himself further. “You are angry at him, fine. But you will be angry at him while he sleeps in this home.”
His parents continue bickering, but Lo’ak no longer cares long enough to listen. His chest has gone strangely hollow, and embarrassment and hurt flare up so strongly that all Lo’ak can think to do is leave before he bursts into tears at the injustice of it all. His father wants him out of the house, so he will leave. Fine, he can do that. He doesn’t even want to be here anymore, anyway.
He wonders which ‘here’ he is referring to.
“Fine,” Lo’ak finally mutters.
And truly, Lo’ak is a hopeless, pathetic fool. Because he waits a beat for some sort of disgruntled acknowledgement from his father, or a demand to stay from his mother. But neither of his parents hear him, too busy hissing and snarling at each other over a son they’re not even looking at.
“Lo’ak, do not go!” Kiri yells over the noise, and that is what makes Jake and Neytiri realise that their son is already walking over the suspended support ropes back into the heart of the village.
“Lo’ak,” Neytiri gasps. She runs out to him and grabs his hand. “Come back inside.”
It’s enough to make Lo’ak pause for a moment. He feels the warmth of her palm in his, the smoothness of her skin. She is trying to tug him back inside, and Lo’ak nearly lets her. He is loath to upset his mother, but it is more dangerous to disobey Jake. He knows that this is pathetic of him. His younger self would be horrifically mortified if he found out that he would eventually become too scared to go against his father, checking the world against his reactions, calibrating himself, making sure he hadn’t misstepped. But thirteen year old Lo’ak is dead and gone, and all that is left is eighteen year old Lo’ak who sometimes shamefully feels dead in all but the physical.
He waits for another moment to see if his father will retract his command. Jake is still standing by the entrance flap, expression glacial and hands balled into fists. He doesn’t tell Lo’ak to come back, but he doesn’t tell him to leave, either. Lo’ak knows that if his mother dragged him back inside now, Jake wouldn’t stop her. But that doesn’t mean Jake would be happy about it, and Lo’ak doesn’t want to stay somewhere he’s clearly not wanted.
“It’s alright, I don’t want to make any more trouble,” Lo’ak mutters just loud enough for his mother to hear. He gently pulls his hand out of Neytiri’s and steps back when she tries to take it again.
“Lo’ak-”
“I’ll see you tomorrow, mum,” he says, smiling in a way he hopes is reassuring.
He turns around and walks away, steadfastly ignoring his parents’ bitter bickering behind him.
Lo’ak trudges further into the thick shrubbery, shivering faintly as the chill of the night descends further over the village. He doesn’t have any sort of covering to protect himself against the wind or the rain. It’s not a heavy downpour yet, but he knows it will be soon. This measly excuse for a torch that he’s crafted is slowly dying out, flickering pathetically against the light rain. He’ll have to find some form of shelter before that happens.
Getting wet isn’t the issue anymore, considering how he’s currently soaked to the bone. His Ilu wing is lurking somewhere near the coast where he had dismounted. He isn’t quite sure where he is geographically, but he knows he’s on some sort of islet not far from the Metkayina settlement, and it has enough dense forestry to nearly feel like Na'rìng. That’s enough to make him stay for the night.
Still, he hasn’t found a place safe enough to sleep yet. He doesn’t know the full scope of whatever animals this patch of forest may have, and he isn’t too keen on finding out the hard way. At first he was debating sleeping on a tree, but now that he knows a heavy storm is coming, that’s definitely out of the picture. And he knows that even though finding a place to sleep in the mangroves wouldn’t have been possible, he didn’t have to leave the village altogether. That decision was made almost purely out of spite.
Technically, he could have even stayed with Tonowari. The Olo’eyktan likes him enough, and spending time with Tsireya is always a welcome bonus. It was tempting, but the thought of bothering Tonowari and Tsireya was more than enough to dispel that idea immediately. They already have so many duties to perform and an entire village to worry about. The last thing they need is some stray crashing at their marui because of some stupid little fight.
Lo’ak can handle one night out in whatever place this is. He’s survived worse.
He keeps walking, eyes scanning the unfamiliar surroundings for a safe place to sleep for the night. Some sort of divot or large rock crevice should do. As he searches, rain starts falling heavier over the tree canopy, sluicing down his back, because of course Eywa is giving him a time limit.
His torch is quickly losing the fight, and Lo’ak hovers a hand over the top of it in a measly attempt to stop it from extinguishing. Realising his hand isn’t big enough to shelter the torch completely, he pulls a large leaf off of a low-hanging branch and uses it instead. It works, but barely. And Lo’ak doesn’t know how much tree sap is left for the fire to burn through. It’s almost certainly going to fizzle out before he manages to find a place to sleep. His eye sight is infinitely better than a sky-person’s, but it is the middle of the night, and the starlight is too dim to be meaningfully useful. Without his torch, this situation is going to get a hell of a lot worse.
Nothing seems to go right for him, these days.
A buzzing against his neck jolts him out of his mindless stupor. Lo’ak realises he still has his comms on, his father’s voice vibrating against his throat.
“Lo’ak, do you copy?” Jake’s voice is tinny through the small device, and the rain is becoming so loud that Lo’ak’s ears strain to hear him.
“Answer me, boy. I know you read me.”
There’s a tone to his father’s voice that nearly makes Lo’ak turn his side of the channel on. He can’t quite place it, but it nearly sounds guilty.
Ha, as if.
Why the hell should he answer Jake for? So he can lecture him again? If he had wanted to continue being lectured for something he didn’t do, he would’ve let his mother lead him back inside.
The temptation to forsake his pride and go back home to his sheltered marui and warm hammock is strong. But his desire to not deal with Jake is stronger. He has no interest in indulging whatever knot Jake wants to jerk in his tail. He’ll survive out in the forest for the night and deal with it all tomorrow.
Hours pass, and the light rain becomes a full storm, pounding against his skin like icy bullets. He’s cold to the point where it’s now painful to even move. He shuffles forward miserably, desperately trying to find somewhere at least somewhat sheltered and quasi dry. The rain is pelting hard enough that he can barely see, and it tears through the leaf he’s been using. In mere seconds, the fire has fully extinguished, and the stick is too damp for him to attempt to relight it. With the storm becoming so heavy, it’s useless to even try.
His comms start buzzing again, but Lo’ak can barely hear it over the rain crashing down and the deafening wind shrieking and tearing branches from the trees. The storm must be large enough to surround both this islet and Awa’atlu. Jake is pestering him incessantly, demanding that Lo’ak tell him where he is so that he can take him home.
“Get your ass back home right now-”
There is a thwack and a yelp, and then his mother’s voice replaces his father’s.
“Ma’itan, you will get sick in this storm. Please answer us. We know you did not touch the gun.”
Lo’ak knows she’s only saying that to appease him. If he comes back home, his father will start yelling again before Lo’ak can even dry himself off. Without realising it, he tears the stupid little device from his neck and throws it onto the dirt. His father will be pissed about it, but he can’t really find it in him to care right now. He’ll add it to the list of worries for tomorrow.
Finally, finally, he finds a cave that looks just big enough for him to squeeze into. He can’t even really call it a cave. It’s more like a bunch of large rocks that have happened to stack on top of each other in a cave-like formation. They look precariously close to toppling, damp and covered in moss. But it’s the best option he’s got.
He crawls into the opening carefully, arms sliding in first so he can feel around to check for anything that might be lurking inside. When he doesn’t find anything immediately alarming, he slowly maneuvers his way inside. It’s a tight fit, but there’s just enough wiggle room for Lo’ak to pretend that it might even be comfortable if he were a small child. At least he is protected from the rain. And being curled up so tight will help preserve what little warmth his body has left.
Through the lethargy, it occurs to Lo’ak that he may genuinely freeze to death, alone in this pathetic excuse for a cave, all because of a crime he hadn’t even committed.
He wants his mum. He wants her so fiercely that it somehow makes his chest ache even more than it already is. His pride is beaten bloody and bruised, crumpled right next to him. He wishes he weren’t such a stubborn, reckless fool. If he hadn’t thrown his comms away, if he hadn’t ignored Jake’s messages, if he hadn’t taken his ilu out to this stupid little islet that he’s never even been on before today, if he had just twisted his stubbornness by the balls and gone to Tonowari, he wouldn’t be in this mess.
If, if, if, if, if.
It’s too late to change his actions now. But it is also too dangerous to try to reverse them. Rain is crashing down around him, and Lo’ak knows that if he tries to get to his ilu and get back home before the storm eases he will definitely get himself killed. He will have to stay for the night, and pray he doesn’t die in his sleep.
If he even manages to sleep at all.
Tuk is losing her mind.
Even hours after Lo’ak has left, she is still bawling hysterically. Jake has been waiting for her to knacker herself out and fall asleep, but he’s had no such luck. No amount of reassuring, or cajoling, or cuddling, or empty promises have been able to get her to calm down long enough. Even when she exhausts herself from her wailing, as soon as she has enough energy it picks right back up again.
Jake feels awful for it, too. He hates to make his baby girl cry. And even at twelve, Tuk is still so tiny, and it makes Jake’s protective instincts go haywire. He is supposed to be able to comfort her. That’s his role as a father, to protect and provide, and to make the big scary things seem like a clown show.
“He’ll be okay, baby girl. I promise.”
“But daddy he’s all alone!” She heaves out around sobs, nearly hyperventilating. “Why would you make him leave? You don’t even know that he did it!”
Jake has no good answer for that, but he keeps her cradled on his lap, arms winding more securely around his youngest daughter’s thin body. He can barely hear his own thoughts over the storm raging outside, which Neytiri has made clear is Eywa’s wrath manifested towards her foolish mate. He rubs a large, soothing hand over the small of her back, and when her cries dissolve into forlorn little hiccups he nearly cries from relief.
“He’ll be back tomorrow, yeah? And you can tell him that daddy is a big stupid idiot with a butt for a brain.”
Tuk doesn’t giggle like she normally would, but she doesn’t burst into tears again either. Jake considers it a monumental win.
Tuk keeps drawing uneven breaths into her lungs, but even as they begin to even out, he can still feel her heart beating frantically against his own.
“I know he didn’t touch your gun, daddy. I know he didn’t,” Tuk says, and Jake sighs.
“Baby girl-”
“No, I know it wasn’t him,” Tuk repeats, and she sounds so certain that with dawning horror, Jake already knows what she’s about to say. Still, he lets her gather her courage and talk.
For another few moments, Tuk is deathly silent, as if she knows she’s on the precipice of truth and is debating whether it is too late to back down now. The rest of the family are looking at them, all staring expectantly at the youngest Sully. Neytiri’s face distorts with anger and horror, and Jake knows she is realising the same thing that he has. She sharply inhales as if about to speak, but Jake holds up a hand towards her.
Jake closes his eyes and takes a fortifying breath before asking the question he already knows the answer to. “Tuktirey, how do you know Lo’ak didn’t take the gun?”
Tuk can’t even meet his eyes as she admits it, barely even above a whisper. “Because I took it.”