Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Stripes woke earlier than usual. Whether it was the abnormally rank smell of the new processing plant across town or the electrical buzz of the new turbines on the shield wall, she couldn’t tell, but there was no getting back to sleep now. She tiptoed around the kitchen, hoping not to disturb the feather-light sleep of the Recom squad before she had a chance to get some fresh air.

in a lot of ways it was nice having them around. She felt less self conscious with all the giant bodies surrounding her. like being shielded from the sun by the trees. Less empty and exposed.

But the drawbacks still existed.

She hated having to be so quiet. Back when she was the only one she’d had this part of the barracks to herself. No one came in because what was the point when you’d have to climb the sofa like a mountain and stand on a chair to see over the table? There were also the issues of people swiping things she left in the fridge, bumping into her in the hallway, getting rowdy while she was sleeping- the only thing that didn’t go away was the name calling. Once the Blue Boys realized she wasn’t a Recombinant it was game over, and they became just like all the other assholes in the RDA SecOps, except bigger and louder.

At the mouth of the building, she let her hand rest on her hip, rib cage nearly splitting from the volume of air she took in. her lips curled back in a grimace, the flehmen response, as Marisol had explained; and the taste that touched the roof of her mouth was dusty and metallic. salty from the ocean and warm from the steam of her coffee.

Her hand trailed across the wall that separated her Playpen from the rest of the barracks. big, colorful blobs she’d branded across them as a child with spray paints lifted from Bridgehead’s early construction. The world was a lot smaller back then, and she regretted how long it took her to realize she preferred it that way. She spotted a can in the overgrown weeds that creeped through the cement cracks and gave it an experimental shake, delighted to find that there was still some left.

Hell yeah.

She let loose on the brick, signing her name in big, cursive letters and throwing the can clear over the wall when she was done. Another deep inhale, a moment dedicated to appreciating the paint fumes, turned into a gasp when she heard a voice yell something along the lines of what the shit?

She sprinted away, knowing whoever it was wouldn’t be able to catch up in time to punish her. Her run led her into the Boom Room where they kept the Blue team’s gear, and without missing a beat she unhooked an oversized rifle that obviously belonged to Quaritch, bringing it all the way back to the kitchen to fix another cup of coffee. The mug she left outside would probably die a slow death, but that was okay. The RDA kept the place stocked now that the real assets had arrived-

“Morning Stripes,” a playful voice called from the end of the sofa.

“Morning, Sol.” She called back. Stripes liked Marisol. They fell into an easy friendship almost instantly, something Stripes could only blame on the fact that Sol was not a soldier.

Stripes took care to keep the rifle out of view when she went to sit on the coffee table, no matter that the woman couldn’t see her. From this angle Stripes watched as pictures of the jungle were uploaded, notes added to the margins of each page. She recognized some but figured they could talk about the rest after dinner like they always did. Sol taught her all about the local flora and sea life, the habits and scientific names of everything. Stuff that the constantly rotating stream of strangers who took turns babysitting her never bothered to mention and probably didn’t know to begin with. Her favorites were the trees, and the superweb of data they carried. Sol explained how there used to be a tree with more memories than they could record in a million lifetimes.

She also said that the military had blown it to bits the day she died. The look on her face had been sad as she told the story. Stripes tried to be sad too, but she couldn’t. It didn’t mean anything to her. She didn’t care about the natives or the deity or whatever, and the fact that the Recombinant sitting in front of her wasn’t even the same person who went down in the war made it all the more difficult to empathize.

“You shouldn’t be touching those outside of the shooting range.” Sol’s throat cleared, breaking Stripes’ train of thought.

always a stickler for the rules. If Sol had lived on a half acre of concrete all her life, she’d be more understanding and less of a pain in Stripes’ ass. “Touching what?” She asked sweetly.

Marisol said nothing as she stood, just sipped her coffee with a cocked brow and pointed at the girl’s chest. “I may not be good at much but I’m good at knowing what the rules are.”

“I know the rules too, I just don’t follow them.”

The woman hummed, gesturing for her to follow while guzzling the last of her coffee and taking the new cup Stripes made for herself. “Put the gun down, my little non-conformist, and I’ll tell you a story,”

“Is it the one about the cat who bit the hand that fed her?” Her eyes rolled, hand grasping at the edge of the mug Sol stole, only for her to hold it out of reach.

Sol’s brows went up, a look of mock surprise taking her features that made the hair on the back of Stripes’ neck prickle. Here we fucking go. “Oh so I’ve told you that one?”

She felt a groan in her chest that didn’t quite make it into existence, knowing if she copped an attitude, sol would just double down and tell an even longer version of the story to annoy her. It was like that, the same thing each time with tedious details changed to fit whatever narrative Marisol wanted. But the ending was always the same; BOOM, dead cat, BAM, dead cat, SMASH, dead cat. Stripes didn’t bother asking her friend not to tell it again. That shit never worked. “Only every day since you came back from the dead.”

“Then you should remember that the cat’s owner eventually put her down; You know, because you don’t bite the hand that feeds you, that’s the whole premise of the story. when you break the rules in someone else’s world, you die .” The woman chugged Stripes’ coffee, ignoring her protests entirely. “And you are very much in someone else’s world.”

Stripes looked down at her feet, standard issue combat boots custom made in her size, scuffed from all the brick kicking and running and general fuckery of her daily life. She was just as tired of wearing them as she was of seeing camo and khaki day in and day out. It didn’t occur to her until Project Phoenix blessed her with Marisol Corona that she even considered a life outside the city as possible. The mountains and the jungle and the sea, that she could only see in photos and handwriting, were calling to her, she could feel it. All it would take is a helping hand. One strong push to get her over those walls and- “What if I don’t wanna be in someone else’s world anymore.” She mumbled.

“We talked about this.”

“If you just told me where to go I could-“

“No.” Sol scolded. “Absolutely not, now get to the quad before Wainfleet drags you there by the ear, he woke up before you got back.”

and just like that, the day was ruined.

Stripes signed in and pushed the clipboard aside for the first task of the day. A random standard-issue weapon was always laid out, rotating so many times that they weren’t new anymore. today she tinkered with the pieces of a Crye rifle until they fit together like a puzzle, taking it apart and reassembling it again with ease.

She brought it with her, this time following the RuLeS, and scanned the yard for Lyle. Normally he could be found by the dummies they used for target practice but her head tilted in confusion when she didn’t find him there. Her search brought her back inside, through the squeaky linoleum halls of the Training Block and into the only room where something was actually happening.

The gym floor was covered in mats today, and while it would have been fun to watch the Recom team wrestle- the only times the Gym was ever used- none of them seemed to be awake yet, and so a sick feeling settled in her chest when Wainfleet met eyes with her from his position at the punching bags.

“Yo, Stripey,” he said after a long gulp of water. “We’re doing hand to hand today.”

Her heart dropped into her stomach. Please don’t make me. Please don’t make me- “Can we skip today? I had a big breakfast-“

His head shook and he pointed to the mat “Get into position,”

A compromise. A distraction. Anything to get out of this. Anything. “Can I practice with Toby?”

“Quentin’s busy. Paws up.” His fist went up in front of his face, which sat nearly two feet above her own, even hunched over to spar.

When she didn’t move, he ripped the rifle from her grip, tossing it to the floor like a discarded security blanket.

She didn’t want to do this. She didn’t want to be here. She should have stayed asleep- “Please, Lyle, I don’t wanna-“ there was no time to finish pleading before his fist cracked against the side of her head.

Her body flew back, tail bending beneath her definitely not the most painful part of being hit by Lyle Wainfleet.

“Pick yourself up kid,” he goaded, his own tail twitching fast in excitement. “Come on!”

She imagined herself back in her Playpen with Tenoch, learning about Nouns and Verbs. A simpler time than the hell she lived in now. Tenoch had been paid well. She was only following orders, but Tenoch was hers . And Tenoch would never hurt her. Stripes imagined the old lady moving somewhere quiet once she was finished on Pandora. Her grandkids, all grown up by the time she got back, could inherit some of the money she made teaching Stripes grammar and math. They could spend time together in her retirement, watching the birds outside the windows of the little blue house Tenoch described, and she could die knowing she’d lived a damn fine life.

Stripes cried on graduation day. The day they took her finger paints and toys away and shoved a gun in her hands. Not even so much as a goodbye from Tenoch.

Suddenly she was back in the present.

“I hate you!” She screamed from the floor, mouth opening in a hard hiss.

“I didn’t ask, now get up,”

All of his hits landed, each harder than the last, each growing less sympathetic as she yelled and cursed at him. His instruction was sound, but there was no time to implement it, zero transition between teaching and mindlessly beating the shit out of her.

she hated him. She hated herself.

she wished she was dead.

Stripes wandered around the barracks with a dead eyed expression and two pieces of gauze shoved up her nose. Courtesy of Wainfleet’s lack of tact and medical training.

He’d sent her off after target practice with a sip of water and a pat on the back, saying something like it’s nothing personal, or whatever, and the sentiment fell on deaf ears.

It sure as shit on a biscuit felt personal.

Her feet ambled to a stop in the Playpen, the sight of her name, now dry and permanently at home on the wall, making her head jerk in the opposite direction. Instead she looked off to the side, where finger paintings of her own face still clung to the brick. One brown eye and one blue. Further down the neon pink silhouette of Tenoch’s tiny hand was stamped next to hers. Even then her fingers had been three times longer, and grew so fast they had to roll the paint onto her palm instead of dipping it into the little tray every year after that.

The back of Stripes’ hand went up to wipe the tears she didn’t even realize had been pooling at her chin.

It was explained to her early on that she was going to be a soldier. Pounded into her head that it would be a privilege to man a gunship or die in combat against the Omatikaya. In the beginning it was nothing but war atrocities and propaganda, but over time the idea seemed to become less and less important to the upper division. The arrival of the Recombinants meant that she had been all but forgotten.

She didn’t know if she was sadder that no one wanted her or that she wanted to be wanted by the RDA so badly in the first place.

Her body turned towards the electrified gate of her playpen.

She didn’t know if life was worth living at all anymore.

She sat at the kitchenette counter for the rest of the day, watching the Recombinants walk around. She growled when they passed and hissed when they bumped into her. No one was spared, not even the Queen Bee himself.

“Who pissed in your cereal?” Quaritch griped, swatting her over the head as a punishment.

Stripes snarled. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d gotten into it with the colonel, the half-moon scars of her bite mark still visible on his forearm. It surprised her to find he was nowhere near as aggressive as Wainfleet, even hesitating to hurt her while pulling her off of him. A mark against him, in her opinion. Now she knew she could get away with more at his expense. “Fuck off!”

“Listen kid-“ his ears flattened, tail going taut. He jerked when an arm looped in his and pulled him away and the voice of an angel cooed in his ear.

“Thanks Miles,” Sol winked “I can take it from here.”

“Thanks Miles,” Stripes mocked when the man left. She’d had to sit through enough Sex Ed. classes after hitting puberty to know those two probably did it in the gym while everyone was asleep.

“You’re tap dancing on some thin ice, kid,” Toby said through a mouthful of Mac n’ cheese. Where the hell had he been earlier when she needed him? “Like wafer thin,”

“Tobes, you’re not helping!” A vein popped out of Sol’s forehead and she pinched the bridge of her nose after herding her brother through the hallway. The rest of the Blue Boys already having gone to bed.

This part of the day, at the cusp of eclipse, when all the new bodies were settling down for rest, was a favorite for Stripes. The mornings were their own kind of peaceful, a dewy and productive spot in the cosmos- but right now, when the machines had all been left at their stations and no one had fallen asleep yet; when it was too dark not to have the lights on, and the hum of the fiberglass panels above her were the only sound in the whole city,

was the only time when she felt like she could be.

“you okay?” Sol pointed to the strips of gauze and Stripes immediately went to pull them out.

“My nose is broken,” she said, wrinkling her nose at the trail of snot that came out with each pad.

Sol seemed to consider this, head rolling back and forth playfully. “How do you know that?”

“I just know,”

“Let’s see.” The woman’s thumbs pressed against her face, moving positions every few seconds to test the whole area, “Take a deep breath through your nose, in, out, in, out. there, does this hurt?”

“Yes.” Stripes whined. Of course it hurt, she was bleeding .

“You didn’t flinch though,” sol grinned “is it tender here?”

Stripes couldn’t help but feel like this was going to be another variation of the dead cat story, but she answered anyway, sighing irritably. “…No,”

“It’s not broken.” She asserted, ruffling her hair and letting her hand trail across Stripes’ braid. “Investigate before you jump to conclusions, it saves lives.”

Oh thank god, Stripes praised, knowing that skipping one of Sol’s lessons was a once in a lifetime opportunity. She had enough fuel for an existential crisis without adding more crap on top of it today.

Sol went about making herself comfortable at the edge of the sofa, throwing her boots into her young friend’s lap “Wainfleet is a dick, huh,”

Stripes gasped, taking note of another bruise she’d have to watch for the next week and mumbling a few curses. “I’m glad he’s dead.”

They shared a laugh. It was hilarious. A massive cosmic joke with twelve assholes at the center and to not take advantage of the serotonin would have been a waste. Stripes went to tuck herself under Sol’s arm, only to meet resistance and an uneasy silence before the explanation “We’re not doing that today,” Sol said with a sad smile “Set your alarm for two-thirty and come meet me at the Playpen gate.”

“That’s in like five hours.”

“Do it or I won’t give you your birthday present you little shit.” Sol scolded

“I’m not going to lie, I completely forgot.” She laughed nervously. Her hand tapped at her knee, counting the fingers on hers, three, and then on Sol’s, Four, over and over to distract herself from the feelings. She didn’t want to think about that anymore. Or ever, for that matter.  “I haven’t celebrated since Tenoch left.”

There was that sad smile again. Reserved only for the cutting of wise old trees and the destruction of celestial deities. “Well this year you’re getting something good, now go to sleep.”

Stripes dutifully made her way back to her room, taking a moment to look back at Sol, whose head rested in her hands.

If the normally joyful Recombinant was stressing this much, it was probably going to be one hell of a gift.

Stripes woke to the gentle click of her alarm, which was set to exactly twenty minutes before she was supposed to meet Marisol. This way she could take her time rolling off the bed and onto the floor. Dragging her storage bin out from under the frame, and pulling on her pants while still laying down.

She didn’t even bother to buckle her belt until she was in the bathroom, toothbrush in her mouth, with the realization that anyone could walk in for a piss and see her standard-issued underwear. The toothpaste was cinnamon flavored, not spearmint like she was used to and a quick turn of the tube revealed it belonged to Zhang. Another drawback of having roommates, she supposed, and the perfect time to test out her gag reflex apparently.

In the fridge was a carton of eggs, a pudding cup and an apple.

The apple, of course, was the only thing she left there, sucking the pudding straight from its plastic container and tossing it on the counter once empty. The eggs were special. Those were cannon fodder for the curly lines of her handwriting on the yard wall. The Playpen never felt so suffocating and she wasted no time emptying the eggs on it as if they were bombshells that could blast a hole in the brick and erase the whole event of her confirming that this would be her coffin.

She checked her watch. Five minutes, and no Sol.

She tore up the weeds that grew along the cement cracks.

Four minutes and no Sol.

She grabbed yesterday’s forgotten coffee mug from the brush, dumping the black sludge out and pulling at the lip on both sides to see if she was half as strong as Mansk, who constantly broke the communal glassware just from how hard his grip was.

Two minutes, no Sol.

“Fuck this, I’m going back to bed,” she growled. It was one thing that Sol wanted her up this early, but a whole different deal that-

The creak of metal brought her to a halt. The sound was so eerily unfamiliar that she couldn’t bring herself to turn. It was obvious what it was. The gate had been opened before, but never while she was out, and most certainly not right in front of her. If she moved, what would happen? 

“Yo Birthday Girl.” Sol’s voice played softly on the breeze, a smile apparent in her tone. “You comin’ or what?”

Marisol Corona and Toby Quentin were thick as thieves after coaxing Stripes through the Playpen gate. They pulled her forward and pushed her back, shoved her head down and shushed all of her questions. No one was up, save for a few straggling linemen that seemed not to even notice the three of them creeping around in the shadows.

There was a lot of looking around and heavy coordination between the images on Sol’s holo pad, angles of the ceilings and walls they were passing through, and the direction they took to get wherever they were going.

she’d left her room still groggy, hoping to get back to sleep for a few more hours after the surprise. The fact that it wouldn’t happen became obvious the moment they cleared not only the Playpen wall but the entrance to the housing facility. Her knees locked up and her heart began to flutter. This was wrong. It wasn’t allowed. She wasn’t allowed to leave the barracks.

Stripes had never been so scared to break a rule in her entire life.

Dead cat, dead cat, dead cat.

“Come on, babe,” Sol beckoned. The way her eyes shifted skittishly back and forth did nothing to quell the rising anxiety in stripes’ chest but she crept forward anyway and let Sol rub circles in her back. “It’s safe, I promise,”

She breathed deeply. She liked Sol. She trusted Sol. Sol was safe. Like Tenoch . “Where are we going?” She begged.

“Just up ahead,” Toby’s tone was clipped which didn’t help.

Neither did the breeze on her bare shoulders or the deterioration of the area they were walking into. It was obvious where the maintenance crew had stopped caring, vines and weeds creeping out from cracks in the walls like the ones taking over her yard. Soon it was all around them, the jungle rolling over everything in sight.

“This is an old facility,” explained Toby, who jogged ahead,  motioning for them to finally stand up straight. “I helped design it before Hell’s Gate went belly-up.”

“The blueprints in Archive One show they followed it down to the bare bones so I was able to get a signal block on some of the cameras and jimmy the skylight open for a smooth takeoff.” The man rattled off some unintelligible engineering jargon but all that fell straight through the jittery paws of the monkey in her skull until one thing was left for her to ponder.

Stripes cupped her elbows, prompting Toby to shrug off his jacket and toss it at her. She didn’t have the heart to tell him she wasn’t cold. “Takeoff?” She breathed as hands came up to her arms, pulling them through the sleeves and adjusting the collar for her.

Sol hugged her around the shoulders, kissing her cheek as they entered a large room, empty except for a rusty old Scorpion. “Happy birthday.”

Toby entered it through the hatch and began to fiddle with the controls, bringing it online by the glow that illuminated the pilot’s seat.

“I don’t understand.” she let her hand reach out to touch it anyway, mouth ajar in awe. the thing was Frankensteined together with screws and panels from different aircraft. The finishing touches were the patches of duct tape and array of blue stripes… The paint was still tacky to the touch and fuming so hard it made stripes dizzy but she didn’t move an inch back. Didn’t take her palm off it, and refused to look anywhere else but the serial number etched into the side.

101415. 

After a few minutes of listening to Toby in the cockpit and Sol tapping at her Holo-pad, fear suddenly made way for something else. Stripes let her hands fall away from the metal and fly to her temples. “you want me to drive this thing?”

Sol handed a small object to Toby through the hatch but neither of them bothered to look up at Stripes. Was this really just another fucking Tuesday to them? “I thought the context clues would have been enough to answer that,”

The taste of chocolate pudding and cinnamon toothpaste in her mouth became overwhelming. The blood in her veins was one degree too warm. “I don’t think I can do this,” she nearly heaved.

“What happened to ‘ I don’t wanna live in someone else’s world!’ ?” Sol put on a high pitched voice, joking like she always did. She wasn’t acting differently than she normally would- no nervous tics or anxious tells making themselves apparent.

Why isn’t she panicking? “No, I mean I can’t pilot an aircraft, Sol!” What the hell is going on?

“That’s what the chip is for, dingdong,” Toby called from somewhere in the copter, metal scraping against metal and the whirring sound of technology growing louder in its depths. “the joys of autopilot,”

Despite the new information, this whole thing was so far out of her depth that she was already drowning. Was it really happening?

No. Absolutely not. Sol said that, didn’t she? Did I imagine the whole thing?

Toby leaped out of the scorpion with a booklet, showing it to her before reaching back in to place it on the seat. “I tried to find you a manual for this model but all I could get my hands on was the new one. It’ll tell you how to land safely but you’re fucked if this thing goes down in the boonies.”

The deeper down the rabbit hole she went, the more she drew back on what she knew about Sol. The breakdown tactic had worked in the past and they were slowly chipping away at her resolve by not answering her questions, she could feel it. mental exhaustion waning into acceptance. “I’ll just call you to come fix it,” she joked weakly.

All the air in the room turned into lead at the switch in his expression. Lead in her lungs and her bones and heart. This wasn’t the Toby who would let her win a wrestling match. Not the Toby who gave her books to read and movies to watch. This was someone else entirely. “No, Stripes,” he said carefully “You’re on your own and if you get caught, we didn’t do this, you get me? You did it alone with no help from anyone.”

Oh it was real. It was tangible, physical, visceral, that she was truly about to take off in this flying monstrosity and there was no changing her mind about it now. “Didn’t see shit; don’t know shit.” She swore, throat going dry.

She had asked for this. She wanted this.

Didn’t she?

“‘Atta girl.” The real Toby reached into his pocket and pulled out a bible, tattered and small in his hand. As if her agreement had sealed away whatever demon had come out and resurrected her friend in its place.  “you remember Psalm twenty-five fifteen?”

Stripes took it from him, pressing it to her forehead with a groan. Nothing could possibly make this moment worse. “Tobes I told you i only read it because I was bored, I don’t believe in-“

Sol shushed her, pulling her closer to huddle into Toby’s little circle. “I don’t either, just do the thing,”

“Psalm twenty-five fifteen through twenty,” he insisted, roughly shoving both their heads into a bow and closing his eyes.

“Turn to me and be gracious to me,
    for I am lonely and afflicted.

Relieve the troubles of my heart
    and free me from my anguish.

Look on my affliction and my distress
    and take away all my sins.

See how numerous are my enemies
    and how fiercely they hate me,

Guard my life and rescue me;
    do not let me be put to shame,
    for I take refuge in you.

May integrity and uprightness protect me,
    because my hope, Lord, is in you.”

None of them moved a muscle when the psalm was completed. Foreheads pressed together, nothing in view but their shoes and the fine layer of dirt that covered the ground.

Leaves passed through the gaps between them, the artificial wind from the propellers and engines of Stripes’ scorpion making dust devils of the debris all around them.

For once Stripes wished there were cameras, if only to scroll back once this moment was over and watch it forever.

“I’ll give you guys a minute,” he finally said, breaking the shield of safety theyd built with their bodies and walking away to look over the aircraft one last time.

Sol’s voice cracked at first that she had to clear her throat a few times before getting it clear enough to speak.  “The display on this bad boy is down so Tobes linked it with my Holo-pad. Guard it with your life,” she looked as if a piece of her soul was leaving her body as she handed the thing over.

“Yes ma’am,” 

“after today these dickheads wont be your friends anymore, you know that right?” Sol fiddled with the end of her braid, looking awkward and uncomfortable with nothing in her hands.

Stripes considered this

Friend was a strong word for what the military force was to her. There weren’t many kind words said to her between the name calling and the artillery training but she wouldn’t bring any of that up with Marisol now. Not when there was something more important hanging in the air. “What about us?”

“We’ll always be friends.” She said, incredulous, as if it was crazy the girl would even ask. “No matter what.”

“Promise?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die,” Sol’s sharp teeth flashed and they both laughed at the irony, tears welling up and spilling over both of their faces, dripping everywhere as they embraced.

Stripes knew it was okay to cry, having missed this chance with the last person she had been close to, Tenoch disappearing into the night and fading away with the slow march of time. She knew this was a happy moment. She just didn’t understand why it had to hurt so much.

Marisol kissed her forehead, wiping at both of their faces again. “be brave. Be brave and strong for me okay?”

“I will,”

At 0400 the sky was dark and eclipse was at its peak. Toby and Sol prepared her for the possibility that the animals and trees would make the conscious decision to murder her, but so far that didn’t seem to be at issue. It didn’t take long for her to move out of her seat to avoid looking at the passing objects though, the idea of losing power and exploding into a million little blue pieces against a cliff or tree at the forefront of her worries.

Stripes instead distracted herself with the exploration of the craft. The Scorpion was more spacious from the outside. From the inside it was a thirty square foot straight-jacket packed to the brim with whatever crap Sol and Toby could throw together on short notice.

She emptied the Duffel they gave her with extreme prejudice, deciding what to keep and what was garbage. it was a handful of MREs, water, a utility knife, a rifle and a first aid kit that contained an unopened bottle of gin that she ultimately decided to keep. Beyond that there was a puzzle she put together quickly and discarded, a flashlight with a finicky solar panel and a book of matches. But she was so terrified of the idea of burning down the forest, trauma from the first time she tried cooking for herself, that she kicked it away with her foot.

Initially Toby’s bible was listed as the latter, placed to the side, though her first inclination was to toss it over her shoulder. After all of three minutes of debate, and a dozen sidelong glances she relented, shoving it back into the bag.

Toby had carried this thing around since he was a baby, so Sol said. He went to his church thing every seven days with that weathered old book in his lap so Sol said. The only thing she knew for sure was that it had followed him through death.

She didn’t see the appeal. It was old and too small for his ridiculously wide hands, the addition of a fourth finger doing nothing to help that situation, fragile pages ripping with the slightest pull.

Sol’s Holo-pad was a far easier decision. It had everything on it, a compilation of all her research down to the scientific name of the algae that grew on their water pipes. In its codex there were some things Stripes recognized, little animals who would breech the city shield and crawl across her Playpen wall, and some things she didn’t realize existed at all. Giant monsters with razor blades for teeth and hammers for heads.

The notes in Sol’s margins for a lot of them were vague but distressing- fuck around and find out. Kill on sight. Tsaheylu with this organism can cause loss of hearing.

She pulled her braid from behind her back, touching the tendrils of her Queue, which she knew from Sol’s lessons was called a tswin . There were shorthand translations for Na’vi words she had no hope of pronouncing, that Marisol probably spoke perfectly. She missed her already, the metal walls of the Scorpion growing colder and darker by the minute.

A deeper dive into Sol’s notes revealed the instructions she’d left for Stripes, though it wasn’t much to go on and still left a million unanswered questions. Mainly, how did Sol expect her to make this request in the first place? The woman had a tendency of overestimating her but this took the cake. Her Na’vi language skills bordered on non-existent and that presented a whole new set of challenges her two dingus friends probably hadn’t even considered.

Stripes slumped against the wall with a groan. She was being ungrateful, she knew. There were worse positions to be in. For one, she could be dead. That was the anchor she held onto for the next few hours. The life she wanted to die over yesterday was miles behind her,

and Pandora lay ahead.

The rhythm of Neteyam’s heart was off. He could feel it skipping every other beat and despite Lo’ak’s feigned calmness he knew his brother felt the same. It had taken some convincing on mother’s part, a quiet look at their father in public and some loud arguing in private, to get here. The point where they could finally be men and fill their roles as warriors.

Only, the job they were actually assigned wasn’t exactly what he had in mind.

He watched his parents flying up ahead, listening to the chatter between them through his comm link, and sighed. Spotters. The first son of Toruk Makto, a lookout.

“At least we got to come this time,” Lo’ak offered, a deep shrug making his neck disappear.

That was looking at the ravine half full, and why not?  Neteyam supposed this was enough to start with. Full of frustration and anxiety, but proving they could follow orders was the first step toward what they really wanted.

Kiri would insist that blood and battle were bad for the heart but she didn’t understand. It donned on him that she might not ever know how tall the shadows he lived under truly loomed. She would never need to fight or prove her value like he would. How could she, being praised all day by grandmother and doted on by father must have left her spine a bit weak.

That was unfair, he scolded himself. She was only ever trying to help and resenting her wouldn’t get him anywhere.

If he really wanted someone to blame-

“I see the train,” Lo’ak called, a wide grin lifting his mouth.

Neteyam’s head shook and he smiled back “looks like it’s show time,”

When the sun began to peak and the landscape became visible through the mist, Stripes leaped into the Pilot’s chair so fast the weight of her body broke the back adjuster. The seat would be in a permanent laying position now, but it didn’t matter. Her pupils blew wide, and her heart became too big for her chest as she took in the sight below her.

There was color as far as the eye could see. Green instead of grey. Pinks and purples instead of khaki. She thought she knew what it would feel like- exciting, motivating- but this was something else entirely.  The jungle was primordial, completely untouched by man, making its own walls out of the trunks of ancient trees and shields from the giant leaves of their canopy.

All at once she became aware of how enormous the world really was and that she was so small that no matter what she did or where she went, she would always be just a microscopic piece of it.

Her body trembled, hands shakily going to wipe a river of tears away for the second time that day, and she took the time to steady her choppy breathing to push out the only thing she realized she forgot to say before her scorpion lifted off the ground. “Thanks, guys.”

she could imagine Sol, tucked into the corner of the sofa, staring up at the ceiling with nothing to do.

That had been Stripes just yesterday. She hadn’t even been off the ship yet and still, turning around and spending another second in the barracks, walking in circles around the barren yard that used to house her jungle-gym and her blocks and crayons, sounded like the worst torture imaginable. This has to work, she promised herself. She was never going back. Not ever.

Although,

the assertion faded away and the determination turned into confusion when train tracks became visible beneath her.

No matter how far Stripes flipped through the data on the Holo pad, the rabbit hole never seemed to end. Though any vague descriptions she typed it seemed she could pull up the scientific names and photos and relationships of any plant or animal in the goddamn universe.

Unfortunately there was nothing in it that would tell her where the metal railing would lead. Her leg bounced and her tail twitched and she spent her brain power wondering how long she’d have to look at them before the craft automatically pulled up and away, taking her deeper into the forest and past the danger the tracks represented.

If Sol hadn’t been so obsessed with plants, she may have added something that could answer the question of where they went or what they were for.

It frustrated stripes most that she never once questioned what was outside the walls of Bridgehead. It was just wilderness, wasn’t it? No, the existence of a train disproved that, opening up a whole new world where nothing was sacred and no one was safe. There could have been a hundred RDA bases on Pandora and she would never know, because she never bothered to ask and therefore didn’t know anything about anything.

Her whole entire being had been consumed by get out, get free, survive, that she never stopped to think about…everything else.

The one thing Sol did have the foresight to add was music and even then, there wasn’t much of that. A handful of tunes Stripes thought were cheesy, though her ears pricked up at one she recognized from her first days with the Recom Squad.

Eleven months ago they landed at the base, skins smelling of saline and plastic, and carrying crates of new equipment. It was all frivolous shit, but Stripes quickly warmed up to Toby’s vintage movies on a big new flatscreen and Fike’s sound system blaring on the weekends.

This song was her favorite, and she wasted no time selecting the album cover and blasting it as loud as the little piece of hardware would play it.

The pad was small enough that it fit in her back pocket so that’s where it made it’s home, squished between the ripped leather of a cushion and her bony buttcheek while she searched through the storage compartment for a map. The hope was that after she had a clear idea of where she was, she could alter the destination a bit before landing.

She pulled out paper after paper, scanning each quickly and letting them fall to the floor around her boots. She hummed and tapped her toe to the beat of her song, growing less bored and anxious with the new objective to fulfill. It wasn’t until she reached back down for another handful of papers to leaf through that she saw it.

It began as the butt of the train, MagLev mechanism severed and collapsed onto the track,

The sound of propellers and yelling from all directions,

The smell of smoke,

The train tracks turned into a battlefield, the sky freckled with aircraft and animals flying in all directions,

A Na’vi on the back of a banshee,

The tip of an arrow aiming right for her.

Stripes kicked off the control panel, rolling backwards off the flat back of the seat and getting stuck upside down.

She heard the arrow blast through the windshield, a shower of glittering shards falling around her,

It ripped through the middle of the seat, and the tip of it stopped when it hit the metal floor, nearly going through her hand.

The Holo-pad announced the maneuver Autopilot took to avoid three organisms flying overhead and jerked right, dislodging her from under the flat seat and throwing her against the side hatch, which slid open a foot and jammed.

She only had a split second to be thankful that her plane was such a piece of shit before autopilot jerked again and brought her face to face with another Scorpion.

Her hands flew to the controls, elbow bending awkwardly around the long shaft of the arrow to reach them, the song still playing from her pocket,

There was no time to consider the ramifications of unloading. Not a single second between when her eyes locked onto the gunship and when her finger hit the trigger.

Manual weapons operation activated:

Autopilot disengaged

“SHIT.”

~Ba-da-bum-bum-bum~

And another one gone,

And another one gone,

Another one bites the dust!

Jake’s head tipped as the strange scorpion accelerated. As expected, Neytiri’s shot had taken it down, but not before it rushed the one in front of it, firing the bulk of it’s ammunition and swerving to avoid the people below instead of dropping on the spot like it should have.

It was aerosol painted with blue lines, probably to blend it in, a shoddy attempt at camouflage. though he couldn’t say for sure if it had worked, it sure as hell wasn’t a bad idea on the part of the pilot.

One more turn to avoid hitting a tree, and it skid across the forest floor, losing its propellers, it’s tail and it’s door.

He let his mate know he was heading in through his com link and she gave a nod, following him down.

In mob fashion, the Omatikaya gathered not far from where the blue scorpion had landed, the bulk of them waving around weapons claimed from the heist. He wasn’t sure what to expect as he waded through the crowd, letting out an irritated groan when the backs of two familiar heads came into view.

“What are you two doing on the ground?” He seethed.

“We saw what happened,”

“The plane went down and-“

“I don’t wanna hear your excuses,” his head shook. He looked up again to catch a glimpse of the commotion. “you had orders, now get back on-“

A shot pierced the air, clean and echoing, and he forgot his sons for a moment in favor of jogging to move between the threat and the people.

She was dressed in military gear. Combat boots, a bomber jacket, a dog tag around her neck. She waved a rifle in the air as a warning.

“Come and I kill.” She hissed in broken Na’vi with a hard accent.

a light went on and he switched easily between Languages, hoping they could find some common ground that way. “You speak English?”

Her expression softened, fear flashing in her eyes before hardening back into anger. She was just a kid.

He paused a moment to take a closer look at her. One eye was a bright blue. The other a dark brown. Three fingers. Her face and hands were bruised to hell but aside from that there was nothing; features so seamlessly Na’vi that she could have otherwise passed for a native.

His shoulders relaxed when he realized her finger didn’t rest on her trigger, meaning she wasn’t planning to shoot, or, at least, that she didn’t want to. Good. If he didn’t have to kill her, a girl who didn’t look any older than his own kids, he preferred not to.

He looked around as if to cement the notion and ordered Mawey. He told everyone to take what they could back to camp, because that had been the plan all along. because it would be easier to chill her out with less people around. And, if only a little, it worked.

She nodded stiffly, lowering the muzzle of her rifle by half an inch.

“Cool,” his hands went up, feet inching closer. “can we talk for a minute?” If he could just get her to-

she fixed the gun at him again the moment he stepped too far and his palms went up in surrender.

“Okay,” Jake relented, taking a step back again and blowing out an irritated breath when he stepped on Lo’ak’s foot. “fair.” He said through his teeth, promising himself to give the boy hell later.

“You’re Jake Sully.” The girl muttered, more to herself than to him.

“You know me?”

She set the rifle down finally and pulled a holo pad from her back pocket. a photo of his human face played across the screen, then a blurry shot of him on an Ikran. Whatever images he assumed the SecOps could scrounge up after Hometree.

“I don’t know what they’ve added to my file since I fell out with the RDA,” He considered the situation for what it was. A girl, too young to have been around in those days, who clearly had some kind of loyalty to the military. A rogue aircraft shooting at the RDA. A mag full of bullets but no holes in his body. If she had beef, it certainly wasn’t with him. “But I’m not a bad guy. you can trust me.”

She knew he wasn’t a bad guy, or, at least, assumed that everything Sol said about him had some truth to it.

After a quick scan of the area, eyes flitting from him, to the three faces around him, to the pack of blue bodies scattering into the distance, Stripes considered the situation for what it was.

The word of someone she trusted with her life. A grown man making an attempt to appear non-threatening. a low tone, an outstretched hand, and a heartfelt promise. He’d sent his army away, and away they went.

If he had beef it certainly wasn’t with her.

But that didn’t make the stimulation of what had just happened any less distressing. Her body ached, and her mind was tired. She didn’t want to be here talking to him. She didn’t want to hear what he had to say or stand or sit or breathe. She wanted a magical pause button, so she could stop time to collapse and pick back up when she was less exhausted. Less excited.

Less scared.

She wanted to cuddle up to Sol and talk about plants and animals and eat pudding. She wanted to go home.

“I wanna help you, I do, but I need you to help me first okay,”

Stripes looked down at her feet, and back up at him, hands twisting around the strap of her rifle. Uturu. Ask for Uturu. Sol’s voice grated her like gravel on a kneecap. She almost wanted to yell out loud that the woman wasn’t helping. That she didn’t want to live with natives, that she’d rather go back to Bridgehead and get her ass whooped and never see the light of day again than accept help from some random fucking guy in the woods. She didn’t need him. She didn’t need anyone. “I don’t need your help,”

“I think you do.” He chuckled, “You look like you need all the help you can get.”

Going by the readjustment of her rifle, and how irritated the look that spread over her face became, apparently, that was the wrong thing to say. “Woah, okay, what about, ah,” Jake gestured to her hands, which each had three fingers, shouldering Lo’ak to move behind him, and thanking Eywa that Neteyam had the sense to hang back with his mother. “I’m guessing you were born, not grown.”

“I didn’t come from a test tube,” she snarled “my mom is…”

“Is she Na’vi?” He pressed, recieving a tense nod, “she still around?”

“There’s an RDA base on the coast. She left me at the perimeter when I was born.” she pointed to her eyes as if to emphasize the point. “…She didn’t want me.”

He decided to throw out that line of questioning, seeing her posture tense and her hands twitch. “What’s your name?”

Her tail flicked back and forth. “They call me Stripes…”

Stripes. Like an office pet. They may as well have named her Sparky. “Did you come from a  community? Were there homes, kids, a school?”

“I was kept in the military barracks ,” that was the turning point he was looking for. Her whole body wilted a bit, voice going softer, hair falling in her face “it was just me…”

Another winding staircase he’d have to climb later. There were so many questions running through his head that he had to let one of them fall out of his mouth before it gave him a headache. “How the hell did you get out of there?”

“I stole a decommissioned scorpion.” Her eyes shifted nervously before adding “Alone. By myself.”

he couldnt help the laugh that escaped him. The fact that she’d escaped the RDA, survived Neytiri’s arrow, gunned down an airship and still had the legs to stand there and threaten to fight everyone was at least worthy of praise. “Kick-ass.”

The wheels in her head turned while he waited, listening to the breaths of his family, the hiss of his Ikran. He’d learned enough while raising five kids to know that sometimes they needed a little space. Time to think. And that’s what he gave her.

“I’m supposed to ask you for Uturu.” She said.

At this, he looked to Neytiri. He knew what she would say, that it was up to him, and she trusted him to make the right call, but it was too big of an ask. Too great a responsibility for him to just throw some kid on top of their already mounting list of worries.

His mate’s head tilted left, tilted right, and then nodded.

It was all the reassurance he needed to know that Yes was the right decision.

Jake grinned back at the girl, who looked confused. With enough time she’d learn. “I dunno, Stripes. that sounds an awful lot like I’d be helping you with something.” He teased, fully expecting her to laugh and go along.

Stripes went dead-eyed, like a fish, throwing her hands up in the air, and to his surprise, walking off in the opposite direction. “Fine, screw you,” she called over her shoulder “and screw your goddamn lizard too!”

What just happened?

Jake blew a sigh from deep in his belly and clapped his hands, turning to face his family. “wasn’t expecting that,”

“What now?” Lo’ak asked, finally moving to give his father some room.

It was easy for him to come to a solution, seeing that the day had been, more or less, a success. The boys had stayed out of trouble, followed orders, and proven they could be helpful in the field. One more task for the day would be a piece of cake. “Think you two can turn her around?”

His sons shared a look of surprise, but Neteyam was the first to step up to the plate, albeit hesitantly. “We can try, Sir,”

“Get to it then,” he nodded, hauling himself back onto his Ikran, Neytiri close behind him.

“What if she won’t come?”

“She’s got to.” He explained, the memory of his own first night crystal clear in his mind. “she won’t make it past eclipse.”

He left them with a nod, taking their promise that they wouldn’t let him down as serious as a heart attack. There was no way they could botch this one.

Was there?

Stalking a Na’vi was much less exciting than real hunting, Neteyam found. Especially when she wasn’t making any effort to hide. He wracked his brain trying to think of a motive for her just taking off and came up with nothing.

Yelling had been pointless, walking away had been pointless, them following her was pointless, and Lo’ak reminded him so every chance he got.

He prided himself on his ability to keep calm with his siblings. They needed him to be the level headed one, and that’s what he tried to be- but if Lo’ak wasn’t getting on his last nerve. His head dipped, eyes closing until he found his center and calmed down a bit. There were a thousand other things he’d rather be doing right now, and listening to his brother’s constant complaining didn’t make that list any shorter.

At last Lo’ak let his Ikran hop to a lower branch when they saw her trip, struggle to stand and go limp on the ground “are you done being crazy yet?” Lo’ak called.

“go away and let me die,” she threw her arm over her face dramatically.

Neteyam smirked. She was strong-willed, he’d give her that. There was still no point to why she was playing this game, and no ending in sight if they didn’t do something about it soon.

He could see from this angle that her foot was stuck in a hole and thought of the best way to free her from it, sifting though the details in his head from would it work to would she let him, when his brother met his eye

“We can just say she got eaten.”

His tongue clicked “We said we’d try,”

“We did,”

“No, Lo’ak-“

“We tried, this was trying,”

Neteyam shushed him with a look, passing him completely to dismount onto the root where she was stuck.

She struggled a bit when she realized how close he was coming and he stopped, taking a step back and holding out a palm to calm her like his father had.

“Hey,” he gestured to her leg with one hand, wary of the way her mismatched eyes followed him. She sat up and pulled at her pant leg, giving him permission, and he continued speaking as he twisted her foot to let her loose. “if you want Uturu, you have it. Our dad sent us to get you.” He dusted the bits of bark and soil off himself when he was done,

“The Jake Sully is your dad?” She pulled her legs close to her body, scooting backwards a few feet to get away from him and standing. There were twigs in her hair, dust all over her, but she did nothing to clean herself off, just straightened the strap of her weapon and kept talking as if nothing was out of place.

“I’m Neteyam te Suli Tsyeyk’itan,” Neteyam offered, standing to the side so that Lo’ak could dismount next to him.

Her nose scrunched up, eyes flicking to the left and right, making it obvious she didn’t understand. “Right, whatever that means,” her tone was suspicious, but becoming playful in a way that he didn’t trust. Like the wrong answer would get him slapped. “and how do you guys know im not a spy. I could just be asking for sanctuary so I can gather information and bring it back to the RDA.”

He appreciated the way her hands laced in front of her, making it easier to move about without the threat of getting shot hanging over him. He admitted to himself that would make this whole thing less boring, but it would also drag it on for longer, and he didn’t have that kind of time, nor did he think he had the patience left in him.

“Well?” His eyes rolled, but he waited, prompting for an answer when she said nothing. “Are you a spy?”

Her lips pursed, eyes narrowed as if she didn’t want to admit she’d lost the game.“…no.”

He let a long breath leave him. She looked ridiculous with her hair a mess and dirt all over her face, but he said nothing. She must have been hurting badly from the crash, black and purple bruises trailing all the way down from the side of her face down beyond her neckline. something grandmother could surely help with. “Mystery solved,” he offered a hand, hoping she’d stop whatever this was and just take it. “let’s go.”

The girl’s-Stripes, was it?- ears flattened, “I’m not getting on that thing,”

Lo’ak’s mumbling in the background almost got to him- like I said, bro, we should leave her- and this time Neteyam was heavily considering it.

They could go home now and sing a song for dad about how they lost her, how palulukan chased her down and swallowed her whole to sell the story, but he dug as deep inside himself as he could and pulled out the first thing that came to mind.

Bring her back before eclipse, that was the only thing their father had asked.

He never said how.

He never said she had to like it.

“Fine,” his hands went up, head tipping, lips pursing as he made Tsaheylu with his Ikran, thankful that Lo’ak seemed to take the hint and mounted again as well. “You win.”

He waited a moment, placing his foot down for a wide stance- a solid grip.

In his side view he could see her look up to watch the other animal take off, and there was his chance.

Neteyam reached out and grabbed a fistful of her jacket, throwing her off balance faster than she could flinch away.

One of her legs slid off the tree root, knocking her foreward,

His free arm went around her backside, shoulder pushing into her waist.

It took all of five seconds to throw her across his saddle, flailing and screaming, and take flight after his brother.

Oh yeah. Today had been a very good day.

Chapter Text

Stripes remembered the worst day of her life like it was yesterday.

Back when Tenoch was still around, someone always made sure the Playpen was spotless. The thick outlines of hopscotch boxes were crisp and her jungle gym was rust-free, which was only possible because every new year, Maintenance would invade the sanctity of her yard.

It was abundantly clear no one told the new crew the way things worked. This was her place, not a dive bar. If things had been done right they would have stayed outside, scribbled off the tasks on their little clipboard and left without saying a word to her.

Instead they spent the whole time lounging in her day room, rummaging through her kitchenette, eating her rubbery apples and meal kits from the fridge. Getting comfortable as if they were welcome to stay. But the worst day wasn’t the day the maintenance crew came- it was the day after, when the whole city was sent on the wildest goose chase of their lives.

There were choppers and sirens and men on the ground, calling out and tearing up the barracks to find her. The chatter of comm links and walkies was relentless but what was truly troubling were the actual voices of the soldiers around her, Ardmore herself coming out of the woodwork to assess the situation in person.

All of which Stripes listened to from the safety of the cupboard she’d crawled into. She wasn’t afraid. She’d slipped away while the crew was busy slacking off, watching them quietly and napping until the next morning. It was only a game to see how long it would take them to find her.

Bad came the moment they did, and worse came after, in the form of a tranquilizer dart. It stung when the drugs flushed through her system but more so that it had happened at the expense of sitting still. of trusting the soldier who pulled her from the small space and feeling safe in the place she called home.

When she woke up, the front gate and outer fencing of her Playpen were electrified and a collar with a tracking chip locked around her neck. She had that thing on for nearly a year before Ardmore gave the green light to disable it.

She felt naked after that, the uncomfortable physiological response to being informed, wordlessly and once and for all, that she was property.

If that was the worst thing that ever happened to her, flying over pandora while hanging off the back of an Ikran was a close second.

By the time they returned to high camp Neteyam had had enough of her screaming and wriggling around. He figured once they landed she would slide off his saddle and go find something to perch on, or hide under, depending where her mind was after the ordeal.

He hadn’t noticed along the way that the straps securing the saddle had twisted around her leg though, and when he went to free her for a second time, the order to be calm while he untangled her at the tip of his tongue, a sharp pain shot up his arm.

“Ow!” He yelped, “She bit me!”

Her boot flew off as he let go of her, body landing on the ground with a thud. she popped up, leaping behind a rock as he predicted. Good riddance. she could be someone else’s problem now.

Several people came up to check on him, all of whom he could smile politely at or wave off except his sister. Kiri tutted, ears pinning, and tail swishing slowly back and forth. he wished she would make herself busy with something else. Anything else. 

“That’s going to be a scar,” she murmured, turning his arm to see the damage. “Are you alright?”

He tried shooing her away knowing full well it wouldn’t work “I’ll be fine,” he pulled himself from her grip, only for her to grab him again. The wound burned like an open flame but he did his best not to show it, if only to avoid being dragged off to see grandmother, where the two of them together would poke and prod at him endlessly. He used to think they treated him like a baby because they loved him but now he was sure they just liked hearing him scream.

in any case, it wasn’t a comfort to be mothered while he was so irritated.

“Is it true that she was raised by humans?” She asked while looking for something to wipe away the blood with.

“That’s what she said,” he gave in and admitted to himself that there would be no getting out of being tortured in the Tsahik’s tent “I don’t know how much of it’s true,”

“Then I will ask her myself,”

Lo’ak came around the line of Ikran to chime in with some of his deep wisdom, “I don’t think that’s a great idea,”

“Oh, stop it,” Kiri insisted. She didn’t turn to face them, just kept walking, scooping up the boot left behind on her way over. “Dad asked me to welcome her and I will,”

The list, Neteyam recalled, groaning, the list of a hundred other things he’d rather be doing right now than this. “Alright, but don’t get too close or she might-“

Kiri moved closer with more curiosity than caution, ignoring Neteyam’s warnings in favor of peeking over the cluster of boulders the girl hid within. She went through all the things her father told her about the day’s mission, how she leaped from her machine and stood to fight all their warriors with nothing but a rifle, expecting to see a fearsome beast on the other side.

Oh, how Eywa loved to make her laugh.

She was a tiny, unimpressive thing, shoulders broader than the other Omatikaya girls, with a plain face. Kiri was almost disappointed by the sight of three fingers instead of four, the hope of finding a kindred spirit faded, but thankfully not erased.

She noticed in the girl’s oddly colored eyes one pupil was smaller than the other. They expanded and contracted at different rates, mesmerizing her. A beautiful, wondrous detail that made her smile widen as she offered her greeting . “Oel ngati kameie, Stripes,”

Stripes hissed, ears flattening, but Kiri didn’t move back an inch.

The hissing continued but she waited and waited. It seemed never ending at first, hard and abrasive but going softer the longer she sat there. The girl didn’t move to hit her or run away, not that there would be anywhere to hide. She just sat there, desperate and clutching her gun in deep, increasing distress.

 “She doesn’t speak Na’vi.” Neteyam informed her gently, pulling her down from the rock.

The news made her sad. They would have to teach her everything straight from the bare bones. Did their new friend know anything? She remembered the stories dad told her about coming into the tribe and how difficult it was, even with his stubbornness. But he was strong. She could only imagine how hard it was going to be for the poor creature huddled between the boulders.

Kiri let her eyes wander over the activity in the caves, tribesmen walking about, sniffing the air around her hiding spot, and an idea struck. “make sure no one bothers her,”

Neteyam deflated, disregarding the fact that she’d never specifically asked him-that Lo’ak was also standing right there, listening. “Don’t make her my responsibility,”

Her eyes rolled far back into her skull but she started off anyways, knowing he wouldn’t dare refuse her. “I will be right back,” she promised.

Kiri jogged back to their tent on light feet, skipping around everyone’s junk to get to her own bed. She gathered up her blanket, which was too small for the task at hand, and decided to steal Neteyam’s as well. He won’t even notice it’s gone, she reassured herself, glancing outside to see it was already pitch black. Well, maybe he would notice but if he did, it’s not like he would complain.

She jogged back up the path and returned to the sight of Tuktirey’s tail sticking up from the cluster, the light sounds of a struggle coming from its center, and her brothers nowhere to be found.

Kiri climbed to the other side, peeking over to see what the commotion was and put a hand to her face in frustration.  Tuk pushed a beetle into Stripes’ mouth, meeting resistance but smashing it harder into the space between the older girl’s lips.

“Tuk, Tuk,” she scolded, sprinting to the other side to haul the little girl away, “she can eat later,”

She struggled but finally was able to calm the little girl down, at least long enough to ask, “Where are Teyam and Lo’ak?”

“Dad called them,” Tuk explained “can I-“

“No, go play for now, I’ll tell you when she’s ready,” it wouldn’t do to put her through more stress than she was already in, no matter how exciting it was to have her here.

She watched until Tuk became a drop in a sea of people before continuing. She made quick work covering Stripes’ head with her blanket and making a shield over the collection of rocks with Neteyam’s. The boot fit through a small opening in the makeshift tent and she giggled as she heard the girl inside pull it on and lace it up.

“Is that better?” She cooed through the gap, not expecting a reply.

She was delighted when she actually got one.

“Yes.” Whispered Stripes.

Kiri circled, taking in the new scent. The lifeblood of the forest and a satisfying combination of her family’s distinctive musk now surrounded her. It nearly masked the sharp metallic smell she arrived with, allowing the Na’vi passing by to settle down enough to disappear into their own tents.

She lay on her stomach, kicking her feet into the air. When her eyes adjusted to the darkness in the little space, she could clearly see Stripes inside, forehead resting on her knees.

Stripes’ tiny ears twitched, so Kiri knew she was listening, and she wondered at the best way to coax her out.

“you should come meet-“

“I don’t wanna,”

Oh well!

“I’ll wait until you do then.” She asserted.

“You might be here a while.” A voice called.

She turned to see her brother making his way tiredly back up the path from their part of camp, his arm bandaged and held away from his body. “Good thing I’ll have company,” her hand patted the empty space next to her.

Neteyam’s eyes flicked up at the cavern ceiling, and she knew something cynical was probably running through his head. If she was right, he never opened his mouth to share it.

The funny thing about cats was that they weren’t all the same. Up until the recom squad came along Stripes thought all cats were orange but Lopez told her his old cat was white with black spots and according to Prager, they could also be striped with white feet. Sol, of course, opened up a new world where cats weren’t even cat shaped anymore. Where there were cheetahs and tigers and lions and each one could slice through the hand that fed them easier than the last.

The inconsistencies in the stories she was told made it easy enough to question everything and disrespect authority because everyone was a hypocrite. Ardmore said Na’vi were scum but Sol said they were peaceful, and nothing made sense. She knew what happened to Hometree, there were so many accounts of the event in so many flavors that it would have been ignorant of her to just believe the agenda the general had set.

The Na’vi weren’t the bad guys.

but if a lion raised by house cats isn’t quite a lion anymore then she wasn’t really a Na’vi.

And so it was only natural that she felt uncomfortable being around so many of them- particularly the ones so close to her own age. She felt small. Embarrassed. Leaving base had been scary, being shot at was terrifying, the flight here was petrifying and this was a fucking conundrum.

The urge to be passive aggressive and sarcastic, a word only Toby used to openly describe her, but could conceivably have been mumbled under the breaths of everyone she’d ever met, cut into her like a knife. It ripped her guts out and spread them all over the cavern floor like cream cheese on a bagel. She didn’t know how to act. Wasn’t even sure if she wanted to try.

A spy. What was she thinking? It was a stupid joke she blurted out because she wanted to confuse them, make them laugh, make them leave. That she could do. It was effortless for her. She prided herself on the ability to agitate everyone into giving up. she took the realization that she didn’t want them to give up as a personal attack.

 I asked for this, she allowed herself. She had wanted to leave home and come here, no matter what that entailed. Begged for it, even. And as soon as her wish was granted, she’d tried to tuck tail and run. She took a deep breath, feeling her heart palpitate from the effort. Everything was quiet now, pitch dark like her room back at the barracks.

If she listened closely she could hear the snores of the sleeping bodies on the other side of the cave system. She focused on nothing but that. In, out, in, out, until the thunderous pulse in her ears slowed.

“Okay,” the words came out so quietly she couldn’t tell if she’d said it aloud or to herself. Even then, she didn’t believe them. “I’m ready.”

Neteyam took a deep breath as Stripes came out, ready for whatever terrible thing might happen next and desperately hoping nothing would.

“It’s about time,” Kiri sang, offering a hand to help the girl clear the entrance of the little sanctuary.

Stripes rose still covered in twigs and dirt, purple bruises now black and green. Her jacket hung over her arm and Neteyam could see clearly that they lined her arms as well.

“how did you get these?” His sister asked, expression melting into concern.

“Someone-“ her head hung, hand balling into a fist and stretching out again. “I hit my head.”

“Stay here while I grab something for it,” she said, walking off without even a sideways glance at her brother, who shot a quick look at the back of her head.

In her absence Stripes turned to him, folding her bare arms across her chest and looking him up and down. “Oh hey. It’s the Jackass.”

Neteyam would have been lying if he said he wasn’t eager to see what painful sounds she made when Kiri came back.

“Neteyam.” He reminded her, carefully, adding- “sorry I kidnapped you.”

It took her much longer than it should have to reply. “I didn’t mean to bite you-“ she stopped herself, strange eyes shooting down at his injured arm “-well I did, but not so hard.”

His nose wrinkled in distaste “That didn’t sound as sincere as you think it did,”

“No? That sucks.”

“the next time you get lost in the forest I won’t be there to save you, nantang.”

Stripes’ face went blank for a long moment, as if her brain had suddenly stopped working “Did you just compare me to an animal?”

“Trust me, there are worse things I could have called you.”

On her way to get the supplies, Kiri hung back to watch as they began to argue, chuckling to herself.

Stripes would fit in just fine.

Chapter Text

Stripes jerked herself awake again for the tenth time, nodding at whatever story Lo’ak was telling. These late nights and early mornings were killing her but she didn’t have it in her to complain and she refused to be the first one to fall asleep. Her internal timer was set for 0600 as per the annoying community clock in her kitchenette. The one that blared like a goddamn crisis alert siren in contrast with  the gentle clicking of her bedside unit.

I should have bit Quaritch as many times as i could before i left.

She would never admit to herself that she missed her room. She refused to entertain the idea that her springy little mattress had been nice or that she preferred the privacy of a locked door. There were a lot of things she’d started denying- ignoring, even- since that first day.

Namely that she was bad at weaving and beading and cooking and singing and all the other activities Kiri tried to push on her. It would be easier to list the things she was competent at, which so far was nothing.

She’d tried to make the case to Jake that she was a half decent shot, and he seemed to loosely believe her but forbade her from walking around camp with her rifle. The danger was not in the gun itself but the bullets. Butterfly rounds made to spread open on impact and blow off limbs instead of just piercing a target. When she explained to him how it wasn’t a big deal he’d looked at her like she was a monster.

The phrase War Crime was suddenly a stone in her heart, playing on repeat in her head in Jake Sully’s voice.

Another thing she did her best to ignore.

there was, however, no choice but to acknowledge that her upbringing had made her uniquely unfit for clan life. The one upside was that she moved through camp more or less comfortably, though there were always a few people who whispered when she walked by. When she told Neytiri she was afraid of what they thought of her, the woman proceeded to smash her ego into a thousand tiny pieces by informing her that, in fact, they do not think of you at all. A fair point that did absolutely nothing for her self esteem. That was fine. she probably deserved it for doing something shitty in a past life.

At the very least, even in her failure to keep up with the Sullys and their limitless stamina, she could say with certainty that this was still her favorite time of day. the cusp of eclipse; a spot nestled safely between asleep and awake. The hum of solar panels was replaced with the crackling of campfire but the whispering breath of bodies settling in for bed, growing silent in respect of the darkness, remained the same.

In her peripheral Stripes watched intently as Tuktirey lay her head down, a yawn escaping her.

It was only then that she allowed her eyes to drift closed.

Neteyam stretched in his bed, feeling each satisfying crack of his joints before turning to lay on his side.

From across the tent he could see Stripes facing him, everything up to her nose covered in the blanket she never gave back. Her cheeks rubbed the edge of it, hands fisting into it, pulling it closer around her as she tossed and turned, phobic of being still even in her dreams. In the days since she arrived he’d begun to notice his scent on her in the mornings, clinging to her skin until late in the day.

he would argue that she could use Kiri’s blanket but having slept beside her on more than one occasion he knew his sister well enough to admit she didn’t share her covers. He knew what it was like to wake up freezing and covered in dew, a victim of her hogging habit, so he let it go.

I hope it serves you as well as it did me.

He heaved himself up, stretching again on his knees and once more when he stood. He saw his father’s shoulder beyond the flap of the tent and tiptoed slowly around his sleeping family, pausing when he reached  Stripes at the end. Her bare feet were uncovered and he leaned down to pull the corner of his blanket over them before moving on, shaking his head. The first time she woke up that way, she’d spent an hour trying to warm them up. This way she could rise when everyone else did and begin her day without stalling.

She was a slow learner. She’d need all the help Eywa could spare.

Of all the books Stripes was given to read during her tenure at Bridgehead, nestled neatly on the shelves of her personal library before it was renovated to make space for the Recom Squad’s Boom Room; the most relatable was turning out to be  Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

The caverns of High Camp were bigger than they seemed from the outside, with no shortage of jagged pathways and drafty cave systems that seemed to go on forever. The mountains were a greedy beast that couldn’t be tamed and Stripes hated the feeling that she could theoretically walk in one direction for hours and still never reach the end. The uncertainty of what lived beyond each sharp turn and winding corner kept her as close as she could stay to Camp Sully without being told you can’t be afraid of everything forever. 

~If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't.~

the world as she knew it was unraveling strand by strand around her, expanding and contracting in ways she never thought possible, and by god, was that shit the definition of isn’t. The schedule in her housing unit was streamline and the clocks ran on time, every time. but here the word order had no meaning except when Jake sully was yelling at his kids. Her response, if she hadn’t also been afraid of looking weak, would be, I wouldn’t be so afraid of everything if everything wasn’t so scary.

She wiped the line of drool off her cheek and onto her arm. Her face somehow ended up inside her boot in the night and she took note to keep them closer to her feet from now on. While pulling on her socks and shoes she mentally prepared to present herself to Kiri for a thorough slathering of stuff .

Upon further inspection of her, the older girl found a hairline fracture in one of her fingers, a mild concussion and a bruised tailbone. Stripes couldn’t tell which injuries were from Wainfleet’s beating-ah- lesson, and which were from the crash. She didn’t really care for the constant reminder that any of those things had happened in the first place either, preferring to deal with the pain and move on with her life, but she dragged herself dutifully across camp to have them looked at anyways.

The Tsahik’s tent had come to represent a deep and singular misery for Stripes. If the groans of pain outside of it weren’t enough, the desperate gasps inside of grown ass men trying not to cry from how badly Mo’at’s balms and tinctures stung definitely did it.

Hoping to make Kiri laugh, she stuck her fingers through the flaps of the tent and whipped them open, arms stretched out to her sides as far as they would go, and declared  I have arrived in the best newscaster voice she could muster. In hindsight it may have been a better idea to poke her head in first to see who was around. Inside were a few blue bodies she recognized as Avatars, some unkind looking tribesmen and the Tsahik herself.

Stripes’ arms dropped slowly, curling around her torso in an attempt to make herself smaller- to take up less space. “Uh, I’m here for Kiri?”

“She is busy,” Mo’at said without looking up. Stripes couldn’t say for sure what had put her in a good enough mood for English. For the duration of her two weeks with the Sullys, Mo’at had exclusively spoken Na’vi. Whether it was to encourage her to learn the language faster or just because the old woman didn’t like her remained a mystery. “I will see you today.”

Her tail dropped and ears pinned as she took her usual seat, watching as Mo’at gathered the ingredients for her poultice. The smells in the air were so rich her lips pulled back in a grimace. an oily taste touching her tongue.

“Jakesuli says you are Na’vi,” Mo’at began again, laying a hand over the crown of Stripes’ head to turn it sideways for the application of something sticky. “but you do not look Omatikaya.”

That had become a budding issue too. the way she stuck out like a sore thumb in the crowd of tall, lithe women. Narrow shoulders and spidery long legs mocking her with up and down glances made her glad she never took Mansk up on any of his workout offers. She was bulky enough without the added size those sessions would have cursed her with. “My, ah… my mother was Tipani,”

Mo’at’s mouth made an ah shape, brow line raising. “That you have come here makes sense. The Tipani would not have accepted you.”

She compared the sting of the balm being applied to her temple to being burned on a stove. It seared away her skin to the muscle, hissing and spitting. Scolding her for being so careless with her words. Despite how much it hurt, and how much she knew she wouldn’t like the answer, she still managed to whisper- “Why?”

“You know why, child.”

she remembered Sol explaining how There were no reported cases of heterochromia in natives, and she supposed she understood that much. But if she were to stumble upon the Tipani out in the wild, would that really be the difference between a friendly greeting and an arrow in her gut? “I guess she did me a favor by abandoning me huh?” She said quietly.

“Indeed.” Mo’at declared without missing a beat.

She hung her head as much as Mo’at would allow, eyes searching the floor for nothing. That generational apple fell straight down, Stripes decided, as close to the tree as it could land.

Her jaw clamped shut for the rest of the visit and Mo’at sent her away to make room for the other sick and injured people, which suited her just fine. As much as she loved being doused in mushed up leaves and thick dollops of jelly, she’d literally rather be anywhere else than shrinking beneath the hands of the resident dragon lady.

She didn’t not like Mo’at. Mo’at was great. But if she had to compile everything she knew about the people she’d met so far and pick a favorite person, it would be Kiri.

Spider was an awfully close second.

Need someone to show you where to pee? Spider’s got you . Need to know what that group of girls just called you so you can formulate your vengeance to fit the crime? Spider’s your man! Need someone to say something halfway nice to you? Not a single problem, friend; Spider will say ALL the vaguely non-insulting things you need to hear until you hate yourself a little less!

Her eyes scanned the small gangs of people for one or the other, walking through the crowd with heavy feet and a low hiss sitting at the base of her throat. Stripes was now a firm believer that the key difference between humans and Na’vi was as simple as boundaries. They liked to touch her as she walked by, come into her space without an invitation and they were always breathing deeply around her. Like she was a goddamn air freshener.

Her feet slowed at a group of boys she recognized as Neteyam’s friends, though, he wasn’t around as far as she could tell. The oldest was named Kino, and she stood as far away from him as she could, knowing he was the most likely to reach out and put his hands where they weren’t welcome. Friendly or no, it always left her in a bad mood.

“Kiri?” She asked them, knowing they wouldn’t understand anything else she said.

In spite of her efforts, Kino walked over to her, splayed his large hand across the small of her back and pointed off to the side. “Kiri,” he confirmed, flashing a smile at her. He was a hunter from what she could tell, skin always tinted a light lavender from all the time he spent in the sunlight.

She pulled away with a nod, hugging herself on her way in the direction he pointed. Her ears flattened to her head, tail tucking between her legs as she walked.

In all fairness she didn’t know why it bothered her so much. Sol had touched her all the time, running her fingers through Stripes’ hair and counting the sanhí on her arms and hands. They cuddled together on the sofa, bumped into each other in the kitchenette and even laid in bed together to talk about flowers and clouds when they had the free time.

She was okay with being touched.

Just not by him.

In her distress she failed to notice something move into her path and hissed loudly when it brushed her leg, turning on her heel and continuing to seethe loudly until she could focus on what the thing was. “Oh, thank Christ,” Stripes praised, clearing her throat and hoping the people who were now staring would somehow forget seeing her freak out. “please tell me you know where Kiri is,”

~Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?~

Spider dusted himself off as if being kneed by her was no big deal. She couldn’t decide if his best quality was determination or kindness, though he had both in spades. She’d never met a human like that.

One who was entirely, unconditionally happy.

“She asked me to come get you,” he said, grinning wide. “but I don’t think you’re going to like what we’re doing today,”

Her eyes narrowed “what are we doing?”

Stripes was wrong before. Being thrown over some stranger’s lap and carted through the air upside down while a literal dinosaur flapped beneath her was not the second worst thing to happen to her. No, that honor now belonged to being handed what looked like a bundle of rope, being told it was clothes, and being forced to wade through a crowd of people while fighting the urge to pick the wedgie out of her ass.

Kiri had done her hair, pulling the loose strands into her main braid and adorning her with tiny turquoise beads and a flying visor that kept slipping off her ears.

The side of Kino’s mouth picked up when she passed him again and she couldn’t help but feel like this was some kind of frat house hazing where everyone was in on the joke except her. The Sullys at least had the good Grace not to make comment and she thanked her lucky stars she would soon be free of the prying eyes of the Na’vi who watched her use the strap of her rifle to cover her intrinsically bare breasts all the way to where the Ikran perched.

It was Lo’ak, Kiri, Neteyam and their respective mounts that waited for her at the edge of the caves, and Stripes could already tell by the looks they exchanged that she would have to leave her metal security blanket behind.

“I’m going to need a ten page essay on why I can’t bring a gun to a killing things party.”

“We use bows to hunt, so you will too.”

~The uninformed must improve their deficit, or die~

“But I don’t know how to use a bow,” she whined, watching Kiri nestle her rifle between a few tall rocks.

“We’ll teach you, it’ll be fine,” she dismissed.

It was the Scorpion all over again, the wearing her down by dismissing her worries, the powering through her concerns-

Neteyam held out a hand to help her up onto his Ikran “I won’t grab you this time,” his other hand went up to emphasize his promise.

after the night they officially met, things had calmed down between the two of them and settled into a monotonous peace where she walked by him and he nodded his head to be polite. To say she trusted him though, would be an extravagant stretch of the imagination.

Stripes took a deep breath, nodding once or twice, as if to consider it. She already knew her answer before he even offered, “No.”

“You can ride with me,” Lo’ak offered “but if you bite me I’ll bite you back,”

“Double no.”

After some back and forth she finally climbed up behind Kiri, arms wrapping around the girl’s skinny waist. The sound of everyone making bonds with their Ikran made her gag, souring her stomach for the first leg of the flight,  but when Stripes allowed herself to calm down she admitted the view was much nicer when she wasn’t upside down.

The area where they chose to land was dense and overly lush. They spent hours climbing over and under things, and stripes learned quickly that she was not meant for the jungle. Her movements compared to everyone else’s were stiff and awkward. She fell through and off of things and had to hold her limbs away from her body from all the stinging scrapes she was collecting, something Kiri would unfortunately nitpick later.

As they came closer to where they needed to be, the pace slowed and Stripes could breathe. On the floor, Pandora was cartoonishly beautiful, and she found herself grinning at the absurdity of it. The ground lit up where she stepped, bioluminescent lizards creeped over the trunks of trees and wood sprites swam through the air.

She didn’t see the appeal- they were like little sky fish that moved by squishing their bodies around the breeze that carried them. They were not the almighty spirits Sol- and every fucking Na’vi- described. She couldn’t see these little dudes being responsible for any cosmic wonders or awakenings or magic like the stories gave them credit for.  The one thing she would give them was that they were really, really cute. 

They swarmed Kiri as she rolled in the grass and Stripes held her hand out to touch one, only to follow it when it sped away from her.  She spent way too long chasing it in a circle and heard Spider laughing behind her

“Stripes, you can’t force them to land on you.”

This, of course, didn’t stop her, and she continued holding her hand out under the sprite’s tiny body expecting it to eventually settle down. “Bullshit; they like me, they just don’t know it yet,”

“Come here and focus!” Neteyam laughed, waving the group over to one of the pockets of open space.

There were tons of animals to choose from, both large and small, but the one they were after was called a yerik. It was a blue thing with a crest around its head- she could see a family of them trotting around not far from the grove they hid in. The biggest was only half the size of a direhorse. Stripes pushed down the urge to ask why they didn’t just cut out the middle man and eat those instead. It would be so much easier , yield so much more meat, it would be so much easier.

“I can’t do this,” she declared again, head shaking. “you should have let me bring my gun,”

“I believe in you,” sang Spider.

Her palm covered her face. it wasn’t that she didn’t believe him, it was that he would have said that to anyone in her position.

Neteyam’s eyes rolled, as they often did, and Stripes waited for whatever annoying thing was going to come out of his mouth. Her brows shot up when it came.

“Alright, crash course,” he took her hands and placed them where they needed to be on his bow. He was so close she could feel her tail twitch against the side of his leg. The strong beat of his heart where it pressed between her shoulders. “keep your elbow high, hold while you aim,”

Stripes nodded, trying to focus on his words without being distracted by all the places he was touching. His palm covered her knuckles at the bow’s body, fingers woven around hers at its string.

A heat went over her that felt a lot like morphine. Flushing through her veins and heating up her skin. The healing flesh of his bite wound was visible, the top half going into the meat of his forearm and the bottom slicing through his wrist. The area around it turned his blue pattern a deep purple and she couldn’t help but feel a little guilty.

Something she’d never say aloud.

When she decided she didn’t like the suffocating feeling of his body cradling hers, Stripes ended the contact by elbowing him in the ribs. “You broke your promise.” He’d said he wouldn’t grab her.

“Sorry, sorry.” His throat cleared. “Think you can do it?”

“Of course I can,” she couldn’t. She knew she couldn’t, even said so, but the faces pressing in on her made it impossible to disclose that a second time. It made her upset, how badly she wanted to be liked by them. She pulled an arrow into place like Neteyam instructed.

“You’re doing so well,” Kiri praised, hands at Stripes’ waist.

The yerik in the clearing walked around slowly, munching grass and minding their own business. She could hit one, couldn’t she? They weren’t even moving.

Neteyam’s fingers hooked slowly under her elbow, lifting it higher for the right angle.

Her breath hitched.

“Just let go already,” Lo’ak urged, rapping his knuckles on the back of her shoulder

The bowstring slipped from her fingers, and almost instantly, the arrow landed far off to the right. So far that the Yerik didn’t even really notice it.

Lo’ak blew air from his lips. “Well that was a waste of time,”

this fucking guy! “I would’ve hit it if you-“

“Soldier girl can shoot guns but not bows and arrows!” He hooted, pushing her backwards.

Her ears pinned in frustration

he lowered his body, tail twitching, and jerked to the side as if he was going to chase her.

A sick feeling settled in her chest.

Paws up, kid.

A hiss ripped from her throat.

I hate you.

Lyle Wainfleet’s face burned into the trees around her. A thousand of him swallowing her whole.

I hate you.

Lo’ak’s voice came in as static. His teeth became sharper, skull narrow. The eyes of a monster… “You okay?”

A loud screech- the sound of something big hitting the ground startled them, and Stripes took in a sharp breath.

Neteyam grinned wide from above, sheathing his bow as he made his way past them and over to his kill.

They watched in silence as he blessed the animal, Kiri grinning peacefully between them.

“I think that’s enough for today,” Neteyam squeezed his brother’s shoulders reassuringly, though that wasn’t enough to wipe the look of confusion off Lo’ak’s face, “let’s go home.”

Neteyam noticed the change in Stripes and Lo’ak immediately. They walked far apart, something unspoken hanging in the air. He didn’t blame his brother for being so distraught. Nothing really happened. He’d only wanted to play, and Stripes had overreacted. She didn’t just look irritated, she looked like she wanted to kill him.

“He was joking you know,” he threw over his shoulder. “You shouldn’t take things so personally.”

The footsteps behind him slowed to a stop and he had to drop the legs of the yerik to turn and look back at her.

Her gaze was low, fingers laced together in front of her. Voice gentler than he’d ever heard it. “I thought he wanted to fight me.”

Neteyam’s brows pressed together “Lo’ak will never harm you.” He thought better of that and rephrased, “Not on purpose at least.”

“How do you know that?”

A frown took his mouth downward, a chuff puffing from his chest. He straightened and threw the yerik over his shoulder so they could pick up their pace after the others. “I know my brother better than you,”

She pursed her lips instead of replying, hugging herself with her arms before beginning to walk slowly past him. For someone who talked so big, she had a talent for making herself small.

He weighed the possible outcomes of his next response, knowing she was equally as likely to begin arguing as she was to just take his words for what they were. Words.“my dad told me about you.”

Stripes scoffed, thankfully not slowing her pace. “Well your dad doesn’t know me so I don’t know what he would’ve said.”

“He said you’re lost. That you need help finding yourself again.”

She mumbled under her breath as she climbed awkwardly over a bush. “Figures the guy who literally became someone else would say that.”

“watch it.” He scolded, pulling her up and over the plant by her armpit and reorienting her roughly. He pointed to the middle of her chest in warning before continuing. “He wants you to find your place in the world like he did. I’m going to help you, for him.”

“I never asked for-,”

“You did,” he pointed out, and her eyes went downcast again. He had been there when it happened, and he wouldn’t let her lie to herself about it, “But that doesn’t matter. You’re here now. you came to our family, and we’re not going to let you stay lost.”

~Only a few find the way, some don’t recognize it when they do – some don’t ever want to.~

The strange twilight zone she’d walked into where she actually cared what people thought about her was starting to piss her off. At Bridgehead it was easy to fuck up and move on because more often than not, whoever she offended would be gone by the end of the week, replaced by some other poor devil who would leave even sooner.

When Neteyam explained that this couldn’t be waited out and she would have to speak to Lo’ak at some point, to apologize for something she didn’t even think was that big of a deal, her brain short circuited. What would she even say?

As they neared the end of their hike back to the Ikran, Neteyam dropped the big blue carcass off his shoulder and whistled.

Lo’ak’s head bolted out from behind a tree and his older brother waved him over to Stripes’ dismay.

“come here for a second,” he called

She scrambled on her feet , searching for a place to hide and covering her face with her hands when she found none, absolutely fucking mortified. She swatted Neteyam’s hand away when he patted her shoulder, earning a hearty laugh from him. The sound made her want to cry from the embarrassment. What a dick, what a-

“What’s up?” Lo’ak stopped a few feet from her, folding his arms in a way that made him look uncomfy.

Oh no. She had done that. This was her fault.

“Stripes has something to share,” Neteyam nudged her foreward.

“I- I wanted to say-“ she stammered- looking back at the older brother desperately. “what am I supposed to say?”

“She’s not mad at you,” Neteyam offered, a hand at laid over his heart. “she doesn’t know how to make friends, so you scared her a little, but that’s okay. We’re moving forward now, right?”

Lo’ak lowered his head to meet Stripes’ eyes, though she continued to avoid him. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to make you feel-“

“I know,” she breathed, stepping back from both boys. The air became thin, the sky was growing dark- “that’s- it’s okay, I-“

“was that so hard?” Neteyam threw his arms over each of their shoulders to steer them towards where his ikran was perched “I don’t know about you two but I’m starving, let’s go eat!”

The trip back was spent on Lo’ak’s Ikran instead of Kiri’s. A way for stripes to show him she trusted him as per Neteyam’s advice. It wasn’t so bad. his waist was a bit wider and she held her body further away from him as opposed to the tight grip she held on his sister, but the flight was smooth and he helped her to the stony floor when they landed back at High Camp.

Kiri hugged her, nuzzling her cheek in praise for her all the hard work she didn’t do, and Lo’ak blessed her with a sincere Oel ngati kameie and a bashful grin as he walked off.

Neteyam was the last one in the tent with her, everyone else having gone to sit by the fire with their parents. His hand went to touch her shoulder for the dozenth time that day but she shrugged before it could land, not looking forward to the hot pins and needles feeling she knew his fingers would leave behind.

He laughed and nodded, backing himself out of the tent with his hands thrown up in surrender. A silent and mutual understanding that she wasn’t ready. 

She watched him leave from the corner of her eye and got lost in her thoughts. Had it ever felt like that when Sol touched her? Like the ground beneath her could crumble at any moment?

Her head shook to ward off the thoughts, all the little annoyances of the day, and leaned down to get her bedroll ready for the night. Fuck trying to stay awake, and to hell with eating. she was tired, so she was going to sleep.

“I can’t know everything,” Stripes hummed to herself, the image of the Cheshire Cat vivid and unyielding in her mind.

With everything in its place, she rested her head on the cushion and let her eyes drift shut…

Only,

she realized, eyes snapping open, that the pile of items beside her bedroll was too small. The clothes she came in, the holo-pad, a rifle and an oversized visor couldn’t be everything she owned.

…where was Toby’s stupid bible?…

…

……

………

“Oh shit.”

The duffel.

The first time Spider and Kiri lured her into the futuristic little room where the scientific voodoo was done, Stripes took one look at the big, metal capsules, turned on her heel and walked right back out.

Sol explained the concept to her, where a human would operate a lab grown organism that was roughly the size and shape of something like her. That was all she needed to know before the feeling of wanting to shed her own skin like a snake worked it’s way into her subconscious. It was eerie and unnatural, and super gross.

It wasn’t that she had anything against Avatars.

She just didn’t want to be near them or smell them or be touched by them.

“I don’t get why you don’t want to go in,” Spider’s body was nearly horizontal from how hard he was pulling on Stripes’ arm.

She yanked backwards, bumping into someone hard and muttering a quick whoops, I guess you shouldn’t have been standing there, before doubling down on her state of mind. “That’s because you’ve never seen Body Snatchers.”

“Do I even wanna know?” He shared a look with Kiri- one that clearly said not this again.

“It’s a movie where aliens invade a planet and start possessing people’s bodies,” she pointed to the entrance of the iron trailer “you know, kindof like what’s happening in that room right now.”

“just come inside.” He groaned.

“Come with us,” Kiri nodded in agreement. Her hands went out to hold Stripes’, fingers lacing comfortably and forehead pressing to hers. “I want to introduce you to my mother,”

Stripes moved back a reasonable distance, just out of arm’s reach, severing the contact abruptly and leaving the older girl standing alone. “No, I’ll wait here.” She didn’t miss how Kiri winced at her reply. Ears lowering a bit and eyes hooding as she looked at the stone floor. Stripes did nothing, said nothing to comfort her. It was for the best, and that was a hill she would die on.

She watched them disappear and wove her way back through the flesh puppets and to the edge of the Avatar camp to wait for them, guilt once more settling over her like a raincloud.

It didn’t take Stripes long to figure out that Kiri’s bottomless well of tenderness was exclusively saved for her. There was almost nothing Kiri wouldn’t do if she asked, from bringing her food to weaving her new clothes. The older girl did her best to make her happy, and Stripes appreciated the effort that went into it.

It was nice while it lasted.

After the fourth week Stripes stopped spending so much time with Kiri. After the sixth she all but withdrew completely.

It was troubling how hard Kiri seemed to be taking rejection. It wasn’t as if she had said anything rude or done anything to hurt the girl, except slowly pull away. But the realization that she had been down this road, the one where she’d get attached to something that might not be around forever, made the decision an easy one.

“You don’t have to be out there, you know.” A familiar voice called from just inside the pocket of caves. “I can pull up a chair if you want to-“

She sat on the rim where she could be out of the way and still see both into the crevice and out into the larger area where the Omatikaya community went about their daily chores. “Thanks Norm, but I’m fine.” She called back distractedly.

“Suit yourself,”

Stripes knew, vaguely, who Norm Spellman was before they met. It was Jake who officially introduced her to him, for the specific purpose of helping her acclimate to the mix-n-match neo-societal thing they had going on. He was a lot like Marisol in that he spent an unnecessary amount of time trying to teach her about things she didn’t really care for, and used a lot of words she didn’t understand. He respected her personal space and didn’t push too hard on her boundaries though. He made cultural references she understood and translated for her whenever she asked. He’d even downloaded a few of his favorite songs onto her holo pad. She liked Norm.

She did not understand why he was chosen for the Avatar Program instead of Sol.

It had been rare for the woman to snap at Stripes. From the beginning almost all the way until the day she helped Stripes escape, Sol remained cool as a cucumber in the face of all her poking and prodding. but at the inquiry of what her tenure on Pandora was like before she joined Project Phoenix, Sol became an animal. Stripes later learned in a chaste conversation with Toby that Grace Augustine didn’t like Marisol, and that was that, and don’t ask any more questions.

She wondered loosely if Norm would react the same way if she mentioned her to him; Decided she’d rather not find out.

Stripes blew a raspberry, fiddling with the beads in her hair. She swung her bare feet in the air, she tapped at the rock beneath her. Toby would say that only boring people get bored but at this point she’d probably be looking for something to throw at him. High Camp, when there was nothing engaging to do, had become her personal gateway to hell. She compared it to watching food in a microwave. Things were always happening, every second of the day, at a s n a i l’ s  p a c e. Her eyes floated over the people, trying to pick out faces she recognized. Ones that were close to the Sullys, or maybe the ones that placed RDA artillery in piles around her while she worked. She tried remembering their names and ages, leafing through the pages of her memory for the information when she picked up a tall figure moving through the crowd.

One with an eager smile and lavender tinted skin.

More and more often Stripes had been noticing Kino. He stood in the little circles that seemed to constantly form around Jake Sully’s sons, burdening her with heavy glances and warm touches. He tasted the air around her when she walked by and she was having a hard time figuring out how to make him stop doing these things in a way he would understand, without sounding like an asshole.

She knew if she barked one of the only three Na’vi words she remembered at him, all of which were insults, he would probably keep his distance. But the idea of a second person, once constantly happy to see her, flinching when she spoke and looking away when she passed was wholly unwelcome.

Instead she grasped frantically for something that would get her out of an awkward grunting match with him, racing to the chair Norm was about to sit in and barely beating him there.

He had to catch himself on the edge of his wobbly desk to keep from falling after accidentally sitting in her lap. Norm’s Avatar was much heavier than his skinny frame made him seem and in typical fashion, he apologized for smashing her and went about his business like she knew he would.

“So what happens if you leave your Avatar alone for like a month?” Stripes pulled her legs up onto the seat, hugging her knees as Kino approached. “Does it shrivel up like a raisin?”

Norm tinkered with the items on his table, adjusting knobs and bending wires. “Ah, I wouldn’t know, I’m in it almost every day.”

“Kaltxí,” kino’s smooth drawl sounded at the lip of the cave.

Norm paused what he was doing to greet him. “Ngaru lu fpon srak?”

They had a short conversation before the boy gave Stripes a toothy grin and walked through the Avatar camp. She watched his long tail wave back and forth as he wove around the machinery and people getting dressed.

Stripes had known for a long time that her sexual preference was definitely men. Kino was a nice looking boy, only a few years older than her, but much taller. The angles of his face were sharp and his Sanhí took up a large area of his skin, making him light up like a Christmas tree in the dim light of eclipse. But she wasn’t interested in him the way she wasn’t interested in Spider. He was just there. Another body taking up space. One that stood too close to her and breathed far too much of her air.

“I think he has a thing for you,” Norm said, raising a brow when he’d noticed her looking.

She frowned deep, resting her chin on her knee. “back home there wasn’t much of a selection but I still don’t think he’s the one I’d choose in a lineup of eligible bachelors.”

“Careful!” He hooted, returning to his work “if your head gets any bigger it’ll explode,”

“That’s not-“ she jumped off his creaky plastic chair, throwing her hands up, hoping to somehow pluck an explanation out of thin air. “-I just don’t think we’d mesh well,”

An mhm sound came from his chest. “How do you know?”

“Because… im not going to talk about boys with you, Norm,” she wanted to embellish the thought with something along the lines of him being a nerd, but thought better of it, leaning back on the rock wall and sighing instead, “besides, he can’t even speak English,”

“Typical tone-deaf, Americanized teenager.” He tutted. “Im just saying, maybe give it a chance. you might be surprised what you like once you’ve tried a few things.”

But she had been trying things.

In fact, Stripes was learning, slowly, that tribe life wasn’t all that bad.

Very slowly.

Very, veeeeery slowly.

She liked the native fruits and vegetables and the way thunder echoed through the caves when it rained. The strings-and-feathers getup Kiri gave her was even becoming pretty comfortable save for the lack of underwear. She loved watching woodsprites float on the wind and she was getting used to the smells of Mo’at’s medicines. She came to realize that the only reason her days were so exhausting, so packed full of activities, was because Kiri wanted to make sure she was aware of all the Omatikaya had to offer. That none of those things were a necessity if she wanted to stay, and now that she had sampled everything she could focus on the things that she liked doing, which admittedly still wasn’t much.

That is, at least, until Jake gave her the job of assembling stolen gear. It was a simple task. Adding bullets to cartridges, attaching straps to rifles, fixing grenades to tactical vests; making sure everything was ready for the war party at a moment’s notice. Something she could do with her eyes closed, and a need she could fill without having to talk to anyone.

Oh. And beading. She was really starting to like beading.

Her main focus after that was the game of three-dimensional chess that was preparing to look for the downed Scorpion. Stripes made the list of the reasons to go after it in her head, each row becoming less and less coherent and more obscure as she went on. Eventually it all boiled down to the fact that she had three things of true value left in the world. Her RDA dog tag, Marisol Corona’s holo pad, and Toby Quentin’s goddamn bible.

It was hers and she wanted it back and she didn’t care who or what she had to steamroll to have it in her hands again.

Her first instinct was to find a map, but none of the ones looted from the RDA’s supply trains seemed to lay out the surrounding forest itself, only the routes directly along the railway, and certainly not anywhere near the mountains.

Dead end.

The next was to ask someone constitutionally weak and socially flexible to help her map out the coordinates of the wreck. But when she did finally ask Norm if she could use his equipment for this, he refused.

Dead end.

“You could try pulling up the observational data on your hologram pad.” Norm suggested.

Excuse me? “The what now?”

“Your tablet should make a three dimensional map of where you are relative to its synced devices.”

“What about the magnetic field?”

Norm scratched at the base of his braid, looking off to the side as he often did while he was deep in thought. “The picture won’t be clear in the places where it’s strongest but if you get a few miles out of the mountains it should adjust enough to show you where you need to be.”

Stripes instinctively touched her leg, right where the pad would have occupied a pocket, which, thanks to her new tribal digs, wasn’t there anymore. Her feet skipped for a second in the wake of her decision to go grab it and she began sprinting back to Camp Sully, throwing “I suddenly have a thing I need to do, bye Norm!” over her shoulder.

Unsurprisingly, no one was there, and she was free to drop onto her bedroll, settling into the relative silence of an empty tent.

“Are you still synced?” She whispered to the Holo pad, scrolling through the settings to find the list of linked devices. There were a few things she had the foresight to disconnect and block, like Lopez’s stereo and Toby’s flatscreen, but her heart nearly crawled out of her throat when she came across what she was looking for.

Craft 101415 connected.

“Hell yeah.”

Neteyam’s eyes cracked open to the sound of rustling. At this time of night it was normal to hear Lo’ak’s snoring or Stripes moving uncomfortably into different positions once in a while, but this lasted longer. There was clinking and shuffling and the sound of something brushing the tent flap is what finally brought him to his feet. The light from a nearby fire threw a shadow across the face of a rock and he went, carefully, to see who it was.

He felt more than a little guilty for assuming it was his brother.

From where he was, tucked against behind the entrance of the tent, he could see Stripes’ bare back. It disappeared under the soldier’s shirt she came in, and she bent down to pick up her old pants as well. When she pulled down the cloth Kiri lent her to put those on he looked to the roof of the cave, knowing at the very least that she wouldn’t want him to see.

as the sound of her thick rubber boots gripping the stone became less and less clear he came out of the tent to follow her.

He watched her do several against the rules things before she went off in the direction of the bridge.

She grabbed her cartridge of bullets- the ones his father expressly forbade her from using,

She swiped fruit from outside a neighboring tent,

And plucked a canteen from someone else’s tactical vest.

The sounds of her slurping on the fruit’s juices were so loud he was surprised it didn’t wake anyone, and at the end of the bridge she began to chug away at her stolen canteen. All that without ever noticing he was right behind her.

Neteyam had never met someone so ignorant with so much unearned confidence in all his life “What are you doing?”

She projectile spat the gulp of water off to the side, coughing uncontrollably as she whipped around to face him. The motion was so fast he had to grab her elbow to keep her from falling, though the canteen couldn’t be saved. “what are you doing?” She asked, still struggling to breathe.

His lips pursed. He wanted to tell her the truth. That he’d followed her all the way out here to see how much of a fool she could make of herself. “The cliffs out here crumble like sand. I came to make sure you didn’t slip and die.”

She cupped her face with her palms “What is it with you Sullys and getting in peoples’ business?”

“I’ve been asking myself the same thing about Lo’ak.” His eyes rolled, rejecting the idea that her sneaking around and being secretive was none of his concern. “what are you doing out here, Stripes?”

She pulled her hologram pad out of her pocket, tapping away and bringing up a map with a red beacon in the middle.

“This is the ship I flew out in.” She held it up so he could see, making a vague explanation that didn’t sound like the full truth as it came out of her mouth. “It’s loaded up with some supplies. Food, ammunition, fun stuff,”

His head shook. “None of that is important enough to leave camp for.”

She pocketed her pad again and pursed her lips. “I’d like to know what your measuring system for important things is because whatever it is, it’s super backwards.”

“I’ll walk you back to camp.” He held his hand out to coax her away from the bridge, choosing to ignore her grumbling.

Her arms curled around her torso, the telltale sign that she was uncomfortable, which he refused to believe was because of him. “The crown jewel of all that useless crap is the Design and Data manual for the ships that were gunning you guys down. I was hoping it might be something your dad could actually use.” One of her feet moved back, stone crumbling beneath the sole of her boot. “I have to do this.”

He groaned, pressing the heel of his hand into one eye. He should have stayed in bed. “You know this is all suspicious right. You show up, talk about being a spy and now this.”

Neteyam regretted speaking almost instantly.

Stripes moved toward him at last, head tilting playfully. “Well if you don’t trust me, come along and make sure I don’t do anything shifty,”

The tip of her tail flicked and her ears pricked up. She liked to do this to everyone, he’d noticed. The game where she’d argue as long as she could until it wore the other person out enough to let her win. He didn’t have the energy for a battle like that right now. Nor did he have the patience to go back to sleep without wondering if she was safe.

“If we do this, we’re doing it my way.” He insisted irritably. ”I don’t want to hear one complaint from you.”

Neteyam watched her try desperately to fit his leg guard over her pants. He’d made her agree to wear them so the material wouldn’t irritate his Ikran. She put up a fight about her boots, but those were eventually kicked off to his relief.

the gun, apparently, was non negotiable, but he managed to grab a cartridge of his father’s bullets to replace hers with and that seemed sufficient enough.

He tried to plan out the time it would take to rush there and rush back, and bent down to help her pull them on quickly. His hand hooked under her thigh to keep her steady, placing her foot on his knee.

He paused when he realized she was focused on her pad, fingers pressing into her leg as his mind wandered back to her getting dressed. It would have been nothing special to see her naked, having seen all the parts of a woman when his friends and sisters would change and bathe in front of him; there was no shame in baring skin to people you trusted.

So why didn’t he feel like she trusted him yet?

He exhaled, tapping her ankle and trying to ignore the fact that it bothered him. “Other foot,”

When everything was set he pulled her up behind him, noting how stiff her arms were around his rib cage. He heard a gag when he made Tsaheylu but didn’t bother to comment before taking off.

Stripes was amazed at how accurate his sense of direction was. She kept trying to give him instructions according to her holo pad but he brushed off every attempt, claiming he knew a quicker way. If it took four hours to get there by air, she could only imagine how fucking long it would have taken her to walk there through treacherous mountain passes and sprawling jungle.

The battlefield had already been taken over by wildlife. Groups of syaksyuk and yerik scattered as they circled, splashes of color in the wreckage. She spotted her Scorpion almost instantly, being the only one with blue spray paint, and Neteyam patted her knee, nodding before heading in to land.

She held him a little tighter as the Ikran’s wings beat around them but slid onto the forest floor before she had to hear the sound of their bond ending. The flying visor she’d borrowed slid off her ear and fell somewhere but that wasn’t important when the Scorpion was just up ahead. Her feet were still unsure but she’d gotten much better at balancing and catching herself since she started going hunting with the Sullys. Hopping from one thing to another came more easily now and -

A rancid smell reached her as she drew closer to the severed edge of the train tracks.

It was funny.

Death had never seemed like such a permanent concept until this very moment.

She flinched at the feeling of Neteyam’s knuckles brushing her arm.

“Something wrong?” He asked.

Her jaw felt like a vice. Words were impossible right now. How could he not see it?

Autopilot disengaged.

She recognized the craft she had opened fire on by the absence of an arrow. The shells of a gunship were much bigger than an automatic rifle, as she could see by the giant holes in the front windshield. and it was tilted in just the right way that she could tell it was the one she shot out of the sky.

~Another one bites the dust!~

Inside she made out the outline of a human body. not it’s face. Just the top of it’s helmeted head, slumped over but still secured to its seat. She wondered if the it was a man or a woman but realized it didn’t matter now. it was gone. It didn’t need an identity or a name or a gender.

Did it?

How would she feel if someone she knew- no. She wouldn’t even let her mind go there. Her feet only began to move when she felt Neteyam’s arm around her shoulder, pulling her away and towards her own grounded ship. 

Whoever you were, you probably didn’t deserve to die… she thought, hoping she never had to feel this way again.

The hatch of the Scorpion was jammed wide open from when she leaped out and started threatening to blow the heads off all those tribesmen, which meant she could see everything inside clearly. the papers she tossed out of the storage compartment littered the ground and she moved them off the duffel, a long, shuddering breath leaving her when she finally felt the fibers of it beneath her fingers.

It zipped open easily to reveal Toby’s bible at the top but she only allowed herself a moment to press a shaky palm to its worn cover before moving it further into the bag and grabbing the manual to show Neteyam.

“Maybe you’re not a spy after all,” Neteyam joked, sitting on the floor of the gunship while Stripes shuffled through the bag. He watched as she pulled out a small bottle of clear liquid, popping it open and gulping down half, before offering the rest to him.

“Salud,” Her nose wrinkled as she swallowed, lips pulling back so hard it made him lean away from the lip of the bottle.

The dejected look in her mismatched eyes was enough to make him reach out for it.

“Try not to breathe.” She warned.

He touched the picture on the front, realizing it was made on earth and not the RDA base. It had leaves around the writing. A big pink animal on the side. Too colorful and playful to be made by people who seemed to like killing so much. “What was that thing you said?” He braced himself.

“Salud,” she grinned “it means cheers- like good health, god be with you, and all that. My friend taught me.”

He nodded, hoping it didn’t taste as bad as it smelled. “Salud.”

He fought hard not to show how much it burned going down his throat, setting a trail of fire all the way into his chest. She didn’t seem as affected as him, going about her business and pulling more things from the bag.

After a few seconds it began to fade, barely, and he could feel the stuff making his mind fuzzy. The appeal, he supposed. There had to be at least one upside to drinking that crap, otherwise who would ever do it?

She pulled out a large metal knife, the kind that flipped open, and fixed it to the strap of her rifle.

“We have knives.” His throat cleared.

“Correction; you have one, I don’t.” She shook her head hard, the beads in her hair tapping together lightly. “I do now. It’s nice and shiny,”

Neteyam sat still as a happy feeling set in, a laugh sitting at the base of his throat. “Well good, you’re going to need it,”

“What for?”

He jumped up, accidentally startling her, and walking back towards his Ikran. “For your walk home!” He called over his shoulder.

“Oh, fuck you , really?” If she was upset about it, he couldn’t tell by the way her lips turned upward.

His footsteps slowed after a few more moments and he turned back on his heel to return to her. “No, I’m not going to make you go on foot,” he chuckled when her fist met his arm in a soft punch. “but it would’ve been funny,”

“It won’t be funny when I smother you in your sleep,” she threatened, dodging the punch he threw back.

He nudged her with an elbow and crouched down low, tail curling in excitement.

She hissed like he knew she would, but Neteyam waited patiently for her body to relax before encouraging her.

“Come on,” he coaxed “you can do it,”

Her head lowered, breathing shaky, hands trembling.

“Remember. Its not a real fight.” He insisted, walking sideways with his tail twitching excitedly. It had been a long time since he felt happy enough to play. watching Spider and Kiri run after Tuk satisfied something in him, but he couldn’t deny that the longing to join them existed. Wrestling with Lo’ak was one of his favorite things to do as a child, slowly beaten down by the responsibility of simply being the eldest brother.

She reached behind her head to grip the barrel of her rifle and he threw that idea out, surrendering quickly.

“Okay, maybe not,” he is hands went up where she could see them.

Her body deflated a bit, ears pinning, shoulders dropping. Turning back into the pitiful creature that had huddled between the rocks, covered with his blanket. “It’s not you,” her head shook.

“I know.” He hadn’t done anything wrong. just as Lo’ak hadn’t. “Maybe if you explained why-“

“I’m not talking about it.” The response was abrupt, and left no room for argument.

“Fine, you’re the boss. Give me something to carry,”

“There go those Sully tendencies again,”

Neteyam’s head tipped back to look at the sky, because merely rolling his eyes wouldn’t have been a big enough gesture for how annoyed he knew he was about to be.  “What do you mean?”

“It’s only one thing and it’s not heavy. You don’t always have to be useful.”

He pointed at her forehead, touching the center of the flower pattern her stripes formed. “You don’t need to keep trying to be independent,”

They walked in a circle around each other pointing and making goading sounds. Hoots and hollers to dare the other to come back with a better reply. There was none, and Neteyam had finally beaten her.

Only, not really.

“You know what. I’ll let you win this one,” Stripes examined the back of her hand, glancing at him from the corner of her eyes. “you can carry the bag, bag boy,” the thing dropped to her feet, waiting for him to pick it up.

“I don’t know if I like that.” His head tipped, eyes narrowing ever so slightly.

“What happened to i’m the boss?” Her brows pressed together.

He regarded her for a long moment before deciding the conversation wasn’t worth it and turning to walk away.

“Wait, don’t leave me here, I was joking!” She laughed, picking her bag back up and following him through the rubble.

Stripes let Neteyam lead her past the nameless, faceless corpse, surprisingly comforted by the feeling of his shoulder brushing her ear, his arm around her torso.

By all rights she should have been exhausted, but the anticipation of the cool wind on her skin and the visage of the canopy below her made her too excited to let drowsiness take hold just yet.

He let go when they reached his flying monster, taking the duffel from her and strapping it to its back. He’d been holding her dropped visor and he placed it carefully back on her head before pulling her up behind him and this time she scooted as close as she could, palms flattening against his ribs, cheek finding a place in the middle of his back.

She released him immediately when Tsaheylu was made, a loud, wrenching noise bubbling up from the back of her throat.

“Why do you keep doing that,” he tutted.

“Because watching Tsaheylu happen is gross to me,” she explained in exasperation. It was like listening to someone stir something gooey. “like the concept of my tswin touching something makes me physically ill.”

“What happens when you make Tsaheylu then, you just throw up?”

“I wouldn’t know, I’ve never done it with anything,”

“Never?” He twisted as far as he could to look at her without breaking his spine.

“ Ever.” She asserted.

He stared at her hard, expression morphing from horror to anguish in the span of a few seconds. As if what she’d just admitted was the worst thing he’d ever heard. “Hang on to me,”

“Where are we going?”

“To make this right.”

As soon as she realized what Neteyam had meant by make it right , Stripes decided she wasn’t a fan. By the time they reached where they were going eclipse was almost over, the shot of gin from the first aid kit completely worn off.

Gone were the playful, comfortable feelings, replaced by a palpitating heart and the deep distress that had become her constant companion these days.

Stripes looked up at the tree, big and grand and wise-looking. It’s vines were like spaghetti noodles hanging down from its branches, glowing an opalescent pink that made the plant look warm. Friendly, even, with all the squishy little woodsprites floating everywhere. “I don’t know if I wanna do this,”

He shoved her forward by the shoulder, eyes rolling into his skull. “come on. It’s not as bad as you’re making it out to be,”

“But you’re confirming that it is bad though, right?”

Neteyam’s fingers went through his hair, both hands raking through his tiny braids in agitation before he moved to stand behind her. “Breathe deep,” his fingers curled around her elbows to anchor her in place “don’t panic,”

“See, you’re not making it seem like this is going to be pleasant for me so maybe-“

He came around to face her with a stern look that made her mouth snap shut. She always thought he looked more like Neytiri. Lithe and lean. Soft and elegant. He had long eyelashes and full lips and big eyes- but right now, whatever this was; the killer in his expression, was entirely Corporal Jake Sully. “I drank that horrible stuff so you wouldn’t feel bad,” he said through clenched teeth. “you’re doing this.”

Her hands flew to her head. The heels of her hands squeezing her temples. If she pushed hard enough maybe she’d wake up on her bedroll. “That’s not fair, your super tight anus loosened up for five seconds when you drank it, I did you a favor!”

“And now I’m doing one for you,”

Her body moved before her brain could catch up, sprinting towards his Ikran, leaping on unsteady legs over roots and boulders until something hard knocked the wind out of her.

Neteyam was on her in an instant, pinning her hands down above her head, body held far away from her teeth, having seemingly learned his lesson from the first time.

She struggled for a bit before giving up and wrapping her legs around his hips, smashing their bodies together so she could reach his face.

Her tongue shot out to make a trail from his chin to his ear

he rolled off of her with a loud noise of disgust, wiping at his face for all of three seconds before gripping her ankles and beginning to drag her, cursing in Na’vi.

She kicked and screamed and hissed, positive she’d woken up half the forest by now if the cresting sunlight hadn’t done that already,

At the base of the tree he let her ankle go to throw her over his shoulder and bring her to the spot where they were, dropping her on her feet and holding her braid in a hard grip,

She groaned, leaning as far as she could from him and the tree’s vines without hurting herself. “Let’s pretend I did want to upload my frontal lobe onto a plant; which I powerfully do not-“ she gave an experimental tug on her hair, wincing when the bundle of nerves stretched a bit. “what are you expecting to happen?” was she supposed to get right with god or suddenly become a better weaver after this?

“Nothing.” He deadpanned, exhaustion evident in the huffing and puffing of his chest. “Now sit down and pull your tswin out or I’ll leave you here.”

Her head tilted in contemplation, deep breaths coming from her nose “what if-“

“Stripes.” He scolded. “Stop being a baby.”

It took a bit more coaxing from him, and some sort of reassurance that she wouldn’t die from doing this for the first time as an adult before she relented and settled to the ground. Neteyam sat cross-legged in front of her, talking about Eywa and the lifeblood of the forest or something of that such while she tried to tune him out.

She’d decided to play one of Norm’s songs on her holo-pad, selecting her favorite from his playlist and looping it.

~ Say, Candy and Ronnie. Have you seen them yet?

Ooh, but they're so spaced out

B-B-B-Bennie and the Jets~

The cadence slowed her thoughts a bit, lyrics helping her focus.

~Oh, but they're weird and they're wonderful

Oh, Bennie, she's really keen,

She's got electric groove, a mohair suit

You know I read it in a magazine, oh

B-B-B-Bennie and the Jets~

The tendrils of her Tswin wrapped around the vine Neteyam handed her and her heart stopped as she entered oblivion.

The day Stripes graduated from Tenoch’s care was one month after her sixteenth birthday.

That morning, Tenoch adorned her with a crown of flowers, brushed her hair and hugged her tightly, none of which had been out of the ordinary.

What had been was the arrival of General Ardmore. She dismissed Tenoch and explained to Stripes that it was time for her to officially join the workforce, which apparently to Frances, explicitly meant Security Operations. That was always the plan, of course. To make her useful. The woman went over a brief history of the RDA and dovetailed into a long winded rant about insurgency and betrayal, which Stripes didn’t really understand.

Regardless, she sat quietly as her housing unit was cleared out. She was able to keep the dog tag issued to her at birth, but everything else was removed. Any color in her clothes, all the schoolwork and toys from her childhood carried off and replaced with olive and camo except for the library.

She spent most of that first year of synthetic adulthood as a square peg being sanded down to fit a round hole. Weapons training, single combat, advanced mathematics. She learned how to read a map, how to sharpen a knife. her vocabulary was broadened by the colorful cast of nobodies that came in and out of her once sacred space, teaching her a new set of life lessons by chipping away at her shoulder

And then Marisol…

Eleven months to the day after Tenoch left her, Marisol Corona stepped off a shuttle, and drifted into Stripes’ life on the wings of an angel.

Sometimes Sol made Stripes feel stupid. Not that Sol ever put her down, but the very existence of her in the universe made stripes feel like she needed to re-learn the alphabet. A woman who stopped wearing underwear when she ran out of clean pairs because god forbid she stopped talking about birds and monkeys long enough to do her fucking laundry. who fixated on the pathways of Stripes’ Sanhí like they were the most interesting thing in the world. It made her angry, the way Sol made happiness look so easy.

That if she could borrow just a piece of that, even for a little while, maybe she could outmaneuver all the obstacles and finally achieve nirvana, or at least murder the goblin that had run off with her ability to make serotonin.

There were a lot of people Stripes wished she was. Tenoch the Teacher, Toby the Engineer, Mansk the Strongman, Quaritch the Leader…

Anyone but herself.

Because if she had to be anyone, she wanted to be someone who didn’t cry or flinch. Someone who didn’t doubt herself or question the morals of other people. She wanted to be a skilled hunter or an ecologist and make movies and write books about all the adventures she imagined herself going on in a fantastic world where she wasn’t Stripes the Orphan.

But more than anything, what stripes really wanted was-

Hello?

Who’s that?

I’m Stripes.

Oh.

Where am I.

Somewhere better.

Like heaven?

Feels like it.

Does that mean we’re dead.

Only me.

That sucks… did it hurt?

Like a bitch.

How do I get back?

Where?

To…where I was?

You don’t want to go back. Only forward.

Then where do I go from here?

Wherever you want.

That doesn’t help me.

It will. You’ll see.

I think someone is calling me.

You’d better go then… Will you visit me sometime?

How do I find you again?

No need. I’ll be here waiting.

As Stripes understood it, each Recombinant was able to ask one thing of the RDA in exchange for signing onto Project Phoenix. Some of them asked for favors like take care of my family, put my son through college, etcetera. Stuff that made sense. She understood those things, and why a dead man might want them.

she didn’t understand, however, what was so important about a briefcase. If the Blue Boys could have asked for anything they wanted, why would they ask for something so mundane?

She’d scanned the common room and the hallway to make sure Lyle wasn’t around before rooting through it. The thing was made in a luxurious leather, stamped with the RDA insignia in gold leaf. It was already cracked open, the thumb pad on its lock still glowing.

Inside were packets of powder, neatly stacked. Needles, spoons and cartridges of yellowed liquid in perfect little slots.

Letting curiosity win, she’d picked up one of the packets, parting the seal to take a sniff. It had a metallic scent that caught so thick at the back of her throat that she coughed. Her foot nudged the case away, it’s corner bumping into Wainfleet’s nightstand. She was too busy trying to catch her breath to notice Mansk come into the room. He’d grabbed her arm so hard and so fast that her hand tightened around the little baggie to keep from dropping it, the stuff inside exploding upward into her sinuses in a hazy cloud of white.

Toby’s hand on her shoulder didn’t wake her from the fog that devoured her mind, and neither did Sol’s voice, high pitched and curving upward with worry at the end of each frantic sentence.

Stripes couldn’t breathe.

Her muscles siezed up and her jaw clamped shut, teeth grinding as if turning her molars into dust would stop the furious beat of her heart, but it didn’t, and she wheezed and gulped the air around her until everything faded to black.

Her hand had gone to her neck to make sure a collar wasn’t there when she woke, eyes only opening once she could confirm there was nothing. She didn’t want to wake up at all if she had to live that way again.

Not long after being brought back to the barracks, she found out that Ardmore had deemed the presence of the powders as a hazard and taken the briefcase away from Lyle. it was a while yet before she realized why he’d stopped pulling his punches during their sparring sessions…

Disconnecting from the spirit tree felt a lot like waking up from a cocaine overdose.

Bad but not as bad as it could have been, with a slight chance of making her life a whole lot more complicated.

Neteyam held Stripes as she sobbed. The sun was at it’s peak now, and his parents would surely be looking for them but he set that worry aside to comfort her. He wondered what she could be thinking; what she could have seen to warrant this. 

He made sure she was comfortable before leaning back, patting her on the head stiffly. She was a storm, loud and unyielding as if her sadness would never end.

Her hands clutched at her neck, throat clearing hard.

He patted her on the head, on the shoulder, shushing her and calling her name to bring her out of her thoughts and back to the real world. Her tswin dropped from the vine and into her lap, which he tucked back behind her, hand rubbing across the back of her shirt. “It’s okay.” He promised, unsure of how to make her stop “I’ve got you.”

her sobbing finally let up a bit she pulled herself out of his arms, sitting up carefully with her eyes covered and ears flat.

He rested his cheek on his knuckles, waiting patiently for her to be ready to speak. The words of the song she left playing echoed around them, and he listened disinterestedly, wondering how the sky people saw this as actual music.

~ Hey, kids, plug into the faithless

Maybe they're blinded

But Bennie makes them ageless ~

“Are you alright?” He asked again.

“Yeah,” she eventually sniffled into her hands “just give me a minute.”

…

….

…..

what?

He choked on a laugh, not entirely sure of what he’d just heard. “ What did you say ?

“I said I need a minute,” she repeated irritably.

His eyes narrowed into slits , hairs on the back of his neck raising. “You said you couldn’t speak Na’vi.”

“I can’t ,”

“But you are.” He insisted, leaning forward on his hands and knees to sniff her. Had anything changed? Was she the same person? “What language do you think you’re speaking right now?”

her hands came away from her face, melancholy replaced with agitation. Her sleeve wiped at her nose, a bead of blood smearing across her lip, and she angled her body away from his. “I only speak one language, dingus,”

“You need to-“ something bumping into his face made him flinch backwards. Atokirina bumped against his face, a few of the little seeds floating past his nose and under his chin, lingering until his heartbeat stilled. “What did you see?” He asked as calmly as he could.

Her arms hugged her legs, deep in thought. The blood began to flow faster from her nostril, which she wiped desperately with her hand before giving up and bunching her shirt to catch the red as it fell. “Will I get struck by lightning or something if I tell you?” She asked in a pinched voice. The screen of her pad went blank and the music ceased.

Neteyam caught the bottom half of her dog tag as she lifted the fabric up to her face and he looked away before she could realize where his eyes were. He resisted the urge to tap his leg.  His grandmother would know. he wished she were here to tell him what to do. “No,”

She waited a while before speaking, looking at him and the ground several times before deciding what to say “I saw myself, it was-“ her legs came down to cross in front of her, free arm waving wide “I was in the jungle.”

“A man was there- well, I didn’t see him, I heard him and-“ she struggled.

He waited with his lips pursed, hoping if he stood still enough he could avoid another one of her mood swings. He wanted to know, oh, he wanted to know.

“I don’t know who he was but he-“ she covered her eyes, body folding in half over her lap “are you sure I’m not speaking English?” She mumbled between her legs.

His fingers laced together, tail going taut behind him. “Yes.”

“You said nothing bad would happen,” she wailed 

In all fairness, he hadn’t known this would happen. Tsaheylu for him was always pleasant and easy. There was no reason to believe it would be any different for Stripes. Yes, she may have been raised wrong, and as a result turned out a little backwards, but she was still Na’vi, and he had hoped the experience would make her see things a bit clearer. A bit closer to the way he saw them. “Nothing bad happened; you are alive. You still draw breath. I told the truth,”

“But there was some guy talking to me, I don’t know who he was and I can’t-“ her voice trailed off into a bout of mumbling that he had to turn his head and lean forward to try to hear her.

When he realized she was hyperventilating he sighed and scooted closer, knees touching hers so he’d be close enough to lift her torso more easily. “Come on, breathe.” He instructed, patting her leg “Breathe deeply, count to six, in, count to six, out.”

She did as he asked for once, and he briefly considered the fact that he may have been wrong. That he shouldn’t have pushed so hard for her to make Tsaheylu… but then she may have gone her entire life without knowing what it was like to be one with Eywa. It was her birthright, to be connected to the world around her.

He’d done a good thing, he reassured himself as he watched her struggle to breathe through one nostril. If Kiri could hear his thoughts now, she’d be proud.

“I don’t want to talk about it.” She sniffled.

“I won’t make you.” He soothed. “Keep breathing.”

They sat like that a long while, counting and breathing and counting. Animals began to appear around them, the sun baring down on their shoulders. His comm link wouldn’t work from this distance but he could let the family know when they were at least an hour out. Give his dad time to relax a bit before they arrived and hopefully lessen the blows of whatever punishment he would certainly be planning for them.

Stripes scratched at her nose, itching off the dried blood and settling a hand over her heart. She looked exhausted- but much less panicked. “Where’d you learn that?”

He scratched the back of his head, deciding the knowledge might help her somehow- to know she was less alone than she assumed. “My dad used to go to a center for old soldiers. They taught him how to breathe when he had, ah-“ he searched for the right word “attacks?”

“Jake has PTSD?”

“He doesn’t like to talk about it,” he warned, and she nodded. “but I know he struggles sometimes, like you.”

“I don’t struggle.” She frowned

“Sure.” Neteyam shook his head, chuckling. He stood, signaling to his Ikran to come closer and offered his hand to help her up.“Let’s go home.”

The blood that hadn’t finished drying smeared across his arm but that didn’t stop him from pulling her up behind him. He looked back expectantly when she didn’t wrap her arms around his waist, on the edge of rolling his eyes at her until he saw her face.

Her eyes were cast sideways, ears as far down as far as they could go. He didn’t need to ask what was wrong, having been the subject of so many scoldings right alongside his brother for his entire life.

He knew shame when he saw it.

“Stripes?” He urged.

She reached behind her to unzip her bag, pushing things around until she found what she was looking for. The thing she pulled out was bound in leather. A symbol on the front he recognized as human. It popped up from time to time in the avatar camp, though he knew little of what it actually meant. “I didn’t really come out here for the manual.” She explained as she offered it with both hands. “I came out here for this.”

He took it and met her eyes over his shoulder. Running a thumb over the raised lines of the cover.

She went on with her hands cupping her elbows, though he could tell this time it was done because she couldn’t find the words, and not because she didn’t trust him to listen. “My friend gave it to me. I didn’t realize how important it was to me until I didn’t have it anymore, but now I don’t think I can live without it.”

He turned it over gently in his hands, nodding before giving it back to her. What was there to say? Eywa had blessed her, given her a gift and sent her back into the world brand new. This was all meant to happen.

It needed to happen.

“I’m glad I could help you get it back.”

Stripes had come to know the Sullys as both an indistinguishable unit and as highly distinctive individuals. They were all stubborn and bossy and intrusive, but generous to a fault and damn fine company when she stopped thinking hard enough to let them be.

In the two weeks since she’d started avoiding Kiri, she’d gotten a bit closer to Lo’ak and, funnily enough, Tuktirey, who was always handing her small objects that reminded her of Stripes. The husk of the beetle she’d tried to shove down the older girl’s throat on the first night, beads to match the turquoise in her hair, flax cord so she could fail at making bracelets; it was sweet and foreign and wierd to think she had once been that little.

Stripes almost regretted never spending any time with her. Almost.

Tuk was the first child she’d ever encountered aside from herself. At first she tried treating Tuk like she treated everyone else, but that didn’t fly for long. Apparently kids were less hardy, more sensitive. They needed patience and guidance that Stripes couldn’t give, and needed filters on words Stripes couldn’t help but blurt out into existence.

She didn’t know how to be around Tuk, or Neytiri for that matter. Both of them so different from what she was used to and so set in ways that were incredibly difficult for her to understand. She was still getting the hang of all of them really. One stubborn, bossy member at a time.

But Jake was another matter entirely.

Regardless of where he’d been for the last twenty years, he was still a marine.

So when Neteyam’s Ikran landed at high camp, already surrounded by the Sullys, Mo’at and Spider lingering off on the sidelines, and headed by a fuming Toruk Makto, she slid off it’s back with all the confidence of a dying mouse.

Neteyam’s posture dropped immediately when his feet met the ground. He thought of all the things he could say to appease his father. He could tell the story as it happened at the risk of Stripes being exiled- but then he’d never be able to forgive himself. She was too callow to be on her own, and where would she go otherwise?

His father’s scent reached him first, then the sight of the shadow his tall frame cast on the stone. “Front and center, both of you.” The man growled.

Stripes stood tall, arms hooked behind her back, stance wide and shoulders squared, as if she hadn’t been terrified to touch a tree just hours prior. “Corporal.”

“What the hell happened?” He gestures to the blood dried all over the front of Stripes’ shirt.

Neteyam sighed, knowing without a doubt that he’d have to spin up a story and take the blame like he always did. His mouth opened, eager to pacify his dad and get the punishment over with, when Stripes’ voice cut through the tense silence built between them all.

“I went out to get something from the wreckage of my aircraft,” her tone was clear and unflinching, so strong in resolution that Neteyam’s brows lifted as he stared at the side of her face. “I knew you’d say no so I tried going alone, but Neteyam caught me as I was leaving.”

Neteyam tensed up for a moment. He’d been so preoccupied with what he was going to say to his parents about leaving after eclipse that he’d forgotten all about the new problem they’d created.

His mother did as he had, sniffing the air around Stripes, tilting her head, and narrowing her eyes. “What have you done?”

“We-“ she seemed to catch herself, clearing her throat before continuing, ignoring the expressions of surprise on everyone’s faces at the prospect of Na’vi coming from her mouth. “I-“

“I took her to the tree of souls to make her first bond with Eywa,” Neteyam interjected then. If she was going to incriminate herself he would at least take responsibility for this. “It just happened.” He offered with his palms facing the sky. There was no other explanation, no reasoning he could push for why she was suddenly speaking perfect Na’vi.

”first bond?” Lo’ak gawked “as in ever?”

His hands went up, feeling validated that someone understood how strange it sounded. “that’s what I said!”

but of course his dad decided to find some other reason to be upset.  “You didn’t have the sense to wake me up, boy?”

He again tried to respond, only to be cut off by the girl next to him. 

“I was already at the bridge heading off the mountain when he found me.” She explained, not moving a single muscle as the man loomed over her “I told him I was going no matter what so he came along. There was no time in between for him to get you.”

Neteyam’s gaze shot at his brother, whose hand covered his mouth, eyes flitting between stripes and their father. Even mother seemed surprised.

“I hope whatever you brought back was worth risking our position for.”

“It was.” The girl declared.

“Just apologize,” Neteyam said through his teeth, hanging his head and lowering his volume to a whisper.

Her head jerked in his direction, an expression between anger and disbelief warring over her features “Why would I say sorry if I’m not?”

“Excuse me?” His father’s tone was a warning. A command to quit while she was ahead.

“I’m not sorry.” Her posture became a bit more open, reaffirming that she felt absolutely no guilt for going behind his back. “I went to get my stuff, I own it it’s mine. And one of the things I brought with me could help you a ton so double whammy; you’re welcome.”

He could see his mother and grandmother whispering urgently to the side, moving closer so they could see Stripes more clearly. He tried splitting his attention between them and his father’s scolding, between Lo’ak’s murmuring and Kiri’s fussing but shook his head to focus himself when he found no middle ground.

“You’re out of line, kid; Way the hell out of line.” His father seethed, distracted also by the women closing in behind him. “You’re not allowed to leave camp again without consulting me, are we clear?”

“But…“ Stripes trailed off when Lo’ak shook his head, encouraging her wordlessly to take what she was given. “yeah…fine.”

a sigh of relief blew from Neteyam’s chest as his father moved away.

Stripes didn’t know how lucky she was.

In hindsight Stripes wished she hadn’t walked into it guns blazing. Her spine was soft as a spaghetti noodle by the end, legs made of jelly, only made worse by the beckoning gesture of Mo’at’s hand.

Her throat was filled with the rank sting of bile, guts coiling like a serpent. She didn’t know what awaited beyond the entrance of the Tsahik’s tent but she was willing to bet it wasn’t good. It was Kiri’s hand guiding her forward that kept her from throwing up in her mouth and she regretted ever making the decision to keep the girl at arm’s length.

But what would happen when Kiri inevitably decided she wasn’t worth the trouble?

When Kiri’s hand pulled away from hers, she gripped it tighter and was relieved when she sat so they were shoulder to shoulder, fingers laced together in a way that made her want to laugh. a four fingered hand and a three fingered one fitting together like the pieces of a puzzle.

It occurred to her that the exhaustion that came with not sleeping for twenty-four hours was making her loopy and that she would wake up wishing they were still estranged, if only to spare her the constant nagging thought of what if; what if Kiri decided that Stripes didn’t deserve her? What if something pulled them apart and once again left Stripes without the chance to say goodbye?

like with Ansel.

like with Tenoch…

She didn’t get to wave to Lo’ak and Neteyam before they were ushered out by Neytiri, leaving her at the mercy of the two people that favored her the least in the clan. It wasn’t for lack of trying, either. Stripes put up a good effort to warm them up to her, but it eventually came down to just staying as far out of their way as possible. She was as good as human to them, not only confirmed by the way they looked at her but the similarities between the way she and Spider were treated by both women.

Suddenly it felt like that first night again. The burning embarrassment of being the only person who didn’t know what the hell was going on working it’s way into the marrow of her bones. She tucked herself closer to Kiri as Mo’at’s mouth opened.

“Speak.”

“What do you want me to say?” Stripes asked carefully.

“Say why you are here.”

The way Stripes was used to solving her problems was a simple three-step program.

Annoy the adversary until she got what she wanted,

Bend the rules if she didn’t,

Then sleep like a baby knowing she probably wouldn’t be punished.

The four bright yellow eyes boring into her forehead made it clear that was a thing of the past. This conversation was a consequence. The question a test. And if she were honest with herself, she was afraid of getting it wrong.  “I don’t think I understand what you mean,”

“Say why you did not stay with the sky people.” Mo’at leaned in, hands on her knees “Say why you have come to us, no lies.”

Her eye twitched with the sudden awareness that she really had been speaking Na’vi. That she recognized the patterns she’d been using in her sentences, and that the word Lies had been the only thing in that sentence said in English.

Her throat became itchy for no apparent reason. The blood crusted to her nostril making her nose wrinkle. She remembered vaguely the first time she asked Sol what it was like outside of the shield walls. The holo-pad’s pictures, sol said, did the vast sea of sparkling blues and lush green landscape no justice. Every day after, Stripes would ask General Ardmore when she’d be ready to leave on her first mission and every day she would say soon, but soon never came and Stripes was stuck wondering if she’d ever make it out of the gray waste she called home.

It wasn’t a bad home, she reaffirmed for herself, looking down at her three-fingered hand in Kiri’s. It just wasn’t where she wanted to be. I want to be here. The thought donned on her like an axe hitting her skull. I want to be here and I never want to leave.

Her breath came as a shuddering sigh and with a nudge from Kiri she said the first thing that came to mind. “I guess I came because I didn’t want to spend my life not knowing what it was like to be free.”

The pause was long. It was quiet. It was suffocating.

Mo’at‘s expression never changed, not in the thousand minutes it took her to formulate her response and not as she moved to sit in front of Stripes.

There was a tenderness in the way she wrapped her wrinkled fingers around her hand, the one enveloping Kiri’s, that had never been there before.

“Eywa has given you a gift, child,” she explained slowly, carefully, as if Stripes still wouldn’t understand her. “and decided once and for all where you belong.”

Well alright then.

Chapter Text

Over the course of several weeks Stripes felt the full affect of the tree take hold of her. Her dreams the night before were full of butterflies and red flowers where before it was only grey cement and cigarette butts. The jacket Toby gave her had lived a rough life and she found it was fraying in several places. The letters G.A.Q hand embroidered on its collar. There were blues and greens in the sediment layers of the cave walls instead just of just flat brown, showing the years carved out by the heavy rains of Pandora. Jake and Neytiri’s bodies were littered in blemishes, worn and weathered compared to the new, baby smooth skins of the recombinants. Mo’at’s left hand shook when she raised it too high, and the right gripped things too softly sometimes.

The little things were beautiful now, like how Lo’ak’s stripes formed a woodsprite on his forehead and how Neteyam’s ears would pull back when he smiled wide enough. If she thought too deeply she forgot to breathe, and so when she came out of her trance she took a long pull inward, filling her lungs with the crisp mountain air as Kiri continued to speak to her.

“Today you’ll become one of the people,” Kiri explained. “This is the most important day in your life,”

Her heart skipped a beat at the thought. Word was spreading about tonight’s ceremony and it had somehow invited the whole of the Omatikaya to reach out their hands as she walked through the clusters they formed around High Camp. She decided begrudgingly that she shouldn’t fight it and that the extra attention was something she could live with for a while.

What really bothered her were some of the budding changes to her identity. Today alone she had used phrases that didn’t previously exist in her vocabulary like please and thank you - yes sir and no sir. it wasn’t so much the words themselves, but the intonation in which she said them that left a bad taste in her mouth. 

“The most important day of my life was when I left Bridgehead,” Stripes argued. Losing herself in the gentle taper of Kiri’s nose. “Remember, I lived a whole ass eighteen years before I ever got here…”

she went through all the things she remembered from her classes to determine which lessons were still useful and which would be absolute garbage after she became part of the clan.

If a plane flying horizontally at one hundred meters per second at a height of one thousand meters releases a bomb, the velocity at which the bomb would hit the ground is…seventy-two point one meters per second.

with a queasy feeling in her stomach, she tried letting her mind rest on something else. she tried forgetting the fact that knowing what her tax deductibles would be on a soldier’s salary was just taking up rent-free space in her skull.

How many extra bones would I need to grow to necessitate a fourth finger?

“I don’t know anything about that life,” kiri pointed out, “you never tell me anything about it.”

“We can talk about literally anything else,” Stripes wiped a hand across her face, ear flicking at the sound of the beads in her outfit clicking together, adding quickly at the end “-except Eywa.”

“Can you really shoot with this thing?” Lo’ak asked, waving her rifle in the air.

“I could pop a yerik traveling twenty miles an hour through the eye from a hundred yards away,” her eyelid twitched as he cocked a round into the chamber- most likely on accident. “Stop touching my stuff,”

“I want to know what your childhood was like; who your friends were.” Kiri leaned in close and pressed her thumbs into Stripes’ collarbones, a serious look on her face. “did you like living in the city?”

“…hard pass.”

“Stripes,”

Lo'ak mumbled in the background “I’ve never actually seen you use it-.”

Stripes couldn’t recall someone ever being so invested in what she had to say. So when Kiri began asking real, authentic questions she wasn’t sure how to feel.

”there’s nothing even that interesting about me!” Stripes clutched at the air to emphasize the desperation inside her.

“But I want to know all about you,” Kiri insisted. “do you have a favorite animal?”

“-You just kind of drag it around like a third leg.”

If Fike has twenty thousand cups of pudding, how pissed off will he be if Stripes eats them all?

“I… i like cats.” Stripes blurted, taking the gut feeling at face value. It wasn’t a very well thought out truth but it wasn’t technically a lie.

“What’s a cat?” Asked Lo’ak, pretending to aim.

Stripes ripped the rifle from his hand, ejecting all the bullets onto her bed and giving it back to him. Baby-proofed so he wouldn’t murder someone. “My favorite animal.” She offered through a clenched jaw. “There, you know a little more about me, should we hold hands and sing now?”

Kiri’s fingers tapped at her knee.

Then she got up to leave.

“Kiri!” Stripes whined “you can’t be mad at me!” It felt wrong as soon as she said it and she knew she would be paying for it later. Remorse was thrown around this place like a rubber ball with no one to catch it- bouncing off the walls and onto the floor, up and down a million times and only stopping when everyone was asleep. If she had to hear someone say I’m sorry one more time, she would dive off a cliff.

The girl was already too far out of earshot to hear anything else so Stripes thrusted her body back, spreading her arms out on her bedroll in defeat. 

Lo’ak pressed the trigger a few times, satisfied when nothing happened, and pushed the muzzle into the side of Stripes’ head.

She hissed hard at him and he rested it over his crossed legs, thankfully taking the hint to chill the fuck out.

“You going after her?” His chin jutted in the direction his sister disappeared in.

“She’ll get over it.” Another sin she would have to pay for later.

His face twisted in what Stripes would call disapproval, but more than likely it was disappointment. She’d seen her fair share of both. “That’s not the way you keep friends, Stripes.”

“Because you have soooo many friends.” She rolled her eyes.

He lay her rifle across her stomach, standing to leave her alone in the tent. “More than you will if you don’t loosen up.”

Stripes was, perhaps, being a bit uptight.

There were lots of ways she could explain why, but none would be valid enough to satisfy Kiri without delving into the mess of her past. Something she was still battling with herself.

She couldn’t get a grip on why the girl wanted to know these things so badly in the first place. There was nothing special about any of the questions she’d asked and the answers didn’t change anything.

It was the reason she never bothered asking the girl about herself either. Because she knew all she needed to know. Kiri was spacey and curious and a little domineering but she could be generous and affectionate and courteous and Stripes didn’t care about the rest. She didn’t need to know what Kiri’s favorite fucking color was to know that she liked her.

She sighed aloud, looking up at the stone ceiling above her. She wished she was a rock. Always staying in one place, never having to worry about anything except erosion.

That way she wouldn’t have to lay here, ejected bullets digging into her scalp and shoulders like a punishment, missing the sound of Sol’s heartbeat beneath her ear and the taste of Zhang’s god awful cinnamon toothpaste. She realized she also accumulated lots of unnecessary junk like how many different types of guns the RDA manufactured and approximately how many bricks made up the outer wall of Bridgehead city. Tedious details she was fine with never thinking about again but hoped she’d never forget.

Rocks didn’t have to think about shit like that.

She’d be the best goddamn rock that ever lived.

Mo’at’s explanation of the coming of age ceremony rang through her head like a bell between the mixed bag of her daydreams. There would be no banshee claiming, no dream hunt, and no skill test. Mo’at, Neytiri and Jake had nodded their heads in a circle like birds pecking at breadcrumbs at the declaration that Stripes wouldn’t survive most of those things.

Stripes would have been almost insulted if she didn’t agree so fully.

She would present herself to the clan, Mo’at would bless her and that would be that. Eywa had done her a favor apparently by churning the contents of her skull- given her a free pass to blow through all that shit and straight to the finish line.

the whole situation could be blamed on Neteyam’s insistence that she bond with the tree of souls, and stripes didn’t know if she should thank him or slap him for it. When taking into account how adamant he was, it felt like staying here hadn’t been her decision at all. She felt like a fly caught in a web. Everything was weaving around her, just-so, anchoring her into the ground where she would stay until something with twelve legs and three heads and a mouth full of razor sharp teeth came along to maul her to death.

Her hand fisted the blanket beneath her, bringing the corner up to her face so she could look at the frayed ends of it. She wasn’t stupid. She’d seen Neteyam bending over to pull it down every morning. She knew the blanket had been his and she noticed the way his nose never failed to twitch when she joined his family at breakfast.

She wouldn’t deny that she appreciated some of those things, no matter how much they annoyed her. Like Kiri’s constant mothering or the rocks and pieces of shrapnel Tuktirey would shove in her duffel as gifts.

how could she be mad at a single one of them for caring?

She sighed again, gathering up her bag and shaking off a bullet that stuck to her skin, knowing there would be imprints all over her. She reached back to try to see how many there were as she walked out of the tent and her heart nearly stopped as she noticed who was sitting at it’s entrance.

Neytiri regarded her calmly, looking up from her work of putting arrows together.

“Hi,” stripes made an awkward little wave, wishing Mo’at hadn’t burned her uniform. Some cover would have been nice under her daughter’s sharp scrutiny, but she settled instead for folding her arms across her chest. “I-“

“You should be preparing for tonight.” The woman turned her focus back to what she was doing, the downy fluff of yellow feathers falling to the floor as her blade ran across the end.

Stripes swallowed, though her throat was dry as sandpaper. “I’m ready,”

“I do not agree.”

And there it was, the admission she had been anticipating. If Neytiri looked at Spider like a bug crawling on the floor, she looked at Stripes like a rat. Higher from the ground but not even a little bit less disgusting. “I know you don’t like me, but-“

“That is not true.” Her eyes cut to Stripes “I do not think you deserve this yet. You have not earned it.” Her hands lowered into her lap thoughtfully, as if to consider whether the next thing she said should be out in the open. “But I do not dislike you.”

Stripes exhaled in what was half a laugh and half a sigh. The air that came out was made of nothing but tension, and she was happy to have it out of her system. “Can I ask you something?”

She tilted her head. “Yes.”

“Im not saying I believe in Eywa, but if I did-“ Stripes continued as the woman mumbled a prayer for the strength not to hit her, under her breath but still loud enough that she could hear every word. “do you think she’s ever wrong? Like maybe this whole thing was an accident and she didn’t really mean to… you know?”

The set of Neytiri’s shoulders softened. “No.”

The conversation ended with Neytiri barking now leave me, and Stripes was happy to oblige, tightening the strap of her bag over her shoulder and muttering a goodbye.

She looked for the littlest Sully because if there was anyone willing to hang out with her and talk about absolutely nothing, it was Tuktirey.

One would think finding the little brat would be easy enough, being as she was always the fastest thing zooming through camp, but by the time Stripes caught up with her, she at perfectly still on the back of an Ikran.

“We’re flying out,”  Lo’ak offered a hand to help her up onto his saddle. “want to come?”

“Ahhh,” Stripes glanced back at her bag, then around at the group, “I think I’ll just hang out here, actually.”

Kiri groaned, hopping onto her mount behind Tuk and Stripes turned in a frantic little circle, bending her knees and gripping her head in both hands as if squeezing her skull would magically grant her the right thing to say. “I’m not avoiding you, Kiri, I just don’t feel like flying right now.” Her octave raised when Kiri didn’t look back at her “Are you really going to stay mad at me? I told you I liked cats! You’re being ridiculous!”

“We’ll see you when we get back,” Lo’ak’s arm bumped against Stripes, brow raising. He earned himself a low growl from her, grinning as he mounted. The look in his eye was I told you so.

She watched them go with a final wave from Neteyam and Spider and a curse under her breath, knowing by the time they came back Kiri would be her usual happy self. Unfortunately it would gnaw at the back of Stripes’ subconscious for the next week. The next two if she was unlucky enough, which seemed to be the case with most things these days.

Everywhere she walked she had to grit her teeth against the unwelcome friendliness, turning on her heel at every angle to try and find somewhere she could be alone.

She preferred it when people had stared and pointed because they didn’t like her.

eventually she settled into a space with tall rocks on all sides, imagining she was back in her Playpen- the most private place in her memories- as she flipped through the tiny pages of Toby’s bible while her free hand sifted through a bag of beads in her lap.

She did her best not to linger on the reason she stood behind while everyone else went off to have fun without her , which was because she didn’t want to ask Jake for permission to leave the sardine can that High Camp was becoming. hadnt it been just a few weeks ago that the vomit-inducing size of the place had intimidated her into a corner? 

Well, at least her resolve hadn’t gone anywhere.

now there was an entire day to fill with literally fuck all before she would have to present herself to Mo’at.

Today felt like a weekend. Like the Sunday afternoons she’d spend scribbling out pictures with fat, waxy crayons and sipping flavored water through a bendy straw while Tenoch read her a book. Just trying to squeeze in those last few drops of mindless pleasure before the inevitable doom of Monday morning came and she had to practice writing her Ps and Qs in cursive.

Her head shook to knock the thought loose and she focused on what was in front of her. The silk bookmark of Toby’s Bible parted the pages exactly where she hoped it would; at the psalm they said before the Stripes-Mobile lifted off for her maiden voyage.

She was surprised to discover she could still read English at all. She spoke it now with a hard accent and had a lot of trouble pulling up the words for things she used to mention every day. The images of pop culture figures and items that couldn’t be found on Pandora at all were clear in her mind but she’d since forgotten what to call them.

Norm was a big help there, working out a system for her where she would describe the thing she was thinking of in Na’vi or scribble it in English in a little notebook and he’d write the word for her phonetically so she could later practice pronouncing it.

Today she walked out of the avatar camp with a chipped mug filled to the brim with the worst coffe she’d ever tasted, the titles of several vintage movies she’d watched with Toby, the name of a baseball player Zdinarsk had mentioned in passing and the word Peachy, which she seldom used but asked Norm to add to  the notebook anyways.

Some other time she would have to go through it and add everything to her Holo-pad just for the sake of convenience but for now it was enough to write stuff down, glad and thoroughly grateful that what she considered to be the most important chunks of her knowledge had been spared by the spirit tree.

Turn to me and be gracious to me,
    for I am lonely and afflicted.…

She turned it over to feel the ridge of the cross emblazoned on the other side only for her fingers to run against a small dent in the binding. The back cover opened to reveal a little pocket, the material thick and yellowing with age. She pulled open the accordion flap to see what was inside.

In the back pocket of it’s cover was as followed:

Four tickets to a movie called Terminator 12, Last Legacy. Seats A11-A14.

And two RDA ID cards.

The name on the first was Tobias Anton Quentin.

The smile that took the corners of her mouth upward was instantaneous. Toby looked good as a human. He had wavy hair and good square features. Lightly tanned skin that reminded her of the way she took her coffee.

Stripes wondered what he was doing right now. If Sol was laughing at one of his jokes.

If they missed her as much as she missed them.

The name on the second was Gideon Anton Quentin.PhD. The man in the tiny photo looked so much like Toby it would have been hard to tell them apart except for one thing.

One of his eyes was a bright blue.

The other a dark brown.

“Hello, Stripes,”

She threw the Bible as hard as she could in the direction of the voice, heart fluttering wildly when she realized who it was. “You scared the shit out of me!”

“Sorry,” Kino groaned, holding his stomach. Something else balanced precariously in his free hand as he coughed from the impact. “I thought you saw me,”

Hearing actual words in his breathy voice instead of gibberish made her ears prick up, the word sorry bringing on the urge to bang her head against the floor.

He grabbed the book and the cards that had fallen out of her lap, handing them back to her with a sheepish grin.

“Thank you,” she said, not entirely hating the cadence of it as it exited her mouth. It didn’t sound small this time.

“So you do speak the language,” Kino leaned on the rock beside her, letting himself slide down to sit. His legs were so long that his knee touched hers. “Does this mean you were ignoring me?”

“Yes.” Her head bobbed up and down, testing the boundaries to see how much rejection he could withstand before he gave up and left. “What do you want?”

He unwrapped the little bundle in his hand, peeling back the edges of the dark green frond to reveal a lump of white fish pressed into some kind of boiled root. “I have brought you food,” he held it out to her “seeing as no one else has,”

She swallowed the saliva pooling under her tongue. She wasn’t exactly hungry, but the food here was never bad and what a waste it would be if she didn’t take the offer. “I usually eat at the end of the day, with the Sullys.” She hesitated.

“My father says you should eat as much as you can always,” he placed the leaf between them, palms settling on his knees as he waited for her to take it.

Would it really be so bad if she just- “What does your mom say?” Her body scooted forward a little to pull the frond closer. Her tail curled over her lap, tip flicking back and forth.

“That he will be fat and useless when he is old,” his smile widened, eyes crinkling at the corners when she took a bite of the fish. “we shall see.”

Her teeth sank into the root, savoring the sweet taste. Her eyes cut between Kino, who waited patiently for her to be done, and the crowd behind her little cluster of rocks as she licked her fingers clean.

Kino followed her eyes in obvious confusion. “What are you looking for?”

“Your friends,” she admitted. They were always somewhere nearby, always lurking on the sidelines when he talked to her.

His long fingers covered his heart “I came alone to see you,”

“Why?”

“I do not need a reason.” He laughed and Stripes wanted to tell him to go away but didn’t get the chance to before he continued. “what are you making?” He pointed at the half made item in front of her.

She remembered the beads. “I’m trying to make a bracelet for the thing tonight but i-“

“That is not the way you do it,” his tongue clicked as he examined it, head tilting to get a better angle from where he sat. “here, let me show you,”

Her hand went to her hip where her utility knife was clipped, ears pinning when his arm reached out. Too much of him was in her space at once. His lavender tinted skin smelled like an Ikran from all the time he likely spent flying. He was almost as tall as Jake- a few feet taller than her, and definitely big enough to hurt her if he wanted. “I don’t like being touched,” she said testily.

“I have seen Kiri touch you.” Kino frowned, withdrawing.“And Neteyam and Lo’ak.”

Fine. Have it your way. “I don’t want to be touched by you.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t like you,” Neytiri’s yellow irises flashed behind her eyelids and she added, in her mind… but I don’t dislike you either… it was a fair description, and one she would probably carry around with her for the rest of her life. She wondered if there was a word for that. The bland feeling of nothing towards something.

“You will soon, I think.” He reassured her, looking between both of her eyes. It was like people didn’t know which half of her face to focus on sometimes, and Stripes allowed the pause he made while he made up his mind. “I would like to be friends.” He said finally.

“Friends.” Stripes tasted the word. Neutrality, that’s the one I’m looking for!

“Friends.” His palm went to cover her knuckles. Slowly. Carefully.

Stripes waited for the pins and needles feeling of a hand moving across her skin, and was surprised when it never came. “I think I can do friends.” She decided, focusing on a scar that went through the back of his hand, thoughts idling.

If Lopez has thirteen melons and Stripes smashes five with a hammer-

He patted her excitedly, giving her forearms an unsanctioned squeeze before gathering up her flax and beads. “Let me begin by making you something for your ceremony.”

Kiri danced ahead of the group, enjoying the feeling of the sun on her skin as she cut a path through the shrubs. The wind was solid against her. She could feel it in her hands, cupping her cheeks, combing it’s fingers through her hair. It had been a long time since they’d done this, just flying out for no particular reason other than to spend time away from camp for a while.

to spend time together.

Her arms spread to catch the tips of the leaves on both sides of her, taking big wide steps across the forest floor. Spider jogged along, telling her a joke he’d heard and she giggled, not finding it the least bit funny but appreciating the sound of his voice.

Her brothers were talking about something childish like who’s Ikran could fly the fastest so she focused on more important things, making sure Tuk stayed close to them as the little girl stopped to chase a lizard.

Kiri chased another that spiraled out of the same hiding space, it’s brightly colored disc helping it float on the breeze. She wondered if it looked anything like a cat and frowned, suddenly wishing she had stayed behind to press Stripes a bit harder.

She wasn’t asking for anything unreasonable.

Just the chance to know her a bit better. If anyone deserved to by now, it was Kiri.

that was why she made her way over to Neteyam, who had stretched his body over a rock after they reached their destination. Head resting on his arms as he warmed himself.

He cracked an eye open, but didn’t close it fast enough for her not to notice and she settled over him with her elbows on either side of his head, chin resting in her hands.

“Tell me what happened,” she said directly into his face at a solid volume.

He groaned, rolling over and pressing his face flat into the hot surface of the rock. His adventure had surely left him exhausted and she assumed he didn’t sleep very soundly knowing he wasn’t allowed to fly for the next two weeks, but she couldn’t leave him be without knowing

“Well come on ?” She shook his arm “You’re the only one who saw,”

“You know she’ll be upset,”

“She’s always upset,” Lo’ak pointed out.

Neteyam’s lips pursed and he nodded along with everyone else, a unanimous agreement that their companion walked on the sensitive side.

Kiri felt spider’s hand pressed into her spine and smiled.

Stripes was slow to warm up. She was skeptical and flighty had a funny way of showing she cared, but Kiri could tell, beyond all doubt that she did care. Kiri saw it in the way she endured her fussing. Felt it the way Stripes crawled onto the bedroll beside her and wouldn’t let go of her hand all night. “tell me.” She prompted again eagerly.

“Nothing.” He stretched out, resting his head on his hands like before to catch the rays of the sun. “She made Tsaheylu, her brain leaked out of her nose and she cried, which is nothing new.” Kiri knew the reason he wouldn’t look at her was because he didn’t want to see the irritated expression she was giving him.

“You’re mean,” she poked his armpit.

He put that arm down, tapping his stomach with a long exhale and a roll of his eyes “That’s how it happened, I don’t know what you want,”

She huffed irritably, leaning her weight back on her palms. Neteyam had always been bad at telling stories. Something he inherited from dad. “Next time wake me up too, I want to be there,”

“There won’t be a next time,” he promised, eyes narrowing up at his sister when her head shook “what?”

“Remember when you said not to make her your responsibility?” Her brow raised playfully “You keep doing that yourself so I don’t even have to anymore,”

“Stop it,” he waved her off, giving the whole group a stern look that was entirely ignored.

“It’s true,” Lo’ak threw an arm around Neteyam’s shoulders, lightly slapping his cheek “ we’re not going to let you stay lost, Stripes ,” he teased in a high tone.

“Stop,” Neteyam laughed as everyone began to make baby talk at him, wrestling him into a puddle between them. “ Don’t ,”

Kiri beamed with joy. It had been a long time since Neteyam let himself be playful.

Lo’ak slid off the rock, popping his joints loudly. “It’s bad timing for you. We’re gonna miss you on the next mission.”

Her eyes rolled, ready for the measuring contest. It was always a contest with them, who could be the strongest, who could be the smartest. If they spent half as much time improving themselves as they did trying to outplay each other, dad might respect them a little more.

“No, I’m still going.” Neteyam yawned.

Lo’ak paused, looking off to the side as if working out the reasoning in his head. “But you’re grounded .”

“And I’m still going.”

“Man, you get away with the craziest things,” he whined, throwing his arms out. “if it were me dad would’ve left me behind.”

“No he wouldn’t have,” Kiri’s ears flattened to scold him, eyes rolling at his protests of yes he would.

Lo’ak often stopped short of saying he was the least favorite child. Kiri knew better. They were all loved equally- he just needed to stop pulling so hard in the opposite direction.

“He needs all the warriors he can use, he wouldn’t leave you.” Neteyam insisted, getting up from his rock.

”says you,”

Kiri hushed Lo’ak and pulled on Neteyam’s tail, goading him to sit back down and relax more, but he walked off anyways, leaving her annoyed and sitting on the rock by herself when Tuk and Lo’ak went to follow him.

Kiri looked to her side, expecting Spider to be there but growing frantic when she found an empty space. Her head swiveled around until she caught sight of him, far off at the edge of the cliff.

“Uh, guys?” Spider called. “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”

Stripes made an enormous effort not to hyperventilate as she watched the vague movement outside. Neytiri had grabbed her arm and all but tossed her into the enclosed space without a word, and she didn’t have the backbone to peek out and ask what she should be doing.

she searched frantically for something to keep her busy while she waited for whatever was supposed to happen next. She tried fidgeting, twisting at the leather fringe that hung off the arm band Kino had made her, ultimately settling for pulling the Holo pad out of her jacket when that gained her no progress. grabbing it in the nick of time before she could be kidnapped and marooned in Mo’at’s tent was a stroke of genius on her part.

Her hands patted absently at the other pockets on the jacket to find the little card she’d stashed there. Gideon Anton Quentin.

G.A.Q.

Sol always told her that she and Toby were brother and sister. It never added up before, but now Stripes’ braincells were buzzing as they bumped together with the fruitless ambition of trying to make sense of that. Maybe Sol was adopted, Maybe Sol was just a really good friend, so good they felt like family.

Sol loved Toby so much that there were dozens of photos of him in her recent history on the Holo pad, even more as a human now that Stripes had looked him up in her files. Logically, if Gideon was Toby’s sibling, because what else could they be with how the same they looked, he and Sol had to have met. By that logic, Sol would have compulsively entered something about him into the data storage, wouldn’t she?

Stripes glanced up at the tent opening one more time to see the bodies gone and the outside of the tent void of movement. With shaky fingers, whether it was anxiety or anticipation, she typed in the letters;

G

I

D

E

O-

A single photo popped up.

It was pixelated to hell, labeled Gideon_Shidani, and when she tapped on it, the pad informed her that the file was deleted.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” She said aloud to no one, her voice sounding like a siren in the eerie quiet of the space. Her fingers grasped at the thumbnail, expanding it only to make it even worse, the two blue blobs on the screen mocking her with their blurry faces.

she jumped out of her skin when the flap pulled back to let in Tuktirey and Kiri, whose smile slid right off her face at the sight of Stripes’ distressed expression.

“Is everything okay?” Kiri asked, taking Stripes’ hands in hers.

She almost said I’m fine, but stopped herself, replacing it with a very flustered- “I’m really nervous,”

Kiri perked back up, bringing them chest to chest and whispering into her shoulder “I’ll be with you the whole time,”

Stripes returned the embrace, pulling her closer to squish Tuk’s head when the little girl tried to squirm between them.

They had a nice little laugh and a moment of silence before Tuk stretched out her hand and uncurled her fingers. In her palm was a shiny cylinder with a tapered nose and a flared tail. At its center was a silver ball bearing held in place by four copper arms.

It was one of her butterfly bullets.

“Dad threw the rest away but I saved this one for you.” The little girl said, placing it in her hand with a wink.

a high pitched cackle and a snort burst from Stripes’ nose as she took the thing, holding it to her chest to settle herself down.This was so incredibly against the rules that it was comical, and she praised her for it. It was just the kind of low brow, non-conformist energy she fucked with. “Thanks, Tuk.” She wiped a tear from her eye.

The little girl crawled closer and wrapped her arms around her neck, nuzzling her cheek and Stripes gave it back to her, hugging her tightly while avoiding Kiri’s eye knowing at the very least she would be smirking. She felt like a jellyfish. Spineless and soft and pliant beneath the hands of the Sully sisters. There had never been a moment for her like this, where the pounding in her ears was so loud she couldn’t even hear her own thoughts. 

She sat still while Kiri pulled the jacket off her to dab thick globs of white paint all over her face and arms and back, focusing as hard as she could on the way Kiri’s lips parted as she worked. The way her sanhí glowed in the dim light. She wanted to remember this moment, and all the fine print that came with it.

She was suddenly glad she wasn’t a rock.

A rock couldn’t appreciate the way the girls tugged on her arms to help her to her feet, making her feel a bit taller than she had been earlier that day. A rock’s heart couldn’t skip seven beats at the sight of her friends surrounding the tent, supportive grins adorning each of their annoying faces. A sight that cemented the idea she’d been holding onto that this was exactly where she was meant to be.

“There she is!” Lo’ak gestured up and down at her, holding back a chuckle “you look great,”

“Quiet, you,” her eyes narrowed in false menace. She wanted to pull him into a hug that would break all his ribs.

Neteyam made a motion inward with his palm, pretending to take a breath “count to six,” he reminded her, and she exhaled a shaky gulp of air she hadn’t even realized she’d been holding.  “In and out. You’re going to be fine.

“What if I’m not though?” She whispered, glancing down at her bare feet. There were so many people looking at them she felt like she was going to retch all over the floor.

“We’re here with you,” he looked around to confirm that all his siblings were on the same page, getting everyone to nod and taking her hand in his when it was done. “we won’t leave your side,”

Her palm was sweaty and her skin  flushed when he tucked it between his arm and rib cage. A safe grip so he could keep his promise that she wouldn’t be lost in the crowd as he lead her to his grandmother.

every single person was there, both human and Na’vi, just standing in a huge pack at the center of camp. So many people staring that Stripes had to swallow the bile rising in her throat.

Kiri stopped just behind them, hands cupping the bones of her hips, nose touching her spine to whisper reassurance into her skin. what she assumed was Spider shouldering her hip.

The shield around her broadened when Lo’ak threw an arm around her and she was surprised when Neytiri’s fingers suddenly appeared on her shoulder, a slow blink to show the woman’s support of what was happening. She could make out the small upward tick of Jake’s mouth just behind his wife’s head.

“This one has the name of Stripes,” Mo’at’s arms went above her head, fingers of her left hand shaking a bit.

“She is a daughter of the Tipani; raised by the Sky People,” Mo’at began, voice carrying over the crowd, echoing through the tunnels and bouncing off the cavern walls. Her words the only thing that mattered at all in this moment. “She has learned to be slow and desirous as they are, ignorant to the ways of others,”

Well that’s just uncalled for.

“but now the mother has brought her to us,” the old woman’s hands pressed to her heart.“Eywa has blessed her with the language of the People so that we may teach her what it truly means to be one of us.”

The sea of blue began to close in around the Sullys, arms connecting like a web, heads bowing in prayer towards them as Mo’at went on.

“We take her today as Omatikaya.” A hum rolled across the mountains, repeating a prayer over and over as the Tsahik walked down from her perch to lay her hands on Stripes’ neck.

“she is our daughter now.”

Stripes in ceremonial paint

Chapter Text

With the ceremony ended Stripes settled into a trance. One where she could still tell there were people around but their voices turned to static going in through one ear and out the other. She focused her energy into leafing through her past. maybe if she thought really hard about it she’d suddenly snap her fingers, shoot to her feet and yell I knew I’d figure it out!

But no such miracle occurred and she was left still wondering why Sol erased all the Gideon files from the pad and why it mattered so damn much to her in the first place.

I’m related to him. she HAD to be. There were only a handful of Avatars ever produced; was the probability that more than one driver had heterochromia?

He’s related to Toby, we’re related, we’re family, I have a family, Toby never told me, Sol hid it from me, I trusted them, I can’t trust them anymore, they were the best friends I never had, and so on.

“Are you listening?” Spider waved his tiny hand in front of her face.

What really grounded her wasn’t the hiss of his mask or the incredulous expression behind it’s plastic shield, but instead the feeling of silt and gravel beneath her hands as she leaned back. She picked one up to see what stuck and found two pebbles cutting into the skin of her palm with their sharp little edges and fine, gritty texture.  Next it was the smell of a forming storm, maybe not so close that it would hit tonight but close enough that she knew it was coming. She clambered back into reality with a clumsiness that reminded her of waking up in a bed that wasn’t hers, back when she had a room. Back when she wasn’t so accustomed to being in a different place and doing a different thing every time she opened her eyes.

She sucked in a breath so full her lungs stung and let her response float out on the exhale. “No.” Whatever he said wasn’t important enough to sacrifice all the valuable time she was spending feeling sorry for herself.

“Don’t give it to her, Kiri.” Lo’ak tisked to show his disapproval but was only able to move three steps before Stripes was on her feet to follow him.

“Hold up,” she tossed her head back and forth, arms crossing and uncrossing dramatically to call a time-out. “I’m getting a present?”

Spider chuckled, joining in on what he surely knew was torture. “Oh, so now you’re paying attention!”

Stripes looked to Kiri who, with her hands behind her back, began to inch away.

She didn’t chase the girl, knowing the two rowdy boys by them would escalate the play too quickly. She saw the appeal of roughhousing- everyone had a good time zipping around and playfully pummeling each other into the ground, but she was having the hardest time getting her heart not to do backflips. To keep calm when someone lowered their center of gravity and gave a mischievous look with big yellow eyes that she knew weren’t Lyle’s or reached out with hands she only half believed would never hurt her.

it wasn’t fair. She’d had no problem hitting the mats with Toby, but her sessions with him were few and far in between. Honestly, it wasn’t combat. it was two nerds occasionally bumping shoulders while contemplating the ending of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote and debating whether or not Bigfoot existed-considering the fact that aliens obviously did.

she wanted that with the Sullys. The comfort of an absolute trust she doubted would ever deign to show up. Would she ever have it again now that so many of her friends had lied to her?

For now at least, she was slowly learning how not to spoil everyone’s fun and never starting it to begin with was turning out to be the best way. “Can I have the thing?” She begged, embellishing her deliberate pace forward with a sincere “please?”

Kiri flashed her pearly white teeth in a blinding smile, glancing up and over Stripes’ shoulder. “Hi, Kino,” she said.

Stripes could tell it was a fake out. There was no way in hell they could know she hung out with Kino today. They’d been gone since early in the afternoon and barely got back as the ceremony started. The news couldn’t possibly travel that fast… could it? “ha-ha, very funny,”

“Neteyam’s coming back in a sec if you wanna wait for him,” Spider offered, jerking his head in the direction of Camp Sully at the non- existent person behind her.

They were definitely fucking with her. The two of them were always in cahoots somehow, so in tune with each other they may as well be telepathic-

“I see you, Stripes,” 

she whipped around, arm swinging, lungs bursting from the shriek she let out, and cracked Kino in the side of the head with an open palm.

the way he bent over to hold his face was like seeing a mountain crumble, cheek turning an electric purple from the sting of her hand. Naturally everyone made their own distinctive noises of painful empathy except for Stripes, who crouched down in front of him, looking up into his face to ask him in exasperation why he kept sneaking up on her.

Kiri came up to clip something to Stripes’ waistband. It was a short, straight piece of jewelry with a beat up carabiner at one end. It began with her dog tag, a feather from one of Lo’ak’s armbands, the shell of a nut and one more of the turquoise beads that seemed to freckle everything Kiri made her. There was even a metal washer she recognized from one of Spider’s masks. “A songcord,” kiri explained with a tender smile.

Stripes pulled it as close to her face as it would go, making sure to touch every single one of the favors that occupied it, and never got the chance to say thank you before Kino finally stood to his full height and wiped a finger across his lip.

was that blood?

Neteyam left his family’s tent with a little smile on his face. Tuktirey had wanted to come with them, begged and pleaded as hard as she could but finally let him tuck her in after he promised to take her next time.

She was getting too big too fast. Another year and she would be almost as tall as him, just low enough that he could still pat her head but not so small that he could carry her anymore. Everything was changing. And with the knowledge of the thing they saw earlier in the day, he wondered if… he shook the thought from his head, taking care to focus on where he was going after narrowly avoiding tripping over a loose stone.

He’d taken longer putting Tuk to bed and talking with his father than he meant to, but he had high hopes no one had made any mischief while he was away, though he knew that was expecting a bit much.

It was to the waterfall by the far side of the mountain that they were going since the forest was off limits after dark. The stream at the bottom of the mountain would have been better, there was more cover and more things to do to pass the time, but the waterfall would do fine. Kiri and Spider could forage for twigs and things under the sparse trees that survived up there, Lo’ak could do whatever it was Lo’ak did while he kept a watchful eye on everyone from the cave wall.

He climbed up the carved out steps to where they waited and was surprised to see Kino there. the boy was standing close behind Stripes which Neteyam could have advised against if he’d been there sooner, and in a split second he was doubled over, head tucked practically between his knees. Neteyam belted out a loud laugh, though he was far enough that they most likely didn’t hear him and watched as she crouched in front of Kino.

As he walked up on them, she touched her fingers to where she’d slapped.

“Does that hurt?” She asked, concern pulling her mouth into a frown.

Kino smiled in that friendly way he’d done since they were kids, only, with hooded eyes when he looked down at Stripes. An expression he’d seen often when his father looked at his mother. “no,” he said.

She moved her hand, pressing a thumb to several places and asking the question again and again until he pulled it down by the wrist and laughed.

“No, my friend,” he grinned.

Neteyam’s feet ambled to a stop several feet away, eyes narrowing in disbelief. That’s new , he thought, memories becoming an impossible maze as he tried to pick out one time he’d ever seen them together- at least one where she hadn’t quickly tried to run away.

She seemed satisfied enough to end it there, all but yanking her arm away and callously asserting you’ll live, before she even noticed Neteyam was there at all. When she did her ears perked, hand going up in a wave.

he waved back, browline creasing. “Friends since when?”

“Today,” he Kino said happily.

Neteyam looked at Stripes for more and she shrugged. His siblings were no help either and he settled for pursing his lips to avoid a full frown.

Kino was his dearest friend as far as he was concerned. always helpful and enthusiastic and loyal to a fault. But he was also severely traditional. it didn’t make sense that he’d choose to be a friend to Stripes on his own, not that she wasn’t an alright one.

But she was stubborn and didn’t believe in Eywa- he doubted she even remembered Eywa’s laws because of how prone she was to tuning out Kiri’s lessons. She couldn’t use a bow, she couldn’t fly, couldn’t cook; She wasn’t someone he imagined Kino pursuing.

and yet here his childhood friend was, talking to her excitedly like a lovesick little boy. The fringe on her armband was made from Kino’s leather and one of the beads from her hair now wove into his songcord.

His heart stung, disappointment clawing through his chest. The two of them were growing further apart as he forfeited more of his time to fly patrols with his parents, but he never imagined Kino would keep something this important from him. They spent enough time together for Kino to have at least mentioned it but not once had he ever expressed any kind of interest in her, and the thought that his friend had drifted so far away; that even Stripes, who slept in the same tent as him, who he took his meals with and who he woke up to every morning, hadn’t bothered to say anything, made him uncomfortably upset.

Kino held a hand out and Neteyam took it, muscles jerking forward to grip his friend’s arm out of sheer involuntary memory, though the feeling of his familiar hand patting his back came as bittersweet.

“You may as well come with us then,” Neteyam ground his teeth, feeling his jaw tense and grind against all the questions he wanted to ask, and motioned with a wide gesture of his arm to herd the little group away “let’s get going.”

“where?” Stripes hung back as everyone migrated further down the clay platform toward the entrance to one of the many tunnel systems of high camp.

The tunnels were almost pitch black at night, which wouldn’t be a problem if the animals on Pandora went to sleep at a reasonable hour. Sol’s notes on Palulukans popped up like a neon sign in her mind. if you encounter this organism in the field, Rest In Peace. They didn’t live in the mountains, did they?

“somewhere nice,” Kiri tried to lead her away by the elbows, by the wrists, then by the fingers when she wouldn’t budge. “You’ll like it, I promise!”

She hesitated the way a bird might hesitate before jumping out of its nest for the first time. If the songcord being a surprise was annoying, this was like having a bag shoved over her head, being spun in circles and shoved down a flight of stairs. She still wasn’t as sure footed as the rest of them. What if she lost her balance and slid into a really deep hole? “what’s so great about it?” She tried again.

Kiri came up to envelope Stripes in her arms, which didn’t make her feel safe or secure the way the girl probably intended. Kiri’s shoulders were narrow and dainty and her body was dwarfed by Stripes’ awkwardly wide shoulders, but she took the affection with grace, scrunching up her whole face and letting an irritated noise slide from her chest when Kiri’s nose poked her eye.

“If you tell me something I don’t already know about you, I’ll tell you where we’re going.” Kiri bargained into her cheek.

Ohohooooo, that was a personal attack. Offensively clever. Diabolical, even, so much that stripes had to put both of her hands over her face to wipe away a smile. “Hard pass,”

“You cannot keep doing this.” Kiri scolded her.

Stripes wriggled out of her grip to step into the dim light of the tunnel entrance, stretching each limb as far as it would go to limber up for the journey to the mystery spot. Her lip curled at the mildewy taste of stagnant water in the air. “I could dodge questions until I die, Kiri.” She didn’t have to look back to see the disappointment in the girl’s expression.

She covered her brown eye to see how quickly the blue one could adjust in the darkness, uncovering it slowly and flinching back before realizing it was Neteyam who stood in front of her now. He had a stern look on his face, focus jumping between her eyes as it often did right before he was about to correct her.

Not this shit again.

Her ears pulled all the way back when he held up a finger between their faces, a warning that told her if she didn’t go along, she would regret it. And she believed it too- her bones were still aching from when he bodyslammed her into the stone floor at the tree of souls. a solid reminder that, above all, he followed through.

He spoke slowly, lowering his finger to touch the middle of her chest. “what she means is it’s hard for her to say what she’s thinking. Sometimes she can’t find the words; right?” He pressed harder when her mouth opened to argue.

“Yeah.” She said tightly, eyes cutting to Kiri, whose lips were pursed. “Yes.”

His browline raised, head tilting as if to dare her to disagree. But the words he chose were wrong for her and she had to bite her lip not to laugh out loud at how used to dealing with his siblings he was. How accustomed to solving situations by speaking to them like they were children- expecting they would bow their heads and say yes sir, like they were so used to doing. He’d obviously forgotten who he was talking to. “And she’s sorry, isn’t she?”

Nopity nope. “I’m sorry you think I should be sorry,”

Neteyam rolled his eyes and scratched the back of his head when Kino brushed past. They shared a friendly but tense nod that left Stripes wondering what the hell was up with that, and Lo’ak was the last one to go by when all the others had already made their way around the inclined bend of the path. “You guys go.” He said. “We’ll meet you there.”

Stripes was reluctant to open her mouth, knowing anything that happened after Lo’ak’s narrow blue ass disappeared into the void would stress her out. She felt close enough to Neteyam that she knew what to expect out of this interaction but they had a bad track record of seeing eye to eye and she didn’t want to argue for once. It was her night. She’d been baptized and prayed over and someone even played a super long number on the omati s'ampta to honor her. All things considered, it was a good night, she was happy.

That didn’t mean she wasn’t ready to though, and the instant he began, long eyelashes fluttering as he searched for the right words, arms up to gesture at her in a teasing motion, she could feel her blood begin to boil.

“Why are you making this so hard?” He chuckled. There was an underlying strain to it that told her he was equally reluctant to do this right now.

“It’s your fault for not dropping it! She would have just gotten over it if you hadn’t done all that.” she tried shouldering past him but flinched back, hissing into his face when he tugged her tail.

“Did you see the look on her face?” His ears pulled back, moving a few of the thin, beaded braids tucked behind them.

She stood taller than him thanks to the rock below her but this wasn’t the high ground she preferred. Being above him somehow made things worse. The right words didn’t come quite as easy. “I wasn’t looking.” Her gaze drifted to her shoulder. Anywhere but directly at him.

She was reminded of how little the Omatikaya cared for personal space when Neteyam put a foot on her rock, face tilting so close to hers she felt his breath on her jaw as he seethed. “you didn’t see because you didn’t want to.”

She shoved him away by a hand at the center of his chest, only for him to move forward again, blocking the path to catch up with the others. “I wasn’t looking.” She was tired of being treated like a problem everyone needed to fix.

Bows and arrows,

burn your uniform,

obey the rules,

be one with with Eywa,

apologize to Lo’ak,

apologize to Jake,

apologize to Kiri,

tell everyone the tragic history of Stripes the Orphan-

Wiping her ass with a leaf she could stand, eating bugs once in a while was tolerable, and she already loved the trees before she was forced to trauma bond with one, but the joke that she had to change her entire identity to fit the standards of other people was getting old and not aging well at all. another fat dose of everything you do is wrong would not be enough to make her bend. “Did you really pull me aside just so you could yell at me, Jake Junior?”

Ouch. That  hurt her to say, let alone to hear it bounce off the walls. 

Neteyam’s expression was a mixture of insult for his father and acknowledgement that Jake Sully was the strictest hard-ass in the world but he held fast for a moment before giving his reply.

how pragmatic.

His hand went to rest on the non existent shelf of his hip, the other covering his mouth. He breathed into it and the cup of his palm accompanied by the long echo of the tunnel made it sound like wind hitting the shield wall at Bridgehead. Strong and angry at the obstacle it had to overcome to exit his body. “I’m not yelling.” He said, calmer than before.

Not one to miss an opportunity to take advantage of literally anything, Stripes doubled down. “You guilting me is the same thing as Jake yelling.”

“Please,” He scoffed, finally walking past her, head shaking as he turned the corner. She had to jog not to lose him around the bend but stopped as soon as she cleared it. The way was blocked by a half wall of stone that Neteyam leaped onto with ease. “you wouldn’t know guilt if it hit you in the face.”

She sized the wall up, meeting eyes with him in the dark. She definitely preferred being above him, she decided as her hand gripped the edge by his foot. “Just because I don’t walk around like one big apology for existing like you guys do,” her struggle reflected in her words and the rest came out as gargled grunting from the effort, but she said it anyways because it was the truth. “doesn’t mean I don’t regret doing things.”

Stripes had the upper body strength of a baby so pulling herself up was a chore that took much longer than it should have. Her ear twitched at the sound of her dog tag and carabiner clip hitting rock, muscles clenching and relaxing several times until she could confirm it wasn’t some nocturnal animal creeping nearby. Her feet slipped on several spots which rendered them useless and when she finally heaved the top half of her body over she flipped onto her back, out of breath and dead-eyed in defeat. 

By that time Neteyam was crouching, face hovering a few feet above hers with his long hair creating a barrier, making her line of vision seem that much darker in it’s jet black shadow.  He tilted his head and for a moment it was Neytiri looking at her, all primal grace and confident composure. “Where’s the proof?”

“What?” She breathed.

“Name one time you felt sorry for something.”

She had to think for a second.

Two.

Three…

There were plenty things she looked back on with a mild maybe I shouldn’t have taste in her mouth- thousands of little instances after which she was sure not only had she gone too far but that the people affected would be right not to like her anymore.

The one that surfaced first wasn’t the worst thing she’d ever done, not by a long shot. but right now, looking up into Neteyam’s big yellow eyes and feeling the guilt he was trying so hard to push on her worm it’s nasty path into her heart, it seemed like the most important. “I’m sorry I bit you.”

Neteyam blinked down at her, then at the raised set of scars on his wrist. The wound healed unevenly and left somewhat of an eyesore but he was alive. He remembered having the uncomfortable conversation with his mother in Stripes’ defense, explaining how she did it out of fear, not malice- though her decisions were getting harder to justify as time went on. The thought occurred to him that he should tell her it was alright. of all things, defending herself was something she didn’t need to be sorry for. But it was such a chance to toy with her that he couldn’t pass it up. “I don’t forgive you.”

“What?” She pulled her legs up from the ledge and he moved to give her some space as she got to her feet. “Why not?” Her brow furrowed.

He shrugged, looking at her from the corner of his eye smoothly. “Because I don’t.”

She was fuming now, craning her neck around him to try and meet his eye and following when he began to walk away.  “If this is supposed to teach me some kind of lesson about hurting people’s feelings it’s not working.” She said behind him.

His eyes went to the ceiling, a smile spreading across his mouth that reached his voice. “Isn’t it?”

He heard her stop and let his feet still, throwing a look over his shoulder at her annoyed face and waited for something, his tail flicking playfully at the end. If he just stood there for long enough she would probably-

Her hands went up, shoulder knocking into his on her way past him. She walked left of the oncoming fork and he laughed, wondering if she would figure it out or if he’d have to tell her. “Screw you and your morals, I’m leaving.”

She kept going for a few beats until Neteyam figured it would be nice to let her know. “That’s the wrong way,” he called.

She spun on her heel quickly and came back, eyes planted firmly on her feet when she came  around the bend to head in the right direction this time. he noticed her cheeks going purple before she could turn away from him. “Don’t tell me what I know!”

On the way, he tried starting the conversation again several times to either stubborn silence or more cursing on her part. He wondered what kind of people she must have been around to turn out like that, always feeling the need to push everyone away, but refused to feel sorry for her. She may need his support from time to time but she didn’t need his pity.

At the end of the walk Neteyam held a hand out for her to join him in the open air. When she hesitated his fingers flexed to hurry her along, pleased when she did and went wide-eyed in awe.

The circle of rocks smashed several trees in its grip, the tallest laying its roots over the tunnel they came out of to make a precarious but useable ladder off the sheer cliff they stood on. A mountain floated across from them, cascading water down into shining pool below. Her focus followed the many bugs and animals that dipped into the water and a little smile parted her lips at the sight.

The others were there already, doing the things he suspected they’d be doing except Kino, who sat cross legged by the bottom to wait for them. He stood and walked over to offer a hand as Neteyam descended the rock face and Stripes immediately began to panic.

“No, wait, Neteyam-“ she protested, kneeling down to grip the ledge. “Neteyam!”

Neteyam took kino’s arm in a firm grip to leap down the last third of the way, thanking him before stepping back to look up at Stripes. He knew this would be an issue but if the past was any kind of guide, he was well prepared to handle it.

“I can’t do this.” Her laugh was a nervous one, hands going up to signal how unqualified she was. “I’m going to fall.”

“I will get her-“ Kino made to climb but stopped at a on his shoulder.

“-Let her do it herself,” Neteyam clicked his tongue.

Their fights were a raging stream in a river bed, breaking her down little by little until a clear path grooved into the ground. if he just pushed a little harder she might fail but she would at least try. He called to her in a firm tone. “You’ll be fine, just hold tight before stepping down and don’t think too hard.”

Stripes walked in a few frantic circles before coming back to the edge and peering down hesitantly. On the bright side she hadn’t just turned around and started heading back to camp yet. “What if I-“

“You-“ he growled “ come down here , Stripes,” would she ever stop being difficult?

He side-eyed Kino, pursing his lips at the look of concern on his friend’s face as they watched her unwillingly try to grab a foothold and scuttle a few feet towards them like a drunken spider.

“You’re going to miss me when one of your suggestions finally kills me,” she made a mock-sobbing noise that was cut with anxious laughter.

His cheeks puffed up with air. Her pace was slow but steady and he knew she most likely realized the trip down was not as intimidating as she thought it was, her hands grabbing and feet moving more surely with each step. “And not a moment sooner,” he mumbled.

She avoided Kino’s aid when the last part of the climb came, stretching her foot as far as it would go and touching nothing but air until Neteyam moved under her, forcing her to use his shoulder as an anchor. Her hands reached down one at a time and he lowered her to the floor in a tangled confusion of limbs.

He straightened her stance by the shoulders.“Not so bad, was it?”

She chuffed at him and left without another word, walking towards the water and into Kiri’s waiting arms.

He was about to call you’re welcome, but stopped himself and closed his mouth tight. He hardly realized until now how much time he actually spent scolding her. It wasn’t as if she never deserved it. but he could admit that today he was wound a bit too tightly and some of his chastising was merely him taking his frustrations out on her. He made a mental note to apologize later.

“I could have helped her,” kino frowned “I would help if she asked.”

you poor fool, Neteyam thought. He wished there was some advice he could give, a look into the mind of Stripes that would give some insight as to how to get closer to her, but he was still figuring that out himself. He’d cooled down over the initial shock of seeing them together and lay a begrudging hand on Kino’s shoulder, choosing not to ask any of the whys or hows that had built up in his mind. “You’d have better luck holding the wind in your hand than getting Stripes to ask you for help,”

Kino looked down at him with determination in his eyes. “We will see, Nete. I will make her see.”

Stripes climbed up the raised roots of one of the trees that dipped into the plunge pool, a mist of cool water coating her skin in the process. She hugged Kiri tight and listened to the sound of her heart for a few minutes just because she could. The girl was already soaking wet, her scant woven clothes drenched from the waterfall.

if she turned on all the shower heads in the barracks bathroom she could get the same effect, only less inviting with a higher chance of getting her yelled at. 

Kiri tipped her head, trying to look Stripes in the face and failing from how tightly she gripped her waist.

She pulled tighter, shaking her head when Kiri asked if something was the matter. Neteyam was right. Everyone was always right about everything all the time, and she was wrong and everything sucked.

She checked over her shoulder to confirm he was still busy, thankful that Kino was keeping him far away. She strained a little to hear the conversation they were having, watching their expressions become more serious with each reply.

Kiri took the opportunity to pull back to look at her, pushing a strand of already wet hair behind her ear. “Do you like it?”

Stripes tried to swallow a lump that refused to disappear down her dry ass throat. She never imagined she would visit a place like this, not in her wildest dreams. The pool danced alive with bright neon light and bugs that sounded like helicopters zoomed across its surface. Fish swam and the breeze drifted and… “it’s perfect.”

And she was glad everyone was here with her. They didn’t need to be, really. They could have gone off and left her alone in their tent or gone to sleep for the night, but instead they went the distance and dragged her all the way out here against her will to have a good time.

Neteyam was right. He was always goddamn right.

She looked at her feet, shifting her weight between them. “Do you wanna hear a story?”

“You’ve got to be joking,” Neteyam scoffed.

“It is no joke,” Kino insisted “I mean to make Stripes my mate.”

“You know next to nothing about her,”

“I will invite her to hunt with me tomorrow,” he said, as if that was the answer to all the problems he was about to unload on himself. Kino was the least complicated person alive. He wouldn’t be able to handle Stripes and all the work that came with her.

“You can’t do this.” Neteyam decided. Stripes belonged with his family after today. It was up to him to make sure she was taken care of, and Kino’s interest would only complicate the already chaotic process of getting her used to their ways. She would be left confused and Kino would be left heartbroken and neither of those were things he felt like dealing with. No. He wouldn’t let it happen.

“I did not ask.” Though the smile didn’t leave his lips, it all but evaporated from his eyes. “Stripes is grown, she can choose for herself.”

Neteyam shook his head. “My friend, you don’t understand-“

“I have decided.” Kino chuckled, resting an arm across his shoulders to steer them towards the group. “Now, let us join the others,”

Neteyam briefly considered hitting him but realized he wouldn’t win that fight. Maybe before Kino hit his growth spurt but certainly not now. 

Spider was on Lo’ak’s shoulders reaching for a fruit from one of the low hanging branches but failing miserably. The next attempt was Stripes with a long stick she found on the ground but that also bore no result.

Neteyam sat next to Kiri to watch them jump and stretch like a bunch of idiots. Her head on his shoulder soothed him a bit and he was able to laugh when his brother and Spider fell headfirst into the pool below. She was right before, of course. It was nice to spend time as a family after going so long without a moment of peace, and Tuk was going to be furious in the morning for having missed all this.

Kino walked in a big sideways circle around Stripes, hands raised to avoid startling her but she didn’t seem to notice at first, too preoccupied with watching the boys surface and gasp for air. Her breaths came hard and fast as if she were the one underwater.

did she even know how to swim?

“Would you like me to get you one?” Kino pointed at the fruit.

Her palms rubbed at her arms in that familiar self-soothing way and she slowly perked up. Meals were not some mindless task Stripes rushed through to continue her day. She loved food and ate obnoxiously and was always somehow hungry, so it was no surprise when she gave her enthusiastic response.

“Give me five of them,“ she held out her hands greedily. “no, ten- as much as you can carry,”

Kino obliged, reaching his ridiculously long arm up into the branches to produce clusters of palm sized berries by the handful that she immediately went to work handing out. She gave some to Lo’ak who handed some to Spider, who brought a few over for Kiri.

Stripes slurped loud and let the juice run down her face and arms and Kino wiped a stream of it off her neck with his thumb, drawing his tongue across the digit.

It was a small gesture that could mean nothing to the naked eye but it made Neteyam bristle, fist curling so tightly he flinched when Kiri lay her hand over his. her look of concern forced a fake smile to his face. “I’m fine,” he said, knowing she would see right through it. “just a little tired.”

He was content to listen to the sticky sound of their conversations through mouthfuls of food until he heard his name and caught the handful Stripes dumped into his lap.

A few went rolling and while he tried catching them she made a place for herself in the middle of the root, nestled snugly between him and Kiri, the place where she was conveniently the least likely to fall and drown.

Kino sat across, beside the other two boys, a deep scowl marring his features.

He was trying too hard, Neteyam almost wanted to say. Most of the things he knew about Stripes he only knew because he squeezed them out of her. He knew her because he needed to, and because she was always nearby. This thing Kino was doing, expecting her to just volunteer to be around him would prove pointless in the end. But instead of saying any of those things Neteyam gave up once more and plucked a berry from his pile. He held it up to Stripes’ face. “Salud,” he said, hoping he was saying it right.

She grinned so wide the tips of her canines pressed into her bottom lip, eyes almost closing from how much space it took up on her face. “Salud,” her head bowed in return. 

Kino and Kiri visibly sagged from the weight of being left out and he explained for them what just happened. “It means good health,” he tried, holding up another berry for them to mimic. “Salud.”

in a much less happy fashion, they both did it, and for once Neteyam was thoroughly grateful that Lo’ak had no self control.

Lo’ak threw a fruit at Stripes hard and she bent over her lap, holding her shoulder more from the shock of it than from any real pain.  “Ow, you fucker!”

“tell the story now!” He demanded through a mouthful of berry flesh. Snapping his fingers and clapping once in a gesture that said dance, monkey.

She would’ve thrown something right back at him if Kiri’s fingers hadn’t laced with hers.“Alright,” she exhaled a shaky breath, not really knowing how to reassure herself that they wouldn’t laugh. It was going to sound ridiculous. They wouldn’t get it, the reference would go straight over their heads and she would have to go live in the forest to hide from the embarrassment. Here goes nothing. “Okay, everybody shut up!”

They obeyed,air filling with the sound of thoughtful chewing as she decided where the best place to begin was.

It happened after the dart incident- she didn’t remember how long because time stood at a dead stop the minute she woke up in her room, a snotty, dribbling mess- that Tenoch gave her the magnum opus of all gifts.

The catastrophe went undiscussed and Tenoch even went so far as to forbid her from talking about it, having always been flighty and avoidant about all things unpleasant like the old-fashioned schoolmarm she was. That was a subject for another time though…

During that sad, loathesome stretch, she followed the woman everywhere except for outside into the Playpen, which vibrated with the hum of its newly electrified skeleton. In the mornings she sat and waited in the middle of the living room adjacent to the entrance, huddled on the open floorspace with her knees tucked up under her nose until Tenoch unlocked the barred door to start their day.

Stripes trailed her into each room, even the ones that were supposed to be private, and moved whenever Tenoch turned her head to do something else, determined to stay in her line of sight, as if to say here I am, please don’t shoot me again!

Eventually it became too much for Tenoch, and Stripes was banished to her room in her free hours to sit in the middle of that floor instead. It went on forever, that time when danger seemed to crawl out of the proverbial woodwork where before none existed; that is, except when counting the dwindling cups of applesauce in the fridge or reading a book that was not approved by the general.

Ardmore had her own ideas about the direction of Stripes’ education and censored what content she could consume and subjects she could learn with an iron fist. It was thanks to Tenoch alone that Stripes had books with pictures and lessons that included fun activities outside of watching grass grow through cracks in cement.

And that was how time finally rolled out of it’s grave. on thanksgiving some months later, when Tenoch decided to break the rules and treat stripes to a single episode of an ancient show called Charlie Brown.

it was a simple little video, if she watched it now she’d be bored out of her mind, but in those days it was the pinnacle of entertainment. She couldn’t get enough of that shit.

In the episode Charlie and Snoopy built a mountain of leaves for something or other and not a second later, their friend Linus yelled charge! and barreled into the pile headfirst. There was a crash and a bang and the leaves exploded all over the screen, floating down into the withered orange grass.

She must’ve watched it thirty times before Tenoch had enough and made her swear not to touch the monitor again. She developed an obsession with, out of all the things she chose to latch onto, the depiction of leaves during a period she would come to know as Autumn.

Pandora didn’t have leaves like that, that changed color when they died. They stayed mostly the same, became rubbery when they fell and produced no such noise as the one she’d heard Charlie Brown’s leaves make. On earth there were seasons. Things didn’t stay the same there, as opposed to Bridgehead, where the air was a constant eighty percent humidity year round and always tasted like sea salt and battery acid.

with the video gone and the days blurring together, Stripes was a pitiful mess again, biting back tears and trying desperately not to be left alone until one morning,

when the house door opened

and Tenoch did not enter.

It took Stripes the longest time to gather the courage and venture out into the playpen yard but eventually she did and what she found was nothing short of a miracle. She didn’t remember exactly what she said but she remembered the sting at the base of her throat and the tears falling in a river down her cheeks.

It was beautiful.

The pile of leaves, made of MRE packaging and the pages of old books and magazines no one was reading anymore, individually painted different shades of oranges, yellows and browns and cut perfectly to look like the leaves Linus demolished, gave her the resilience she needed to power through the rest of that year.

She took all her naps and meals laying in that pile, learned English and science there and refused to leave. Every day she would leap into it like Linus had and every day she had to be dragged out of it by the legs, kicking and screaming without fail.

that was, until a storm came to wash it all away.

Tenoch made them hot chocolate and they sat at the unit door, watching fat droplets of water turn their beautiful handmade leaves into a pile of brown mush. 

It was safe to say the maintenance crew was irreparably pissed off, but it would go down as one of the greatest days of her life. The day General Ardmore decided it was time for the tracking collar to come off.

Her skull nearly split in half from the force of her epiphany that, while being abandoned and lied to hurt like burning her hand on the stove, being stabbed in the ribs and being stomped to death by an ‘angtsík, she never stopped loving Tenoch…or Toby and Sol.

And she probably never would.

She blinked herself back into reality after a long pause, far too long not to have been noticed, and parted her lips to timidly explain what was going on in her head.

Kino listened with interest as Stripes told her story. He did not know what most of the things she described were but he did his best to follow along and give her the respect she was due as she spoke of her pile of leaves. She did so lovingly as if they had been alive, holding her hand to pretend one of them was gripped delicately between her fingers.

Tarsem, too, was a spirited storyteller. He would change the pitch of his voice and use the objects around him to make it exciting, to make each word soar with intrigue. She would like the stories his brother told.

“That was depressing,” murmured Lo’ak.

for his rudeness he received several berries to the face, courtesy of Stripes and her impeccable aim.

Kino laughed, a deep-bellied laugh, and rose to his feet to retrieve more for her.

She stood to stretch her thin limbs over her head. A moan came from her chest and Kino swallowed as she held out her hands.

He cupped her knuckles with one hand and gave her fruit with the other, smiling wide when she did not pull away. They did spent the day together speaking of his family and making her new armband, the fringe of which brushed tenderly against her skin when she moved. She liked him, he knew this. If she did not then she would, he was sure of it.

“You are Omatikaya now,” he said, tugging at the wood of one branch and letting it go when it was bare. “we have no Hometree here but perhaps you can make your bow from this,”

She placed a berry on her tongue and bit in with her front teeth, tilting her head at him with narrowed eyes. He did not know what this meant in reply so he merely smiled down at her.

Neteyam was mad if he truly thought she was not a good match for him. Easily frightened, perhaps, but he would make a fine wife of her yet.

Lo’ak leaped off the root of the tree onto the stone below, saying “Stripes shouldn’t be allowed to have a bow,”

“But why?” He was confused. It was not an iknimaya that took place today, but was she not a warrior? Did she not deserve this right?

“Bro, she’s terrible at hunting,” he explained “one time she almost shot me,”

She turned away from them to follow Kiri down and Kino went after them, if only to be close to her. “I wouldn’t have missed if I had my rifle,” she sighed. Her hand went up to stop him from moving closer, blue and brown eyes resting steadily upon him but no other signs of stress becoming apparent.

Good. This was progress.

“Sure; whatever helps you sleep at night,” Lo’ak teased.

“Listen, jackass,” she embraced herself, shutting her eyes hard for a moment. She seemed to do this often, holding her emotions back in the cage of her limbs. He longed to take her hands and tell her it was not necessary. She finally opened her eyes and used her arms to tell the story of why she needed her rifle. “using one finger and my brain at the same time is way different than the using my brain, my back, my chest, both my arms and all my fingers. shooting an arrow is harder than shooting a bullet.”

Kino met eyes with Neteyam then, both stretching their limbs in the proper form to shoot an arrow to test the theory of what she said. In the corner of his eye he noticed Lo’ak and Spider do the same.

“Unbelievable.” She joined Kiri in the water and Kino was left to wonder what he had done wrong.

Spider jumped into the cold below, letting his arms and legs go limp. His mask was an advantage underwater, he could stay there as long as he wanted- or at least until his oxygen ran out. He once asked Norm what it was like to be in space and this sounded as close to that as Spider would ever get, floating like a bird on the wind. Weightless. if his eyes stayed closed he’d never know which way was up or down.

He smiled wide when Kiri dunked her head under to wave at him and motioned to follow her to the edge of the water where Stripes dipped her foot in and out repeatedly.

In the beginning, Lo’ak and Neteyam made jokes about the long list of things she didn’t know how to do. He made fun too, even saying once out loud that there must be something wrong with her. Climbing and hunting was kid stuff, so why couldn’t she do it?

To give her credit, it did look like she was trying pretty hard to fit in, but it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Jake and Neytiri treated her, more or less, like family. something he tried not to hold against her but often failed miserably at. He’d been there longer, he knew the land, the traditions, the language- and he wasn’t allowed to set foot in Camp Sully past eclipse. He’d walk into their tent in the mornings to see her drooling on Neteyam’s childhood blanket, an arm draped around Kiri’s hip, laying in a bed that was his by all rights.

Stripes’ only saving graces for him after each time she made Kiri upset were the fact that she was funny, in a kicked animal sort of way, and that Kiri loved the girl with her entire heart and soul.

It’s okay to be different. 

Spider’s lips pursed then pulled up slowly as she smiled up at him. He caught the glint of his mask washer on her new songcord.

It’s not her fault I get treated badly.

He sat waist deep in the water and splashed a scoop of it at her and Kiri, knowing the answer to his question before he even asked it. “Can you swim?”

She shrugged, wiping the wet off her arms that were already drenched from waterfall mist. “Nobody ever taught me,”

“Why not?”

“There was nowhere to learn where I lived.” She shrugged, picking a few pebbles off the ground and stacking them so she didn’t have to look at him. Stripes was always doing stuff like that- trying not to make eye contact when she wasn’t sure what she should say. At first he thought it was because she didn’t like him. He was glad when she started doing it to everyone else too. “We had a shower but no tub or pool or anything like that.”

“That is sad,” Kiri pouted.

“I had other cool stuff like…”  Stripes shrugged, knocking over her pebble tower. “Let’s talk about something else.”

Spider could tell those words said in that order grated Kiri. She rolled her eyes and eventually let it go but it made him irritated that she kept making excuses for Stripes. the girl hadn’t come too long ago but it was long enough for her to trust them a lot more than she did.

Stripes made another pebble tower and this time Spider knocked it down.

“We saw something cool today,” Lo’ak said from above, having been there watching them the whole time.

Spider looked nervously over at Kino and Neteyam, who seemed distracted enough not to hear them, but it still wasn’t worth the risk of being lectured. “Dude-“

“Come on,” Lo’ak leaped down, crouching near the water’s edge beside Stripes to help her and Kiri stack random things in a tall pile. “she was going to find out anyway.”

Stripes took two sticks and leaned them together to try to make the tower bigger. “Find out what?” She said, not really paying attention.

Spider hissed at Lo’ak, hoping he wouldn’t say any more. He’d gotten his fair share of scolding from Jake in the past and he tried his best not to get in the way. Beyond a doubt, it would count as getting in the way if he found out they told her first. “We’re not supposed to tell you yet,” he shook his head. “your dad said-“

“There was something in the forest, like a bug made of metal,” Explained Lo’ak. He was going to get them in trouble for sure.

Stripes made to look at him, taking her eyes off the pile and accidentally knocking a stick over with her knuckles. It brought the rest down with it. “was it doing anything?” She asked.

“It was scanning the trees with a red light.”  Kiri’s expression was somber like it was while she was watching it crash into things so hard they tumbled down, smashing animals and plants on the forest floor. It was a wonder how she’d been able to perk herself up when they returned to camp.

Stripes’ head shook, looking like she’d been smacked in the face by something, surprised and confused and a little rattled all at once. Her voice was loud-too loud for what they were talking about. “If that’s all it was doing, why are you guys being so weird about it?”

Lo’ak didn’t seem to care either, talking at the same volume as her. “Dad’s real tense because it was only a few hours from camp,”

Stripes stammered, ears pulling back. “What-I-Well what the hell does he wanna talk to me for? I didn’t put it there!”

“Shh!” Spider leaped out of the water, tapping both her knees with his hands and peeking over at Neteyam. “Be quiet or he’ll hear you,”

They looked all at the same time and all but broke their necks trying to look away when he happened to glance over.

Shit.

Neteyam was left alone on the tree root with Kino when Lo’ak joined the others. Earlier in the day he might’ve been happy to talk. His father often praised Tarsem as being more capable than he gave himself credit for, and had moved up in the ranks as an advisor and a leader in the war effort. Kino wasn’t far behind him and there were so many things he wanted to congratulate them and their family for…but as of this moment he drew a blank.

Their conversation about Stripes wasn’t over by a long shot, and he didn’t want to give his friend the impression he would let it go so easily.

He also didn’t want to start an argument- at least not one about this, where the subject of it could plainly hear about how much he didn’t approve. she was free to make her own decisions, but if he could guide her into a better future than the one Kino offered, one she was hilariously unfit for, he would. “How is your grandmother?” He found himself asking against his own will.

Kino grinned, tightly packed clusters of Sanhí pulling up with the muscles in his face. “Old and getting older,” he said “she cannot fly anymore but still finds the strength to scold Tarsem and I.”

He managed to smile. His own grandmother was the same way, only she did it more often while holding him down as he writhed beneath a palmful of stinging oil. “I know the feeling,”

Kino’s head tilted, scolding playfully but not looking at him. He was pulling at each beanch of the berry tree to see which was dead and would come down more easily. “The grandson of the Tsahik should be grateful to be scolded. Each word is a lesson learned,”

“It’s not always my grandmother,” Neteyam sighed back at him, deciding to pull at branches himself to help speed the process along.

“Has old age not made your father kinder?”

He scoffed “A thousand years couldn’t make him kinder.” The back of his hand met Kino’s shoulder and the boy helped Neteyam pull down a branch that was dead and dry enough to come loose without an ax.

Together they plucked the bark and leaves from it and threw them into the water, chuckling when a few fish came to check if it was food.

“It cannot be so bad.” Kino reasoned. “My mother says my brother and I are idiots. I know she does this out of love,”

“That does sound like her,” he said sheepishly, using his knife to skin some of the bumps off the branch so it was one smooth length of wood. “Lo’ak isn’t an idiot but… he doesn’t know when to stop.” In his father’s words, he played stupid games and had the audacity to wonder why he won stupid prizes. Eywa blessed his brother with an incredible amount of confidence to the point of arrogance. Eywa did not, however, bless him with common sense.

And Neteyam was suffering for it.

Always the happy-go-lucky one, his friend dismissed the claim. “Lo’ak will calm down one day. You need not worry for him so fiercely.”

It donned on Neteyam that Kino didn’t know much about what his family had become. If he truly knew the troublemaking Lo’ak could get up to, his opinion would be different. If he still knew anything about Kino, he might not have to wonder why he wasn’t being agreed with. “I hope you’re right,” he sighed, handing the branch, now stripped bald, to Kino.

He chanced a look over at his siblings and their heads jerked to look away but by then it was too late. Hell no, what were they doing? “You’ve been caught!” He barked “what are you hiding over there?”

“Look!” Kiri sprung forward, and the rest took it as an opportunity to escape by following her. They bent over in a circle and he had to get up to see what they were looking at- was it a real excuse or were they just ignoring him?

“Is that a baby spirit tree?” Stripes asked, though it was more in horror than curiosity. She put a hand up to her face, the knot of her nose wrinkling behind it as if it weren’t obvious she was sniffing the air and saying disrespectful things about the little plant in her head.

“Its so precious!”

“How’d it get all the way up here?”

Neteyam stayed standing with his arms crossed while Kino nudged through the line of them, taking his tswin and a thin vine from the tree. It was small, hidden in a crack between the tree and the rocks around it, no larger than a bush.

It was kindof cute if he were honest.

“Eywa makes her paths where they are needed,” he said happily, unaware of the girl behind him slowly crumpling in on herself. “she knows we are here and has blessed us with a new way to see her.”

Neteyam covered Stripes’ entire face with his palm and turned her head sharply but wasn’t fast enough to stop the gag from forming in her throat before Kino made Tsaheylu. His hand landed hard enough to make a noise against her skin but if it hurt at all she was too preoccupied to care. “Calm yourself down,” he urged. “Go, go,”

He felt kino’s growing irritation with this overplayed bit merely by the look he recieved as he explained “she doesn’t like the sound.”

He was visibly frustrated, the set of his shoulders tensing as he stood to his full height. “then why did she turn away? Eyes cannot hear sounds.”

“Something bad happened when she bonded with the tree of souls,” he explained through a tight jaw, pulling kino off to the side. “I could have told you this if you’d said something before.”

“You can tell me now,”

“While she’s right here? are you insane?” Neteyam’s brow shot up at that. The feeling of her teeth slicing into his skin searing through his memory. “She will kill me in my sleep,”

they argued back and forth for a few seconds before Stripes interrupted.

Stripes covered her mouth and nose as she watched Kiri’s tail wave back and forth in excitement. The taste it put in the air reminded her of the thundering headache after her first bond and her lips pulled back, tongue curling out of her mouth in muscle memory. to deflect, she thought of Sol and how the woman would be kneeling, taking a dozen photos and poking it all over to add random notes to her pad. She imagined it so vividly she hardly noticed what Kino was doing until it was too late. the sound of tendrils embracing the length of the tree’s tiny vine made her guts coil.

pressure pulsed between her eyes and a voice called, one she could recognize if a hundred people were talking at once

Will you visit me sometime?

I’ll be here waiting.

Neteyam’s hand planted firmly on her face, warm and smelling like berries, grounded her but only slightly. He shooed her away and she nearly tripped over the stick Kino was holding to jog halfway back to the cliff that housed the entrance to the caves.

She wondered if Mo’at was still awake…

No, the old lady would probably say something unintentionally backhanded and send her to bed feeling terrible…

Maybe tomorrow.

Right now she had to scratch the anxious itch. The one she knew would be nigh unreachable until she finally sat down in front of Jake. “I hate to cut this short, but I think we should head back,” she called, letting Kiri come up and lace their wet, pruny fingers together.

Neteyam narrowed his big yellow eyes “Why?”

“Um,” she looked down at their hands. He was on a roll today, all ornery and nitpicky in a much more severe way than he usually was. It made the itch even worse and she searched for an explanation to make him drop the subject- failing miserably in the end. ” none of your business, nosy,”

He groaned, turning straight to Lo’ak “You told her.”

So much for that.

“She was going to find out anyway!”

The walk back was shorter without having to ignore Neteyam’s nagging, but this time around, Stripes went to the opposite extreme. She watch him, Lo’ak and Kino talk and weave through passages, under arches and over inclines in a symbiotic relationship where none had to ask the others for help. They stepped on each other’s knees, pulled one another over obstacles and passed a random branch to each other to make the journey smoother.

Kiri and Spider weren’t as savvy, waiting for her, lagging themselves and dragging behind the more capable half of the group like a broken leg.

It was nice but not. She was less afraid of being attacked by some animal now and more afraid of being left behind, wishing her slightly elevated confidence would elevate just enough more for her to not have to watch her feet every few seconds.

When they left the tunnels the crackle of fires and the vibration of sleeping bodies echoed over the clan. They wove between tents unhindered until they came upon camp Sully and the ones who lived there said their goodbyes to those who didn’t.

It was completely fucked that Spider had to live with the Avatars. He was practically a Sully himself, a fixture both in and out of camp, and almost never left Kiri’s side. He was a great person, and had much more to offer the Omatikaya than Stripes ever could. Why should she get to stay with Jake’s family but not him?

he gave her hand a squeeze before walking off, a trail of melancholy in his wake so thick she couldn’t cut it with a chainsaw.

The last one to go in was Lo’ak, but not before pulling her close by the shoulders. He moved her line of vision towards the back of the tent, where they usually ate their meals, with a loose hold on her jaw. “dad’s over there, but don’t look him in the eye,” he directed, the side of his head pressed flush against hers, smushing her cheek a bit and bringing up a low hiss from her lungs. he didn’t let go until she smacked him on the stomach. “remember, he can smell fear!” He laughed, jogging into the safety of his home.

She casually imagined smothering him with a pillow.

Kino appeared in her peripheral, out of swinging range this time, and walked up as close as she would let him.

she looked the boy up and down, letting her eyes follow his bold Sanhí pattern, close enough together to be solid lines and bright enough to be a neon sign. His hair was in loose braids like Neteyam’s that only went down to his chin.

The tips brushed his cheeks as he tilted his head, smiling for absolutely no reason. he’d been glancing at her all night, not that it bothered her by now. She had all day to get herself used to it, and learned enough about him that he wasn’t a stranger anymore. Regardless, her body still bent to avoid his hand when it came up to touch her cheek.

“I enjoyed being with you today.” He said, pulling back and bowing respectfully.

She warred over whether he would look more appropriate in a tuxedo and top hat or a suit of armor. The branch gripped in his hand could be a sword for chopping the heads off orcs or a walking stick for whatever the hell walking sticks were for. He could even wear a lavender bow tie to match his tanned skin. “Thanks for the beading lesson,” she bowed back at him, running her fingers over the fringe of her armband. “And the ah-“

“It was my pleasure,” his palm went over his heart, speech stumbling as he added, “in return, perhaps you could come with me to hunt in the morning.”

Neytiri’s voice chopped through her thoughts like a cleaver once more. I do not dislike you.

The real question was, did she want to spend the whole day cut off from society and stuck in the forest alone with him? Her arms went around her torso, thumbs tapping at her elbows to beg the gods that lived in her funny bones for a way out of answering. They supplied her with none. “I have to ask Jake but let’s put a pin in it.”

he nodded and followed her gaze into the Sully tent.

She made eye contact with Lo’ak past the entrance and saw him throw up his pinkies and stick his tongue out. It was his weird version of a peace sign and she always tried to give it back to him but it never looked quite right on her three-fingered hands. She gave him her middle finger instead.

Kino cleared his throat and Stripes looked him up and down again, noting the twisting of his hands around his branch. “The son of Jakesuli is not right for you,” he said quietly, ears pinning to his head and big, amber eyes fixing on the ground.

“Who?” Her whole body reacted as if she’d touched something sticky, recoiling in distaste. “Lo’ak?”

“Neteyam.”

“Oh.” Her stance relaxed a bit, taking on a whole new tension when her brain processed the implication. “Oh!”

Stripes was suddenly choking on a mouthful of unintelligible stuttering, “I don’t-he and I- i don’t like- like him or anything, we-“ her head turned to see him settling onto his bed beyond the flap of the tent. Did she like Neteyam? “We’re just friends,” she said finally, letting a loud huff go, though none of the strain of the conversation went with it.

Kino moved closer to her, blocking her view of camp Sully with his long torso, a sad look taking his features. “I only mean to save you from heartache, Stripes. I love Neteyam. he is my brother.” He whispered, still looking at the ground. “But you will find no future with him.”

Stripes hugged herself tighter but didn’t back away. She could hear footsteps coming from around the stone bend that hugged the tent and wanted to stay hidden from Jake for just a few seconds longer.  “I wasn’t planning on having one with him anyways.” She mumbled.

”then you should not waste your days becoming familiar with him.” He insisted “Jakesuli is not your father, nor his children your siblings. You must find your own way without them.”

”they’re my friends,” her brows pressed together.

”Neteyam is my friend,” his tone turned somber and he looked at her then, just as Jake pulled up into view “But he lives and breathes only for war and his father’s legacy. we grow further apart with every passing moment.”

”I have Kiri.” She asserted, moving towards the increasing new safety of Jake’s body, “that won’t happen to us.”

”if it does,” kino’s head bowed “I will be here for you.”

Stripes walked in a half circle around the older man to hide from Kino now, shaking her body to rid herself of the gross feelings that clung to her skin. How dare he? How dare he!

She’d just spent the whole day getting used to the idea that she belonged somewhere and here he was, pulling it all out from underneath her. 

I do not dislike you, Neytiri said in her ears, a belligerent lump gnawing at her throat. Why right now? Couldn’t he have waited until tomorrow to ruin everything?

”can I bend your ear for a sec?” Jake asked, steering her away from their camp altogether.

Stripes swallowed thickly, wanting nothing more than to get as far away from Kino as possible. “Sure,”

The spot where they eventually sat down was extremely far from Jake’s family, which was probably a good decision on his part considering they couldn’t keep secrets for shit. 

“I’m guessing they already told you.” He sighed like an old man who’d lived too many years.

Stripes readjusted until she could get comfortable on the woven cushion he supplied and played with the tuft of her tail. She liked to think she was a great secret keeper. Heck, she’d avoided saying much at all about anything for the better part of three months. that had to count for something. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“Right,” he rolled his eyes and produced a pad, an ancient thing with hologram capabilities but a primitive glass screen behind the image. She resisted the urge to call him a peasant, knowing he wasn’t one to joke with when he was in a mood like this, stern and militant. the thing was likely older than she was. “Can you tell me what I’m looking at?”

It was exactly as Lo’ak described it; a bug made of metal. and she was delighted that she could be useful in telling him exactly what it was now that it was right in front of her. “That’s one of the little guys that puts up structures at bridgehead. It’s called a Hexbot; A Quad if it’s got four legs.”

“This one was the size of a tank.”

She went a bit dizzy with the image in her mind’s eye. Along with the different types of guns and ammunition and the ever expanding variety of explosives the RDA employed, tanks were one of the main food groups of her training. She may have sucked ass at flying a scorpion but she knew the ins and outs of a Bulldog like the back of her hand- at least in theory. She felt her palms twisting her tail like Kino with his branch. “I wouldn’t know, I’ve never seen a tank in person.”

“They’re big.” He said. “Really big.”

“Outstanding.” She teased lightly.

He cracked a smile that made her entire body unclench ever so slightly. “So that’s all they do is build things?”

It was indirect but she knew what he was really asking. “they don’t have guns- but they build fast. as soon as the supply shuttle landed there were a hundred new buildings at bridgehead in just a few months,”

“…Supply shuttle.”

She responded too quickly, surprised by how eager she was to prove she had something to offer. Kino had done that. She could be sitting here in relative ease, calmly considering her answers before she gave them, but instead she vomited up information as it came to her, hoping for some kind of praise from the man in front of her. Gross. It was a gross feeling…

the words came anyway.

“Tons of hexbots- and a big printer that makes all the parts for buildings- I never saw it in person but I watched the orientation video.“ she explained bashfully.

“Honestly, I would’ve preferred the guns.”

She would too if she were him. Her stomach went sour just thinking about all the things the bots could be making out there. Whether it was new buildings or train extensions, the world was about to get a whole lot smaller and a hell of a lot more dangerous for anyone who happened to be blue. She’d wondered where the tracks went. Now she regretted knowing the answer.  “You can’t have your cake and eat it too, Corporal.”

“Feels a lot more like having shit stuffed down my throat,”

She gagged. “so what are you gonna do about it?”

His hands came together in front of him in a gesture she instantly didn’t like. “I’m so glad you asked-“

“-I think I hear someone calling me-“

“-In two weeks we’ve got a war party flying out to intercept the next train and see if we can figure out how to take these things out,” he continued, ignoring her flimsy attempt to leave. “you’re gonna ride along. You don’t even have to drop any shells, just observe and report.”

She sank low to the ground, spine turning into jelly as her head tilted so far sideways it may as well have been upside down. “Why come if im not helping?”

It was then that she remembered who exactly she was talking to. Jake was a lot of things, but wasteful wasn’t one of them. She was a resource. A way to acquire what he needed. “You’re a soldier, right?” His brow raised “I want you to get used to the open air; see what fighting is like from our side,”

She stood quiet for a long time.

In her heart she knew she didn’t really wanna kill Na’vi. War was something Ardmore tried to propaganda and indoctrinate into her from birth. The story of a dying planet that needed to be saved. And who was going to save it? Stripes didn’t want to be a hero, she wasn’t made of the right stuff. She wasn’t truly a soldier, she didn’t have the constitution. It was a part she played to convince Ardmore to let her out of her cage. A ruse she tried to keep up around the Sullys to make it seem like she had a purpose.

She didn’t.

She never really wanted to kill Na’vi.

She didn’t want to kill RDA soldiers either.

he lives and breathes only for war… did Neteyam want to kill people?

~Another one bites the dust!~

“Problem?” Jake’s hand waved in her line of sight to snap her out of her thoughts.

“it’s just awfully convenient that you chose now to put me to work.” She scoffed. “right after my Omatikaya adoption papers get signed and all.”

“I don’t like what you’re insinuating.”

Jake was a lot of things.

But wasteful?

That certainly

Wasn’t

One

Of

Them.

“I mean I don’t think I insinuated anything, I just told you the exact thing I think you’re doing.” It was a passive aggressive mumble beneath her breath, said loud enough for him to hear clearly. Neytiri was making an impression of her own…

“I waited so long because I wanted to give you a chance to breathe.” He laughed humorlessly, producing a thick white booklet with black writing. “But since you’re not having it, I won’t beat around the bush about the next thing.”

Her ears stood straight up, eyes going big in curiosity. The manual had been a spur of the moment idea, but she was still interested in whatever they managed to do with it. “Did you figure out some use for it?”

“No, it was a dead end.”

Meh. “Oh, shucks, gosh, dagnabbit.”

He threw the thing over his shoulder unceremoniously, leaning back on the rock face behind him. “It was a good try. A nice cherry on top of your lie, huh?”

“What?”

“Neteyam told me why you really went out.”

Excuse me?

Of course he told, he didn’t have a dishonest bone in his body. She shouldn’t have expected any less. she winced when she accidentally plucked a hair from her tail. “I still don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

It was obvious Jake didn’t believe her. His eyes rolled and she was starting to see where his kids picked up the habit from. “My family was Christian, ya know.” His fingers laced over the pudge in his belly “We’d come back from Sunday school and have a big dinner- cube steaks so tough you’d have to hit ‘em with a hammer when money was tight.”

Church wasn’t new for her, or at least the concept of it. Tenoch was catholic and carried around a little wooden cross on a rosary woven from silk cord that stripes wasn’t allowed to touch under any circumstances and Toby gave an impromptu sermon once when the Blue Boys were having a  weekend party in the barracks. It had fuck all to do with god and more to do with how none of them deserved a second chance, but it had some christs and almighties thrown in for good measure.

She wondered why some people felt like they had no choice but to believe in something. “Really?”

The man nodded, cracking another tough smile. “My brother Tommy and I got in trouble one time for drinking all the communion wine before service. Worst ass kicking I ever got.”

The vision of Jake Sully being spanked for breaking the rules made Stripes grin. “I can’t even picture you doing something like that,”

“I was a kid- I’ve changed a little since then...” He shrugged, scratching the back of his head. “it’s hard to have faith in anything until you know who you are.”

That rubbed her the wrong way. What was it with people thinking they had her figured out? Her tail curled into a tight circle behind her. “I think I know me a hell of a lot better than you do.”

“Then let me ask you something,” With a smile that was more of a smirk, Jake pulled Toby’s Bible from the same spot as the manual. He held it up for her to see clearly, running a hand across its cover. “is this why you don’t believe in Eywa?”

Her jaw clenched so hard it made her teeth hurt. She could hear the muscles in her head strain as she ground her molars together. The Bible had been on her bed, out in the open, but that still didn’t give him a right to touch it. “Does it matter?” She asked quietly.

He held her stare for what felt like forever, looking back and forth between her brown eye and her blue one like everyone else did until his arm extended to hand it to her with another old-man sigh. “I guess it doesn’t.”

She snatched it up and held it close to her chest, making a note to keep her stuff secured in her bag from now on, as if the thin layer of canvas could protect everything she held dear. If his family thought she was uptight before, she was going to be a lot more selective with her trust from now on. “So the moral of the story is Neteyam’s a dirty, filthy snitch.” She growled under her breath.

“He played it smart,” he tried visibly to calm her down, but it didn’t work. “waited until after your gig to tell me so there was no way I could kick you out.”

“You could still kick me out,”

“Not according to Mo’at.”

Her fingers flexed at the ghosting sensation of the old woman’s hands holding hers. “Thank fuck for that,”

There was a pause in the steady flow of their conversation and they both took a break to stretch their limbs and rub the drowsiness out of their eyes. She wanted to go to sleep already.

“Teyam’s a good kid.” Jake said suddenly.

Despite all his bossing her around, she believed it. Neteyam loved his family and made the choices he thought were right and true and no matter how annoying it was, she didn’t think any less of him for being a good guy. “I know.” her lips pursed and she blurted out the rest for no other reason than to expel some of the bitterness from her body.  “I’d say Spider too, but you and Neytiri treat him more like a pet.”

His face pulled into a grimace, as if thinking about it hurt him. “Spider’s…it’s complicated.”

“No it’s not.” Stripes crossed her arms, head shaking. She could still feel the sadness that followed the boy around, even without him there. “You either care about him or you don’t.”

“If you knew where he came from you’d be a lot less confused about it.”

She considered just dropping the subject there and saying goodnight. She could bring it up another time- a less stressful, tired and irritable time. “Norm told me he was born at Hell’s Gate.” A few more minutes wouldn’t hurt, would it? “His mom was a soldier.”

“Yeah, that’s true. But his old man was head of security back in the day.”

That didn’t add up somehow; the nicest person alive being sired by some SecOps asshole. “Good riddance,” she’d said it mostly as a tribute to Marisol, who’d choked up when she got to the part about the mining explosives being loaded onto helicarriers and tanks.

“I don’t know.” Jake cracked his knuckles all at once, eyes floating to the ceiling in thought. “Looks like the new head’s got it out for us worse than Quaritch ever did.“

Her body went cold and rigid,

needles poking hot and sharp into her skin.

Her head went light,

Her hearing muffled so badly she couldn’t even tell it was her own voice in her ears as she asked “Who?”

“That was the guy,” Jake said, words engulfing her in hellfire. “Miles Quaritch.”

Chapter Text

Jake sent Stripes off to bed well into the afternoon. He figured she’d told him about as much as she could, recounting her entire year with these Recombinants; a baker’s dozen of dead men uploaded onto avatar bodies who landed with the supply shuttle like cargo.

It made sense for the RDA to put stock in soldiers who knew the playing field instead of wasting the resources to import and train new ones; small ones they could stick with arrows or pick up with one hand.

It made sense for them to pick Quaritch.

He hadn’t lost that battle- he would have won if Eywa hadn’t jumped in at the end. He was persistent and resourceful and whatever the reason was for him existing a second time, it couldn’t possibly be good.

She recounted events from their first arrival, giving details of the team down to the tune Quaritch whistled when he took a piss. He’d gotten carried away with the interrogatio- interview and done a little yelling. A lot more than a little, actually. She gave her answers in an uncharacteristically small voice and cried and swore up and down she didn’t know anything else. She revealed no objective or master plan, just a collection of anecdotes and an apology she gave with her entire body, limbs shaking so hard her bones clanked together like a Halloween prop.

The kid was exhausted. A ball of nerves, as observed by the fact that she just finished emptying her guts off the side of the mountain.

It felt like she was telling the truth. Still… he couldn’t help but feel like she was leaving a few things out, so he confiscated her rifle and hologram pad and sent her off to get some rest, trying to figure out how the hell he was going to explain all this to Neytiri.

he scrolled through the pad’s contents and decided to just type what he was looking for in the search bar. 

I think Sol had OCD or something. she’d sniffled, she put everything in there you’d wanna know. 

“I remember Marisol,” Norm admitted when he saw a woman’s blue face pop up in a video thumbnail. “She was an ecologist. Brilliant but never made it into the Avatar program,”

“Why’s that?” He played the video. The camera was turned towards this Marisol’s face and featured a Quaritch Avatar sipping coffee in the background and Wainfleet flipping burgers on an electric stove. As it turned, there was Stripes in the background wearing a uniform like the one he’d found her in doing math problems at a metal counter.

They were all like that, inside the same facility. Shots and clips of the special division of soldiers doing painfully boring domestic things like Stripes described in her confessions. The oldest was a photo of the whole team, excluding the kid, that dated back a little over a year.

Maybe Stripes deserved a little more credit than he’d given her. If Eywa trusted her enough to claim her, he could probably afford to have a little blind faith in her too. What she gave him was good enough for now. and the rest?

Well, it’s not like she was going anywhere.

“Sol respected the notoriety more than the work, so Grace gave her to Stolm for his field team.” Norm’s lips pursed, shoulders coming up to swallow his neck in a shrug. “We weren’t close though. Max would know more than me,”

“he back yet?”

“Should only be a few more days,”

Outstanding.

Stripes dragged herself back to the tent with a sour taste in her mouth. At this time of day there would be no one around and she could roll herself into a cocoon and force herself to fall asleep unhindered. She wanted to forget everything she’d learned in the previous few hours- at least for as long as she could avoid having to think about it.

When Jake recounted the story- his story- and the part Quaritch had played in it, she was sure her face faded from it’s healthy shade of blue to a sickly, toilet-bowl white.

She wanted to crawl in a hole and die. Not because she didn’t want to live anymore. No, not when she’d found a place in a the world and carved out a spot just big enough for her in it. It was because if Miles Quaritch was truly the monster Jake described, then all the hours she spent getting comfortable with his presence, asking him questions as he leaned against the kitchenette counter or snorting at one of his haughty remarks must’ve meant she was a monster too.

He even killed Kiri’s mother, who stripes (if she had taken her head out of her ass for a few seconds to step into the link room like her friend asked her to a dozen times) would’ve known was none other than:

Grace

Fucking

Augustine.

Maybe that was why Sol liked him so much; because he got rid of the one person standing in the way of her being an Avatar…No. she desperately wanted to believe Sol was better than that, but the accumulation of things the woman withheld from her was starting to boil over.  she had no right to cry about war crimes when she was with the bad guy.

what the hell, Sol?

The worst thing was, Stripes couldn’t find it in herself to hate Quaritch. It wasn’t like he’d done anything to her. It wasn’t as if he pushed her around or called her names or punched her in the face or…

The brief flash of Wainfleet’s bald head soured her stomach and she swallowed the residual barf trying to crawl up her throat. Even worse than the worst thing was that if Spider were to meet the Quaritch she knew-

the cocksure old guy who lived across the hall,

who occasionally offered her the leftover and coffee from the pots he made each morning

and who spent his off nights sipping beer, watching war documentaries with a giggling ecologist in his lap,

-he’d probably really like him.

the order Jake barked at her before finally saying get your ass to bed brought a lump back to her throat. She was not to involve his kids in this situation for any reason. 

That was like asking a grenade not to explode after pulling it’s pin. How the hell was she supposed to not say anything now? Suddenly her self appointed reputation as a great secret keeper dissolved completely.

At the very least they’d wonder why she was acting so weird. That was the only word she could use to describe the feeling of her skin fitting over her muscles like a straight jacket. It was as if this body belonged to someone else- she had woken up with her headboard facing the wrong way and slipped on someone else’s shoes and every step she took felt like her own feet were trying to trip her.

Mulling over Kino’s stupid speech last night didn’t do anything for the anxiety and only succeeded in sweeping away the last crumbs of what might have been drowsiness. Of what could have turned into a decent eight hours of sleep. It pissed her off to no end that he was halfway right.

The way she understood it, she belonged to the Omatikaya now. Whether her place was with the Sully family in particular was up for interpretation. as of right now, with Jake on his way to tell his wife the killer of her father was still kicking and that Stripes had indirectly known about it the whole time, she could see it leaning in the direction of no.

But she would never just grow apart from Kiri, that much she knew. She could push the girl away, never apologize for a damn thing, disregard her whole religion and the girl would still welcome her back every time with open arms and a soft smile reserved specifically for her. at this point there was no way stripes could continue to do any of those things anyways. She was going to walk around for the rest of her life like a beat dog, saying sorry for everything, and clinging to Kiri like a life raft in a sea full of sharks.

Neteyam was his own separate issue. She’d spent all this time hyper-fixating on Kino and how bad of a pair they would be because he was too forward and too Na’vi and now that Neteyam was presented as an option, she realized that wouldn’t work because she thought he was a self-righteous stick in the mud and he thought she was a selfish asshole.

he probably didn’t even like her as a person, let alone a-

-her first hunting lesson in the forest blinded her for a split second. Neteyam’s hands covering hers, his heart beating against her spine. The slow progression of warmth across her skin as he explained how to hold a bow…-

-Stripes let her stomach empty itself into a gap in the stone on her way to camp Sully but her feet took her in a wary u-turn when she saw movement in the tent. She imagined how she must look. dried berry juice she hadn’t realized coagulated in a sticky trail from her neck to her collarbone, eyes sunken in from lack of sleep and puffy from crying.

She wondered if they wound up in there naturally or if they’d waited all day since waking to see when she would turn up. It was touching that they bothered but she knew they would ask questions she didn’t have the willpower not to answer. Where before she avoided talking about tough subjects like they were a flesh eating virus, all she wanted to do now was throw herself to her knees in front of kiri and confess every single sin she ever committed, her likes and dislikes, what happened with Jake, and whatever else the girl wanted to know.

So instead she slithered around in stealth mode, making a beeline to the one place she assumed nobody would be interested in talking to her.

The clinging and apologizing could start tomorrow.

Kino sat cross-legged at the fire pit by his family’s home, drawing his knife across the branch he and Neteyam chose. It was a good strong piece of wood in the perfect shape for the gift he had in mind. Since mother and father were away for the day, filling patrol for he and his brother, finishing this was a fine way to spend his free time.

“Is that your woman there?”

Kino’s head bolted up so he could see if it was truly her, the blade in his hand slipping and skinning his palm in his lapse of focus. “Ah!”

Tarsem sighed and picked up a blanket nearby, holding it to his hand to soak the blood.

Kino knew he was speaking of her too often, but could not help his excitement for their newfound friendship. She was coming from the opposite direction of the Suli home and her footsteps were that of an injured animal. Slow and deliberate in pace, arms as always around her like a shield.  None of what he said about Neteyam was untrue.  if he could only make her see it he was sure she would forgive him. “Stripes is not mine yet.”

“Jakesuli says she is difficult,” his brother tutted “you should find another,”

“there is no other.” Kino said dreamily. he watched her walk off, letting his eyes go to his injured hand only when she disappeared. The skin created a flap that held the blood in if he did not move, but the moment he did it flowed in a thick red stream off the side of his hand. He would not be able to deal with it himself. “I will have this looked at by the Tsahik,”

When Stripes entered Mo’at’s tent the old woman seemed less surprised than Stripes felt, casually going back to cutting strips of sinew into thread with her knife between some very judgemental up-and-down glances. She looked awfully like her daughter at work, hands expertly pulling and maneuvering the objects in her hands to make a perfect finish. “what is it, child?”

Will you visit me sometime?

Her mouth opened and closed several times, arms eventually going around herself. “I don’t feel good,” she decided was the best course of action. Her tail hung completely limp behind her but she held Mo’at’s hard stare with all the confidence she had left, which admittedly wasn’t much. 

When Mo’at gently ordered her to come sit in the spot beside her, Stripes eagerly obeyed, crossing her legs and holding still as the woman gave her a once-over. Her nose wrinkled, no doubt catching the aftertaste of vomit in the air and picking up a rag out of a bucket to wipe her face down. 

the girl whined as she was manhandled, by now used to Kiri’s tender touches and pecks. Her grandmother was absolutely not where she learned to be so pleasant. In fact, she was positive that part was all Neytiri. Apart from how terrifying the woman was, she was a doting mother and babied the crap out of her kids. Her voice would go soft and her touch would go light when one of them was hurt or upset and it reflected a thousand times over in the way Kiri treated Stripes.

The boys tried to act like they didn’t like it but that was bullshit. When Lo’ak was being mothered he always tried to play it off like it annoyed him, but deep down everyone knew he was a mama’s boy. The tough guy act didn’t work when he smiled every time his mom held his face in her hands or called him her sweet boy, and she and Spider would never ever let him forget the time he sliced his elbow open against a tree and got the scab kissed with love.

they’d also never forget the empty feelings they got whenever they met eyes afterwards. Stripes never asked if his mother issues were as bad as hers but she knew damn well he had them.

“Be useful,” the old woman placed a mortar and pestle into her lap when she was done wiping the last of the crud off her face. The bowl was made of wood and inside were what looked like a handful of orange sesame seeds. “grind this to a fine powder.”

Her heart beat inconsistently in her chest; one, t-two, one, one, o-n-e, two, one, two, and her blood gummed up her ears so the sounds outside the tent were muffled by the sounds inside her body. She worked at the seeds in the bowl with her jaw clamped firmly shut and the vague sound of Mo’at cutting sinew to her right.

After some time she showed her progress and the old lady’s tongue clicked. She frowned down into her lap, grinding some more and got the same response a second time. It was at least three or four more tries before the mix was acceptable and Mo’at took a scoop of it, mixing it into a cup of water and handing it back to Stripes. 

“Drink.”

the tincture was a bright yellow and smelled flowery, which would at the very least get rid of the nasty aftertaste of bile. One sip and the headache that was forming between her eyes disappeared. Another and her stomach settled.

She let the third drop out of her mouth mid-sip and back into the cup when the last person she wanted to see came strolling up the path. A stormcloud formed above her head the moment Kino walked into the tent. Of all the people, it just had to be him. She was about to say something mean but the sight of his hand,  dripping a puddle of scarlet onto the floor made her adrenaline spike and she forgot how to speak.

As a kid, her whole living space was baby proofed. There wasn’t a single sharp edge or  electrical socket uncovered. Later on, even with the introduction of knives and guns, there were very few occasions outside of being smacked around by Lyle Wainfleet where she encountered blood, and even rarer still was the sight of blood that wasn’t her own.

her tongue touched her teeth in discomfort at the memory of Neteyam’s blood in her mouth.

“What has happened?” Mo’at asked, checking not only his hand but the rest of his body too.

Kino spoke as best he could with his head being moved back and forth in her vice- strong grip “I was crafting a bow and my blade slipped,”

At seeing Mo’at thread a needle with sinew and pucker his skin without anything for the pain, stripes expected him to squeal like a pig. That’s what she would have done. She’d even heard Neteyam yelp a few times when getting first aid from his grandma and her unapologetically rough hands.

Though, she was a tiny bit impressed when the boy didn’t make a sound.

For the most part it seemed like he was trying to mind his own business, looking away sharply whenever she happened to glance over.

He looked at her and she looked at him, both throwing their eyes at each other and away like a game of ping-pong, bouncing focus back and forth until she finally lost her shit like a sore loser and threw her paddle onto the table.

“What’s your fucking problem?” Stripes seethed, disregarding the very real blood dripping through his fingers as Mo’at sewed him up. “did you just come in here to make me uncomfortable?” She waited impatiently as logic took a backseat to anger. It didn’t matter that he was hurt and being seen by the only doctor in camp, it just mattered that he was breathing too much of her air.

The seconds ticked by and his face flashed with surprise then confusion. His lips pursed and he went “No.” in a way that made him look like a yerik before being impaled. Dumb and completely unaware.

She would have let the invasive thoughts consume her and popped him right in the face with her cup if the sliver of a scab on his lip hadn’t humbled her back into her seat. That was his fault, she reasoned. He shouldn’t have been standing behind her in the first place. “Whatever.”

Stripes made sure to slurp extra loud to dare the boy to make eye contact with her but he didn’t after that. After a night of being grilled by Jake answer-the-question-or-else Sully, it felt good to finally be in control of something again and she enjoyed it to the fullest extent, watching the apple in his throat bob as she stared straight at his face until Mo’at was finished with him.

She zoned out when they started talking about something, most likely his parents. He explained before that they were in an arranged marriage and he detailed how they ended up loving each-other eventually. One of the very few questions she asked him was what his favorite thing to do was, taking a page from Kiri’s book and trying her damnedest to take an interest in him. His family history was shoved down her throat in just a few hours but that seemed to be the extent of what he had to offer.

Kino was polite to a fault, deepthroated the Eywa Kool-Aid like everyone else and was super, incredibly boring.

“May we speak please?” He asked from right in front of her.

She hadn’t even noticed him walk up. “About what?” In her mind, there was nothing he could say to glue back together the pieces of what would’ve already been a very strained friendship.

Right now, she bet herself she could hold a grudge much longer than she could keep a secret.

”please?” He asked again, lips pursing.

She gave him a dirty up-and-down, the meaning of it most likely lost on him as he laced his fingers together patiently. She could say No and he would probably retain some hope that she’d come around, but she wanted to be done with him. Explain that he had nothing to do with any of her decisions and to butt out of her life now.

“Thanks for the juice, Mo’at,” she waved off to the side, only for a hand gripping hers to startle her. Kino bowed and left but she could still see his giant feet planted firmly outside.

“Stripes.” When Mo’at said her name it always sounded like Sterr-ipes. “I do not know what caused this,” the woman’s head tilted,  “but hate is a monstrous weed that grows fast in the heart. Be careful not to dwell in it.”

Stripes swallowed hard, and nodded as her hand fell to her side. “Yes ma’am.”

It was past midday when the clouds began to turn a gloomy silver and Neteyam had more than enough of Kiri’s fidgeting by then. She was busy with her plait and struggled with how she wanted it to lay over her whip, braiding and unbraiding it in frustration each time she completed the length. He watched her face wrinkle in ways it seldom did, bushy brows pulling together when she realized her hair wasn’t smooth enough, the segments weren’t as tight as she wanted them.

Norm came not much earlier to collect some of Stripes’ things but neither her nor Spider could be found after he left, not even when they peeked around the bend into the Avatar camp.

Neteyam’s fingers tapped at his stomach, a leg resting on his knee as he focused on anything other than his sister and her feelings. She was forgetting there was more than one person wondering what was going on. “Stop that,” he ordered finally.

“What if something happened to them?” She pulled the band of her braid tight and began to unravel it again as soon as it was secure.

“Both of them?” His eyes flicked up at the ceiling. “at the same time?”

“Spider may wander off as he pleases but Stripes would have told me where she was going,” Kiri let her hair fall from her hands in exasperation for the last bit, looking straight at him for an answer. “and why did Norm take her gun?”

“Maybe she asked him to get it for her.” He sighed, lazily looking for the correct combination of words to make her settle down. “Or Dad wanted to make sure she was carrying the right bullets still,”

“She’s in danger, I know she is,” Kiri wasn’t having it. “what if he made her leave? She would be all alone right now, scared and distressed-“

“Enough,” Neteyam groaned into his hands. “you shouldn’t think that way,”

“I cannot believe you aren’t worried,” Kiri’s tail curled under her folded legs, shoulders sagging in a palpable gloom- her equivalent of throwing a tantrum.

He wasn’t worried because he knew better. He knew more. When Stripes first came, dad had sat him down and said she was lost. Since it was their protection she was asking for, it was also their responsibility to show her a better way to live. Because no one who thinks their people are doing it right would risk everything to run away like she did. Like he did.

Maybe their father never said it in so many words, but Stripes meant something to him. Helping someone who came from the same place as him, who wanted something different, hit a soft spot Neteyam thought was long gone.

He wouldn’t let anything bad happen to her.

Of that, Neteyam was certain.

“I bet they’ll be back in an hour or two. then all your whining will be for nothing.” He yawned. As he stretched he heard her huffing and a shuffle he assumed was her leaving the tent. He took advantage to roll in his bed and contort his body into a strange shape, sure to flex and bend every muscle and sinew in his body until he finished the stretch in a satisfied sigh.

He opened his eyes again to Tuktirey’s face only inches from his.

He chuckled, standing. “Yes, Tuk,”

She laced her little fingers in front of herself, looking up at him through batting lashes as if to signal that she was, without a doubt, up to no good. “I want fish but there is none left,”

Behind their family tent was a line where meats were hung to age and dry out. With everyone being so busy these last few days it was no surprise the line was empty. It was up to the whole family to fill it but no one had noticed or been paying attention when the food ran out.

a giggle outside made his brow tick up in playful suspicion. He rolled his eyes with a grin, bending over to be eye level with his youngest sister. “Do you want fish or does Popiti want fish?”

Her innocent look didn’t go away and he knew he was in for something tiresome.

“It’s both of us,” she insisted, eyes going big. “please?”

Popiti and Tuk were friends since birth, almost as inseparable as Spider and Kiri. But Popiti’s mother was pregnant again and her mate went down in the last raid. She was so bulbously pregnant, it seemed, that hunting was not an option. He imagined a diet of foraged fruits and vegetables was driving little Popiti insane.

the clouds were silver still and the smell of rain closing in. If he left now he could be back before it started to fall.

“Fine, fine,” he relented. “but you have to go to bed on time tonight. no complaining.”

Popiti zoomed in and both the girls tackled him onto his bed, squealing loud in his ears while Kiri’s bad mood cracked and she laughed. They were strong for their size and he couldn’t get up until they eventually grew bored of wrestling with him, scampering off to terrorize someone else.

“I should take them with me,” he huffed, trying to catch his breath “make them do the work and if they don’t catch anything, they don’t eat.”

Kiri said nothing but got up to collect his bow and a few arrows. She also rummaged through a pile of his things for a hooded cloak that could shield him from the rain. 

she straightened his visor and gave him a kiss on the cheek and a pat between the shoulders as he walked out. “If you see Spider or Stripes, tell them I’m thinking of them.”

Stripes was done before Kino even opened his mouth. When he did, he sounded like the adults in her Charlie Brown episode,

Womp, womp wom-wom womp…

Vague and unintelligible because whatever he was saying didn’t matter. She had decided the outcome of the conversation before they cleared hearing range of Mo’at’s tent and no amount of womp-womping would change her mind.

She went in the nuclear direction with her reply for no other reason than the fact that she was having a bad day. “What did you just call me?”

“I said I did not mean to offend you, my friend.”

Her palm covered the armband he made her, fingers flexing over the fringe. She should pull it off and hand it back to him. Hurt him as badly as the idea of her friends not wanting to be around her had hurt her last night. “Friend.” She breathed. “If you were my friend you wouldn’t have told me the Sullys were going to abandon me,”

“I meant to say that time is a bandit who cares not for our feelings,” The tips of his long fingers touched his forehead, amber eyes closing tight. When he opened them again he took a wide step forward and she took one back. “I want for your happiness, Stripes. that is all.”

“No, you want to be my shoulder to cry on,” she insisted, taking another step back.“we’ve only been talking for a few days. you don’t get to have an opinion.”

“My mother and father knew each other for less than that before they wed,”

Her browline shot up. Who, what, when?“Wed?”

“Yes,” a half step with one of his legs, much longer than hers, put his body almost flush with hers. “I could be a good mate to you. Hunt for you, cook for you, raise our children to be strong.”

“Okay, hold on, wait-“ her hands went up, crossing in front of her to signal a time-out. “how do you take I guess we can be friends and turn it into let’s get married?”

“I knew I wanted you the moment I laid eyes on you,” he patted his chest, fingers curling into the skin as if he could take out his heart and give it to her. “I have planned to make you mine for some time now,”

Her own heart did a little backflip at the word want. His eyes searched for hers like she was some precious, irreplaceable thing. It was a nice idea, that she could be chosen for something so soft and pure as the affection of someone who didn’t know how truly awful she was. She must be, if the way she felt at that very moment was anything to go by.

But she didn’t want to be wanted by Kino.

Her stomach twisted in regret for not marching into the tent and burying her face into Kiri’s neck. She should have just taken in the safe smell of leaf leather and wax cord and cried and kept crying until she could speak without blurting what she’d discussed with Jake. “You’re crazy.”

“So you plan to live with them forever.” His lips pursed again and she recognized what it meant now. That she was the one being unreasonable, and that the words coming out of his mouth, to him, must be the only sensible part of this conversation. “Grow old in their home while they build their own families around you? Is that what you wish?”

“I…” she didn’t know what to say. There had never been a plan for what she would do next. Waking up, not fitting in, then going to sleep is what she believed she’d be doing for the rest of her life, and nowhere in that vague assumption had she considered she may not be living under Jake’s totalitarian roof. “I…”

Kino’s expression went soft, deep vibrato going light as his face lowered to hers. “Should you choose to leave the Suli family, I will make a home for us,”

She tried taking a step back but exhaled when her foot hit an incline. Blood pumped a little faster through her veins, blotting out her voice as it pounded in her ears. “I’m gone. this is too much-“ she turned, ready to squeeze between him and the wall of rock “-you are too much.”

when her body was yanked back by a tight grip on her arm she let out a hiss so strong it nearly ripped through her throat.

Neteyam made his way to the Ikran nest in mild contentment. When was he last time he’d flown out on his own? He waved to a group of girls who smiled as he passed and hummed a tune to himself while he walked. He was still grounded and would have to make a case to his father but he could save some time by calling on his comm link.

He straightened the band on his neck so it sat comfortably above his necklace. His mother made this one by weaving flat strips of leather together and it was his favorite thing to wear, but his neck was arguably too big for it. Maybe he and Tuk could make a new necklace with all the beads she’d saved up. Give her something to do with all that limitless energy of hers and give Popiti’s mother a few hours of peace.

On his way past his grandmother’s tent, he stopped to say hello and left chewing a piece of salted and dried meat from her line. Energy for the journey, she said. She was always worrying, just like Kiri.

He didn’t get far before realizing his feet were landing in something moist. There were no leaks in this part of the cave system, the ceiling being one solid mass of stone, so he wondered if someone was carrying a bucket or a bowl of water and spilled.

But it wasn’t water. It was blood.

Blood that was fresh enough to still be wet and red. Blood that began in a trail that led away from the Tsahik’s tent, not toward it.

his curiosity got the better of him and soon he was following it. It smeared in several places, it’s oddly familiar scent dripping down from an incline and leading him to the last thing he was expecting to see at the end.

“What happened there?” Neteyam called reluctantly, stepping up to where Kino stood, hunched over and cooing into a crack in a cluster of rocks.

The boy’s hand sported a long gash with neat stitching. It was red and puffy and could have been where the blood came from, only it was clean and dried over. “I was making a bow,” he replied through a tense jaw “I cut myself.”

He narrowed his eyes “You already have a bow.”

“Yes.”

His lips parted slightly. The branch made much more sense now, but the mystery at hand was why he happened to be talking to a rock. Neteyam poked his head over the boulder’s peak and recieved a loud hiss that tapered off when the creature behind it became aware it was him.

He held Stripes’ angry stare for as long as he could before her face went blank, as if all the muscles in it suddenly stopped working. Her head tucked into her knees, tail curling up around her hip and he slid off the Boulder to face Kino.

Now, seeing him head on, Neteyam spotted a second wound on the opposite arm, raised and bloody as well, but this time in the shape of two half moons.

Kino cradled the limb but refused to meet his eyes. He didn’t need to for Neteyam to deduce what happened.

”she bit you.” his brow raised. There was no question. Her teeth were sharp and long. They probably pierced bone. It probably stung. It would probably leave a tough, nasty scar. The only thing that wasn’t probably was the fact that it had definitely been Stripes and it was most certainly Kino’s fault.

Neteyam could recall in great detail a time when he and Lo’ak would visit the Avatars every day at Hell’s Gate to pester the scientists, to ask questions about earth with answers they could only imagine and would never truly understand. It was in those days, as a small boy, before he became inseparable from Kino and before he separated from Kino, that he learned there were human words Na’vi didn’t use.

Interstellar.

Beaker.

Collateral.

Insurgent.

Lie,

and many more.

The one that came to mind in this moment was disproportionate.

If Neteyam could describe Stripes in one word, that would be it. Her confidence outweighed her knowledge of things. She ate so much it was a wonder how she stayed so thin, and her reactions were always too big or too small. But despite all that, the winds and rains of her moods could always be predicted. The warning signs were clear and given with ample time to get out of her way. Were he allowed a second word, it would be Consistent.

If Kino didn’t know better by now then the boy simply couldn’t be helped.

“She will not speak to me,” he winced, touching the edge of the puffing skin. “I have tried to-“ something flew over the rock and hit The side of his head.

When they both looked down, it was the fringed armband. The one made from Kino’s leather.

Neteyam pinched the bridge of his nose and exhaled a long breath to stifle a chuckle that turned into a wheezy laugh.

He laughed for so long and so hard, trying not to the whole time, that Kino joined him. Soon they were bent over, smearing blood all over the rock and holding onto each other for dear life or balance or whatever they could use the other’s body to aid them with as they turned purple.  He let himself have this moment knowing full well as soon as he caught his breath and looked his once close friend in the eye again, they would not know one another.

If he knew this would be the last pleasant moment he ever had with kino, perhaps he would have pretended to be happy a little longer.

But eventually it ended and Neteyam wiped a happy tear from the corner of his eye, taking a last, deep breath before poking his head back over again.

“Stripes?” He tried, a laugh still in his chest.  “You should come home. Kiri is worried sick.”

There was a rumble in her throat that vibrated off the walls and ceiling. She followed it with another hiss and he could tell by its duration that, no, she would not be moving from that spot. He thought of what he could do. The designs ranged from bringing her food to throwing her over his shoulder but neither of those seemed right. It was never simple with her, never easy…

ah.

It had been a while since he’d asked himself what his sister would do in a situation but he found doing so gave him the perfect idea for how to coax her from the state she festered in.

“I’ll get her,” he said with confidence. He was sure it would work.

The plan began with making Kino disappear.

“How can I help her?” The well-intentioned, but ill-informed boy asked.

Neteyam shrugged, pulling off his cloak. “just go,”

“I will not.” He scoffed. “I do not want to leave her this way.”

again, he briefly considered hitting the boy. It would be much easier to take him down now that he was injured, but his father’s voice in his head made his blood cool a bit. It would be what he called a cheap shot.  “If she didn’t ask you to stay, you should leave.”

His shoulders squared, and to say he towered over Neteyam would be an understatement. To look directly at his face, kino had to bend his neck at an unnatural angle. “You cannot stand between us, Nete.”

If he wanted to play this game, Neteyam would play.

And he would damn well win.

he moved, folding his arms over the lip of the rock cluster and leaning enough so he could see Stripes in his peripheral. His real focus was Kino, who made a point of looking him directly in the eye. “You’re a mess.” He informed her in English.

He heard her head lift and saw kino’s nostrils flare.

“Is mean to say, deek,” she strained.

He looked at her then, as if Kino standing there, watching them ignore him didn’t matter. But only because it didn’t. He could stand there all day and still not understand a word of what they were saying and that, Neteyam guessed, was fine with both of them. “That is mean to say,”

“That.”

“Dick.

“Deek.” She repeated aggressively. He made a note to have Spider, who could read and write in English, add that to her notebook later.

His ear twitched to the sound of giant footsteps leading away and he wondered what would have unfolded if they’d fought. Would Stripes admire Kino for it? Would she protect Neteyam because they were friends? Either way, he was glad it hadn’t come to that. “Do you want company?” His tail swished back and forth while he waited for her answer.

Stripes nodded into her knees.

She didn’t move when he entered her little den, not even when his leg brushed hers. He’d decided to leave his bow and arrows where they were. There was hardly enough space for the two of them so he had to spread his legs, which had to be bent, around her. the soles of his feet hit rock on either side of her hips and his back pressed firmly against a wall of stone.

even if Kino wanted to come in here, the poor fool would never fit.

He drew the edge of his cloak over her knee to get her attention and balled it so there was a gap for her head when she looked up.

She seemed to consider it and unfurled her top half enough to stick her head and arms in. she let him pull the hem down and the hood securely up over her head and he was met with a strange satisfaction when she pressed her nose in it to inhale his scent.

Her head buried itself down into the cloak’s chest so the lip of the hood was touching the collar. Her arms pulled in too, stretching the fabric over her bent knees and encasing her in a cocoon of darkness like kiri had done the first day. “Thank.” She whispered into it’s void.

“You’re welcome,”

“Do he here still?”

“He left,” he graciously switched back to Na’vi for her “did he do something?” An obligatory ask. Friend or no, if he didn’t like what he heard, Neteyam would have no choice but to knock all of Kino’s teeth out of his mouth.

“…he was irritating me,”

“Everything irritates you.” Well, everything did.

Her head snapped up “I didn’t ask for-“

“Don’t.” He cut her off, fully ready to get up and leave her in her dank little hole to teach her a lesson. “If you finish that sentence, I’m walking away and never helping you again.”

Just like Stripes would, she mumbled under her breath, “I wouldn’t say you’ve really helped me, you kinda just boss me around all the-“

That was when he stood to leave.

“Neteyam,” she whined after him, arms and legs still tucked into the cloak, making her look like a nothing but a brown blob from above. Her lower lip quivered but that wouldn’t save her from his scrutiny. If she was going to act like a child he would treat her like one.

“Yes?” He bent his torso in half, hands resting on his knees to be eye level with her as he had with Tuk and Popiti “may I help you?”

“Please don’t go,” she begged. “I don’t wanna be alone.”

She sniffled and he sighed.

He hadn’t just called her a mess to be funny. Her eyes were rimmed red and ringed in purple. Blood that wasn’t hers slowly drying on her cheek. It bothered him; Not that she’d been crying, not that she looked tired, but the blood. He took the corner of his hood and used the inside to wipe it away. “say it,” he warned as he got to her neck. “admit you constantly need things and someone is always there for your ungrateful ass.”

Her eyes rolled, hand coming out of the cloak’s neck to wipe at the brown one. “I’m a pathetic loser and I need everyone to baby me, is that what you wanna hear?” She asked humorlessly.

“you left out the two most important words,”

Sometimes Stripes was too prideful for her own good. “Piss off,”

His fingers slid off the edge of the hood and his leg hooked over the boulder to climb out.

“I’m SORRY,” she sobbed, not stopping even when he came back to comfort her.

This time when he sat, it was beside her, and he held an arm out as an invitation to lean into him. To his surprise she took it. her body trembled against him every so often, prompting him to pull her closer, to rub at her arms, to cover her feet with his in case cold was the issue. He accepted at last that it was just stress, and nothing he could do would make her settle down the way he hoped.

“There there,” he soothed, smoothing down the stray hairs on top of her head. “I’m sure it’s not as bad as all that,”

“It is though,” her words came nasally and over-pronounced against tears that had thankfully stopped falling . “it’s so incredibly bad,”

He waited, figuring she would mention the talk with his father if she said anything at all, though it wasn’t likely she’d share with him. She had a bad habit of keeping important things to hersel-

“Kino wants to fuck me.”

He choked on his own spit “What?” He leaned back so he could meet her eyes and repeated sharply, “he said what?” 

“He was talking about the future and how you and him are growing apart and saying I should leave you guys…”

Neteyam knew what Kino meant by Mate but the thought of what that entailed hadn’t crossed his mind. Suddenly he was filled with-something. It prickled over the surface of his skin, digging into his stomach and tensing his body painfully.

Kino drawing Stripes close,

Kino lowering his mouth to hers,

Kino’s hands all over her body,

Kino canting his hips forward-

“He just keeps stepping over lines I didn’t even know I had,” 

Without thinking his fingers wove through the strands of her braid, feeling the whip of skin where it met the base of her skull. It was an anchor to bring her head to his chest, trapping her cheek against his heart as he glared at the stone wall ahead. If she had any objections, he didn’t care. If she continued to talk, he didn’t hear it.  “Do you want me to do something about it?”

“Like what?” Her breath was a wisp against his bicep.

“Like make him stop.” He ground out, swearing to himself that if a cheap shot was what it took to make kino lose interest and move on then so be it.

But when he pulled Stripes away from his heart so he could look at her, she hesitated.

“…I-don’t. I don’t know…” she stammered “I think he’s kindof right. I don’t think Jake meant for me to live with you forever,”

Stripes packing her things,

Stripes sleeping alone,

Stripes crying in the dark,

He took a firm tone, ears flattening. “your home is wherever my family is. Understand?”

“What if your mom and dad say I have to go somewhere else?”

He meant to give her the same words he’d given Kiri. That she shouldn’t think that way and her anxieties were only a trick of her imagination. What ended up coming out was a mixture of jealousy, frustration, and fondness he hadn’t realized he was growing for her until now. His throat became dry around the words. “I don’t want you to worry about that.”

She nodded and they sat quietly for a while, listening to the sounds of friends laughing together and people walking by. He would’ve liked to continue- to keep insisting she wasn’t going anywhere, but his mind was plagued by something else.

What if she changed her mind and went?

What if she left with all her belongings, Mated Kino and never looked back?

He didn’t want to think about that. About her being happy without his family. She wasn’t his by any stretch of the imagination, but if her scent, which he’d also grown to appreciate over time, suddenly disappeared from his routine- if it faded from his blanket and her bedroll and the flap of the tent her shoulder always brushed on her way out each morning- he could see himself missing it dearly. “Are you still sorry for the bite?”

Her tired eyes narrowed “this feels like a trap.”

“I know how you can make it up to me.”

“Oh, it is a trap,”

He chuckled at her expense and slipped out of the crevice, collecting his arrows and his bow. “Let’s go,”

Stripes followed close behind Neteyam to the other side of camp. She’d shrugged off the arm he offered to lead her around, finding the contact they made a few minutes before was more than enough. She could feel a bruise about to form around her forearm in the shape of a massive hand and touched it often between the glances he threw over his shoulder. If he noticed her fidgeting, he didn’t bring it up.

“Where are we going?” She asked as they came up on the alcove where the Ikran nested. Since last night the taste of rain and stagnant moisture amplified into a thick blanket of gray between the canopy and sky. At least a dozen people were returning, untying their saddles and sliding their gear off, but no one looked to be heading out due to the coming storm.

he waved her over to his mount. “we’ve got to go quick, before the rain starts,”

No one except for us apparently.

“I’m not supposed to leave camp,” she kept a reasonable distance from the light green monster’s mouth, eyeing him warily. “you’re not supposed to leave camp,”

“Since when do you follow the rules?”

when she blinked, in the split second that her eyes were covered by darkness, she saw the exact moment her priorities switched and her spirit snapped like a twig inside her. When Jake took sol’s holo pad from Norm and became the dreaded Hand.

When she blinked again she saw The Cat. Tire tread splitting it’s body down the middle in a grizzly skirt of guts and blood- eyes popping cartoonishly far out of it’s skull; one blue and one brown staring up at nothing. “Since when don’t you?”

He blew out a puff of air, coming over to her and reaching out. His palm was tilted towards the floor, which to Stripes meant he wasn’t giving her an option. His hand would curl around her arm painfully and he would drag her to the saddle and she’d need to dive off the side of the cliff to avoid being yanked around and having to sink her teeth into him for a second time that day-

-Who’s hand was this again?

Neteyam’s palm slid into hers, squeezing gently but not pulling.

She hissed, arm retreating to fold with the other across her chest.

His expression fell a bit. “Fine,” he said, seeming not to have noticed her begin to tremble. “You win,”

He leaned against the Ikran, bringing the reciever of his comm link around to the front and pressing a button “Fisherman to Devil Dog,”

“Fisherman,” She exhaled through her nose, not having it in her to laugh. She wasn’t sure what just happened but it left her feeling something she refused to call guilt. She knew it wasn’t Neteyam’s fault Kino hurt her. “your call sign is Fisherman?”

He pointed his finger to warn her that she’d be in trouble if she started.

A grainy voice chattered on the other end of the channel “What’s up?” Jake asked.

“I’d like to bring Stripes out for a hunting trip.”

The space between the question and the reply was long, but it was what Stripes expected. He’d taken both her pad and her gun because he wanted to make sure she wasn’t bluffing about her lack of knowledge. it was obvious Jake’s trust for her had diminished a bit. That was fine. Hers had for him too.

“Negative.” He said at last.

Neteyam sighed, and Stripes realized that he had no idea what happened, or why Jake would say no in the first place. He didn’t know about the Blue Boys or what the hexbots were doing or any of the things she’d spilled that morning. She wasn’t even allowed to tell him.

“The larder is empty, sir,” he tried again, receiving another painfully long pause.

“…How’s she looking?”

he glanced at Stripes, then turned his entire body so he was facing away from her when he said “Rough,”

“I can hear you, asshole.”

“We won’t go far, dad.” He went on, “Just to the stream,”

In the next pause it was like the father and son had developed a telepathic connection. The set of Neteyam’s broad shoulders relaxed and he made himself comfy on his saddle, offering Stripes a hand, palm facing upward this time.

As if he knew the next words out of Jake’s mouth would be- “…No further than the pens. and you’re back before eclipse,”

“Copy,”

Neteyam was glad when Stripes finally untensed.

Her arms went lax but remained around his ribs for a moment after they landed, wandering eyes enraptured by the scenery. There was a stream at the very base of the mountain cluster right under where the rocks began to float. It was hidden by a thick shield of bushes and plants that illuminated the water with bright shapes and colors in the dim light of the day.

“How the hell did I think I’d be able to climb all the way down that?” She landed in the damp soil behind him with a thud.

“There’s nothing wrong with believing in yourself,” Neteyam shrugged. “you just believed in yourself a little too much that time.”

He plucked a yovo fruit off a bush that was bending over from the weight of itself and took a bite, handing the rest to her. 

her head shook, eyes casting down at her feet. It was so unlike her, the girl who took food from other people’s camps and gobbled fistfuls of berries, that his eyes narrowed into slits.

He pushed it into her arm, trying to work out what game she was playing, and eventually let it fall in the water when he realized she was serious. “No?” He raised a brow “you are in a bad mood,”

“I’m just not hungry,”

“Sure,” he hooked his bow over his shoulder, not believing her at all, and made the arrows her responsibility.

her finger traced the edges of the feathers and she followed him distractedly to the vein of water nearby, stopping when her arm brushed a leaf. It lit up from tip to stem. she stopped to touch every single one on the plant it grew from. if she kept her fingers pinched in one spot, the light would continue to strobe across the length.

he’d forgotten how new everything still was to her. The one thing kiri was able to squeeze from her was that there was no green in the city. It was exactly as their father described earth to be, with no plants or animals in sight. He couldn’t imagine a life like that. Even Hell’s Gate had trees, after all.

A small puddle of dew collected at it’s center and Neteyam watched her take a drink. It was too short for her to stand under so she brought it up to her face, dipping her mouth into the water. The excess dripped down her chin when she came up for air. “why’s it so sweet?”

His eyes lingered on her mouth for a moment too long that he had to shake his head to refocus. It’s just Stripes, he reminded himself harshly. “That one flowers at night and the- what’s the word- pollen-“ he wiped a hand across the leaf to show the powdery residue. “it coats the leaves so the insects can visit during the day.”

she touched where he had, examining the pollen between her fingers, and looked back up at him with wide eyes. “Should I not have done that?”

“You’ll be fine,” he promised, walking over to a vine that strangled the base of another tree, “Look at this one,”

The leaves on this one didn’t glow but they were big, resting in long tubes as they grew in. Neteyam ripped off the tube of a new leaf and let it unfurl like a blanket, both longer and wider than his body.

Stripes chuckled out a woah and came closer to feel the fuzz that covered surface of it.

While she goofed off he made himself busy looking for signs of fish. They laid their eggs in small gaps between rocks and fallen branches and if he could find a clutch, they’d have a bit of extra protein to take home.

When he found one, he tore a leaf off the tree behind him and turned again to see Stripes dipping her foot into the water.

“So where are the fish at, Fisherman?”

He hopped into the water, sure to get her as wet as possible from the splash and began rearranging rocks to get at the eggs. It didn’t bother him. Fisherman was better than Bag Boy. “That’s Mighty Fisherman to you,”

Her hands went up in surrender, turning in a loud, obnoxious circle to address all the imaginary people around them and yelling  “Watch out everyone, we’ve got a badass over here, move out of the way!”

He kept his eyes on the sticky clumps of roe, careful to make them land in the cradle of the leaf. “Stop,” he smiled to himself. “You’re making a fool of yourself,”

Air blew out of her lips. “I bet you-and your dad- would be a lot happier if you spent more time laughing at yourselves,”

“I remember a time when you couldn’t do that either.” The leaf was full of fat, gummy eggs and Neteyam placed one on his tongue, hoping to entice her. It’s center stuck to his teeth when he chewed and he could tell by the way her eyes darted to the leaf and back to his face that she wanted one. “You took yourself too seriously before,” he said around his mouthful.

As she swallowed he could tell her mouth was filling with saliva. like the stubborn little child she was, he knew she wouldn’t ask. “I always knew how to laugh at myself. I just didn’t like it when you guys did it.”

“We never laughed at you,”

“In my head you did.”

He looked at her then, really looked at her. He never asked who her parents were but his father assumed hers was an Avatar. It could be. Her shoulders were broader than he was used to seeing on girls in his clan but the Avatars were wide. their bulk tapered into narrow waists and hips and Stripes looked that way, excluding the fact that her hands were the three-fingered kind. The flower that bloomed on her forehead pointed downward to a nose that tapered too. He had to look hard to find in her what he could easily see in his own siblings, but the signs of alien heritage were there.

Most of all it showed in her uncertainty. He’d never met a Na’vi who was so afraid of the opinions of others- so afraid of things in general.

That part of her was entirely human.

She looked at him for a good long while. Really looked at him. She didn’t have much to reference- just a revolving door of human faces, none of which had been her age, and her waning opinion of Kino’s vague attractiveness; but she knew for sure Neteyam was beautiful.

He had a strong jawline like Jake, full Cupid’s bow lips and a nice smile that could make her either want to cover her face to hide, or slap him. There was no in-between.

She liked his body too. It’s blobby patterns, the way his limbs bent when he climbed or knelt to pick something up. the way his muscles bunched and stretched under his skin. She liked his long braids and watching his hands move gracefully, tenderly, around the objects he touched.

She liked Neteyam.

she liked Neteyam.

”oh fuck.” She thought.

His big yellow eyes blinked,

His head tilted,

She swallowed.

maybe she hadn’t just thought it after all.

She’d been so focused on all the other horrible things that happened this week that she hadnt had time to consider the ugly, presumptuous seed Kino planted in her head. Was she even allowed to feel that way? Would she be breaking some unspoken rule by imagining a world where Neteyam liked her back?

one where he liked anything about her at all?

”are you-“

”I’m fine.” Stripes replied too quickly.

He rolled his beautiful eyes like he always did, and her heart fluttered. Oh no. when his hand turned up to collect his arrows from her she realized she’d been twisting them in her grip. It made her nervous when his eyes jumped from the shafts to her face but she kept as steady as she could, wondering what could be running through his mind.

 “I want to teach you to use a bow,” he said carefully. “Will you let me?”

Stripes folded her arms. The last time they’d done this she went home embarrassed with tears dried on her cheeks. Sol said the reason she cried so much was because of an overactive amydgala. Amidgela? Amygdala? The thing that controls emotions in the brain.  She’d brushed it off as mumbo jumbo before but now she held onto the notion for dear life. Any excuse for all the feelings she couldn’t control was better than admitting she was a wuss. ”sure,” she agreed reluctantly.

He showed her how to wrap and tie the makeshift leaf basket and offered her an orange sphere before they left the water. She daydreamed about how it must taste. Would it be sweet like fruit or savory? But with all the different problems crossing paths inside her she decided her stomach couldn’t take anything solid right now and declined.

“You can’t play dumb with me,” the words were harsh but his tone was not. It was a gentle reminder with no trace of the accusation it implied. “I know something is wrong.”

“You don’t know anything,” she mumbled.

He went to move behind her with a sigh and she instinctively ducked away, uninterested in the morphine-hot feeling of his body pressed against hers. He tried again only for her to take a step back. “You said you’d let me,”

In her hiding space, when Neteyam pulled her close by the base of her braid she’d been a little scared. She didn’t know if it was of him in particular or everything else, but the air became thinner and her blood became thicker, congesting her veins and constricting her lungs. It felt like the overdose all over again.

This was worse.

Stripes didn’t want to risk being held too tightly- to feel strangled and imagine Lyle behind her. She didn’t want to look at Neteyam and see Kino.

But most of all, she didn’t want to brush against him and risk liking it.

she didn’t want to accidentally break the unspoken rule.

She grasped mentally at some kind of excuse, just to buy herself a little more time before having to be close to him. “You said you wouldn’t grab me,”

His brows shot up. ”that’s an old promise,” without looking, his practiced hands notched an arrow onto the bowstring and he looped his limbs over her head “I take it back,”

“Neteyam,” Stripes struggled in the cage of his arms a bit. “I don’t wanna play,”

“I’m not playing,” He was laughing now, bringing her back flush against his chest by an arm around her waist. “I’m teaching you to shoot,”

She shifted uncomfortably, heart palpitating and cheeks turning red, until his head lowered. His temple pushed into hers, hand wrapping around hers on his bow. There was a moment when he seemed to pull in all the air around him, inhaling in one infinite breath and ending in a soft exhale that touched her cheek on it’s way out.

Jake was going to kick her out for sure.

“Do you remember from before?” He whispered, “keep your elbow high, your bow arm shouldn’t bend.”

The fish they were aiming at was circling by the edge of the water. It was a monster compared to the ones by the waterfall. It’s body was fat and it’s fins were long and translucent like the ends of an Ikran’s.

Neteyam instructed her to breathe and she did, but the longer she stared at the fish, green and shimmering and weightless in the water it called home, the more it started to look like the soldier’s body. once strapped into it’s downed scorpion, now floating in the stream.

A rancid smell filled her nose.

She closed her eyes tight when the bowstring slipped from her fingers.

She really needed to get some sleep.

“Good for you,” he let go and her eyes opened to him getting into the water to fetch the skewered fish. It was a headshot so the shimmering body was limp at the end of the arrow.

That’s how Stripes felt. Brain dead. Defeated.“You were the one aiming,” she hugged herself.

“A win is a win,” He shrugged it off and tugged the fish free, holding it up so she could see. “This is a big one-“

Her ears pricked.

Her hand covered the middle of his face to shush him. “Wait, shut up,”

She inhaled deeply, the scent of used air exiting the lungs of an unfamiliar body filling her nose. It was the palulukan. It was the Makto. Something that would digest her and shit her out on a tree somewhere, “What’s that?”

“What’s what?” He asked, mouth moving against her palm.

She kneeled in the mud so she could grip the base of his braid, fingers getting lost in the thick shag of his hair. In the distance she could see branches moving slightly, hear footsteps that didn’t belong to either of them. She steered his head in the right direction. “Wipe the cateracts out of your eyes, old man,”

“It’s just a horse,” he squeezed her forearm but that didn’t ease her anxiety. “There’s a pen nearby, he must’ve gotten out,” He stepped out of the stream, laying the fish atop the basket of eggs and whistled. It was a clean, sharp sound that made the leaves rustle a little harder, the footsteps a little louder in their direction.

Stripes could see the beast now. It was tall and blue and she remembered. Not this specific one, but a dozen others surrounding her as she threatened to unload on Jake’s soldiers. It wasn’t particularly scary, but it was big. Big enough to squish her if it wanted to. The word Nope snapped it’s fingers to the tune of her panic. “What are you doing?!”

His hands clapped to make sure the animal’s attention was firmly on him. “Bringing him over so you can meet him,”

“Oh my god,” Stripes’ tail flapped back and forth wildly, hand covering her mouth. “oh my god,”

Neteyam made a clicking noise as it came up to them, reaching out both hands to pet it. In the dim grey light she could still tell it’s skin had some kind of sheen and if the sun were in full swing it would probably give off more colors than just blue. “This is Ayat. or Ayat’s brother A’sik, I can never tell.”

She kept her distance but did a small wave. “Hi Ayat or Ayat’s brother,”

His head jerked to coax her over, palm facing the sky between them. “give me your hand,”

“No-“ her head shook, but he’d already anticipated her answer and walked over to drag her to the horse by the waist, “i hate you!” The protest increased in intensity each time he said no you don’t. She did, and she was still mad by the time he finally got her to lay a flat palm on it’s neck.

Neteyam held her hand with his to make sure she didn’t try to leave and patted along it’s back with the other. “There, Ayat, calm.”

Ayat’s massive chest heaved when he made his loud, abrupt baying sound and Stripes flinched into Neteyam’s side, continuing to pet him much more cautiously than before. He had a long tongue and two weird looking whips on either side of his head that kept moving up and down when he looked around.

When Stripes was ten years old, she found a worm and kept it as a pet. It’s name was Pudding and it lived more or less happily for all of three weeks before it decided it didn’t like being a worm anymore and turned into a beetle. Tenoch made her let it go when it started trying to fly; the lesson being that no flying thing should ever be kept in a cage.

She found herself in a bad mood over that for no apparent reason. Fuck, I’m tired. Why should things with wings get to be free when Ayat had to live in a pen?

“Who’s horse is he?” She said around a yawn.

“We share the horses,” His hand lifted off hers when he realized she was petting the horse of her own free will now. “they aren’t bonded to any one person,”

“Then who names them,”

“I don’t know actually,”

“Do you know who named you?”

He laughed “My dad named his Ikran Bob. What do you think?”

Stripes cracked a smile. She wondered what Jake would’ve named his kids without his wife’s help. “Neteyam does sound awfully close to Neytiri,”

He draped an arm over Ayat and leaned back to check the sky. Droplets of rain were starting to fall now. “What about you?”

Stripes paused.

She’d heard this story a dozen times. The one where she was handed to general Ardmore, looked over once, and dubbed Stripes because it was an easy identifier. It wasn’t a true name. More like something you read on the back of a can of green beans to tell you how it’s nutrients benefitted your immune system and how quickly it could raise your cholesterol. A word people could use to address her without having to make a real connection with her.

Her fingers curled around her military tag, halting it’s jingle at her hip for a second before letting it go. Aside from what she was called and a return address in case she was ever found wandering the city, there was nothing on it. Her entire identity reduced to a name that wasn’t a name and four oppressive brick walls.

she put her forehead on Ayat’s shoulder, feeling her heart swell in their newfound kinship. My owner named me, she wanted to say. Would Neteyam look at her differently if she did? “I don’t know.”

He pulled his hood over her head as the rain picked up.

“Whoever it was, they picked a good one,”

She wished she could agree “if you say so,”

“I do,” His ears suddenly pricked and his eyes darted between the horse’s whip and Stripes’ sullen face. As if she needed more reasons to hate being alive today. “Do you want to ride him?”

She walked around to the other side of Ayat’s body, head shaking. “Not a snowball’s chance in hell, pal.”

“Come here.”

“No,”

“Stripes.”

“No.” She said again, this time sure to make eye contact with him. She didn’t have the energy to run away or argue anymore, but forcing him to look straight into her exhausted face and feel bad like she knew he would, that she could do. “The last time you made me link with something I forgot how to speak English.”

His brows pressed together, beautiful features pulling  in pain as if she’d just stabbed him. She wished she could take it back and say something softer. Something kinder. Maybe she didn’t want him to feel bad after all. “That wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“Well it did,” her ears pulled downward. And there’s nothing you can do to take it back.

They stayed there, locked in limbo as he sky fell around them in fat droplets. The dirt turned to mush and the air became water, but they watched it descend between them without flinching. Stripes could see the wheels turn in his head and wondered what he thought he could say to change her mind. There was nothing. She wouldn’t do it.

If only Neteyam was the kind that gave up easily.

“What if we tried another way?”

“Like how?” She asked warily.

He was up Ayat’s back before she could blink, legs on either side and Tsaheylu made in one fluid motion. “Come up here and I’ll describe it to you,”

She let her hands slide away from the animal’s body.

The rain continued to fall as she stared at her feet. 

“…You don’t truly consider us friends, do you?”

That was surprising to hear, but she kept her head down to think about it. she’d thought of them as close when he led her to Mo’at for her ceremony. She thought it when he was teaching her Jake’s breathing exercise, when he was telling Kino off on her behalf. If she had to explain her relationship with Neteyam to a complete stranger, she would readily use the word Friend.

But in some ways, that’s not what it felt like. He was a beautiful, winged thing and she was a beetle larvae in a plastic container. a horse in a pen.

“I do…but I guess in a different way than Kiri is my friend.” She dared a glance at his face, which was all hard lines and disappointment. “It just seems like you’re always annoyed at me.”

“Different from Kiri meaning you don’t trust me.”

Ooh, ouch, he didn’t even deny it.

She pulled her braid over her shoulder to give her hands something to do. “I don’t not trust you, if that helps.”

“You need to work on that.”

“Probably.” She shrugged.

It was more than a little comforting to see Neteyam so lost for words that he curled his arms around himself for once. “…for what it’s worth, you only annoy me sometimes.”

Stripes laughed then. It wasn’t loud and it didn’t last long, but it gave her permission to untense some of her muscles. To let a few tears be hidden by the rain. If Kiri got to hear about Tenoch and her leaves, maybe she could let Neteyam have something too. “you can’t mess with me while we’re doing this.” She sniffled.

his hand went over his chest, a wide smile spreading across his face. “Cross my heart,”

She hung her arms over Ayat, going to mount in front of Neteyam when he stopped her.

“No, facing me.”

She obeyed, trying her best to climb up as gracefully as he had. When she situated herself their knees were touching and she shrieked when his hands hooked under hers. He dragged her closer until the meat of her thighs rested over his hips. “Neteyam!”

He tapped at her legs and snapped his fingers in front of her to manage her attention. He had all of it without even trying- she was damn near falling over until she held onto his shoulders to anchor herself in place. “Just relax- look at me.”

The unspoken rule, her brain sobbed inside her skull. She relaxed as much as she could, ignoring the slow boil of her blood and his familiar smell surrounding her to the best of her ability. 

his pupils were blown wide, yellow irises almost completely swallowed by black. 

“What’s it like?” She found herself asking in spite of the peril of the situation.

His back straightened and all of the sudden he looked years beyond his age. “I can taste the honeys he’s been eating from the flowers,” he explained. “I can feel his worries about the predators, his affection for his mate,”

she let herself melt into him as he went on.

“I can feel the air in his lungs, the muscles working in his body,”

“Feel,” he embellished the command by taking her hand and holding it to his sternum. He took a deep breath in and so did Ayat.“It’s a beautiful thing,” His palms cupped her elbows. “you deserve to be part of it”

she didn’t even need to consider it to know she would never want to make the bond with an animal. “I’d rather chew off my own arm.”

“You’re terrible,” he scolded playfully, the beads in his hair bouncing off eachother in his vigor. “a terrible, stubborn mess.”

“Screw you,”

She almost added Bag Boy at the end but thought better of it . Though now it would be a joke it was at first meant to shame him, to belittle him in the most passive aggressive way possible for wanting to help her even after she insisted she didn’t need it.

That was Neteyam in a nutshell. a boy with the unnecessary weight of the world, of his clan and his family, and now her, slung over his shoulder and weighing him down for no other reason than to lighten the load for everyone else.

She would try, going forward, not to weigh too much.

God, I’m so fucking tired.

Chapter Text

It’s quiet in High Camp.

The campfires burn low and the slow cadence of sleeping bodies rolls like a wave over the mountains.

In Camp Sully, the family is tucked safely into their beds, dreaming peacefully.

Stripes is asleep…

Stripes is awake.

She yawns and stretches, sitting up in the dark. She is bleary eyed and dehydrated so she stands to drink from Jake’s canteen. She knows he knows she does it but since he hasn’t scolded her for it yet she does it anyway, taking long, desperate gulps at the foot of his bedroll and placing it back where she found it.

While she wipes her eyes, her elbow sticks out in front of her and bumps into something. There is a monitor that she doesn’t remember being there before she went to sleep. It has several screens broken up into smaller sections labeled Cam1, Cam2, and so on.

The footage shows the stream where she and Neteyam went fishing, the bridge, and the other major points where one could enter the Omatikaya stronghold.

She decides it’s not important, that she can ask about it when she wakes up, and goes back to lay in her bed.

It disappears. So does her duffle.

She blinks the sleep from her eyes and looks again to make sure she isn’t just imagining things.

Her belongings are, in fact, gone.

She is about to wake someone to ask when her ear twitches. The sound of music playing draws her out of the tent.

At first she is sure it’s coming from the Avatar Camp, but she learns after checking there that it’s loudest at the bridge.

She looks over the side of the rickety wooden artifact, unable to see the ground through the thick blanket of fog. The music is playing somewhere down there and she needs to know why.

Her foot lands on the first plank and expects it to break beneath her weight. It holds her up perfectly and she dares another slow, cautious step. Then another, then another until she reaches the end.

She descends the mountain and the song becomes clearer with every plateau she passes. She smiles and sings along to Bennie and the Jets.

“Hey, kids, shake it loose together; the spotlight’s hittin’ somethin’ that’s been known to change the weather!”

At the bottom of the mountain there is a thick vine she can climb down but she leaps off the last floating boulder instead, landing easily beside the stream.

~we kill the fatted calf tonight so stick around! You’re gonna hear electric music, solid walls of sound!~

She follows the water with her eyes closed, an arm held out to catch the velvety edges of the leaves around her, when her hand touches something else. Something solid that breathes against her.

It’s Ayat.

Upon seeing him she doesn’t flinch away. He’s her brother. They are exactly the same.

“Hey boy,” She remembers Neteyam calling the whips on his head Kuru and she backs away when one tilts at her “everyone’s a comedian these days,” she laughs “I’ll just walk then.”

She places a hand on his shoulder and lets him lead her towards the music and away from the mountains. They walk until the sun is high in the sky and still until eclipse comes to blot it out. They walk for days and nights, telling each other stories about blue giants and nectar filled flowers.

They don’t stop until they reach a wall made of metal.

They look at each other.

They keep walking.

“When did the music stop?” She asks. He simply shakes his head. He doesn’t know either.

It’s a few more days until they see anything, but Ayat stops dead in his tracks when they do. It’s so sudden that Stripes goes a few feet ahead of him before she realizes anything is wrong.

Something is leaning against the wall.

The grasses around it are overgrown and vines have taken over it’s shape but what remains is still recognizable. It’s a tall, odd looking skeleton. It’s draped in beads and feathers, woven clothes like a native. But inside it sits another, smaller skeleton. This one is human. She can tell by it’s RDA uniform. He must be in the science division. Probably a botanist- or an ecologist like Sol.

each one has a small, round hole in the center of it’s skull.

Tendrils of light creep up from the ground and start to absorb collection of bones but when her hand goes to stop them, Ayat bays and she’s startled back to reality.

“You’re right,” she says, shaken “it’s gotta be around here somewhere,”

she waves to the skeletons, promising herself she’ll visit them sometime.

The horse offers his Kuru again and her head shakes. No. This is not a good time.

For days they walk along and Stripes recites the whole of Alice in Wonderland to Ayat, as if she’s reading it straight from the printed pages of a book. When she finishes, she starts over and over and over.

She wonders if Ayat is even listening.

He is. And he likes the sound of her voice.

The next time they come upon something it’s Stripes who stops. The taste of blood is thick in the air and she has trouble making her feet move. She has never liked that smell.

Ayat pushes her forward with his nose and she scolds him “chill out, I’m going, I’m going.”

The blood comes in a solid line. It’s flowing freely as opposed to dropping steadily. unable to be stopped by covering it with a hand.

In the distance they hear a baby cry, and Ayat picks up speed until Stripes has to sprint after him. She isn’t fast enough and once she loses him she knows there’s no hope of catching up. Her hands fold behind her head. Her chest is heaving.

“Where’d you go, you cunt!” She yells.

She keeps walking, irritated. She’ll just have to find it without his help.

She goes along the wall, singing the song which stopped playing days ago. She can still hear it in her head.

“Candy and Ronnie, have you seen them yet? Ooh, but they're so spaced out, B-B-B-Bennie and the Jets,”

She hears the baby cry again and moves forward slowly. The sound is close now, and she doesn’t want to startle whoever is bleeding.

She sees Ayat first and gives his shoulder a light smack with the back of her hand “you fucking left me,”

His nose lifts as if pointing a finger at something.

A woman is walking with a basket in her arms. A shawl rests around her shoulders, long enough to cover her legs. The trail of blood stops in a pool between her feet.

She sets the basket down. There is a camera on this segment of the wall.

She moves warily towards it as if it’s alive and waves an object in it’s view

It’s an RDA card. Stripes can’t see the face on its front but she knows it’s a science division ID.

Orders are barked over an intercom.

The woman holds up her tswin to the babe’s and for one devastating moment it seems like she will let them connect.

She can’t bring herself to do it.

She brushes her braid over her shoulder, tucks the child’s naked whip back into the basket and backs away.

Stripes doesn’t know much about babies, but she knows enough about the RDA to see how fucked up this is. “Hey!” She shouts “You can’t just leave her there,”

“If he sees her eyes he will know. he will kill her,” She kisses the babe on the forehead and sets her down by the steel door, tucking the card into the fold of her blanket “May Eywa protect you, my heart and soul,”

A trail of blood and afterbirth is left in her wake and tendrils of light reach out of the ground to absorb them.

This time Stripes let’s them do their work.

She hugs Ayat for reassurance, and he rests his chin between her shoulders, pulling her as close as he can.

She’s glad he’s here.

She wishes she weren’t.

A hole opens in the wall and a small woman walks out.

It’s General Ardmore.

She approaches the basket and Stripes wants to run over and hiss at her. Take the baby away and keep it safe.

She’s too afraid, and instead watches in horror.

Ardmore pulls the card from its place and is silent.

Her expression doesn’t change except for a line of moisture that trails down from her eye.

Stripes doesn’t dare speak. She thinks. She hisses under her breath. She’s angry. Why are you crying?

“She’s his,” Ardmore says, as if she can hear Stripes.

The little woman calls for the help of the gatemen and the three of them carry the basket into the city.

Stripes can feel her heart breaking into a million pieces. She knows what’s in store. She’s lived it.

The baby is on her own.

“Come on,” she tells Ayat.

His head hangs low.

The wall of Bridgehead is long and it’s days and nights again before they see anything else. The vegetation seems to mutate as they go, growing and shrinking and growing. Perhaps this is how Pandora changes. Perhaps this is Autumn.

They follow the curve aimlessly, sad and sullen.

Stripes doesn’t sing anymore.

She doesn’t quote Alice.

Ayat misses her voice.

It’s an especially dark night when they stop. General Ardmore is outside the wall again. She is standing above a woman who is hunched over in the grass. Hands cuffed behind her back.

Ardmore is devoid of emotion. The gun in her hand pressed against the center of the woman’s spine “Did you think I wouldn’t find out?” She seethes.

The old woman spits on the ground. It’s blood. “I have no regrets,” she declares “she deserves a life,”

“A life of what? Wiping her ass with poison oak?” Ardmore pushes the muzzle harder into her body.  “Stripes is safe here. You have no right to take her,”

Stripes perks at hearing her name. Who is that on the ground?

“No one is safe with you.” The woman spits.

Ardmore is quiet.

“Have it your way,” she says finally. “any last words?”

“Tell her I love her.”

Ardmore, unamused, rolls her eyes. “It’s been an honor working with you, Tenoch.”

A single gunshot echoes through the forest.

The sound bounces off the metal wall and Stripes sprints off without staying to see if the tendrils come to reclaim the old woman’s body.

She trips over something and falls into the mud, slush covering her face and arms and knees.

Ayat is there, baying and bending over and running in circles around her.

She scrambles to her feet and climbs onto his back.

He runs.

She doesn’t let go.

They run forever.

The shield wall never disappears. It goes on for miles. They run so hard for so long it feels like they’ve gone around the world and ended up right back in the same spot.

Only, it isn’t the same anymore.

They slow down.

They stop only when a tree blocks their path.

It’s small, but wide. Hanging from it are fluorescent purple vines that almost touch the floor.  Stripes is disgusted by the sight of squishy little woodsprites flying around. Muscle memory makes her nauseous. A man’s voice is in her head but she can’t understand what he’s saying.

Ayat walks them closer, between the vines so  they don’t touch her.

She is thankful that he knows her so well.

Behind the purple curtain is a woman. This one is kneeling too but this time she is free.

Ardmore, thankfully, is nowhere to be found.

Stripes relaxes a bit.

The woman’s hand is gripping above and below the vine where her tswin is curled around it. She’s not a native. She has four fingers. “I know I shouldn’t be asking any favors,” she says in a voice Stripes recognizes. It’s Marisol. “but if I’m allowed some kind of Hail Mary, I want this to be it,”

“What happened?” Stripes asks. Her brow is furrowed. Her palms go clammy.

Sol looks up at Stripes. “That little shit is all I have left of him,” she laughs through her tears, pulling the vine close. “please let her be okay,”

Stripes slides off Ayat’s back to stand beside Sol. To comfort her. But her hand goes through her shoulder. She is unable to touch her friend. It’s as if she’s a Ghost.

“Bring her back to me,” Sol begs one last time. She then stands and when she turns, the tree is swallowed by the ground. A door opens up in the wall.

it stays open behind her.

Stripes slides off Ayat’s back to follow Sol through the opening and he moves to cut her off, begging with his body for her not to go in.

“It’s cool, I promise,” she coos to him “I’ll be back before you know it.”

She has to make him a few more promises, swearing on her life and Toby’s bible and whatever else she has, before he lets her go.

She glances back at him.

She knows the door may not open a second time.

If she makes it out of the city she will never lie to him again.

Stripes follows Sol through a maze of geometrical shapes and the kaleidoscopic skeletons of new buildings. The tops of the turbines can clearly be seen from here but that is the only thing she recognizes. She’s only been out of her Playpen once, and this is not the same part of the city.

She looks down and realizes the mud is gone. Suddenly she is wearing a uniform. Khaki pants and custom made boots with thick rubber soles. It feels good to be an inch taller again. She likes the familiar stretch of her polyester blend shirt.

Sol stops in front of a building with triage tents outside. The hospital is filled to the brim with people returning from demolished mines and mag-lev construction sites. She waves her ID in front of the guard’s face and he lets her in.

Stripes jogs to catch up before the door hisses shut.

The floor inside is paved in large squares of freckled linoleum that match the white walls and ceiling. Above are skinny panels of light that cast an eerie glow over the exhausted hospital staff and the beds that line the hallway. They are full of bleeding soldiers, ailing workers, and fresh corpses.

Off to the left somewhere is a room with no door. It’s the only room big enough for the task of housing three enormous bodies.

Sol enters the room and mocks a gag at the song that’s currently playing.

~ Hey, kids, plug into the faithless, Maybe they're blinded, But Bennie makes them ageless!~

“Sorry but I’m pulling rank.” She turns the dial on the radio and flips it to the only other available station in the city. It’s a newscast relaying information she already knows.

“Still reminds you of Norm, huh?” Toby chuckles from his seat. He is in an uncomfortable looking chair, a light green puke color that matches the accents in the room. It is positioned adjacent to a bed. A seventeen year old girl with blue skin lays in a medically induced coma, hooked up to several machines and laboring to breathe.

she may as well be a Corpse herself.

Sol walks past Stripes the Ghost to sit beside Toby. Far enough away from the girl that she won’t begin crying but close enough to reach out a hand to touch her. “Reminds me of the three years I wasted in Avatar training.” She grumbles, leaning back.

Stripes the Ghost leans against the bed, trying to touch the Corpse’s hand but dissolving right through her as well. “Norm still listens to that one,” she informs Toby and Sol “it’s his favorite song.”

“Figures,” sol laughs “people never change.”

A woman with straight brown hair enters. It’s Ardmore again.

The Ghost hugs herself to ward off the eerie feeling. She has never seen Ardmore out of uniform before.

“Marisol. Tobias.” She addresses the woman and man respectively.

“It’s good to see you, Frankie.” Toby says, taking the General’s hand in both of his. He still considers her a good friend, even after all these years.

“I’m surprised you showed up.” Sol says, not bothering to stand.

“Always with the dramatics.” Ardmore scoffs, and turns when a doctor walks in.

She is a small, stout woman with a kind face and a gentle voice. Stripes the Ghost remembers her. This is the doctor that performs her bi-annual physicals. Her name is Irene.

“What’s the situation?” The general asks callously. She wants the facts with none of the frills.

This doctor in has been employed at this particular hospital since it opened. She loves helping people. She knows the patient well. She likes her. that is what makes breaking the news so difficult. “Would you like the good news or the bad news first?”

“I don’t have time for this.” Ardmore warns her.

The doctor stumbles over her words, looking to Toby and Sol for help. For a moment she locks eyes with Stripes the Ghost. “She came in with acute respiratory failure but recovered from that quickly,”

“Is that all?”

“The bad news is, it was long enough that she’ll have lasting brain damage, we don’t know how severe, and we aren’t sure how it’ll affect her life if she survives.”

“What do you mean, if?” Ardmore snaps

“As an organism with more than seventy percent Na’vi DNA, she’s having a negative reaction to both the cocaine and the medication administered to lower her blood pressure,

“The condition has triggered severe anemia and we’re working to find a solution, but we’re not sure if our reserves of human blood will suffice for a transfusion.” The doctor explains, quickly and efficiently as the General wanted it. “it may do more harm than good to even try.”

“What exactly are you saying?”

“She’s saying Stripes is chum.” Sol said in far plainer terms. She looked at the girl in the bed. Stripes the Corpse. “The effort and resources needed to save her would be too great so you don’t even want to bother trying,”

“I don’t know what kind of resources you think we have, but-“

Ardmore interjects. As Stripes’ guardian, her voice is the most important one in the room. “What are the chances of survival if we don’t try the reserves?”

“She will almost certainly die within the next fourty-eight hours.”

The room is silent.

The Ghost is confused. “You guys never told me it was this bad,” her heart begins to beat faster.

“If we use the reserves and she reacts badly, it’ll be the same.” The doctor adds softly. “I’m sorry.”

The room goes silent again.

“What about me?” Toby asks.

“Excuse me?” Irene blinks. She was under the impression Stripes had no family.

Toby stands and the doctor has to look straight up at him. “I’m a blood relative,”he explains, a hand patting his chest.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Stripes asks. Aside from an apologetic glance from Toby, she is ignored.

“Yes.” Irene’s brows pull together in thought. “Yes, we can give that a try. We’ll need to do a blood test for compatibility. if you’ll just follow me,”

The doctor walks past Stripes the Corpse and Sol, who is now holding her hand. Toby follows, stopping to kiss them both on the head.

He almost does the same to Ardmore but thinks better of it, bending down to squeeze her shoulder gently before walking away. He has never seen someone in such dire need of a good cry.

When they leave, Sol tries to make eye contact with Ardmore, who is looking at the Stripes in the bed. She is turning more of a pale sky blue than her usual cyan. The woman was not the one who left the drugs unattended, nor was she the one who left Stripes unattended, but she blames herself entirely.

She walks out without saying a word to Sol.

It doesn’t matter. Sol wanted her to leave anyways. “Guess it’s just you and me, Babe.”

Stripes the Ghost takes Toby’s empty seat next to the Corpse and folds her hands in her lap. “How long did you know I was who I am?”

“Francis told me the day after we met.” Marisol sighs. It’s a deep, melancholy sound. “But I knew from the moment I laid eyes on you.”

“I wish I’d never been born.” She whispers.

“I wish you didn’t exist too sometimes.” Sol admits. “But only because it hurts to see you struggle.”

“I don’t struggle.” The Ghost sniffles.

“Sure. Just like pigs can fly and the ocean is red and I’m still alive.”

The Ghost looks up at her.

They both share a sad laugh.

Neither of them speak again for hours.

Toby comes in finally, with an army of surgeons and nurses behind him. They are rearranging the room, laying out needles and wires. They have packets of saline and disinfectants laid within reach.

Diagnostics are run and the procedure is explained in excruciating detail, but no one is listening.

The numb fugue encapsulates everyone not wearing a white coat.

Marisol is made to leave, and Toby is left behind. Unbeknownst to him, she cannot sleep and later goes back out to the tree. He’ll eventually tell her that if she doesn’t believe in God, he’s glad she at least believes in something.

He’s attached to the Corpse by several pumps and tubes and once he’s situated the doctors file out to attend their triage patients.

Toby is alone.

the Ghost is afraid to speak, and watches the thoughts form in his head as if she’s reading a book.

He’s hearing his brother’s voice more often as time goes on. Songs and colors remind him of a death he doesn’t remember.

He would like to take his medication but is worried about how it’ll affect Stripes now that he is hooked up to her like a car battery. he takes the bottle out of his pocket and looks at the pills inside longingly.

Toby looks over at the Corpse “I meant to tell you before,” he pauses, swallowing hard. “nevermind. It’s not important,”

the Ghost sits in the chair beside him. The one still warm from Sol’s body. “I think I still wanna hear it,” she says.

“Toby?”

He stares at his arm. At the needle in his vein pumping life into the Corpse beside him. “I’m sorry I didn’t say something sooner,”

“Good,” the ghost is indignant. She never asked to be born, so who can she blame but everyone else? “you should be fucking sorry,”

He nods “It’s just hard for me sometimes- saying what I’m thinking. I didn’t want to disappoint you.” He laughs sadly. “I’m always disappointing everyone,”

“Not me,” the ghost lays a hand on his forearm, which makes him look up. She is still angry but wants him to know. Needs him to know. She’s running out of time. “If I had to be related to one of the chucklefucks that came off that shuttle I’m glad it’s you.”

He looks at the monitor where the Corpse’s heartbeat is beginning to slow. He places his hand over the Ghost’s on his arm. His eyes close. “He would’ve loved you,”

The Ghost’s eyes close too. “Looks like I get to meet him soon.”

There is a long, consistent beep from the monitor.

The hand is gone

The Ghost opens her eyes.

She looks around.

Toby is gone.

The doctors have left.

The lights have gone down.

She is alone in a room with her deceased body. A sheet pulled up to cover her face.

For a moment she accepts this. It’s the way things should have happened.

Her hairs stand on end when the Corpse reaches a hand up and pulls the sheet down.

To the surprise of the Ghost, she looks normal. Round-cheeked and bright, although still mismatched eyes. Skin a vibrant cyan.

“This is how it’s always been, Stripey.” The Corpse says in her own voice. “No mother, no father. No friends or family.”

The Ghost stands and takes a step back. She realizes she never got to say goodbye to Ayat. They never found what they were looking for.

“It’s just us.”

The Corpse climbs out of the hospital bed in her puke green gown, pulling the machines and tubes she is still attached to with her to follow the Ghost.

“It’s just you,”

Her body morphs into that of a little girl, distorting and shrinking to half the size she was before. A collar so tight around her neck it’s turning her face purple.

“And me.”

Stripes woke with one of her own hands gripping her neck.

“What the fuck?” She said aloud, blinking the sleep from her eyes. She looked for her holo-pad, where she would usually find the time, and remembered eventually that it wasn’t there anymore. That saying about not appreciating things until they were gone? Words to live by.

Without knowing how many hours she’d slept, she couldn’t tell if it was unhealthy for her to be awake. She was still exhausted, but there was no going back to sleep now.

She slumped over in defeat, giving her bones a good pop before gathering her blanket and walking over to Kiri’s bed. She didn’t stir, so she nudged the girl with a foot.

“Stripes?” She rasped. “Why are you awake?”

Stripes dropped the mass of fabric on her head to wake her up further, finding it worked much more efficiently than she’d planned. To avoid suffocating, Kiri flailed beneath it and shot straight up, gasping for air and fully alert.

“I had a nightmare.” She scooted in beside her, tangling their legs under the covers.

“Oh,” kiri yawned after catching her breath. “what was it about?”

Stripes looked at Kiri. At her narrow nose and round yellow eyes.

She loved Kiri.

She trusted Kiri.

She took a deep breath,

And then,

And then…

Chapter Text

The sound of a metal blade grating against Lo’ak’s skin made Neteyam nervous. It was a job he usually took upon himself, keeping the side of his brother’s head shaved as he liked to wear it, but since he was busy with Popiti and Tuktirey, Stripes had eagerly volunteered to take his place.

Lo’ak was also reasonably cautious, warning her to be careful every few seconds, though she insisted over and over that she knew what she was doing. It became clear she didn’t when a painful hiss filled the tent.

“Dude, I wouldn’tve cut you if you were sitting still,” she hissed back.

“Your knife is dull as hell, cuz. Could you-“

There was a smacking sound that cut him off “I’ve got this, stop moving,”

their mother was gutting a fish, making angry expressions at the spot where she thought Stripes’ head was. Another smack and she would probably charge in there and yell at her.

He chuckled, helping Tuk stitch another bead onto the bib of the new necklace. “When did you get so good at this?” He praised.

The sinew slipped and she beaded it again with a little oops, continuing on with her perfectly straight line. “Mama’s been teaching me,” she pulled it’s sharp tip through the other side of the leather again. “she says I’ll be better than Grandma soon,”

He thought of their grandmother and her infinitely intricate headdresses and ceremonial pieces and tilted his head. “One day, maybe,”

Popiti showed him her own progress. Her mother was irritable this morning and she’d come in hanging her head, her shoulders and ears drooping. “That’s good,” he said, as upbeat as he could, placing his needle in her little hand and showing her how to hold it. “now we sew it onto this piece,”

“Let me get this straight,” Lo’ak chided from inside the tent, carrying on a conversation Neteyam hadn’t heard the beginning of. “you fell, and that’s how you got that hand shaped bruise.”

Neteyam looked sharply at his mother, who’s head shot up also. They leaned over to get a good view into the tent where Stripes was settling into Kiri’s lap. She did indeed have a bruise, black and green and curling around her forearm, but he hadn’t considered it looking like a hand at all until now…

Stripes sighed as kiri unbraided her hair. Nimble fingers grazing her scalp to comb through the strands. She was still exhausted from…everything. But talking had definitely helped ease some of the poison building up in her heart. The promise she made to officially meet Grace Augustine didn’t feel like a mistake. neither did Kiri’s assertion that, as of last night, they were sisters.

“What, you don’t believe me?” She knew her half-assed lie was transparent as glass.

Lo’ak touched one of the small cuts on his head, testing to see if they were all dry yet- response skeptical, as expected. “I’m just trying to get the facts right,”

“She got into a fight with Kino,” Kiri said bluntly.

Stripes smashed both hands into her face

“What?”

“It’s like-“ she crumpled over her lap, touching her forehead to a knee. Kiri’s hands on her scalp had been nice but feeling something touching her bare whip was making her uncomfortable. “it’s like you guys have never heard of a secret before,”

The end of Lo’ak’s tail jerked, his expression becoming serious. “Do i have to beat him up?”

Stripes wiped her eye, straightening up when Kiri tugged at her hair. She’d seen Lo’ak get into petty fights before, disasters resulting from Jake’s volatile parenting; just as her flimsy attempt at redirection had come from Tenoch always avoiding unpleasant conversations. She thought it was funny, but letting him get his neck snapped on her behalf wouldn’t endear her to Neytiri.  “You can’t fight Kino,”

“Why not?” He asked, nose wrinkling. “You don’t think I could win?”

Without hesitation, she replied, “No, bitch; he would smash you like a bug,”

“You make it so hard to care about you sometimes,”

“Kiri,” Stripes whined, pointing at the boy’s face, “Lo’ak said he doesn’t care about me,”

“Stop being unkind to her,”

he  threw up his hands, “Did you hear what she just told me?”

“I did,” Kiri said, grunting a bit when the girl in her lap leaned backwards and crushed her onto the floor. She giggled but continued to braid and bead while upside down and Stripes was satisfied. The day had been lacking something without the sound of her laughter. “it’s true,” 

Lo’ak rolled his eyes, scooting closer to touch Stripes, braceleting her ankle with his four fingered hand. “seriously. if kino did something, you should tell dad.”

she leaned over and patted his knuckles but the tension in the set of his skinny shoulders didn’t go away. “We didn’t really get into a fight, he just grabbed me.”

“Your arm looks like it was smashed with a rock.”

“Okay, he grabbed me really, really hard.”

“I’m gonna kick his ass.”

Jake smiled at the sight of his family. From this angle he could see every one of them, braiding, beading, skinning- being together.

He got to one knee, touching his forehead to Neytiri’s and smiled over at his son and daughter. The boy met his eye with a glazed over expression, distracted despite the smile he gave back.

“How’d it go yesterday?” Jake asked.

Neteyam’s head shook, focus going back to the beaded piece in his hands. “I don’t think she’ll be catching anything on her own for a while,”

His wife chuffed and he raised a brow at her. “We all gotta start somewhere,”

She went back to her skinning and Jake gave Tuk’s forehead a peck on his way into the tent where the last three were nagging each other about something having to do with Tarsem’s brother.

Stripes was trying very hard to make it look like she didn’t notice her gun strapped to his back.

“Hi, dad,” Kiri waved from the floor.

“Babygirl.” He grinned, hoping she wouldn’t ask the question. He’d done his best to see what was up with Spider, but Norm kept vaguely insisting he just didn’t feel good. It didn’t pass the smell test. In twenty years, the kid never had a single sick day, but now he was avoiding Kiri like she had cooties or something.

He continued quickly so she wouldn’t have time to reply, sliding the strap off his shoulder and extending Stripes’ rifle to her. “I’ve decided to let you have this back,”

Both her hands stretched out eagerly, but pulled back an inch before they touched it. “What if I’m still a spy.”

“I’ll bet on the ten-percent chance you’re not.”

He pushed it the rest of the way into her grip and she took it with greedy hands, holding it tight to her chest like a security blanket. From this angle he could see the rim of the single butterfly bullet jammed into it’s strap pocket. He had half a mind to yank it out and toss it but the perfect little stitches around it, holding several of Tuk’s beads in place, made him think twice. Of course, she was there the day he got rid of them. She’d bent the rules out of love for Stripes, taken a risk knowing she might be punished- and who was he to revoke a gift like that?

She asked, looking the weapon over to note any changes. There were none. It had been leaning against a random wall all day and hadn’t moved until he moved it. “Where’d you pull ten-percent from?”

“My ass,” he shrugged. “Throw on your bomber. we’re going out.”

She did as she was told with a renewed skip in her step, clumsily pulling on her jacket without setting the rifle down. The thing was too big for her and it hung past her hips, making her look an awkward shape with stilts for legs. Nonetheless, she straightened it out over herself happily, covering the suspicious bruise on her arm and throwing him a salute when she was done. “Okay, where to?”

He took his own rifle from where it rested, just beside a pile of scraps that would eventually become a surveillance system, and looked around. Neteyam was peering in at them, Lo’ak looking up in anticipation. Today was supposed to be just a way to separate her from his kids, give a soft apology for taking his questions so far, and see what she could really do in the field. It donned on him that, especially now, his sons could benefit from knowing how to use a gun.“Target practice.”

“Hell yeah,” she grinned, all her teeth showing.

Jake Nodded at Lo’ak “wanna learn somethin’ cool?”

“Yes sir,”

He nodded, gesturing to Neteyam with a snap of his fingers. “Let’s go, boy, pack it up.”

“Kiri,” Neteyam called “can you finish this with them?”

They gathered up food and ammunition for the trip, saying goodbye to those being left behind. on the way across camp Jake listened to the three of them trash talk each other, wishing he had more time to just be with his kids like this.

Before he could haul himself onto Bob, Lo’ak and Stripes had already mounted. They were joking quietly about something. Neteyam paused to eye them up and down before pulling his visor on and Jake was left to wonder what the hell that was all about.

Chapter Text

Stripes leaned over the Ikran’s body, peering straight down at the conveyor belt of trees below. The thoughts buzzed in her head all at once;

That if she just gave up her grip on Lo’ak, she’d be in free fall for at least a minute before she hit the ground. Would she break any bones? Or would the carbon fiber in her skeleton keep her intact?

The familiar weight of her rifle on her back was exciting but it had been such a long time since she got to practice that she didn’t know if she was good anymore. She drew back on her first shooting teacher and all the tips she learned before Wainfleet took over and the nightmare began.

The year before the Recoms moved in was a fun one. She was constantly praised and rewarded- she and Ansel played memory games and ate their lunches together and she never forgot any of his advice.

She could hear him loud and clear in her head, chanting military cadences and singing paratrooper songs to boost her mood for their classes.

~Gory, gory, what a hell of a way to die!~ she grinned as she looked over the canopy.

Lo’ak’s comm link came alive with Jake’s voice, “its coming up on your left,”

Jake chuckled as he watched Stripes bounce around in shameless glee.

The range they stopped at was a collection of floating boulders that was closed off to the open sky. It had a back wall, a solid ground and boulders to the left and right. On top of all that was a grassy platform where the Ikran could perch while they waited. The wall they would be shooting at already had targets set up- metal plates and spray painted shapes, whatever they could use to train new warriors.

His sons looked confused as she began unpacking the gear they brought without instruction.

He’d put her to use exactly three times since learning she had weapons training to arm his soldiers for demo missions- it would’ve been a waste not to. Stripes would lay out bullets on a table and slot them into the corresponding vessels, hooking them to packs, fastening grenades to harnesses, and anything else they needed for their raids.

She did it quick, she did it clean, and with zero complaints.

This was the first time Jake had heard her sing while doing it, and he was the only one present who probably knew why it made sense. Everything in the military was the same, muscle memory building, habit-forming. Drills, practice, marching, drills, singing,

repetition, repetition, repetition.

“He was just a rookie, and he surely shook with fright,”

He watched her take her rifle apart with expert precision, cleaning the pieces, and putting them together again just as quickly.

“He checked off his equipment and made sure his pack was tight,”

She knew the difference between a clip and a magazine and the uses for both, how to modify standard weapons and even how many of each type of rifle had been manufactured that year.

“He had to sit and listen to those awful engines roar,”

The fact that she spent her whole life in confinement showed whenever she was working.

“You ain’t gonna jump no more!”

This had obviously been her only hobby.

He leaned against a wall to her left, watching as she unhooked the tripod from the bottom of the rifle and jammed the feet into a gap in the boulder in front of her. The memory of meeting her for the first time was vivid, and one of his most concrete reasons for trusting her was never far from his mind. “who taught you not to rest on the trigger?”

“Sergeant Ansel Presley.” A smile curled her lips. “The first thing he ever said to me was you don’t touch the trigger unless you’re ready to kill someone.”

“That’s good, I like that,”

“Move over, Soldier Girl,” Lo’ak stretched out his lanky body, casually waving his hand for her to move. “I’ve got this.”

her face scrunched up “not on your life, Mama’s Boy,”

They began bickering and Jake looked over at his eldest son. The same expression as before dominated his features, eyes fixed firmly on Stripes.

He went over to lay a hand atop his head “you two okay?”

“Why wouldn’t we be?”

A long breath blew from Jake’s nose to mask a laugh. Neteyam’s moods were always obvious, just like his mother’s. “You’ve got that look on your face.”

Neteyam shrugged.

Jake glanced at Lo’ak and Stripes, who were pretending to die gruesome deaths, falling to the floor in a pile over each other. he decided nothing would get done if he let the two of them practice together.

“You sure?” He nudged his son once more for good measure.

“Yeah, we’re fine.”

“Alright then,” he patted his head affectionately and moved to nudge Stripes with his foot. “hey- I’m gonna have you take Neteyam,”

she pushed Lo’ak’s hands off her, which were gesturing as if blood was spurting from his guts like a fountain. “Take him where?”

“You’re gonna teach him the basics.” He unhooked her tripod, folding the legs back in and handing the rifle to her. They could practice on the other side. “I’ve got Lo’ak.”

with this arrangement, Jake could keep Lo’ak on track and Neteyam could do the same for Stripes.

he just hoped, as he watched them walk off, that they could squash whatever beef was going on before it was time to head home.

Stripes and Neteyam made their way to the far side of the makeshift range and she noted the different targets. There were three at eye level, four at random places in the middle of the wall, one hanging from a small boulder that floated above, and a bunch of crap she guessed was supposed to function as cans on a wall, like a carnival game.

when she looked back at Neteyam, his face was twitching, body flexing uncomfortably.

“Are you okay?” She asked, brows pulled together.

“No.” he tugged at the cuff of her sleeve to uncover the edge of her bruise “were you planning to tell me?”

She touched the purple marks gently through the faded fabric, noting that rain was beginning to fall again. “It happened to me, not you.” She could tell that answer was unacceptable by the way his tail waved back and forth behind him.

he looked how he always did when he was getting ready to nag her, all scrunch-faced and narrow-eyed. His chest expanded with big breaths and his gaze shot up towards the sky. “I can’t with you sometimes.”

She was about to tell him she didn’t ask to be babysat. It teetered right at the tip of her tongue as she frantically searched for something else to say. She didn’t want him to be mad at her- not when the day was going so well. “I can’t with me sometimes either to be honest.” She sighed.

”my father was asking questions,” his arms folded across his chest, the irritable look never leaving his handsome face. “You’re lucky I didn’t tell him.”

she sputtered, pushing the rifle into his idle arms and shoving him backwards. “bahah-you’re lucky you didn’t tell him!”

If he did she would smother him with his own blanket.

“right,” his head shook, arms testing the weight of the rifle. “Now teach me how to use this thing,”

Her body trembled a bit in excitement, tail curling and feet tapping. Finally, something she knew that he didn’t. “The student becomes the master,” her hands clapped together. “Let’s see if you can keep up, Bag Boy,”

“Not that again,” Neteyam groaned.

“Oh, sorry, Mighty Fisherman,”

“Great Mother, make it stop,”

The sound of his laughter, even mortified and muffled behind his hand, made her heart swell, it’s sheer mass becoming too big for her chest. Oh, she’d done it. Right about now she wished she had just accepted Kino’s offer and moved in with him right then. That way she wouldn’t have to watch her common sense chase her resolve down the drain at the mere idea that she’d been the one to put a smile on Neteyam’s face.

Her throat cleared, and she teased him a little more before pantomiming a gun in her own hands, “Alright, lesson one,” she declared, resting one foot on a tall rock for dramatic effect. “shoot first, ask questions later,”

“No, Stripes!” Jake yelled over at them, like a professional killjoy. “It’s not playtime,”

“Thousand year old man, got a stick up his butthole the size of a tree branch,” she grumbled. Sticking her tongue out in the opposite direction so the man couldn’t see.

Neteyam chuckled, tucking a strand of hair, wet from the rain, behind her ear. She’d been slowly lowering her walls lately and he was happy to see who she was becoming. A more joyful, less edgy version of the tightly wound girl he snatched from the forest. “Why don’t we start with, how do I hold it?”

She touched the hair he’d tucked away, looking at her feet for a moment, and took a deep breath. “Okay,” While the gun still rested in his grip she pulled the magazine from its slot and ejected the remaining bullets so it was completely empty, explaining every step as she did it. “We start without bullets,”

“That’s not the way my dad’s doing it,” they both looked over to his father and brother, who were already beginning to fire rounds. There were a variety of targets in different shapes in sizes, and Lo’ak missed every single one.

“He’s doing it his way, I’m doing it the right way,” she rolled her eyes, slapping his shoulder, “And who’s the teacher here? pay attention, pleb,”

”what does-“ he didn’t get the chance to finish before she was moving on.

“This flat part on the back of the stock is called the butt,-it goes firmly against the shoulder of your dominant hand,” she shifted it in his hands so the butt rested in the cradle of his shoulder, “you’re left handed so it’ll go on the left,”

She stuck her arm between his body and the gun to show him how she rested her own hand on the grip, fingers curling around his in the opposite direction. She was right handed like a human, something that made his mother click her tongue whenever she watched Stripes doing anything. Humans did it that way. She saw it as wrong.

But now it was helpful, and since he could see her hand clearly he was able to fix his own position on the other side.

“This finger rests parallel to the trigger but never on the trigger,”

She made him insert and eject the magazine, push rounds into the chamber and eject them over and over until he could do it without having to be reminded how.

Neteyam listened carefully as Stripes taught him about the different parts of her weapon. The way she explained it was brutal and clinical, but spiritual in its own right. This was something she actually cared about. He could see the images forming in her head when she explained the intestines of the gun, as if she was looking straight through its metal walls and he listened with intense interest.

He asked how she knew all this and she told him about her teacher, who was on some special force in the RDA. She talked about how nice he was and how much she missed him. How he taught her all about the wars on earth and how she never would have made it through her sixteenth year without him.

It humbled him to realize he didn’t know as much about her as he thought he did.

Kiri sat in her tent wondering what she had done wrong.

Spider had been with her every day for their entire lives, and now today he wouldn’t see her. Norm swore with his whole chest that he was sick and couldn’t leave bed, but she didn’t believe it. He was avoiding her. He was afraid of something.

She went around, picking up after her siblings to keep herself busy. She organized clothes, straightened bedrolls and mats, put away stray knives and arrows, but it wasn’t enough. She cut up vegetables, seeded fruits, beaded a new bracelet for Lo’ak, and nothing.

She peeked out and saw her mother was gone, the remnants of a fire smoldering in their pit. There was a neat stack of meals wrapped and woven in leaves, ready for when the others came back from their target practice. The biggest one would be for their father and the second biggest would be for Stripes. Kiri laughed at that. As much as she denied it, her mother liked the girl.

She went back inside and moved everything around again, pulling her mat closer to Stripes’ so that if she had another nightmare they could talk without waking Tuk this time.

There was nothing left to do now. Nothing except that.

With a sigh, she gathered up one of the perfectly wrapped meals, a canteen of water, and her blanket.

No matter what, she was going to see Spider.

Stripes knelt with her back to the three dudes, ignoring their goading comments. She acknowledged that Jake had a few decades of experience on her, but the other two didn’t understand just how hard she was about to peg them.

She hooked the stand of her rifle on the rock, rotating it to face the first of the three eye level targets. Those were spray painted onto the wall itself.

The butt fell perfectly into the notch of her shoulder.

She tilted her head to check her aim through the scope, and then began to sing.

“He counted long, he counted loud, he waited for the shock.”

Her finger pulled at the trigger, body wholly prepared for the shock of it’s kickback.

She fired once, twice, three times and watched the rock crumble where her bullets landed, dead in the center of all three targets.

“He felt the wind, he felt the cold, he felt the awful drop.”

She rotated and fired again in rapid succession, knocking all the carnivalesque junk off the low rock wall. One, two, three, four, five, six, BOOM.

“The silk from his reserve spilled out and wrapped around his legs.”

she fired at the metal plate hanging from the floating rock and missed,

She tried again and missed,

She tried three, four, five, and missed, deciding to move on to the randomly placed plates on the wall and letting go a long held breath when she bullseyed every one.

When the echo of the last shot faded she stood, throwing her arms up above her head and turning on her heels for the big finish, “And he ain't gonna jump no more!”

Kiri fumed as she walked away from the Avatar camp, kicking rocks and leaving a trail of destruction behind her. Norm would not even let her past the entrance, insisting again that everything was fine and she didn’t need to see Spider today.

She trudged all the way home, not stopping to say hello to her grandmother like she might if she were in a better mood. It didn’t make any sense. She’d been sad when Stripes stopped talking to her, sulking a bit here and there, but this was tearing her apart. Spider was her closest friend. She loved him. She couldn’t lose him.

She couldn’t-

She looked up at seeing him sitting on her bed, cross-legged with his fingers laced together. “Spider?” She asked, as if he was just a trick of the light.

He smiled sadly, patting the spot next to him.

She placed the canteen and the food in his lap, laying her blanket across his tiny shoulders. Her leg pressed against his in reassurance and she offered her hand, which he took without hesitation. “What is it?” She asked gently.

He wouldn’t look at her. Only at their hands. “Theres something I’ve gotta tell you.”

Stripes giggled as Jake clapped. He made a spectacle, hooting at the top of his lungs and only stopping for a celebratory whistle that bounced off all the rocks and pierced the open air.

She graced the man with a curtsy and snapped her fingers in Lo’ak’s face. He’d spent all that time on the way over talking about how she was bad with a bow and now she wanted the goddamn respect she was owed. “Bow down, peasant,”

Lo’ak dropped to his knees, hands waving in exaltation “I’m not worthy,”

She laughed, bouncing giddily on her toes and looking at Neteyam for a reaction.

“You missed that one,” he pointed coolly at the hanging target.

The urge to slap the shit-eating smirk off his face made her hand flex. “Yeah well, the rain was moving it all over the place,”

“Sure,”

“And the sun, you know, it’s so bright, it just-“ she squinted, pointing up in several different directions, where nothing but dreary grey clouds blanketed he sky, “-totally blinded me, I’m surprised I hit anything with that shit in my eyes.”

“right, it was the sun’s fault,” a smile cracked through his smug facade.

She pursed her lips against the smile that threatened her features, pointing with both hands at the spot where she’d just been. “Okay, Fisherman, let’s see you try.”

“Mighty,” he corrected, kneeling in front of her rifle.

Her eyes rolled, not caring if her well timed “Bag Boy.” would put him in his place or not. She just wanted to get on his nerves.

He asked her which target to aim for and she picked one of the ones at eye level, the easiest to hit.

She didn’t say as much out loud, but she was rooting for him. As much as she liked to see her friends fail once in a while, she could push her pride aside for a minute to support him.

He adjusted his grip, head tilting to look into the scope. He pulled the trigger-

He missed.

the kickback blasted his shoulder a few inches back and he sat there in surprise for a while before saying ow, sounding both confused and frustrated.

”I told you it would hurt,” Stripes shrugged.

She picked a few different targets for him to aim at and Jake threw in some of his wisdom, telling him that imagining he was being punched in the arm would make it easier to recover from the shock.

in the beginning she hadn’t questioned why she never saw his sons using guns before, figuring it was some kind of philosophical choice- done out of respect for the deity or something like that. It threw her for a loop to learn that this was the first time they’d even held guns.

but why?

Kiri and Spider sat in silence forever.

each time one of their mouths opened to respond to the wealth of information Spider had blurted into existence, they would snap shut again just as quickly.

“You can’t tell anyone,” he whispered finally.

she blinked, staring at the same spot on the tent wall that he was fixed on. “We have to tell Stripes that we know.”

Jake watched his boys continue their practice between bites of their lunch below. He sat with Stripes on top of the far left wall, opposite the Ikran because she refused to go near them while they were just roaming free.

To say he was impressed would be an understatement. She would need some experience shooting moving targets, and she was a little too cocky, but in time he’d whip her into shape. He lay a hand on her shoulder to get her attention, sporting an award-winning smile while he waited for her to look over.

She was chowing down on one of her MRE’s. a pack of Mac’n’cheese with a brownie as the dessert. She didn’t jerk away or shrug him off. She just scooped another spoonful of mac into her mouth, chewing loudly, and said, “Please don’t touch me.”

His hand lifted off her immediately. “You did good today,” he praised. She deserved it.

“Thanks,”

Her eyes cut to the mound of pemmican in his hand and his kept darting to her macaroni. They did that for a while before wordlessly deciding to trade meals and digging into each other’s leftovers like animals.

she finished before him and bent her legs up under her jacket, letting go of a long sigh as she rested her chin between the two odd lumps her knees created.

he nodded at the pleasantly familiar taste of cheddar cheese as he spoke. “somethin’ tugging on your nerves?”

Her reply caught him off guard “…why haven’t you told Neytiri yet?”

He put the tray of unfinished food down, considering his answer carefully. He had been thinking of a way he could bring it up to her, a gentle way of explaining how their lives were about to change forever, but could come up with nothing that wouldn’t throw her into a full blown and very stressful panic. “She doesn’t need to know just yet.”

“She’s going to want me gone as soon as she does.”

His head shook. Yes. She would absolutely want that. “She’ll understand you didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I think Spider would beg to differ.”

He couldn’t tell if that was an intentional low blow or if she just meant to defend a friend, but it stabbed into him like a hot poker. “Can I ask you something too?”

“Am I allowed to say no?” She scoffed when his head shook. “What then.”

Jake looked at her seriously, brows pulling together, shoulders squaring with tension. “Say I put you to work as a warrior. you’re taking down bogeys, hitting everything in front of you-“ he took a deep breath “-when all of the sudden, Quaritch comes out of nowhere and opens fire on us.”

He noticed the hairs on the back of her neck shift like hackles, her breathing becoming labored. She was just like Neteyam, just like Neytiri- bad at hiding how she felt. And if his memory served him correctly, she was most likely feeling a lot like she’d felt the first time he asked questions.

“If it came to that, probably,” she didn’t bother explaining what she meant by probably, but he didn’t really need her to anyway. “but Quaritch never did anything to me, Jake.”

His tone softened in an effort to convince her he was still a friend. He didn’t mean for it to turn into this- again- but this was important. “If it came down to him or Kiri?”

“I’d put so many holes in him his guts would be leaking lead before his corpse hit the floor.” She snarled “I don’t wanna play this game.”

“What about this Marisol?” he kept going. It wasn’t a game. He needed to know where she was, where her loyalties were, and how much he could still trust her knowing all the things he now knew. “What if she had a gun on one of my kids?”

“She’d never do that.”

“But what if?”

“Fuck yourself.”

He looked straight down at the patch of grass under his legs. “Looks like we’ve both got some shit to figure out.”

“That’s about the size of it.” She mumbled into her knees.

He got to his feet with a wary groan, holding out a hand to help her up. Gravity pulled her sleeve down and revealed the gnarly bruise on her arm, but he bit his tongue, neglecting to ask where she’d gotten it. At this point he knew her trust for him was hanging by a thread. It was fair for her to feel that way, just like it was fair for him to disagree with her.

She only knew the Recoms for a year.

His family was his entire life.

He whistled and called his sons up to the plateau. “let’s get going,”

Stripes waited by Neteyam’s Ikran, as far away from Jake as common sense would allow, not looking up when the boy made his way over, or when he came to stand next to her. 

he asked if she was alright, to which she nodded, and he helped her mount so she’d be sitting in front of him

“Stripes,” jake called, feeling a little guilty that he’d ruined her mood for the second day in a row. He cared- he did. “we cool?”

She looked over meekly, shrugging her shoulders and hanging her head. “Yeah. we’re cool.”

If there was a problem between her and his son, it had been worked through, and Jake smirked to himself as Neteyam settled behind her, asking if she was comfortable before making Tsaheylu.

All the rest aside, he thought they’d make a cute couple.

Stripes looked over the Ikran’s neck, glad for once that she was trapped in the cage of Neteyam’s arms as Ansel’s once upbeat tune twisted in her head, drawing out in an eerie echo across the forest floor.

~The risers swung around his neck, connectors cracked his dome,
Suspension lines were tied in knots around his skinny bones,
The canopy became his shroud, he hurtled to the ground,
And he ain't gonna jump no more!~

Chapter Text

Stripes was quickly regretting accepting the offer to sit in front. She side-eyed The Ikran’s long whip, judging the connection between him and his master wordlessly.

Neteyam made a deep groan behind her that traveled all the way from the base of her skull to her tailbone. “It’s not gross, Stripes,” he scolded.

The sound stayed with her for longer than it was welcome and she shifted uncomfortably, spine going rigid in hopes of quelling the warmth gathering between her legs. She moved so much that eventually he had to wrangle her into a single position, though that didn’t stop her from trying to readjust.

She avoided Jake’s eye to prevent the image of a bullet exiting Marisol’s chest, and she leaned away from Neteyam’s braid so she wouldn’t have to think about what his tswin was doing in the slot of the Ikran’s whip.

“You’re smashing my balls,” Neteyam complained.

“your balls shouldn’t be under my ass in the first place.” She made an exaggerated gagging noise when his braid touched her and he slapped her bare thigh, the contact stinging with aid from the heavy rain. “Fucksake!” She growled over her shoulder “I should’ve just rode with Lo’ak,”

”well it’s too late now, moron,” he tugged on the base of her braid “we’re almost home, anyway.”

As High Camp appeared in the distance, Norm’s voice emitted, staticky and muffled, from Neteyam’s comm link. the signal was clear but it was hard to hear over the rain. Jake wasted no time in replying to him.

“I’m gonna make a stop on the other side,” he said, splintering off from his sons.

When they came closer it was obvious today, despite the rain, was a day for flying. They wove through a large crowd of airborne bodies, narrowly finding a spot to land, and when they did they had to move to necessitate the incoming Na’vi.

Neteyam dismounted first, belting out a laugh when Stripes’ foot tangled itself in his Ikran’s harness. She shushed him and tried twisting her foot free with no progress.

“Shit on a fucking biscuit eating whore!” She tugged at the basketweave of leather straps and hissed hard at him when he began trying to help. “No, I can do it myself!”

There were people around so he held her out of the way by a hand on the small of her back, and steady by one hooked under her knee as she struggled, but the contact just irritated her more. What began as a great day had spiraled into the void of rampant trepidation in a hurry, and Stripes didn’t even have the energy leftover from her talk with Jake to mentally list all the things she was stressed out about. She just knew she’d be better off as a rock or a stick. Nobody ever asked rocks to murder their friends. Rocks didn’t have crushes on the clan leader’s son.

She remembered the pity party she threw herself on the day of her ceremony:

She’d be the best goddamn rock who ever lived.

When she finally tugged free, Lo’ak was there, smirk mirroring his brother’s.

“What?” Stripes snarled.

His hands went up in appeasement, body moving sideways to avoid the passing people. “You were fine earlier,” he shrugged. “now you’re in a mood, what happened?”

“Maybe it’s the fact that I was bullied the whole way home,” she shot a sharp look at Neteyam.

“Slander.” Neteyam’s brow lifted “If anything, you bullied me.”

“How?”

He stuck his hand under the band of his cloth and adjusted what Stripes assumed was his smashed ballsack, all while keeping eye contact with her.

“Don’t you dare touch me with that hand.” She warned, ears pinning.

“Or you’ll what?”

Lo’ak’s arm came up in front of her, pulling her to his chest and dragging her out of the walkway by the shoulders. “guess who.” His chin jutted at the oncoming group, headed by the last person any of them wanted to see.

Spider walked around the tent, peeking through its gaps and entrances to make sure no one was around, but still whispering as low as he could. “How are we going to tell her?”

When kiri spoke it was at full volume, and she brushed him off when he tried to shush her. “We just tell her,” she struck her flint hard into the fire pit, doing it again when the sparks missed their tinder. “And if she takes out her stress on us we ignore her.”

He pushed the front of his mask into both hands, running a hand over his hair. He didn’t know her well enough. How mad would she be when she realized? “I think this is a bad idea.”

The fire sparked to life and Kiri laid down her stones to roll her eyes at him “we cannot keep this to ourselves. Stripes has a right to know.”

“What if she tells Jake?” He crouched in front of her, taking her hands in his so she had to pay attention to him “he’ll skin me alive,”

“Everything is going to be alright,” she insisted “you worry too much!”

“I see you, Stripes,” Kino said, his sudden stop making the large number of tribesmen curl into a shapeless mass around them.

several inhaled deeply and she knew what they were scenting. It was the same musk she’d notice on Sol before the woman would slip into Quaritch’s room at night. The humiliating consequence of Neteyam’s breath on the back of her neck…

Neteyam moved, subtly, so that half his body blocked her. A shield.

Her hands gripped Lo’ak’s forearm. An anchor. She studied kino’s face, noting the concern and hopefulness in his expression. He had the look of a Sully kid who’d counted to ten after being asked to count to nine- like a beat dog who wanted a pet. If he knew he’d hurt her at all, she could see he hadn’t meant to. but the words still welled up in her chest and came out loud enough for everyone in his entourage to hear. “Choke on a dick.”

His lips pursed and he laughed it off uncomfortably, moving on as quickly as he could with the group on his heels.

Lo’ak’s arm returned to his side, but Stripes stayed close anyway, finding the space between his skinny chest and Neteyam’s broad shoulder a comfort. Lo’ak might not always win, but she at least knew he’d try.

“Who are they?” She asked.

Neteyam glanced over his shoulder without really looking at her, attention still on kino’s massive outline disappearing into the caves. “His students- he trains new warriors.”

“Why don’t you have students?”

He turned only to unhook her rifle from his saddle bag, declining to look up at either of them as he did it. “I fly with my mother and father most days, so I don’t have time.”

Stripes hugged herself. They’d only been out together a few times but on each trip he was always patient, always informative. “I think you’d be a good teacher,”

“So would you,” he held the half harness strap of the gun open while she stuck her arm through, buckling it for her so they could head home. “you should talk to my father about teaching people to shoot.”

“Well, I mean-” she laughed, completely unable to come up with a reason not to. It would be a way to show Jake that she was here for the long haul. That she really was on his side. “- Maybe.”

Their walk to camp Sully consisted of a comment about the weather, a few sarcastic jabs at Stripes’ bow aim and an agreement that the three of them would practice together again. Even after talking to Jake, she could admit she’d had a blast today, and she was eager for a re-do. One where she hit all the targets and stayed happy all the way through.

”I’m back!~” she sang upon entering the tent.

the only two people were Spider and Kiri, who glanced at each other and then back at her without saying a word-not even hello.

“Well don’t everyone get up at once,” her eyes rolled.

They sat cross-legged on a large bed made from Kiri and Stripes’ mats pushed together, which she guessed meant she was sleeping with Kiri from now on. It looked like they’d had quite a day of doing nothing when she realized all of her stuff was organized inside her duffel, everything laid neatly and out of the way. “What’d you do that for?”

“I wanted to do something nice for you,” kiri smiled, talking through her teeth, “sit down with us,”

Stripes shouldered the boys out of the way to join them, shrugging off her gun and jacket to lay across her bag. She went to sit but flinched when Spider suddenly jumped to his feet.

“I just remembered, there’s a thing we wanted to show you!” He exclaimed “we should go show her that thing, Kiri,”

“Yeah, actually, the thing, good idea,” Kiri stood up just as quickly, shuffling by and out of camp uncomfortably, motioning for her to follow.

Stripes narrowed her eyes in confusion “why are you guys acting so sketchy?”

Spider walked back a few paces to grab her hand, looking directly into her eyes with a tense jaw “We’ll tell you after you see the thing,”

she groaned, wishing they’d gotten back a bit earlier, or even later. If they had, maybe these two weirdos wouldn’t have been there and she could’ve collapsed onto her bed and fell asleep.

Neteyam watched until the three were out of sight, chuckling at their antics before turning back to Lo’ak. “What do you think that was about?”

Lo’ak’s lips pursed and he folded his arms across his chest, leaning on one leg.

“What?”

“You think you’re good liar but you’re not.”

“You’re one to talk,” he scoffed, sitting by the fire and taking one of his mother’s prepared meals from a pile. “you’re an even worse liar than I am.”

His brother followed, smug expression intensifying as he unwrapped a meal of his own. “That’s not the point I’m making.”

Neteyam was already getting irritated, taking a scoop of mashed root in his fingers and talking through a mouthful, “then what is it?”

“You and Stripes are starting to spend an awful lot of time together.”

This made him pause. They’d definitely found themselves in the same place at the same time more often than not this past month but he still didn’t see the point. “you’re forgetting she lives with us.”

“You’ve been really tense with Kino.”

The mention of the boy’s name made him bristle but he wouldn’t dignify that one with a reaction. “And?”

Lo’ak licked his fingers clean and tilted his head at the fire, “So you’re saying if I asked her out, you wouldn’t care?”

He fought very hard against the urge to smack his brother upside the head. “Go ahead.”

“Really?” Lo’ak’s bushy brows shot up.

“She’s going to say no to you, so do whatever you’re going to do.” Neteyam went back to eating, the previously delicious food soured by this mood Lo’ak was determined to have him in. He could play the fool if he liked but Stripes would never agree to anything with his brother…

…Would she?

“How do you know?”

They locked eyes while he considered it. No. He’d now spent more time with her than anyone in the family. He was well adjusted to her by now, and he felt with a powerful certainty that he knew what she would and wouldn’t want in a lover. He knew what could make her happy. “Because I know her.” And Lo’ak wasn’t it. “She’s not interested in you.”

“Because you two are a thing.” Lo’ak teased.

“Stop.” He warned. “We aren’t anything. we haven’t done anything.”

“Yet.”

Neteyam looked his brother up and down.

He inhaled and exhaled deeply, trying to hide a playful smile,

And tackled him to the ground.

“What the fuck, spider?!” Stripes whispered, because if she yelled, if any of this escaped into the wild, she knew she’d be in trouble somehow.

He held up his hands in surrender, “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop,”

She gestured with an arm and an open hand at the girl to her left, pointing out the obvious, “Either way, you didn’t need to go and tell Kiri!”

“Yeah I did, she’s my best friend,”

Her palms smashed against her face, dragging down until her fingertips fell off her chin “Then you should know she’s a blabbermouth!”

Kiri sandwiched Stripes’ hand in both of hers, giving it a solid squeeze to her her attention. “I can keep secrets,”

”Jake is gonna be so pissed.” She doubled over, laying her head against her crossed legs, hand still in Kiri’s grip. Not because she couldn’t get free, but because she needed the comfort- the reassurance that she wouldn’t be drawn and quartered by the girl’s father for someone else’s mistake. No one was supposed to know about the Recoms- especially not Kiri. “How much did you tell her?”

“Everything. I told her everything.”

She scooted forward then, legs coming flush with Spider’s “How much is everything,” she asked carefully, trying not to let her panic reach her voice, “what did you hear?”

“I saw you and Jake leaving home on my way back to the Avatar camp and I followed you. I didn’t leave until Norm came back with your gun and your holo-pad. I know about Quaritch, the Avatar zombies, everything.”

“Oh my god,” Stripes stood up, walking in a circle, bending over to dry heave a bit and turning in another circle in the opposite direction. “you can’t tell anyone.”

“But I-“

“Anyone!” She barked, pointing at his face, “About anything-Wait, what did you hear about me?”

“Everything.”

“Not a single person!”

Kiri started to giggle and stripes rounded on her, kneeling on the balls of her feet and hissing to show how serious she was. It didn’t work. “That means you too, blabbermouth!”

“That’s…” Spider touched her shoulder to bring her focus back to him, the corners of his mouth pulling down as if whatever he was going to say could possibly be worse than the rest. “that’s not all of it…”

Her heart skipped a beat at his expression,

Then another at the way he looked down at his feet.

He began carefully, using his hands to convey his remorse at having to be the one to tell her, “This morning, I heard Norm talking to-“

“KIRI!!” The scream echoed through the caves, making the three of them jump to their feet in shock at the sheer volume of it.

Tuktirey sprinted in their direction, tripping  over her own feet but getting up and making a straight line to them as fast as she could,

Kiri met her half way down the platform where they sat, picking her up to calm her “what, what is it!”

Tuk gasped for air and struggled out of her sister’s arms, beginning to run again and urging them to follow “Popiti’s mother! She’s dying!”

Stripes supposed the rest of the bad news would have to wait…

The only thing Stripes could compare it to was…

Nothing.

There were no words for this. None tender or soft enough to give due credit to what just happened.

Stripes had always hated the smell of blood. She still did. But the cadence of Popiti’s mother breathing and the cry of the little thing being pulled out of her was enough to make her forget all of that.

Her name was Esikti, and she was beautiful.

she peered into Popiti’s tent with a lump in her throat as Mo’at and Kiri wiped afterbirth off the mats and rinsed it off blankets.

the baby rested in her mother’s arms, sticky and murmuring and shaped like a blob as she suckled. They sat there, bonded by thin neural threads and  basking in the quiet magnificence of one another.

For once, the thought of Tsaheylu wasn’t a frightening one and Stripes couldn’t decide who she wanted more badly to be; the mother, or the daughter.

“She’s so little,” she whispered, eyes rimmed red, when Kiri came out.

 “You’re not going to cry right now, are you?” Spider touched her arm gently with the back of his hand.

She sniffled, sucking a glob of snot back into her nose. “No,”

He grimaced. “Don’t,”

“Shut up,” she wiped at her face, wishing she hadn’t left her jacket at home. “I’m not crying, you’re crying,”

Kiri smiled to herself but said nothing, beginning to clean the gore off herself.

In the first weeks of being at camp she’d asked Stripes if she wanted to try her hand at healing and she’d declined. She could never do what kiri and her grandmother did. They pulled new lives into the world and stitched up old ones with responsibility on their shoulders that would make anyone else’s knees buckle from the weight.

No thank you, she thought. She was already heavy enough.

The girl’s ears perked up, eyes trailing along the path to Popiti’s camp and Stripes followed to see, for the second time, her least favorite himbo.

This fucking guy.

Kino made his way over in a few strides of his long legs, but to her monumental surprise he didn’t say a word to her. He did bow deeply and nod his head, long fingers gesturing out from his forehead to acknowledge that she was there taking up space, but nothing else.

His attention turned to Kiri, voice barely above a whisper. “Kiri.” He bowed again. It was when he came up that Stripes noticed he’d been crying too. “My grandmother does not feel well. Will you come?”

“Of course,” Kiri, in her immeasurable empathy, put a hand to her heart, as if it was her own grandmother that was sick.

Stripes mumbled a few curses under her breath, preparing to say goodbye to spider and walk home alone. She would have preferred that, but a tug on her tail turned her on her heel.

“come on, Stripes,” Kiri pulled at her hand.

She contemplated just ignoring her and walking away. She didn’t even know kino’s family- she didn’t like kino himself, and she sure as hell didn’t want to be around him.  “I don’t-“

“Come.”

Kino was comforted by the sight of Kiri holding his grandmother’s hand inside his family’s tent. She was always helpful, even in her youth he could recall her having a giving heart.

He swallowed the emotion which threatened to well up inside him, standing tall and leaving his family home.

Stripes sat alone, watching kiri and his family inside with disinterest.

He took a tentative step in her direction-

“What do you want?” She asked, still watching her friends.

His hand clenched and unclenched. She was so unpredictable that did not know what words would be acceptable for her. He decided upon the truth. “I wanted to apologize. Lo’ak threatened my life for your injuries, but I was not aware of causing any.”

She looked to him with hooded eyes and he swallowed once more. “Well I’m not sorry I bit you.”

He crouched to the floor where he was, several feet away. He knew he was unwelcome with her but he dared not go in his tent for fear of seeing his family grieving. His grandmother still drew breath, but for how long? “I did not expect you to be,” he said as gently as he possibly could “I acted shamefully. You were right to defend yourself.”

She glanced at him from the side, a blue and brown eye obscured by her eyelashes, and it reminded him heavily of the look Neteyam would give when he was upset. The two were spending quite a sizeable amount of time with one another, it seemed. Perhaps it was too late. Her arms came up to embrace her and then he saw it. A black bruise that wrapped around her wrist and went up her forearm.

His hand wiped at his mouth, throat going dry. He did not mean to do that. He had never meant to hurt her. “May I?” He leaned forward, pressing a hand flat to the stone floor and offering the other to her.

She regarded him warily for a long moment before sighing and stretching her arm out for him to see, laying the meat of it in his palm.

He touched her with reverence, thankful that she seemed in a better mood than the previous day, and traced the marks where they marred her smooth blue skin. “I am sorry.” He struggled, unable to look at her face, “Truly, I am.”

“I’m gonna go home now.” She pulled her arm from his grasp suddenly, standing in place. “tell Kiri I said goodnight.”

He stood as well, reaching out a hand again but withdrawing as she hissed at him. “I have a gift for you, if you’ll take it.” He tried.

Her face contracted in a look of disgust and he knew, whatever trust he had spent building before her ceremony was all but gone. “I don’t want anything from you.” She spat.

And he was left alone.

Neteyam sat on his bed, messing with his arm and feeling out the bruise forming there by bending in different directions. He hadn’t been expecting the gun to be that powerful and he was glad they stopped practice when they did, otherwise his left arm might be unusable. He tried stopping as soon as Stripes entered the tent but found he was too late and rolled his eyes, ready but dreading the oncoming storm of teasing.

“Awh, does it hurt?” She mocked,  lacing her fingers together against her cheek in a doting gesture. “want me to kiss it better?”

He smirked, wondering if she’d do it out of spite. “Yes,”

A wide grin broke across her face and she smacked his leg, sitting in front of him. She rubbed a hand over the spot, massaging his sore muscles with a roll of her own eyes. 

He took a moment to enjoy the feeling of her looking after him for a change, but felt his mouth pull down when she left abruptly, only to come back with his blanket folded in her arms.

“Here,” she said, laying it in his lap.

His head tilted. “What’s this?”

“Your blanket,”

He threw his hands in the air. Yes I know that, Stripes.

“I’m going to sleep with Kiri from now on so I figured you should have this back,” she explained.

“No, you keep it,” he chuckled, knowing she wouldn’t survive a single night without it. Not with her cold feet and his sister’s greed for warmth. “she hogs covers like you wouldn’t believe.”

“I’ll be good, I stole one from the Avatar camp,”

He sputtered, choking out a laugh in disbelief, “You can’t just take things that aren’t yours,”

“But I did-“ she went over to her own bedroll and held the bundle of wool up so he could see, “-look, it’s mine now, see?”

Before he could tell her all the things wrong with that his father chimed in.

“I thought that one looked familiar,” the man said, “don’t take stuff from Norm, he doesn’t have much to begin with,”

“boo fucken hoo, we’ve all got problems,”

“Im not smiling, it’s not a joke,”

Neteyam leaned back in his bed, smiling as their little war continued, and wondered playfully where his family would be without her.

Chapter Text

Neteyam tiptoed around the tent in a hurry to collect his things before he accidentally woke someone up. He was short on arrows so he borrowed a few from his mother, running a thumb across their bright yellow plumage for good luck as he walked out for the day.

only, he stopped.

he went back inside to nudge Stripes’ leg, sticking all the way out and off her sleeping mat, back under her blanket.

every time, he rolled his eyes.

There was no time to prepare anything to eat, and his stomach complained about it as he passed a tent with yerik meat drying on a line outside.

He warred with himself over whether he should or not, remembering wanting to scold Stripes for doing the same thing just last night. He decided it wouldn’t hurt anyone and cut a strip off for himself, jogging to the nests to catch up with Kino and his students before they took off.

***

“Here’s what I’m willing to do. Some time in the next few months, I’ll establish a base where we can collaborate. I’ll send coordinates on the day I plan to land and I expect you to drop everything to be there on time. If I don’t see you when I get there I’m leaving and you lose the chance of a lifetime.”

”I’ll make it happen for you, Sol.”

”thanks, Max.”

“Listen, Marisol-“

“No, you listen; I’m risking life and limb to get you this information, Norman. I am telling you right now, if you want my help, you’d better be there.”

“…Copy.”

“Goodbye.”

***

The recording ended and the room was quiet for too long before Jake broke the silence with a tired sigh. “You’re sure it’s her?” He wiped his face with his hand. “It’s not some trick?”

“It was her on the other end, no doubt about it.” Max leaned back in his chair, lacing his fingers over his stomach. 

“So what does this mean?”

His cheeks puffed up with air and he let it out slowly, shrugging. “We can either cut off all contact or take the offer for what it is,”

“An opportunity to make some allies at Bridgehead.” He grinned. “We both know it can’t hurt to have someone we trust on the inside.”

Jake was glad to finally have him back after all these months apart, but acknowledged that his optimism was biased. He remembered when it all went down at Hometree; when max himself was the man on the inside. But this was different. “We need some kind of collateral.”

Jake made eye contact with Norm, who’s face twisted in horror when he realized. “You’re not saying what I think you are.” 

He shrugged.

“That’s a little cold, Jake.”

“We’ve gotta cover our asses somehow.” He insisted. “If it’s a trap, she’s all we’ve got in our pocket.”

Norm shifted uncomfortably in his seat, leaning his forearms on his knees. “I can’t be a part of this if you’re trying to take her in blind.” His head shook. “She’s a good kid.”

“I imagine even the bad ones deserve to know when they’re being used as human shields.”Max looked up from something he’d logged on his handheld. “It may not mean much, but I’ll vouch for Sol. She’s good people and I think we could benefit from an arrangement with her.”

Jake nodded tensely. He agreed, but this only added to the already large pile of shit on his plate. “I guess we gotta come clean then. Tell Stripes the plan and all.”

Max swiveled in his chair, putting a hand to his chest. “Why don’t you let me handle it?”

“this kid’s an animal.” He chuckled, head shaking. “She’s got no respect. I don’t want you on the other end of that mess.”

“Then at least let me have some time before you pull the rug out from under her.”

His brows pressed together “for what?”

“I knew her father.” Max pushed a button on his monitor, bringing up a photo. “I think it’s important that she knows she’s among friends.”

the sound in Jake’s head was like glass shattering. “Yeah,” he drew out in confusion, “yeah, I had no idea about that.”

“You told him, didn’t you?”

Norm struggled for second, equally confused. “that you knew Marisol, yes, but I didn’t know Stripes had a father in the RDA.”

“You never met Gideon Quentin? He was on Stolm’s team.”

“What was his major?”

“Geology.”

“Definitely never met him.” Norm’s head shook “Was he any good?”

“he was a-“

“Focus.” Jake barked.

Max cleared his throat and continued. “Gideon had what’s called heterochromia. It carried over to his Avatar, one blue eye, one brown.” He explained, “and I know he was, to put it gently, involved with a native woman before his death.”

“From what clan?”

“Tipani.” The man fixed his glasses further up the bridge of his nose. “But it’s the fact that Sol went out of her way to get her out of the city that brings it all together for me. She loved Gideon. If this is Gideon’s daughter, which I’m sure she is, then everything makes a lot more sense. We may not even need to go with the nuclear option. We can just bring the girl with us as an intermediary so she and Sol can diffuse things themselves.”

He pressed his face in to see Max’s monitor. On the screen was a human Marisol Corona, cheek to cheek with a male avatar who had one blue eye and one brown. The man looked exactly like Stripes. “How much time do you need?”

Under the circumstances, it couldn’t hurt to build some kind of comradery between Stripes and the Science Guys. Between her and anyone, really.

“A few hours maybe. I can go to her right after this.”

“Alright,” his hands clapped together, “let’s get it done,”

“Ah,” Norm raised a hand, lowering it slowly to bring everyone back into their seats. “You should know…”

What now? “What?”

“Spider’s been…off, for the past few days.”

Jake waited, hoping this would amount to something important.

“He kept saying it was a stomach bug so I kept turning Kiri away, didn’t want her to get sick, you know. Then yesterday, after this thing with Marisol, I caught him snooping. he suddenly left camp, fit as a fiddle, and now he’s acting funny with me.” Norm went on. “If he heard the transmission, i don’t think it’d cause that kind of reaction unless he already knew who she was.”

Jake’s heart dropped into his stomach. “When did he start avoiding Kiri?”

“After the ceremony- when we found out about the Recoms from Stripes.” The man’s lips pursed. “I don’t know how long he was listening to you guys, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s already told her, or Kiri, or both, about the meeting with Marisol.”

“If he did, I swear-“

“-are you really going to punish him for overhearing something?” Max interjected.

“I can punish him for sticking his nose where it shouldn’t be-“ Jake was already out the door of the lab and calling over his shoulder, “I’ll deal with Spider and send Stripes your way.”

he kept a long stride on his way home, hoping he’d be catching Stripes before it was too late. He’d just finished implying she might have to execute the woman one day, and hearing that he was planning to meet her out in the middle of the forest without knowing the full story would look wrong. Suspicious.

Maybe Spider had good intentions, but one wrong word, one small misunderstanding of what was happening, and her trust for him- the trust he desperately needed if he was going to make this meeting with Marisol work for his people- might be gone forever.

Kiri didn’t make an effort to be quiet as she wove the end of Stripes’ bedroll back together. The girl stirred as she worked but even when her limbs were moved and maneuvered, she stayed deep in slumber.

What finally woke her up wasn’t her whispering to Spider about the last bit of alarming news they had yet to tell her, nor his reply that maybe they shouldn’t tell her at all. It was when Lo’ak came into the tent and began grinding her metal knife on a whetstone.

Stripes looked up at Lo’ak with squinty eyes, taking a moment to process what she was seeing. “What are you doing?”

“Sharpening your dull ass knife.”

She looked down and Kiri met her eye with a little wave, aware that mornings were not the girl’s favorite. “Can you shine my shoes while you’re at it?” She asked groggily, wiping the sleep from her eyes.

“You don’t have any shoes,” Lo’ak rolled his eyes.

“Well if you’re doing nice things for me, why haven’t you made me any shoes yet?” her bones popped as she sat up, limbs stiff and most likely in pain from the terrible position she’d fallen asleep in.

“How does that-?” Lo’ak scoffed, shaking his head when he couldn’t come up with a reasonable reply, “It’s too early for this, go back to sleep.”

Kiri laughed, cutting the end of the reed when she was done patching up the bedroll. She placed the last few inches of the material in Stripes’ hands and watched with her cheek resting on her knuckles as stripes tore it to pieces.

“I thought we were going out for practice again?” She yawned.

“Teyam left so we’re staying in,” Lo’ak informed her.

“Where’d he go?”

Neteyam brought his Ikran to roost in vague irritation.

we have another great master joining us, kino had said, perhaps he can teach you what it truly means to be warriors.

Everything the boy did recently grated at his nerves. Neteyam planned today so that Kino would be the one upset the entire time, but found he was having a hard time controlling his own emotions. His mood was tepid as he scaled down his tree with the others, his smile fake when he was approached by a girl he knew.

She tucked an arm around his and he bent his elbow to give her a better grip, not minding the touch at all. “It is good to see you, Nete.” She batted her lashes at him. She had half a shaved head like Lo’ak and long braids on the other side. Naturally beautiful like he remembered from growing up with her, though she was a few years younger.

“And you, Kiska.” He laid a hand over hers. They stayed like that as Kino explained what they would be doing. 

“Today is a test of skill,” he said, voice only carrying so far over the rain. “Eywa has blessed us with a gift today. A shroud under which to hide in plain sight.” He pointed at the droplets falling all around them.

The weather was sour but not so bad that they couldn’t see. It was fine for tracking but not quite ideal for shooting, and Neteyam felt his eyes roll back in his head again.

“Pay attention, Nete!” Kiska patted his arm.

“I am,” he said tightly. “It isn’t my fault he’s so boring,”

She frowned, and hissed at him “you should have more respect for the Eykyu.”

His free hand clenched into a fist and relaxed out of her view. “Of course. You’re right, I’m sorry.” He grit his teeth. If this kept up it would be a very long day.

Stripes was the first to notice Jake jogging towards them, tossing his half full canteen across the tent without the cap to escape punishment and creating the whole new problem of his bed being soaked by it.

She expected to be yelled at, or at the very least, scolded.

But… everything just, stopped, when he walked in.

He was slightly out of breath, hand over the pooch of his belly as he caught up to himself. He looked old. The lines of his face suddenly deep, the set of his shoulders sagging.

Nobody said a word. Not about the water, not about anything- but when he met eyes with her, Stripes knew.

She stood up without saying anything to Kiri or Spider or Lo’ak, following their father out of Camp Sully entirely and still not speaking as she trailed behind him.

She wondered what she could have done this time.

He turned when they couldn’t see home anymore, opening his mouth several times in his indecision. She’d never seen the man like this.

it scared her.

“Are we still cool?” She asked, not liking how small her voice sounded.

He licked his lips, swallowing dryly. “Yeah, we’re cool.”

“Did something happen?”

His thick brows pulled together, a hand resting on the shelf of his hip. The sigh that left his chest sounded- relieved. “yeah,” he nodded “yeah, something happened.”

“Did I fuck something up?” She pressed.

”no,” he said, “it was nothing you did.”

“Then what?”

He scratched the back of his head, looking much younger as he met her eyes. “I’ve got a friend who wants to talk to you.

Neteyam paired up with Kiska and found she was a wonderful hunting partner. She was sure footed, capable, confident. She also spoke to Kino so he didn’t have to.

“Why is it you do not like him?” She asked, face close to his so she wouldn’t scare off their prey, “I had thought you two were close.”

They crawled along on all fours, using the brush as cover, though not having to be too quiet because of the rain.

“Let us loose at the same time,” She notched an arrow onto her bow but didn’t pull. “It will be a competition,”

He notched one of his mother’s arrows, knowing he’d have to work to hit his mark. Her bright yellow feathers covered a longer section of their ends, meaning they would fly further. Her shafts were heavier, lengthier, meaning he’d have to use more of the strength in his back to make them take off. “I’m still close with Kino,” he explained, pulling his string tight and holding. “But growing up means leaving things behind.”

“It is sad that Kino is the thing you chose to leave behind,” she mirrored him.

“Loose.”

They let their arrows fly at the same time, and as he suspected might be the case, he missed, scattering the remaining yerik, save for the one Kiska took down.

“That is unfortunate,” she said.

“I would’ve hit it but the sun was in my eyes,”he stretched his limbs, giving her a wink. “threw me off, you know.”

“I do not see the sun,” she replied blandly, looking up at the sky to check.

Neteyam felt his posture drop the slightest bit upon realizing she hadn’t understood the joke. “My mistake. I must be out of practice.”

“Perhaps you can come tomorrow and try again,”

“…Perhaps.” He said.

Stripes walked through the Avatar section of High Camp plucking hairs from the tuft of her tail. It was a large series of chrome capsules with air filters and purifiers running their tubes along the ground. There were transparent hallways where she could see humans going about their business and flat spaces with Samsons and Scorpions that opened into the sky.

She’d asked if there was any reason to be nervous and received an androgynous response; a mumbly, nervous tick somewhere between probably not and most definitely.

She took her time walking up the short set of stairs when she came up to the lab, feeling the textured metal on the soles of her feet and listening closely to the sound each one made beneath her weight. What waited for her behind the door? She found herself standing in front of it, not moving forward or backwards, and hardly wanting to breathe out of fear that the smallest gust of wind might blow it in.

When asked what her favorite book was, she always insisted it was To Kill a Mockingbird, or Lord of the Flies, or The Great Gatsby. Whatever shit happened to be on Tenoch’s last syllabus. The answer changed depending who asked, and it was always a lie.

Her favorite book was Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. If she were asked why, the answer would still change every time, but those times, no matter how many, would be the truth.

In this particular moment, Stripes was Alice.

And the door, this ugly, aluminum plated monstrosity, was a never ending rabbit hole that she had no choice but to enter.

She pulled a deep breath in through her nose, let it out through her mouth, and raised a hand to knock.

the door opened before her knuckles made contact with the door’s silver face.

The man at the threshold was tan and bit puffy cheeked with a thick head of silvering hair. Like all the scientists that toddled around the place, he had on a long white coat and a button up shirt.  “Stripes, right?”

She nodded, giving a nervous little laugh at the fact that he was wearing glasses underneath his breathing mask.

“It’s nice to meet you,” his smile was gentle, hands folding together in front of him. “My name is Max.”

“Hi, Max.”

He moved out of the way to allow her some room in the vestibule that filtered out Pandoran air for oxygen and helped her with a breathing mask.

When the door opened to let them into the lab, she was instantly uncomfortable with it’s clinical aesthetic. It looked like the hospital in her dream. Eerie light panels illuminating a room that would’ve once been vaguely familiar now felt abruptly foreign.

Alien.

“take a seat anywhere, the place is all yours,” Max took off his mask, settling down in a swivel chair with yellow foam busting from the seams. All the chairs were like that, and she picked the one that looked the most satisfying to pick at, a few feet from him. “can I get you anything, water, a blanket?” He asked.

She peeled at a strip of vinyl coming off the armrest, one arm around her legs. “I’m good, thanks.”

“Great,”

She looked up at him then, as the sound of his chair’s wheels came a bit closer.

“I was-” he made a circular motion at his head, “-going over what the best way to begin this was, but I’m not sure insofar as your knowledge on the subject.”

She pulled her brows together, puzzled. Jake had told her absolutely nothing. “What subject?”

“Your parents.”

She felt the oxygen sting her lungs, eating away at her chest like a parasite, and took a sip of air from the mask hanging around her neck. What was this all about? “What do you know about them?”

Max laughed, leaning back in his chair.  “Uh,” he clicked a pen that was on his desk, looking up at one of the light panels in thought. “i met Marisol in-“

“Sol isn’t my mom.” She cut in quickly. Her arms around her weren’t enough to pacify her. Interrupting him gave her a bit of power back, but not enough, and she withdrew into the recesses of her mind to look for anything she could remember about her actual birth mother.

she found nothing.

“I know,” he replied gently, an understanding smile gracing his lips, “but Sol is your father’s stepsister and I met him through her. Sol is the beginning of the story for me,”

“Okay.” She whispered.

“We went to the same university and your dad went to some community college, I think, I don’t know.” He used his hands to accentuate the timeline, clicking his own again. “But I’d already been here for a while before they graduated and caught a shuttle over.”

“I don’t care about any of this.” She said, quiet again. Too quiet.

“I’m trying to paint you a picture.”

“I don’t want one,” what she really wanted was to leave. “why am I here?”

“How about this-“ he motioned for her to scoot further down and she used one leg to roll herself away from the monitor he wanted. “Do you want to know what your father looked like?”

She said nothing, but rolled her chair closer warily.

He tapped at a few files on his desktop, opening and scrolling to one in particular.

It was the type of video log she recognized from watching brief clips of Jake. Sol wanted her to be prepared. Armed with as much knowledge about the man as possible before asking him for help, but those, and surveillance images were all she could scrape together to make him a profile on her Holo-pad.

There was an open link unit to the left, a man absentmindedly poking the gel that lined the bed and waving wildly with the other.

She leaned in closer, ears swiveling forward in interest.

She knew him.

Max pressed a button on his keyboard to unmute the video.

“-the most exhilarating, mind altering experience of my life,” the man on the screen said animatedly, grinning to show a mouth full of good white teeth.

She recognized his voice.

Will you come visit me sometime?

I’ll be here waiting.

He went on at length about something to do with the magnetic ore inside the mountains but she stopped listening early on. She just sat there watching his mouth move. The subtle lines and creases of his face. His eyes.

“That’s Gideon Quentin.” She flashed to the letters on the jacket Toby gave her. G.A.Q.- to the science division ID she found in Toby’s bible. A man with wavy black hair and tan skin. One blue eye and one brown.

“Yeah,” he confirmed in a gentle tone. “Your father.”

Neteyam brought Kiska’s kill back to the roosting place over one shoulder. Though he was sure she could do it herself, she didn’t seem to mind, even complementing him on how strong he was. It was faint praise, and a little on the nose, but he took it anyway, catching the subtle touches and glances she was giving him.

He knew mother would approve enthusiastically of a match between them.

After the yerik was strapped to Kiska’s saddle and the group open to do as they pleased, the two of them made their way to the horse pens, mounting and taking a walk along the river beneath High Camp.

He patted Ayat’s neck, cooing and talking to him when there were pauses in the conversation and Kiska giggled.

“He cannot understand you,” she said through her fingers.

“But he can hear me,” he grinned “wouldn’t you want to be talked to if you were him?”

“I do not think he wants for much other than flowers and grass, Nete.” Her tongue clicked.

He looked at the sky, thinking to himself that Stripes would get it. before they’d walked away after putting Ayat back in his pen, she promised to come back and set him free without any prompting.

he wished he’d stayed behind for their shooting practice instead of this.

He made a last attempt at saving his own mood and trotted over to a plant that lit up every time a droplet of water landed on it, waving the girl over. “Look at this,”

He drew a hand over the leaf, pinching the end so it would strobe it’s bright colors for Kiska without stopping, but her expression didn’t change. if he were honest with himself, he wasn’t sure what he expected from her in the first place.

“What are we looking at?” She asked.

He looked down at his hand, at the colors blasting across the leaf’s surface, and realized it was nothing special. He let it go, hand falling to his side. “Nothing,”

Jake knew Spider understood how mad he was.

When he walked back home after sending Stripes off, the boy was already standing outside, looking at his feet. Even after twenty years of knowing the kid, Jake still wasn’t quite sure how to handle stuff like this with him.

He wasn’t Spider’s father. Spider wasn’t his son. Something that was all the more apparent with the information that hung between them.

“You heard the stuff Stripes and I talked about, huh?”

“Yeah.”

He tried to put himself in Spider’s shoes, failing miserably. How could he possibly imagine what was going through that skull? His own father was an absentee too, but that was about the extent of his relatability. the kid had grown up hearing stories about how his father was a murderer, a monster, a demon. A lifetime of hat shit swirling around in his head couldn’t possibly have helped his decision to give Kiri and Stripes information they weren’t supposed to have.

But with that, Jake found the correct anchor to drop. “I would’ve told you about Quaritch eventually. You had a right to know.”

“But you crossed a line when you told my daughter about a sensitive diplomatic mission that had nothing to do with her.” He went on.

“Did Stripes tell you?” He kept looking at his feet.

Jake chuckled despite his irritation. She wouldn’t have told him even if he’d bothered to ask her. Or maybe she would have. He didn’t really know her either. “You did.” He seethed “just now,”

“I’m sorry, Sir,” the boy still didn’t look up “I…I’m sorry.”

“You know better than anyone that my kids like to get involved,” Jake’s tail waved back and forth behind him “I’m telling you right now; something like this happens again- if you endanger my daughter again, you’re done. Gone. Out of our lives, you understand me?”

Spider looked up then, red around the eyes, “didn’t happen that way when Stripes broke the rules,”

“Stripes is my responsibility,” Jake snarled “you aren’t.”

He looked at his feet again and Jake pulled in a massive breath to calm himself.

“Get out of here, go home for the day.” He ordered.

As Spider walked away, his mind cleared except for one thought.

I could’ve handled that better.

By the time Neteyam dismounted in the rookery of High Camp, he was thoroughly finished for the day.

Kiska, Eywa bless her, had spent the remainder hanging off his arm despite his attempts to keep his distance and quell his rising anger. She didn’t deserve to have his wrath taken out on her, but she wasn’t putting him in a position to be kind.

“It was good seeing you today,” she laced her fingers in his, batting her lashes up at him, “you should come fly with your kinsmen more often,”

He pulled his hand from her grip, clearing his throat. “Soon, perhaps.”

“Very well then. I see you, Nete,”

He returned the gesture to her as she walked away and blew out a sigh of relief.

“She is right, you know.” Kino called from further down the stone path, making his way easily to where Neteyam stood.

“I don’t need lessons anymore.” He said.

“Then why did you come?”

He considered his words carefully, noting the still angry wounds on both Kino’s arms. “For Stripes.”

The boy’s brows went up, head tilting, “I do not have her.”

“And you never will.” The tip of Neteyam’s tail flicked when Kino cracked a smile.

“One could almost forget we are friends, hearing that.”

“You are one to talk.”

They stood there in uneasy silence while the rest of the students shuffled about, going back to their homes for the day and leaving the two there alone.

When one of them did finally speak, it was Kino. “You have your choice of women, Nete.” He was no longer smiling. “Why is this one so important to you?”

He locked eyes with his friend, if he could even still be considered one. They stared eachother down, drawing deep breaths.

It was a loaded question. a play of power, to see if he would ease up and allow Kino the freedom to give chase or if he would admit to some kind of claim on her.

Neteyam refused to give him the satisfaction- to let the boy consider himself as competition. If Neteyam wanted Stripes, he would have her, and Kino’s presence wouldn’t stand in his way.

wait… what?

Jake, Max and Norm sat in a quiet circle as Stripes clicked and scrolled through the plethora of media files labeled G.A.Quentin.

There were videos of him in stupid outfits, doing drunken karaoke on Christmas Eve, routine video logs detailing his time with the Tipani-

All this while the recording of the conversation with Marisol played in the background.

***

“We could really use your help, Sol.”

“I dunno, babe. Security’s getting pretty tight these days.”

“Think it’s got anything to do with the really good-looking folks attacking the mines?”

“Could be,” she laughed “listen, Max; I don’t have much longer to talk,”

“Do you have anything for us, before you go? Anything at all?”

“No. Not right now….But I think…maybe I can arrange something.”

“Give me a timeframe and I’ll get you whatever you need.”

***

“Stripes-“ Norm waved in her peripheral.

“No.”

“I really think-“ he tried again.

“Piss off!”

Max leafed through a drawer to her left and came up with a Manila folder that he placed in her lap.

She opened it and pulled out a wrinkled photo. Her eyes closed and a fresh set of tears replaced the old ones, dribbling down to her chin where she wiped them onto her badly bruised arm. “What do you want from me?”

“We’re all going to this meeting with Sol.” Norm explained, scratching the back of his head, lacing and unlacing his fingers, nervously looking for the right words. “And I think we’d like you to come along.”

She slammed the folder onto the desk, “Why? So I can shoot her for you?”

Jake wiped a hand down his face. That one was completely on him. “No, kid. You don’t even need to bring a gun if you don’t want to.”

She stood up, placing her hands on the sides of her head and bending over towards the circle of men, “Ohhh, so you’re hoping she won’t shoot you if I’m there, is that it?”

“Something along those lines.” Jake sighed.

“I hope you die of dysentery!”

“See what I mean?” Jake threw out a hand, gesturing at her while making eye contact with Max.

“You don’t have to decide now. But you should know,” Max collected the things that had fallen out of the folder, organizing them carefully again and extending the corner of it to the distressed girl. “I think Sol would be really happy to see you.”

She wiped her nose, taking it from him roughly and tossing the air mask onto the floor before leaving the lab capsule.

They all looked at each other like a bunch of Jackasses, 

completely unsure of what to do next.

On the way to his family’s camp, Neteyam always passed the same indentation of stone. It was a raised fork in the path with a crevice at it’s juncture, and as he walked over it, he noticed the tuft of a tail sticking out.

He backed up a few paces, bending over to make sure it wasn’t a corpse, and found he wasn’t surprised at seeing who it was. “What happened now?”

“None of your goddamn business,” Stripes snarled.

He jumped down to join her in the crevice anyway. “Were you a monster all day, or do you save these moods just for me?”

“Oh, we’ve got a comedian,” she announced to no one, ears flattening, tuft puffing up in anger. “how about fuck off, dickhead, I don’t need-“

“You’d better not.” His eyes closed, a finger touching the center of the flower on her forehead and poking softly with each word. “You’d. better. not.”

She smacked his hands away and mumbled something incoherent into her bare knees, but he didn’t try to ask what it was. He didn’t have the energy to solve any more problems today.

They sat there in silence, like they had before, like they always did, listening to the sounds of the clan go by around them, nothing but the sound of her hands bending the stack of papers in her lap.

He looked over at her, noticing her head finally come up for air. “Hey.”

“What?” She said scratchily.

“Would you still talk to me if I were a horse?”

She rubbed her brown eye with her knuckles, letting her knees fall from her chest and cross in front of her. “I mean yeah, but not if you were a bug or something.”

He squinted, “Why not?”

“I hate them,”

“Hate is a strong word.”

“If you were a bug I’d smash you. No regrets, no pity- you’d be dead before you could even scream out that nasty sound they make.” She made a fist with one hand, hitting her other palm with it to show how dead he would be.

He laughed a little as she went on, wiping her tears from time to time, detailing different versions of his gruesome demise, and he just watched.

She was beautiful.

she trailed off after a while, noticing his silence. “What?”

”nothing,” his head shook, a smile gracing his lips, “it’s nothing.”

Neteyam looks down at Stripes, who is completely naked from head to toe, with his hand outstretched. a precious vine from the spirit tree in his palm. 

She rolls her beautiful mismatched eyes at him, tucks her fingers under the band at his waist and pulls.

He obliges, dropping the vine and sliding off his cloth so he’s bare beside her. His hands come up to pull her closer but she’s already turning around and walking into the forest.

It’s pitch black except for her Sanhí which shine brighter than usual. He doesn’t bother to look around, and follows the glowing pathways of her skin with complete faith.

She seems to know where she is going.

It’s ages before the darkness fades and the forest bioluminesces to life.

When it does, Stripes is touching, tasting, excited by everything. Leaves brush across her bare breasts and mist coats her skin. She stops to watch a gang of syaksyuk gliding between the tree branches above, but runs away when he comes close.

“Come here,” he says. It’s a command, but he can’t help the smile that curls his lips.

She rips the sheath off a velvet leaf and it expands into a giant wall between them. “No.” He hears her tease from behind it, though he can tell she is smiling too.

He sticks his head behind the leaf and she is gone. It confuses him for a moment, until he sees where she went.

She is high up in a tree, sitting in a hollow made by some animal. He can see around the edges that grass is growing up there, and she hangs precariously from the edge of its bed, arms hanging down and tail curled over her head playfully.

He climbs up with a sigh and is relieved when she doesn’t disappear.

“Are you going to run?” He asks, hands held where she can see them.

She rolls to face him, back arching, lip between her teeth. “Will you chase me?”

He doesn’t answer, he doesn’t know how. He will only come after her if she wants him to.

he gets to his knees, hands still in the air, and waits.

Stripes comes to him slowly, cautiously, as if he’s some wild animal. Her hands touch his and her chest presses to him, drawing in the breaths he exhales.

she gives him a wicked smile and pushes him with both hands.

He lets himself fall onto his back and she climbs over him, littering his face with soft kisses. She inhales at his neck, and exhales a moan beneath his ear.

She lets out a giggle when his hardened length touches her leg but keeps kissing him.

He winces when she comes to his shoulder, but she doesn’t stop. Her mouth presses firmly against the bloom of purple and he groans in pain, eyes fluttering closed when she moves on to his chest.

She trails down, down, and presses a kiss to the side of his pelvis, cheek grazing the tip of his erection. A bit of moisture is left there from his leaking excitement and she grins, sticking her tongue out to lick it from the corner of her mouth.

He remembers how she’d licked his face that night and how he felt afterward. It was disgusting then. annoying.

But now all he can think of is having her tongue on him, dampening his skin and trailing along his-

He’s startled by the absence of her hands and bolts up, searching the alcove for her.

She’s on the other side now, picking low hanging fruit from its branches.

He’s so relieved to see her that he doesn’t think when he approaches. His arms go around her ribs and he pulls her close, giving a high pitched whine from deep in his chest when his cock presses to her backside.

Her tail curls around his leg when his mouth catches her neck. He ruts against her tailbone mindlessly, taking pleasure in the friction. He doesn’t care if she runs anymore. He’ll chase her even if she doesn’t want him to. 

His fingers hook in the thick of her hair, tilting her head to make room for him. His free hand moves to the juncture of her thighs and he shudders out a sigh at how slick she is. The musk of her arousal is even thicker than it had been on their flight home, only this time Neteyam knows it’s for him.

her hand reaches behind her, searching for something. He seizes up when he realizes what she’s after.

he watches the fine tendrils of his tswin extend from the end of his braid, groaning as Stripes presses a kiss to them. For a moment he wonders if she’ll make Tsaheylu but he leaves it up to chance. He doesn’t let himself hope.

He knows her better than that.

she drops his braid to grip the fronts of his thighs and grind into him. It’s playful. It’s maddening, and he can’t wait much longer.

“Do you want me?” He asks, breaths ragged against the nape of her neck. He keeps stroking between her thighs, earning sounds he never imagined she could make, each one more undoing than the last. “Say yes,” 

he needs her now.

He begs and pleads while his hips thrust, words slurring together in desperation, senses overwhelming him as he forgets who he is. All he needs is a word, one word and then-

”No.”

Neteyam’s body jerked awake, eyes opening to the plain cave ceiling. He couldn’t tell if the moisture on him was sweat or just mist that floated in from the fluctuating rain.

He lay down to settle once more into sleep but pulling his blanket back up to cover himself only served to frustrate him.

It smelled like her.

His throat struggled against a dry swallow and he pressed a handful of it to his nose, inhaling her scent deeply and groaning low before tossing it away. To hell with it. He didn’t need to be covered.

He moved to lay on his stomach and winced at the uncomfortable feeling between his legs, rolling so he was on his back again.

Who was he fooling?

He stood stiffly, making sure everyone was still sleeping before heading out for the day.

He had wanted to wake up early anyways.

Chapter Text

Stripes stands on the metal island of the kitchenette, watching in distress as the maintenance crew hauls in a giant pool table and a sofa that could fit forty-seven people.

“Get down from there, Stripes.” The supervisor commands.

She doesn’t bat an eye before responding, “Why don’t you go back home so you can disappoint your wife some more, Jerry?”

A laugh moves through the crew and Jerry gets back to work, mumbling some insults under his breath.

Stripes ignores him. She heard from Ansel that he’ll be laid off and sent back to earth by the end of the week anyway.

Not his wife though. She’s having an affair with Ansel so she’ll stay on pandora with him. He hasn’t shared that with Stripes directly, but he underestimates her hearing, and she’s too nosy to tell him she’s listened to every single one of his conversations with the guy who brings him to the Playpen gate on the back of his golf cart.

A flat screen and a new sound system are the last additions before the new assets arrive at the barracks. Doctor Irene, who came in the previous day for her scheduled exam, said she was the one to check their vitals upon landing. She says they are in peak physical condition, though, she admits Stripes may not like many of them as far as roommates go.

The smell of plaster and drying paint grate at her nerves and she wraps her arms around herself, hoping for comfort that doesn’t come.

Her room is the only thing that hasn’t been changed, though everything that could fall into the category of fun has been confiscated. She does have some used shells collected from Ansel’s classes-she doesn’t know what she’ll do with them, but she knows if Ardmore finds them she’ll get the rod- and an empty box of lucky charms she nailed haphazardly to the back of her door, which is never checked.

She sits cross-legged as the men and women work around her. They don’t put anything next to her because they know from ten years of working in this facility that she’ll either swipe it or shove it off the counter.

Her tail swishes back and forth, bumping passersby and she hisses at them when they have the misfortune to be hit by her. She doesn’t apologize. She doesn’t like any of them. Hates them all, in fact.

They get paid extra to tolerate her.

She’s looking forward to when they have their lunch break and find she’s shaken every single can of soda in their cheap plastic ice chest.

she stays there until the excitement dies down, yawning when she’s finally left alone. People take a lot out of her these days, since she’s been living by herself.

since Tenoch left.

Suddenly a voice she knows all too well is coming through the gate, moving across the playpen, getting closer to the door, and Stripes gets down from the counter to stand in the middle of the room. It’s better if the General doesn’t have to call her name. The effort will irritate the already unsympathetic woman.

“You understand what’s happening today?” Ardmore says tersely

Stripes is stiff. She won’t look down to meet her eye. “Yeah,”

“And you’re going to be on your best behavior.”

“Yeah.”

“Good.”

Ardmore doesn’t stay long. She stands there, looking stripes up and down thoughtfully while the housing unit is inspected and leaves without saying goodbye. Stripes doesn’t mind.

There is nothing left to do now but wait.

And wait she does.

When the new tenants finally show up, stripes is already asleep. She stirs at the sound of voices coming into the hall, large objects being dropped and doors being opened and closed with no regard for who might be listening. She gets out of bed, pulls out her bin of clothes from beneath it and throws on a pair of sweats so she can open the door and see. She waited all day for this, so she isn’t going to miss it.

The door cracks just enough so she can stick her nose out, and then all at once, when she realizes how big they are.

She has never met anyone taller than her, and seeing the massive bodies moving past her sparks her excitement. They are wearing military issued clothing and dog tags and laughing about something. Even though she doesn’t know the context, she laughs too.

A heavily tattooed woman walks by and winks at her, making her tail curl into a tight C behind her.

There are so many of them. She feels like she’s in a dream.

The last two people, a man and a woman, come through the hallway but the woman stops upon seeing Stripes.

“Nope.” She says narrowing her eyes.

“Sol?” The man behind her says.

“This isn’t happening,” the woman walks past angrily, asking if there is a phone in the unit so she can call Ardmore.

The man is left there to make awkward eye contact, and the apple in his throat bobs as he speaks. “That’s Sol.” He points in the direction of the woman that just took off. “Im, uh…My name’s Toby.”

It takes him a minute before offering his hand for her to shake but she doesn’t take it.

She squints up at him, sniffs the air, which smells overwhelmingly like plastic and saline from the skins of the recombinants, and closes the door, pushing his wierd, four-fingered hand out of the safe space of her room and back into the hall where it belongs.

Stripes paid Max no mind as he walked into his lab- nor did she glance up when the group of avatar drivers on his heels began settling into their link units. She’d ransacked the place, going through every file cabinet and box she could get her hands on until she found her Holo-pad. After that, she used the pin she’d seen him entering the previous day to get into his computer and began uploading everything related to Gideon onto its memory card.

When he was done linking everyone with their designated flesh puppets for the day he sighed, pulling up a chair next to her and said nothing as he watched her violate the living shit out of his privacy. The sound of him wiping his glasses on his button up shirt reminded her that this was his place, not a playground, and she considered apologizing for the mess. She’d once felt that way about her housing unit. It was sacred. Hers.

But in the end she decided she didn’t owe anyone an apology.

This was her information; she was entitled to it- along with everything else that had anything to do with anything she wanted to know. She was done being kept in the dark.

She hated it there.

“You have to let the computer know you’re ejecting before you pull the chip out.” Max explained, making a may I gesture that she then approved.

He stuck the chip back in the pad for her and once she had it, she kicked off from the desk to launch herself across the walkway between the desks.

She held the device tight to her chest, staring at the back of his head as he tidied up the frantic aftermath of her rage.

“I was going to grab breakfast in a bit,” he checked his watch, taking a second to make eye contact with her. “Should I bring you something too?”

“That’d be fine,”

She asked for some headphones and he gave her an ancient headset that projected a static quality through its speakers. They also had to be extended all the way out and bent until almost straight to fit her head but she didn’t complain.

Max was nice.

He brought her a blanket and a cup of coffee, which she now knew wasn’t really made from coffee beans. just the on-world equivalent, collected and brewed so the non-natives wouldn’t lose their minds, which is why it tasted so bad. She drank the whole thing anyway.

When she asked why they would make the coffee if it didn’t taste the same, Max said there was peace in routine, and Stripes couldn’t argue. The first thing she ever missed about living in the barracks was the consistency. The certainty that the next day would be the same as the day before.

None of this betrayal and intrigue bullshit she was trudging through today, just alarm clocks and boring  enrichment activities scheduled six months in advance.

She scrolled through her new videos and picked one that looked fun.

-

A human Gideon is wearing a leather jacket with lots of colorful patches and a motorcycle helmet with tint so dark his face can’t be seen. She knows it’s him from the sound of his voice as he states the date and time.

“Today I made my first clean kill,” he presses the tips of his fingers together, crossing his legs like a supervillain. All he needs is a white cat in his lap to complete the look. “I have successfully become a man in the eyes of the clan,”

“What are you doing?” An also very human, very alive, Sol asks from behind him, gathering papers from a poorly lit desk.

“Imagining myself on a dark desert highway.” He sighs.

“cool wind in your hair?” She says without looking up.

“Warm smell of colitas, rising up through the air!” He throws his hands out to the sides and starts singing- badly- and presses play on an old fashioned hologram pad.

~up ahead in the distance, I saw a shimmering light- my head grew heavy and my sight grew dim; I had to stop for the night!~

Sol comes up behind him and raps her knuckles against his glossy helmet. “Are you gonna ride your imaginary motorcycle through the forest to celebrate or is the helmet so nobody can see you crying in your video?”

He does an exaggerated double take over his shoulder at the woman, “Remember that time you minded your own business?”

They banter back and forth for a minute before he straightens out in his chair, throwing one leg over the other again, “as I was saying…”

-

Neteyam sat in the rookery, frustrated and confused, while he shaped the feathered ends of a new set of arrows. Just a few days prior he talked to his father about their scheduled patrol and now he’d been instructed to stay home.

He delayed going back to camp, hoping to avoid seeing Stripes after last night.

Where had that come from?

He’d spent all this time angry at the idea of her being Kino’s mate that he hadn’t stopped to consider the possibility of…well… he did want her. The long lasting erection he left home with proved it- but as much as he enjoyed being with her, there was always some kind of mountain to climb.

was stripes the type to take a casual lover, or did she want a mate for life? If he proposed something less permanent than Kino had would she take the offer?

From what he knew, she had a complicated life before, one that came with a severe set of issues. The ones he’d seen, he could handle. He was used to them- comfortable, even. But beyond that, what else would surface as the years went by? Did he really want to deal with that for the rest of his life?

And that was assuming she even wanted him back… he thought he knew what she’d want, but now…

She wanted me in the dream, he thought, remembering her maddening scent and the slick between her thighs. She may have said no, but perhaps if he had touched a little harder, begged a little longer- if he hadn’t woken up-

“Nete!”

Neteyam put a hand to his chest, willing himself to be calm as a more fitting prospect made her way to him. One he could see himself doing much less work to please. “Kiska,” he smiled uncomfortably, “I thought today was a training day.”

“Did you not hear?” She said, face going sad “Kino’s grandmother has joined Eywa,”

-

“Tomorrow Syeko and Shidani are taking me to Mons Veritatis for my Iknimaya,”  Gideon says. He’s leaning his elbows on his desk and running his fingers through his hair in agitation. “I don’t know if I’m ready just yet, but Im gonna give it my best try.”

His mismatched eyes are tired.

“I’m not that good at climbing, to be honest. The heights don’t scare me, but the falling-“ He throws himself back into his chair, kicking his feet up and tossing a stack of papers behind his head. They fly in all directions, a visual aid for what’s happening inside his head. “When I’m stressed out I have dreams like that. Where it’s like- the black goes on forever, there aren’t any stars- just me freefalling in one direction with the wind coming at me.”

He continues, looking up at the ceiling in thought.

“Shidani says I’ll do fine, but I think she’s giving me too much credit. I might…” his head shifts so he’s looking at his lap now. “I might not make it.”

There is a pause. He glances up at the camera, then shakes his head.

“If I lose this avatar, I won’t be getting another one. Stolm says it’s because I’m irreplaceable.” He laughs, expression slowly becoming lighter. Less troubled. “But whatever happens; even if I fail,”

He pulls a silver butane lighter from his pocket, lights it, and closes it. When he looks up again, he’s smiling so wide he’s squinting,

“It’s gonna be a beautiful goddamn day.”

-

Stripes let her head roll over the back of the head rest, staring straight up at the ceiling. Max left not too long ago and would be back any minute, but in the meantime she was left alone with her thoughts. She unfolded the photo in her hand to look at it for the thousandth time that morning. She hadn’t gotten any sleep having it within arms reach.

It was a photo of human Sol, Toby, Gideon, and a fourth person, whose face had been ripped from the corner of the photo, in the booth of a diner. they looked natural, arms all thrown around each other loosely, smiles easy- the three she could see anyway.

She pressed it flat to her chest and tried not to cry when she heard the sound of the vestibule door opening.

To her surprise it wasn’t max.

It was Spider.

He locked eyes with her for a moment before taking his mask off.

It surprised her a bit that he came straight over to her. The times she was alone with him were uneventful and sometimes he didn’t even bother saying anything to her. Their relationship mostly spanned the length of time they spent with Kiri and Lo’ak. Like Neteyam, she would call Spider a friend- but Likewise, he was in a whole category of his own.

He sat on the floor at the foot of her chair, and she offered him the corner of her borrowed blanket- the last sip of her fake coffee.

“Do you know where Mons Veritatis is?” She asked, interrupting the distant hum of the link units.

“It’s on top of Vayaha village. North, I think” he yawned. It was still early. “we can’t go there though, it’s Tipani territory.”

“Figures.” She sighed, leaving another moment of silence before continuing. “…Kiri said you got in trouble.”

“Yeah.”

She looked at the ceiling again. “You don’t have to pretend when no one is around, you know.”

“What?”

“I can see it.” Her eyes closed, envisioning the expression that turned his features when he thought she wasn’t paying attention. “You look at me how Neytiri looks at you.”

She heard him exhale through his nose.

“It’s hard for me.” His fingers tapped against the empty mug. “I’ve wanted to be where you are my whole life.”

“Where’s that?”

“…With the Sullys.”

Stripes looked down at his sullen head and reached down to tug at one of his dreadlocks. He didn’t move so she replied anyway. If he could feel how she was feeling- about Jake’s request and Neytiri’s wrath and Neteyam’s…face, maybe he wouldn’t be saying that.  “It’s not as great as it looks.”

“Yeah, okay.” More tapping. “I’d still kill to be you.”

She pushed the blanket on top of his head, hoping to disrupt the mood he was in, delighted when it worked. She scooted the chair away and joined him on the floor. “We should make a Sad Orphans club,”

“Right, right.” He smiled, eyes rolling, “There are a ton of empty tents, we could make the clubhouse in one of those,”

“Tell campfire stories about how much our lives suck,”

His expression fell. “It would beat sleeping alone.”

Hers did too. “I’ll be in that same boat when Neytiri finds out about all this shit.”

He leaned back on his palms, a deep breath rolling from his stomach and through his chest as if the very thought of it sucked all the life out of him. “You know why, don’t you?”

The compulsion to look away was overwhelming. Stripes could feel the muscles in her neck straining against themselves as she held his eye contact. She wanted to see how he would react. “Quaritch.”

To her surprise, he didn’t, and she was the one who turned her head. “He was my father.”

“You can ask, if you want.” She mumbled, “If it was my dad I’d wanna know.”

“I already know everything I need to know about him.”

“Sure.” She looked down at her Hologram pad- at the still of Gideon’s avatar, a flower pattern in the center of his forehead and a grin curling his lips. No you don’t, she thought. You really, really don’t. “that thing about moving into my own place might not be so crazy.”

“You’re leaving the Sullys?”

Her lips pursed. “Jake and I aren’t really on the same page right now.”

“He can be…tough.” Spider patted her knee, retracting his hand when she hugged herself.

it wasn’t his fault. The room was just cold. “It’s a little more than that.”

“Is it the thing with your Sol?”

“Yeah.” She laughed. It sounded funny that way, her Sol. “I think he’s scared, so he’s saying all these things about- well, they make perfect sense but…”

“I get it.”

She stopped, thankful he happened to be the one who walked in and not Kiri or Lo’ak. Neither of them would quite understand “…I was thinking…if I do end up setting up my own camp…”

Spider listened intently, a myriad of emotions crossing his face as she looked for the right words.

“Would you…”

He chuckled then, shaking his head. It was a strange notion, and she could see plainly in his posture, in the scrunch of his brow, that he’d never ask her if their roles were reversed. “living together would be cool,”

“Really?” She let out a desperate sigh, relieved in the most visceral way that he hadn’t said no. She didn’t want to be alone. She couldn’t be alone. “I could give you shooting lessons as a housewarming present,” their hands caught one another in a rough handshake, a token of a bargain well-struck.

“Then maybe I can teach you to wrestle.” He smiled.

Her hand instinctively recoiled as if she’d touched something gross, the dark recesses of her memory clouding the once lighthearted moment and tensing her muscles again.

“I know you don’t like to because it makes you feel like you aren’t safe,” he held onto her by the wrist so she couldn’t pull away, avoiding the bruise on her forearm, “but look at me- I could never hurt you, not even if I wanted to. I could teach you. I’d be happy to teach you,”

She did look at him, his short limbs and his friendly face. She thought of Kiri and how much the girl trusted him. If Stripes knew nothing else about him, that would be enough. “i’d like that.”

Max reappeared through the vestibule door, carrying enough food for both of them, as promised. She hoped Spider had either eaten beforehand or would just assume she didn’t want to share, because there was no way she-

“Hey,” max set down the tray on his still messy desk, looking down at her hesitantly “you’re not friends with Tarsem, are you?”

“I know his brother.” her head tilted, “We’re not exactly buddies.”

“Ah, well,” his throat cleared, as if that would soften the blow of the bad news. “his grandmother passed away last night,”

When Stripes walked into Camp Sully, Neteyam was there putting on the necklace Popiti and Tuk made for him.

His hands were behind his head as he tried to tie it, the strings getting lost in the braids of his hair, but that’s not where she focused. The bib of his necklace hid the beginning of his sanhí, which formed an arrow pointing down. They beelined down his chest in relative symmetry, and she followed them down toward his stomach…

“My eyes are up here, Stripes,” he smirked.

Not that it mattered, of course, because she would never be able to look him in the eye again after this.

Her head shook and she mumbled something even she didn’t really understand while she collected her jacket, “did you hear about Kino’s grandma?”

“That’s where I’m off to,” He sighed with a shallow nod, “can you help me with this?”

She went up behind him, pushing his hair out of the way so she could work better. His neck was a lighter color than the rest of him, its stripes, normally a dark navy, washed out by the lack of sunlight.  His nape was lined with loose hairs that she couldn’t help but run her fingers over and she felt her face heat up when a breath left him.

When she was finished she felt the back of her own neck, just so she could imagine what it felt like to be touched there, and a breath left her too at the thought of Neteyam’s hands. “Can I catch a ride with you?” She asked quickly as he turned.

his brow line shot up “You’re going?”

“Well yeah, isn’t he your best friend? I’m supporting you supporting him,” she shrugged, looking down at her feet, “besides, I don’t wanna be alone today and Spider is already riding with Kiri so I’m stuck with you.”

“Nice to know I’m your first choice,” he laughed.

She felt her pockets, fingers catching the edge of Gideon’s ID card in one and zipping her holo pad into the other “let’s just go,” she pushed past him.

He caught up with her, pulling her arm to link with his, and they walked to the rookery together at a steady gait, not really paying attention to the activity around them. “Why are you really going?”

She went over the excuses she could make, the deep dark secrets she could tell.

Stripes knew what grief was.

It was constantly with her, reminding her she was always alone, no matter how many people were around. Grief for Tenoch, and now grief for Gideon, a man she never even met.

She grieved for the life she could have had with him in it. She grieved for the chance to make him love her, because so few people ever had. She wished she were someone he could be proud of if he were alive. She knew she wasn’t though, so she grieved for that too.

And, today, Kino would almost certainly know what some of that was like.

But if she were fair, and stopped pushing down the needy, clingy feelings drawing her hands to his body long enough to be honest with herself- all Stripes really wanted was to hang out with Neteyam for a few hours. “I wanna see him cry,” she joked.

he resisted a chuckle, squeezing her hand lightly, “I know you’re being funny but you can’t say anything like that when we get there,”

”what if I say it in English?”

”people speak English here,” his eyes rolled.

”who?” She demanded.

“Not you,”

She clutched at her heart, gripping a fistful of the feathers that rested over it. Her feelings would’ve hurt much worse if she hadn’t walked right into that one “help!” She wailed, pretending to die and hanging off his arm. “there’s been a murder!”

She bathed in the sound of his laughter as she melted into an exaggerated puddle at his feet. It took him a few tries but he ultimately hauled her to her feet by the waist, still chuckling by the time they met eyes.

She only realized how close they were when Neteyam’s hand came up to touch her face. The back of his knuckles pushed a stray hair away.  the laugh that left her lungs was breezy and breathless. She didn’t know what was so funny about the way he was looking at her, but it was.

He opened his mouth to say something but was cut off by someone coming up the path.

“Nete!”

His arms fell to his side and Stripes was left without the cover of his body as a girl she didn’t know came to stand in front of them.

“Kiska,” Neteyam nodded. “this is Stripes,”

Kiska was adorable. She had big yellow eyes framed by thick lashes, that lithe Omatikaya frame Stripes would cut off her left leg for. Her smile was blinding, ears and nose small.

Stripes had never looked at herself as unattractive, but right now…

The girl regarded her with an up and down look, smile deceivingly soft as she spoke, “they say you tried to fight the whole of the clan by yourself when you arrived.” She giggled. “You are less impressive than I thought you would be.”

She expected Neteyam to diffuse the tension with a joke- mention how good of a shot she was to build her back up or say something sarcastic and change the subject.

But instead all he gave was, “Be kind, Kiska.” In a tone that almost made it sound like he agreed.

“It is nice to meet you,” Kiska revised, holding in another musical giggle.

“Yeah,” Stripes hugged herself, her desire to spend time with Neteyam suddenly evaporating along with any residual happiness. “Great.”

she prickled when the girl wrapped an arm around Neteyam, cheek pressing into his chest as she talked to him. Their conversation was loud enough to hear still but the only thing in Stripes’ ears was her heartbeat.

“I’ve gotta go.” She blurted, turning to weave through the brightly colored Ikran lined up at the edge of the cliff. She needed to go somewhere, anywhere, right now.

“What happened to being stuck with me?” Neteyam called.

She didn’t answer and regretted it. If she’d said something in response, maybe she wouldn’t be picking up his heavy footfalls behind her as she damn near ran through the rookery.

oh thank fuck, she thought as a familiar skinny frame came into view. “Hey, Lo’ak!”

Her face smashed into the boy’s shoulder, arms wrapping around his skinny ribs so she could steer him toward his Ikran.

“What’s up?” He pat her roughly on the arm, trying not to stumble over his own feet as she pushed him. Her bruise was hidden by the sleeve of her jacket and she winced when he made contact with the injured arm but didn’t give up her grip. “You good?”

“Hey,” Neteyam greeted his brother, arriving at the same time as her. Of course he wasn’t out of breath. Of course she couldn’t outrun him..

Stripes steered Lo’ak so that he was between  them, and they gave each other a half hug.

“I’m riding with Lo’ak,” her hands both curled around one of his, squeezing when he tried to talk to signal him to please shut up.

“I thought you were going with me,” a muscle jumped in Neteyam’s jaw as he glanced down at their hands.

Lo’ak struggled for a second but eventually shook his head. “it’s okay, bro, I’ll take her.”

“It’s no trouble,” Neteyam insisted. “We were heading down in a minute anyway.”

Stripes squeezed again. Save me, save me, save me-

“Actually, I needed to talk to her about something.” Lo’ak squeezed back. “Do you mind?” He asked his brother.

Neteyam regarded them both with a serious look, nodding stiffly before leaving to go back to his own Ikran, where Stripes could see Kiska still waiting.

When his back was turned, Stripes covered both eyes, sniffling into her hands and praying on the one in a million chance Lo’ak wouldn’t ask.

She should’ve known better.

“Stripes.” He turned, singing when she didn’t uncover her face. “Striiiipes~”

“Please don’t make me talk about it,” she begged through a runny nose. The sobs came wet and unyielding. She was embarrassed. She was sad and hurt and jealous.

“Shh,” Lo’ak’s four fingered hand pushed the side of her face so her whole body turned, “he’s looking, climb up, crybaby.”

She did as she was told, wiping snot on her sleeve and leaving space so he could hop on in front of her.

Neteyam didn’t know how to feel as he walked back to Kiska.

“Why did she leave?” Kiska pouted, as if she didn’t know exactly the part she played in all this.

he hadn’t known Kiska was waiting for him, and her snide comments didn’t help the situation in the slightest. He knew Stripes wasn’t fond of new things, people in particular. She was sensitive and he should’ve known she’d be intimidated by Kiska; another thing that proved she would be a tedious partner.

But the realization that he was the thing she was trying to escape by hiding behind Lo’ak made something ugly bloom in his chest.

Kiska mounted her Ikran with a smile. The fact that she had one at all meant she was capable. independent. That’s what he needed. Someone who could stand on her own two feet.

Still, he had trouble concentrating on what Kiska was saying as he imagined Stripes holding his brother’s hand.

His thoughts weren’t much clearer in the air, though Kiska put up quite an effort to keep him glancing over at her.

The dream was still fresh- so fresh, in fact, that before Kiska interrupted, he’d been imagining his fingers between Stripes’ legs again, only this time with the advantage of seeing her face as the sounds left her throat.

He should have sent Kiska away when he had the chance. This was no time to deal with both his feelings for Stripes- if they could be called that, with all the excuses he was making for why she wasn’t worth the effort- and Kiska’s vapid flirting.

She wasn’t a dumb girl, and he didn’t dislike her. But he was finding that, unlike it had been when they were kids, she was turning out to be a bit boring. And he dreaded having to talk about nothing with her for the next few hours.

They reached the stream at the bottom of the mountain and climbed down their perches together, Kiska reaching the ground before he did.  The rain had stopped for the time being so they were able to walk without worrying about getting soaked.

He could see that Tarsem and his parents were already there, along with a few dozen others who knew the family personally. They were waiting for Kiri and the Tsahik to prepare for the ceremony, sitting in small groups and busying themselves with the fish in the water.

At some point he knew he’d have to find kino and give his condolences, but the boy was nowhere to be found.

he looked around to see if he could spot someone else he knew, perhaps someone who could keep Kiska busy with idle conversation for a while, and noticed Lo’ak and Stripes already playing in the water.

“Is Stripes your brother’s woman?” Kiska asked.

Neteyam looked at her sharply, as if he’d been slapped. “What would make you think that?”

“I saw them holding hands,” her head tilted. “Do they not seem close to you?”

The idiots were shoving fish eggs in their mouths by the handful, pointing to their faces, which were chubby from being too full.

Lo’ak smacked Stripes’ cheek and she coughed all of her eggs up in his direction, half of them sticking to his skin as the two laughed.

had he really just been jealous of his brother when this was how they were spending their time?

”they’re just very good friends,” he said finally, cracking a smile.

As they made their way over it was apparently Stripes’ turn to slap Lo’ak, only she pulled her arm back all the way behind her and let it fly at his face without hesitation, launching all the eggs in his mouth several feet away upon impact.

Neteyam laughed with them, so loud that it probably sounded indecent to the people who were there to mourn.

Kiska chose to comment on something else entirely. “You should not let olo’eyktan see you hurting his son,” 

Stripes seemed to be in a better mood than she’d been in on the mountain, sharing an annoyed look with Lo’ak. “I don’t see Jake, do you?”

“I see a great deal more than you,” Kiska’s hand rested on her hip.

Neteyam let out a sigh, wishing he were doing literally anything else.

Stripes had had enough of whatever this was.

If Tweedledee and Tweedledum were going to let this girl walk all over her then she didn’t want to be around any of them. She’d sit through the ceremony alone and see if she could catch a ride home with someone else.

“What’s that thing?” She pointed excitedly off into the distance.

The three of them looked and she began walking in the opposite direction to escape the gross feeling in the pit of her stomach. Both Lo’ak and Neteyam called after her, but she kept walking.

Thankfully this time no one followed her.

What happened to the time she spent with the Sullys? Did all of that just disappear overnight? Did she not matter to them anymore?

She wove through the trees and clusters of Na’vi with her tail hanging low and her ears pinned to her head.

It was obvious Neteyam and Kiska were a thing, from how she kept touching and hanging on him. He’d all but tossed her aside when the girl showed up and she realized she was an idiot to assume he didn’t already have someone- to let herself fall for him in the first place. He was talented and attractive and funny and…and Stripes wasn’t any of those things.

She walked as far as she could without losing sight of the larger group and sat against the trunk of a tree and nearly jumped out of her skin when she heard rustling a few feet away.

Of all the people Kino could have met out in the forest, Stripes was the last he ever expected.

She looked up at him with wide eyes, knees drawn up to her chest.

He cast his gaze downward, between his own bent legs, to escape her scrutiny. He had the good fortune of being born with a face like his father’s, strong and handsome, as many people had told him over the years.

He wondered for the most desperate of moments if she thought he was handsome too.

But why would she be here? He thought of asking her but remembered Neteyam’s words struck him like lightning. if you so much as speak to her again, you’ll be sorry. He knew he could easily fight Neteyam and win, but he would not risk the wrath of olo’eyktan, and he did not see what he could gain by hurting his friend. He suspected Neteyam felt differently, being raised in a more volatile manner, but he was glad it had not come to that.

he knew how Neteyam could be when someone touched his things.

Kino decided to respect his wishes, however unfair, and began to stand so he could leave her alone.

I lost someone too, He heard as he took his first step. “I am sorry.” He said without looking at her. Without thinking first. “Who was it?”

“My father.”

His heart broke for her, imagining today being his own father’s funeral instead of his grandmother’s. “May his spirit go with Eywa,”

He heard a sniffle and looked down to see she was crying.

“Do you really believe in all that?” She said into her knees.

The question burned him from the inside. “With all my heart.” He breathed. “Do you not?”

“I mean,” her green clad arms went out to the sides, chest bouncing in a laugh. “where’s the proof?”

He settled down by her, just far away enough that she would see he did not aim to hurt her.“It is all around us. In the waters that quench us, in the grasses and the animals that come to graze; in the trees and the sky.” He explained. “Eywa is everywhere.”

“Yeah, Kiri said that too.” She scoffed.

He looked down at the soil below him, softened by the rain. “I am sorry I could not give you the answers you had hoped for.”

“No, it’s not you, it’s me…” Stripes murmured“I guess living in the city didn’t help me much either.”

“My mother says the sky people do not believe in Eywa because they do not know better.”

“We mostly believe in what we can see.”

“Should it not be they?” He pointed out.

“Can’t I be more than one thing at a time?”

He thought of the story of olo’eyktan- the part where he spied on the clan for the gain of the Sky People. “I do not think that is a good way to live; not knowing who you are or what you stand for.”

She slumped over her legs in defeat and Kino knew he had said something wrong. “I don’t wanna talk about this anymore.”

Did that mean she still wanted to talk to him? “What shall we speak of now?”

“…Is that my armband?”

“it is.” He drew his knuckles over the fringe, “Would you like to have it back?”

“No, your fat bicep probably stretched it out anyway.” Her hand waved in dismissal, but upon looking at him she added quickly, “It was a joke,”

“Oh,” a small smile found its way to his face when he realized, “then it was funny,”

Neteyam couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

Stripes was unbelievable- if it wasn’t one thing it was another with her.

He watched them standing by each other as the ceremony began, not touching but shooting each other knowing glances every so often. There was a hum as Kino’s grandmother was lowered gently into the hollow of a tree, and the two of them stood there longer than the rest, saying nothing as if there was something unspoken between them.

Had he missed something? Had she mentioned anything that would make her sudden warmth towards the boy make sense?

No.

She had said nothing.

Stripes let kino decorate her with the armband she’d thrown at him, faces so close they almost touched, and Neteyam made it clear he was watching.

He pulled from Kiska’s arms to stand in full view of Kino, who met his eye with solid conviction, and cupped her cheek with one hand.

He knew damn well what he was doing.

“Stripes,” Neteyam called, making her whip around to face their group again. “Come,” come back to me, he almost wanted to say.

Only a few hours in and he couldn’t keep up this ruse anymore. Kiska was dull and watching Stripes try to ignore him for whatever reasons she had was driving him mad.

When Stripes came close, Kiska came up to him, reaching a hand out, but he caught her by the wrist before she could touch his chest.

“Leave,” he commanded, steering her backwards a few inches before letting her go. “we’re talking.”

“I suddenly have to go take a piss,” Lo’ak turned on his heel and walked after the now upset girl.

“I thought you didn’t like him.” Neteyam ignored his brother, chin jerking at Kino, who stared right back at them.

“I don’t.”

“Good. you’re too much for him anyway.”His words tasted bitter as soon as they came out of him. He hadn’t meant to sound so spiteful, but what was he to do? She’d sat and cried about Kino chasing her, and now here she was, throwing herself back at him. Nothing she did ever made sense!

“What do you mean?” Her head tilted.

“I mean you’re a menace and he’d never be able to keep up with you.” He blurted, regretting calling her over. He needed a moment to collect himself, to find a better way to tell her how he was feeling…

“I’m not that bad,” she chuckled, sounding hopeful that he would agree with her.

“Sure you’re not,” his eyes rolled.

“You don’t think I could be a good partner?”

he belted out something between a genuine laugh and a scoff.

She could, if she settled down. She could, if her mood swings would stop. She could be a good wife and a lover if she would just-

She began to laugh.

“What’s funny?” He narrowed his eyes.

“I’m just-“ her head shook, “-I guess I didn’t realize what a huge disappointment I am to everyone.”

“I didn’t say that.” He stammered, realizing how hard he‘d been projecting his insecurities into her. He was struck by clarity at the hurt on her face.

This was Stripes.

He knew her.

He enjoyed her.

He wanted her.

Why was he fighting it in the first place?

if she wanted a bedmate for her lonely nights or a family with lots of children, he suddenly didn’t care. He would be whatever she needed him to be, and endure any challenge that came with her.

“I think I wanna go home,” she whispered, a strange smile still tilting her mouth.

“Alright,” he swallowed, working out a way to take back everything he’d just said, “I’ll take you, just give me a minute to-“

“Kino is about to take off. I’ll catch a ride with him.”

Stripes mounted behind Kino after touching base with Kiri and Spider. Kiri asked several times what was wrong and she promised to tell her before bed, walking away, but not before receiving several pecks on the cheek and forehead.

The flight home was soggy and depressing, and the only thing that kept her from sobbing into Kino’s back was the sound of Gideon’s voice playing on the holo-pad in her pocket.

This time he was talking about his mount, Oberon, who he named after the king of fairies in a book or a play or something like that. She made a note to go through the photos to find a picture of him- a bright yellow Ikran with brown stripes.

She wondered woefully if Oberon was out there somewhere, just waiting for Gideon to come back. She felt bad for them both, each banished to two entirely separate planes of hell without being able to reach the other.

She wished the part of hell she was in included a hood on her fucking jacket.

With High Camp coming into view, she decided to make a stop request that would ensure she wouldn’t immediately run into Neteyam or Kiri. She didn’t feel like talking, or thinking or breathing right now. She just… wanted to be left alone.

It’s funny how fast things change.

She stood up, wrapping an arm around Kino’s shoulder for balance and called into his ear “can you leave me at the waterfall?”

Kino nodded and broke off from the mass of people making their way home, curving around the mountain until they could land at the mouth of the cave leading home.

She was thankful he stopped here and not at the base of the drop- there was no way she’d be able to climb up without help. “Thanks for everything.”

Kino tried to persuade her to let him stay, but she turned him away firmly and only realized she didn’t know her way through the tunnels when he’d already taken off.

She laid flat on the ground, looking up at the tree branches that hung over the cave entrance, the sound of the waterfall overflowing to her left and the echo of Gideon’s video log still playing to her right.

Honestly, I expected you to name it something like Bagel, or Nugget. Sol said.

Toby was in this one, agreeing with her around a mouthful of something.

Okay, everyone who didn’t choke out a literal dragon today needs to shut the hell up! Gideon snapped.

Stripes laced her fingers over her stomach, eyes closing while the next video played.

Gideon liked motorcycles and alcohol and had a rock collection that cost more than his childhood home. He got good grades and made great jokes and he loved Toby and Sol- she could tell by the way he talked about them.

She wished she could have met him.

Her eyes opened at the sound of footsteps and Neteyam was there, blinking down with that narrowed, annoyed expression he saved just for her.

“What are you doing?” He asked.

She shrugged. “Hanging out.”

He sighed, offering an impatient hand. “Come on, let’s go home.”

She sat up but didn’t take it. She wasn’t ready yet. “You go, I’ll catch up.”

He crouched in front of her, a scoff bursting from his chest. “Why are you acting this way?”

Acting what way? She hadn’t done anything wrong. “I’m giving you space.”

“I didn’t ask for space,” he growled.

“You didn’t need to,” her head shook.

“I…” he paused, closing his eyes and pressing his hands together, as if to pray for something. “i like being around you.”

“But I would drive Kino insane?”

“I only meant-“

“-I know what you meant to mean.” She stood and passed him to start walking through the tunnel.

“You know,” he laughed, tailing her, “Sometimes I think you argue just for the sake of arguing,”

“Excuse me?” She barked, whipping around so fast her face smashed into his chest.

He held her steady by the arm, letting her go when she began to struggle. She didn’t want to be touched by this fucking asshole. “You won’t take my apology because you like chaos so you have to create it wherever you go,”

“That wasn’t an apology,” her hands went to her head. “An apology is admitting you’re wrong and promising to change!”

“Oh, so you do know how that works?” His ears pinned, “I don’t need to change and I’m not wrong, Kino would never be able to handle your mood swings; I spend all my time trying to keep up with you and it never ends!”

The assertion stung, heart squeezing in her rib cage until it felt like it would burst.

There it was again, the feeling of needing to be fixed.

The more she thought about it, Neteyam had been the cause of that feeling more times than anyone else in her new life. She didn’t have problems, she was a problem, and he was constantly trying to change her. Forcing her to do things she didn’t want to do, telling her she was doing everything wrong, and on and on.

Who was she kidding? They had never been friends. She was just some responsibility he took on to please Jake. That was it, that was all.

By now she was wondering if she ever really liked him at all. did she crave his good opinion so badly that she made it all up in her head? “Then stop trying,” she kept walking, letting the darkness and the mildewy smell consume her.

“What?”

“goodbye, Neteyam.” She called over her shoulder.

He caught up to her easily, bringing her back to face him by the arm. “What do you mean, goodbye?”

“I mean we’ve now reached the end of this,” she hissed when he wouldn’t let go, “I’m done being your fucking problem,”

“You can’t do that,” his head shook, tail waving in wide circles behind him. “you’re always in my face, it would be impossible for us not to talk,”

Unbelievable! “I’m- oh I’m the one always in your face?!”

“Great Mother,” his hand fell, body turning so his shoulder was facing her. As if the less she could see of him, the less angry she would be.

“I’m not the one constantly getting in your business, okay,” she shoved him roughly, frustration rising when she couldn’t move him an inch. “you’re always trying to talk to me when I don’t want to be talked to,”

“Am I supposed to just let you sit in a corner and feel sorry for yourself all day?”

“Yes! I love feeling sorry for myself, it’s my favorite thing to do!” She screamed so loud she was sure the whole camp could hear from the other end.

“I wish that surprised me.” Neteyam seethed in her face, volume just above a whisper.

She hoped with all her heart that Spider wasn’t joking before. “I’ll be out of your hair soon anyway,” she leaned away from him, thinking maybe she’d be able to breathe better if they weren’t so close.

His expression flashed quickly from anger to confusion. “What do you mean?”

“I’m moving out of your family’s camp tonight, so I won’t be in your face anymore,”

The silence between them was a monster. It had sharp teeth and a ringing voice and magma in it’s veins. If he could feel it there, waiting for someone to speak so it could pounce, she couldn’t tell.

Neteyam was calm and quiet in his reply, unafraid of the danger that lurked in the air. “No,”

“What?” She breathed.

“I said no.” He repeated carefully. “You aren’t leaving me.”

this was it. She couldn’t do it anymore. “Watch me.”

Chapter Text

Stripes strolls into the common room with a whole carton of milk in her hands. It’s the last one and she doesn’t want to share so she’s determined to drink the whole thing before anyone notices and makes her put it back in the fridge.

Jerry is in the unit again, explaining how the new cooling system works. It’s a futuristic panel full of buttons and dials but she’s not allowed to touch it so she acts like she isn’t paying attention. she’ll mess with it when everyone is already in a bad mood just to see what happens. The Recoms petitioned to have the cameras removed so no one will even know it was her.

She rounds the corner chugging her milk and spots a bright orange bottle on the end table. She picks it up, reading:

Rx: Quentin, A, Tobias

OLANZAPINE 65MG TABLETS

TAKE 1 TABLET EVERY 24 HOURS AS INSTRUCTED BY -

A hand is laid over the label, and the bottle is gently taken from her hand.

“You shouldn’t touch things that aren’t yours.” The woman- Sol is her name- says with a crease in her brow.

Jerry looks up but waves a dismissive hand when he sees what’s going on. “Be careful around that one,” he says. “little shit’s got sticky fingers.”

She stops herself from making another jab at his marriage and heads out into the playpen for a more absolute revenge. The cameras have also been removed outside so she makes her way over to his maintenance-mobile and circles it like a vulture to find the best point of entry.

“Gas tank’s on the other side,” a gruff voice calls. It’s the bald one. He’s smoking a cigar, his lungs so giant that one inhale obliterates half it’s length.

She takes another swig of milk, bending down on the other side to see that there is indeed a removable panel. “Thanks,”

“Stripes, right?” He exhales a thick fog of smoke as she gets to work unscrewing the gas cap.

One more sip for herself and she tips the rest over into the tank, giving it a shake for good measure. “Yep,”

“Lyle.”

“Well Lyle,” When she’s satisfied with her work she caps the tank again, replacing the panel and tossing the carton over the wall. “I wish I could say it’s nice to meet you but I’d be lying.” She says, walking back inside.

He laughs and takes another drag from his cigar.

Stripes looked up at the slanted wall of her new tent, listening this time to the sounds of Marisol explaining her university dissertation in passionless detail. The fire reduced to embers about a yard away, still plenty warm but not quite enough in the drafty spot they picked.

Initially she meant to sleep back to back with Spider- the boy was, after all, a human furnace, and no matter how small, any of his borrowed body heat would’ve been helpful. Unfortunately as soon as Jake noticed their beds so close, the man took it upon himself to drag hers to the other side of the tent.

He didn’t explicitly say they couldn’t sleep together but he implied it with the threat in his eyes and the apprehension in his tone. It made less sense when noting that she’d done the same with Lo’ak plenty of times, but maybe it was the fact that no one would be there to make sure nothing funny happened that made him so uncomfortable.

Gross.

Jake’s conditions for living apart from the family were that she had to breakfast with them for scheduling and dinner with them for debriefing. Even then, she planned to slowly stop relying on them for food- for anything, really- and make her own life away from them. At least to the extent where she didn’t have to feel like she was being tolerated…

Spider’s solution to this was perfect.

The Clubhouse was the nearest available home to the tunnels leading to the waterfall. The fish there were small and the only forage there was berries and wood and weeds, but it was better than nothing.

It also happened to be adjacent to the Avatar Camp and a stone’s throw away from Kino’s family home- the latter of which was heavily argued over.

In the end she decided she could live with being within shouting distance of someone who actually cared.

The dissertation ended and she scrolled through her videos to find another clip of Gideon. He was quite a sight. His Avatar was in native gear- a woven leather wrap around his waist, a spear in his lap and a Santa hat on. He was wearing sunglasses and three party horns were shoved haphazardly into his mouth.

-

Gideon blows into the horns, breaking one from the sheer force of the air in his lungs.

He raises a bottle of whiskey, holding it out to the side, and hiccups “Salud.”

“Salud.” Sol is behind him, packing up her things for the night. She raises a bottled water, tapping it against his whiskey and replies tiredly, “Maybe you should call it quits before you die of alcohol poisoning,”

“Did you know she’s mated already?”

She takes the horns out of his mouth, picking something out of his hair and throwing it all into the wire wastebasket under the desk. “No, I did not.”

“A whole two goddamn years here and the girl of my dreams has been taken the whole time.”

She straightens the strap of her book bag, not looking at the camera, “There’s more fish in the sea, Gid.”

His head tips back but he’s too tall to touch the head rest, the chair beneath him is struggling to support his mass without breaking. “I hate fish.”

“The fish hate you too.” Sol sighs, “Disconnect now, go drag your real body back to bed.”

-

Stripes scrolled past this one, not wanting to linger on the relatable anguish in his voice. She hoped she didn’t look that pitiful as she packed all of her things earlier.

“He looks like you,” Spider said casually, tucking his hands behind his head. The bastard didn’t even need a blanket.

“You think so?” She sighed blissfully.