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Thinking about a Kiri desperate for answers who begs Ewya to see her, to talk to her, to just give her a chance. About her slipping into the water and connecting to the tree of souls when she knows she can’t. About her crying into warm sand as she racks her brain for memories she can’t quite reach and not knowing if they’re even hers.
About a Kiri meeting an aunt she never met, who brushes the hair from her face and whispers about before all this. About a school yard and a her mother as little as Tuk. She dreams of glimpses of red hair and a teacher, not a mother yet. She can’t imagine a life as peaceful as that could really be real.
A Kiri who opens her eyes and is immediately on the floor, a narrow eyed man pulls her up and holds her shoulder tight as if he didn’t shove her to the dirt the moment before. Tsutey is barely there before he is gone but she feels strong as stone. She wants to ask what he was going to say but the ground under her feet is growing growing growing until the earth reclaims her as it did him.
Her grandfather is found when she tries to bond to a tree with a shimmer in its bark. Is not a soul tree but she thinks there’s something there. He whispers about failures. About passing his burden to his youngest daughter’s oldest son. How he almost ended a cycle. How he didn’t.
She never thought about the people in bridgehead that were like Norm, Max, Trudy, Grace - they couldn’t be people in the stories or else the fires were too hot. But she breathes in the air of one of Norms meal kits and the metal floor beneath her feet is littered with candy wrappers and paper. There’s laughter, clinking of vials, a song humming through a tinny radio, and humanity feels a little too real. Her skin suddenly feels thin, her bones weaker. Her body is too big and too awkward but there’s a haze she hopes they felt all the way til the end. She never forgets how warm the sun through a window felt on such fragile skin.
Spider is so small and so stubborn and she can’t protect him. She’s screaming into the soil, begging for her mother to tell her what to do, and then the smoke fills her lungs. She gasps, breathing in fumes and choking on the poison when his eyes meet hers. Paz Socorro has his eyes, his curls in darker little ringlets. She cries, sobbing just like Kiri. She tried to get home, she tried not to leave him. She didn’t mean to start the pattern. She was only 23, she’d never done this before. Her plane burns and all she can taste are ashes but she feels her strength in her bones, trembling as they are, and she marches home like she doesn’t remember what fire tastes like.
The answers never come plain and sometimes Kiri doesn’t think she’s one person. She thinks she’s a collection. All the souls lost on pandora, gathered and loved with her ancestors or buried beneath the dirt she walks over. She tries though, again and again and again because the heartbeat thunders so loud that she swears it’s thousands of them, begging her to find them. She loves them as much as she hates them. She clings to her mother, the large and the small, and speaks with the only voice that doesn’t shake. Thinking about Kiri who calls it a blessing because a curse is ungrateful and she can’t call them something so cruel. She was never a little girl in the same way there’s always one reaching for her hand in the quiet seconds between minutes. Thinking about how Kiri can never just be Kiri but the way it’s integral to her that she can’t ever just be the one girl she was born as. How she’s not even sure which one that is.
The boys are barely hitting teenagers when Jake stumbles on Neteyam teaching Spider to shoot his bow. About seeing the little human he watched grow up mirror him 13 years ago, holding a weapon double his size and not knowing how to handle it, but this time the boy is comfortable. He’s grinning, cocky and safe, with his son’s hands over his own. He sees his wife for a moment in his son’s soothing touches and then his brother in Spiders grin. It’s healing in the same way that a part of him curls and aches at the sight.
He watches for a while, a silent guard if they get in over their heads. Neteyam is normally level-headed and responsible but Spider is a wild card - plus he rarely sees the two by themselves.
He lurches to intervene when Spider pulls a gun from the bushes, tossing it to his oldest with a teasing prod. It’s big for a human but looks barely larger than a pistol in his son’s childish hands. Neteyam looks nervous but shrugs as Spider lifts his hands to position them better. It takes a few tries to find something comfortable for the taller - it’s one of Norms weapons, not meant for Na’vi, those are locked up safe in home tree - but they settle it in his hands and Jake forces himself to relax. It makes him nervous but he tries to give them a shot. Why, he can’t really decide, but he sits back. If they’ll survive, then they’ll need to adapt. Every solider packs a few scars and he’d rather they do it now when he’s within arms reach.
Spider runs his fingers over the gun and points out where the safety is, how to load it, and then how to trigger it. He doesn’t want to know why he knows all this but suspects his own raids might have been the boys teacher. Neteyam takes a shuttering breath and shoots the gun at the largest tree in their little clearing. The kickback nearly makes him drop the gun and he stumbles back but he grins and laughs like a boy again.
He didn’t realize how long it’s been since he heard that sound.
Spider joins him soon after, clumsily notching an arrow and attempting to hit the same spot. He misses by a long shot and groans dramatically but there’s a camaraderie in the air that he remembers from his own youth. It’s a signature of growing up and something he only really remembers from Tommy. He smiles and watches for a bit as Neteyam tries to fix Spiders posture then tries to one up him with another shot. They’re sparing with the gun, clearly worried about getting caught despite the bravado, but the sound is swallowed by the forest enough to allow a few trysts.
It’s been a good half hour when Spider manages to knock a branch off the tree he’d been aiming at. The boys cheer with such pride that Jake can’t help but feel a little proud. He guesses they really are growing up.
“Okay, okay, hear me out - your dad can’t be pissed if we bring home dinner right? Why don’t we, yknow, try these out for real?”
Jake swallows back a groan and steps out from his hiding spot, perhaps they aren’t that grown up after all.
Anyway
Rotxo has identity issues and has a crisis when the Sully kids show up
They're different. They aren't of their people and they're weird - they have extra fingers, tufts of hair over their eyes, their skin is dark, their eyes the wrong size, their tails too thin - he could go on
Yet they're so proud
There's a sense of purpose in them, they aren't quite kids like he, Ao'nung, or Tsireya are.
It scares the hell out of him
He lashes out at Lo'ak and Kiri, goes for their weaknesses when Ao'nung does
He wants them to leave, take their war with them, and let his family stay safe and tucked away on their beaches
They don't, clearly, and yet he comes to care for them
They're freaks but they're his freaks
Tsireya coming home with blood on her hands, teary cheeks, and Lo'ak in her arms terrifies him. However much he grew up that day he thinks she did double
Ao'nung is suddenly fast tracking his apprenticeship as Olo'eyktan
And he's left behind
Spider comes with the worst day of his life thus far
He once would have gutted anyone who said he would accept a sky person in his home but so much has changed and he can't bring himself to do anything without Ao'nung there to lead him
So he throws himself into his training, wanting to stop what happened to him and his friends from ever happening here
If what happened in the forests happened here he thinks it would kill him
Then Jake convinces Tonowari to let them use a gun
Tonowari - the man who is practically a second father to him after growing up between his children, who hated this war more than anyone he knew, who barely let them use offensive moves before their 15th year - is scared for them
He's awful with a gun
Metkayina kids don't get to carry a gun, it's not allowed to be their primary weapon, it's only for emergencies, but he saw what happened to Neteyam and he needs to know how to use it
He's off in the woods along their beaches trying to practice. Training was over hours ago but he doesn't take to it like the older kids (he and Ao'nung are the youngest learning right now - they strong armed their way in and he thinks it broke Tonowari a little bit inside)
Every shot is just a little off, he can't get the target quite right
Metyakina are spear wielders, their weapons bring them close to their enemies and they use their strength to bring them down. Bows are a necessity but archers are few in the specialty: it's just not what they do
The gun is heavy in his hands, hard to balance and kicks back every time he tries to shoot
Why the hell a weapon bites the user he has no fucking clue -
"Brace your back foot. You're leaning too much, it's not a harpoon."
...
Rotxo will swear for the decades to come that he did not jump, fuck you-
Then the little sky-person is there
He met Spider when they brought him home
The boy was pale, thin beyond what he suspected was natural if the slight sway to his stance had anything to say. He was mottled in bruises and striped with scars but there was a feral strength in the kids eyes
He stuck close to the Sully kids, blended right into the little pack they made up
The other kids flanked him at nearly all times. He never saw the blonde alone and they seemed happy that way. The kid was haunted but he guesses they all are now
They didn't talk much. Lo'ak threatened him with raw fear in his eye that if he and Ao'nung even tried an ounce of what they did to him then peace talks and found friendships be damned, he'd make them regret it
Spider would hang out with them, but he didn't talk much. Most of the others still resented him. They feared him or hated him and Rotxo suspects he knew that
That said, he doesn't know what to do when Spider walks up and forces his gun down to his level
He moves his hands, steps back and adjusts his stance, then steps back with an approving nod.
"Alright. Aim a little lower, you aren't in the green. Shoot, it'll be better."
He hits the target in the neck, then the tree behind it. The gut the third time.
"Uh..thanks."