Chapter Text
Spider watches Lo’ak apprehensively from behind an ikran, feigning to adjust the bridle straps as his friend bristles under his father’s reprimand. Lo’ak’s frown deepens as he covers the scrape under his ribcage with one hand, arm crossing his abdomen, partly attempting to hide his injury, partly to look nonchalant even while getting reamed out.
There’s always been something about Lo’ak, an unperturbed defiance— and desperate need to please — that draws Spider closer to Lo’ak than anyone else. Spider can’t help but be drawn to Lo’ak’s fearlessness, or ignorance, and both boys, most often to their detriment, feed into each other’s delusions of becoming warriors far too frequently.
Now, it is one of the increasingly common instances where it backfires poorly.
They share a glance before Neytiri ushers Lo’ak away to Mo’at to get his wounds addressed. Spider, careful to avoid Jake’s view, skirts around the couple and hastily throws open the flap to the Tsahik’s tent.
“Bro,” Lo’ak groans, his voice a mixture of pain and annoyance. A small smile tugs at the corners of Spider’s mouth as he approaches, crouching on the ground. Lo’ak kneels on a bed of animal skins, hissing as his grandmother unceremoniously slathers the ugly scrapes on his torso with a thick poultice.
“You walked into it,” Neteyam reprimands under his breath, and Lo’ak rolls his eyes. Mo’at has already patched up the eldest brother and undoubtedly is nursing the shame inflicted on him for letting Lo’ak talk him into joining the warriors on the ground.
“Shut up,” Lo’ak retorts, jerking his head to glare at Neteyam with such force that the braids framing his face swing wildly outward. “He never lets us do anything.”
“That’s because this-” Mo’at interrupts to poke at Lo’ak’s rib a little harder, and he yelps, “always happens. You have too much of your father’s blood.”
The remark probably isn’t meant to scathe too deeply, but Lo’ak scowls regardless. He’s heard it before, and he’ll only continue to hear it as he turns into Jake more and more each day, and the comparison is a constant reminder that Lo’ak is different, and he hates it.
Spider gets it; the last thing he wants is for someone to look at him and even think of his father, but maybe that’s not the same thing at all—
“Bro,” Lo’ak repeats, snapping Spider out of his thoughts. “What’ve you been doing all day? You should have seen it down there,” he adds, lowering his voice with a giddy expression. “It was so cool .”
Mild jealousy sparks in the back of Spider’s mind. He and Lo’ak have always been competitive, ever since they were old enough to walk— actually since Spider got tall enough to keep up— and that certainly hasn’t changed now.
“Ah, Dad had me help the scouts pack for the night patrols,” Spider shrugs. It’s routine, and none of the warriors actually need Spider’s help, so he miserably charts it down to Norm and the others not wanting another lab rat running around the humans’ compound in High Camp and the Omatikaya scouts feeling bad that the little human runt has nothing useful to do.
Technically, that’s his home, but it’s the last place Spider wants to be these days because Norm and the other avatar pilots are too engrossed in their work to be interesting, and lately, Dad — the weight of their… strained relationship hangs heavy on Spider’s conscience.
With a pang of guilt, he stands and shuffles toward the tent flap.
“Where are you going?” Lo’ak demands, immediately standing to follow. It makes Spider feel better that Lo’ak still wants to hang out after being tossed around by explosives, so he nods to the exit.
“Dad’s probably up, now. I haven’t seen him since yesterday,”
Lo’ak’s ears twitch, and soon Kiri and Tuk trail after them toward the section of trailers jettisoned off the Omatikaya ’s encampment. The airlock blasts them sterile, and Spider wrenches off his exopack as his Na’vi counterparts grab air filters from the rack by the door.
“Hey,” Spider calls out in English, and Tom Sully looks up from a microscope at his desk with a gentle smile. He looks worn out, and Spider pretends he doesn’t notice.
There was a time when his dad went years without a migraine. Now, with the war, he’s lucky if he can make it through the week with only one. Max says it’s the stress, which makes sense, but it makes Spider even angrier at the Sky People.
“Did you eat?” Tom asks, extending his arm to pull a stray leaf out of Spider’s unruly tangle of limp blond curls and braids. Spider swats his hand away in favour of sitting on the desk with little regard for his unkempt appearance. Tom’s brow furrows. “What happened to you?” he inquires, leaning to look around Spider at Lo’ak, who scans the array of scientific instruments with disinterest.
“Huh? Oh,” Lo’ak shrugs, pulling his arms to his sides with a grimace. “Nothing, just some scrapes-”
“He went down to the front again,” Kiri explains, pushing past her brother to gaze at the amino tank off to the side. Her mother, Grace’s avatar, drifting plaintively as if asleep.
Tom sends Lo’ak a pointed look, but he rests on Jake’s ability to make his kid feel like shit about his choices and doesn’t press any further. He reverts his attention to Spider.
“C’mon, I’ll make you something,” he says, pushing away from the desk to stand. Something in his expression shifts for a billionth of a second, but it’s long enough for Spider to notice.
“Don’t stand up too fast,” Spider blurts, and Tom laughs tiredly. Spider frowns.
“I’m fine; I keep myself hydrated, unlike you,” he responds, letting a hand momentarily rest on Spider’s shoulder as he walks by. Spider ignores how the others go quiet and, by contrast, how Max starts talking to himself at his workstation.
“You’ve been working yourself too hard lately,” he presses. “You’re getting worse.”
“Miles,” Tom sighs, and Spider squints as he feels Lo’ak’s uncomfortable gaze pierce the back of his skull. He pauses, turning in the door to the kitchen to face Spider— his eyes drift to Lo’ak, Kiri and Tuk, and he presses his lips into a firm line like he’s going to say something but thinks better of it.
Spider scoffs and pushes off the desk to turn round and shuffle toward the others, who have gathered around Grace’s avatar.
“So…” Lo’ak begins awkwardly. “Who do you think knocked her up?” he gestures to Kiri’s mom by jerking his chin.
“Ew, gross, ” Kiri gasps, tearing her eyes away from Grace to glare at Lo’ak, who looks at Spider sideways. A smile creeps onto his mouth.
“See, me? I think it’s Norm…” he stoops and pokes around on the nearby monitor, where Kiri was watching one of Grace’s video logs. “See? They’re in every shot together, like, he’s always there or in the background,” Lo’ak points to Norm, about fifteen years younger.
Spider hums, egging him on, but Kiri narrows her eyes at him, and he holds his hands up in surrender.
“Sorry,” he laughs. “Honestly, be glad you don’t know who your father is.” He means it as a joke, but Kiri’s lighthearted attitude shifts to an apologetic expression and Spider winces.
“He’s not your dad,” Lo’ak insists, gaze bouncing back and forth between Kiri and Spider. “You’re our cousin.”
“Yeah, I know,” Spider shrugs. He leaves out the nagging feeling that he’s just another reminder to his dad and Jake that Sky People won’t ever leave them alone.
“Miles,” Tom calls, and Spider twitches. He likes that no one calls him that. No one except his dad, using whatever indignant reason he’s got to refuse calling Spider Spider. He cranes his neck to see Tom jerk his head toward the kitchen. It’s a silent dismissal of Jake’s kids— an order to get to bed before your mother finds you that has become routine in recent months.
When they return home after being gone all day, Lo’ak does his best to make up for Spider’s absence day in and day out. Then Tom sends him home, back to Jake and Neytiri. Sometimes Kiri and Tuk come, sometimes Neyteyam— but it’s always Lo’ak, pulling Spider out of loneliness.
They bid each other goodbye, hanging the air filters back on the rack before the airlock seals the last time for the night.
Spider pads over to the kitchen, dropping onto one of the tall stools at the island counter. Some kind of protein is on the stove, something warm that will undoubtedly send Spider to sleep. Tom turns from the counter by the stove to face him, setting an empty plate down in front of the boy while they wait for the meal to finish.
“You look rough,” Spider mumbles. Tom laughs.
“Thanks, kid.”
“I mean it. Did you actually sleep?”
“You don’t have to worry about me,” Tom replies, and he’s smiling softly, but there’s a lingering sadness behind it. Spider doesn’t remember when it showed up, but lately, it’s all he can see. His dad is pale. The last week hasn’t been kind to anyone, but it doesn’t help that they have nothing to talk about when Jake comes to see him but bad news. RDA advancements. Losses. Phyrric victories.
Spider feels terrible, but there isn’t anything he can do. He’s still anxious from Jake spotting him sitting alone last night, at the lookout where the ikran land, watching the stars appear in the twilight. Jake asked him why he wasn’t with his dad, and Spider explained the same repeated answer he’d been sharing for days.
Another bad one, Max’s just trying to keep him comfortable.
He left out I’m hungry, but Jake has a habit of reading between the lines, and Spider was dragged into the tent with his cousins to eat Neytiri’s cooking.
Neytiri. Even for an Aunt she seems to hate his guts, and Spider never really figured out why.
Well, that’s dumb. He knows why. He just doesn’t want to think about it too hard, because then he might end up agreeing with her.
“Are you gonna go to the battlefield again tomorrow?” Tom asks, and Spider narrows his eyes. He wants to say nothing, but Tom laughs knowingly. “Lo’ak’s grounded for… what, a year? The rest of his life? I’m not an idiot, Miles,” he adds.
“A month, but, basically. I don’t get it,” Spider shrugs. “No one got hurt. Much.”
“I’d be pissed at you, too, if you were down there when I told you not to be.”
Spider picks at his cuticles.
“Hey,” Tom says, and Spider looks up. Tom’s eyes flicker. He’s looking at Spider’s hair and the blue stripes that Kiri helped to adorn him with earlier in the afternoon. “You’re alright, kid. Your Uncle is just…” he sighs and turns to dish the food onto Spider’s plate. He sets it down in front of him, not bothering to hand over the cutlery; Spider’s already tearing into it.
“Worried? That’s all he ever does,” Spider remarks, around a mouthful of food.
“Lo’ak gives him a lot to worry about. So do you. So do I, ” Tom admits. “I’m sorry I wasn’t around. I know it’s hard on you,” he says, quieter. “...all of this is.”
Spider shrugs after a thoughtful pause. “No one’s fault,” he responds. It’s true, but for some reason, Spider still tries to blame himself when nobody is around to convince him otherwise.
There’s just too much to think about, and Spider has all the time in the world to waste in his head.
Tom hums. “If it makes you feel any better, Jake wants me back at the war party meetings.”
“That doesn’t, actually,” Spider states dryly.
“I thought you wanted me to be more active,” Tom smiles.
“I want you to work less ,” Spider aggressively rips a chunk of meat off a rib bone to further punctuate his point.
“It’s the way it is, Miles,” Tom sighs and moves around the island to sit beside Spider. When he does, his shoulders sag. He sports another weak smile and looks at Spider, who gazes at him with a brooding glower.
He’s not mad or anything. But Spider’s short on happiness or a consistent state of calmness, and he doesn’t see that changing anytime soon.
“Be back by eclipse tomorrow,” Tom says, and Spider nods silently, looking down at the scraps left on his plate. He was right; it makes him tired. He puts the dish in the sink and tries to slink out the door to his room, but Tom stops him with an outstretched arm. It moves from his shoulder to his nape, and Tom holds it there momentarily, looking into Spider’s eyes.
Something hangs in the air, something unsaid, but his hand falls after a slight squeeze, and Spider ambles into the dark hallway.
His room is quiet, and he longs to open a window and feel the cold night breeze— but he’s not supposed to sleep outside if he can help it, so he settles for bringing outside inside as much as possible.
From Kiri’s gifts— creeping ivy, twisted ropes of flowers and vines that are now dried and strewn from wall to wall— to the dirt that his dad disapproves of, which is partly why Spider makes it a point to track in as much of it as he can.
In truth, he longs for a life that he’s only barely been able to grasp; even still, he’s only caught the frayed edges of it. He looks at his dad, and then sees Jake, the living reminder that it is, or at least was possible, to cross the divide.
But Spider will never, could never have that chance until he dies, and hope that Eywa will favour him enough to keep him within her heart.
It’s a bitter, jealous envy that has Spider refusing anything to do with his father— with that man. It’s only worse, now that the Sky People are back. At least before, he could ignore it and pretend, but Neytiri’s distaste for him has returned just like the RDA, and Spider’s desperate to prove her wrong.
To prove everyone wrong, but mostly himself, that he belongs here. Pandora is his home; by Eywa’s grace, he’s alive, even though he’ll never know what it means to connect with her. With Pandora.
Collapsing onto the pallet bed that Lo’ak helped him fashion, he stares at the roof with one hand knotted around his song chord.
A measly, unadorned thread of leather dotted with a few beads. One he made, one from Kiri. Two that he and Lo’ak carved from an antler, and a few others. It’s fitting; Spider’s life is sparse, but there’s room— considerable room— for hope that there’s something to fill it with.