Chapter Text
Jake’s eyes flutter open, and this time, it’s a revelation. A new world, a new existence.
Previously, the connection felt tangible— a shift of consciousness, a blend of biology and artifice that toyed with the very fabric of the natural world. He was Na’vi, yet unmistakably human. Now, unfiltered and allowed by Eywa herself, Jake is truly, wholly different.
My Jake, Neytiri greets, and he pulls himself out of the dream-like state, away from staring up at the shimmering atokirina dotting the air high above and back down to reality.
His gaze drifts down to the body he was just in. His heart stutters for a moment. He’s seen Tommy in this body, but never himself.
He lays on his back, but that isn’t him anymore, is it? The ivy and roots that crept over his skin fall away onto the ground as he moves, but it still covers the tiny human frame on the forest floor. Beside Neytiri, Tommy stands, speechless in awe, but Jake can’t focus yet.
He leans in, his five-fingered hand hovering over the chest of… himself. He senses his breath halt and his heartbeat slow, as if descending into a deep sleep, until the roots above it fade and crumble.
He’s Na’vi. There are thousands of Omatikaya, now his brothers and sisters— watching him, gathered around the Tree of Souls— but Jake has no heart to pay them mind. Right now, there’s no one here but Eywa.
He takes his hand off the body and looks at Tommy. There’s something complex in how he looks at Jake— sadness, or envy? Jake frowns, but only for a moment. He feels Mo’at place a hand on his shoulder, and he’s still sitting at the base of the tree as she addresses the gathered crowd.
She reintroduces him as a child of Eywa, Toruk Makto— Rider of the Last Shadow— but all Jake sees is Tommy staring back at him.
Pride, he realizes. Tommy’s eyes glint with pride. Pride that he was right. Pride that he convinced Jake, his brash, lost and wandering brother, to find something he could fight for and derive purpose from; Jake will always, stupidly, be a marine— and spend his life searching for something to defend.
He’s finally found it. His eyes drift upward from Tommy to Neytiri, then out to the multitude of Na’vi staring back at him.
Jake smiles, and Eywa smiles back.
A raspy, chilling cry pierces Max’s medical office to compensate for Tommy’s stunned silence. Clearing out the RDA and sending them back to Earth is a complicated enough process to begin with.
However, none of the years of training and gruelling varsity could have prepared Dr. Thomas Sully for a screaming bundle of human child passed desperately to him from an underqualified— and understandably overwhelmed— field medic.
Two days. Two full days of no sleep, on top of whatever chronic bullshit Max is attempting to diagnose him with, and every minute not spent on a hospital bed is spent filling out paperwork and preparing the remnant of Selfridge’s team for cryo transport, demanding rigorous physical and mental preparation for an arduous journey across solar systems.
A baby. An orphaned, screaming, hungry wrench lobbed into the middle of the most stressful month and a half of Tommy’s entire life. The wails reach a decibel that shoots a pang in his skull, and he pinches the bridge of his nose with a sharp inhale.
“What,” Norm breathes, “are we supposed to do?”
“He can’t go in cryo,” Max states, and Tommy shoots him a look for his unhelpful comment and extends his arms. Norm stares at him dumbly for a beat before realizing what Tommy’s asking for, and he passes along the child.
Everyone on Pandora signed a pre-employment contract forbidding procreation, intentional or accidental. Technically, forbidding sexual intercourse, but the living, breathing disregard for every preventative measure that every human being on Pandora is aware of is cradled in Tommy’s arms.
He’s newly twenty-three, and so is Jake. Jake, at least, has a wife, but Tommy is… Tommy. He turned himself into a nanobiologist and moved halfway across the galaxy for a reason.
“Socorro,” Max says, and all eyes turn to him. “Paz Socorro… she, uh, died during the battle.”
“His mother,” Tommy hums. The kid blinks up at him, and he can’t decide if silence is good or if it means more tears are brewing. “What about the father? Is he here?”
Max and Norm share a look, and Max shuffles over to his desk.
“About that,” Max mumbles and shows Tommy a tablet. His eyes scan the text, blood-oxygen readings, and approximate age, and they land on two names matched to two photos and their respective biological data.
Father: Miles Quaritch, deceased.
“Fuck,” Tommy breathes and looks down at the baby. “She named him after… fuck,” he repeats. Something churns in his stomach, a terrible weight of guilt dropping into the pit of his chest, and he leans against Max’s desk.
He holds the swaddled baby closer to himself like it’ll take away the knowledge that Tommy killed his father.
He barely notices Max and Norm leave the small office, too caught up in whatever desperate, suffocating feeling has replaced his formerly calm demeanour Tommy’s been sporting since Jake’s transference.
It’s a guise, a poorly-drawn ruse, at best. His brother’s only fifteen klicks away in the jungle, the Omatikaya’s new clan home, but Tommy will regret telling Jake to leave him behind until the day he dies.
It all comes crashing all at once, and Tommy cries, silent, bitter tears, stunned and staring down at the helpless little thing in his arms. Abruptly, he twists and looks behind him, out the west-facing window in Max’s office, desperately and foolishly wishing that Jake would just come back and that he’d see him fly over the treetops.
The baby— no, Miles, has ceased to cry. Tommy’s selfish, too selfish to let his idiot brother forget about his humanity, forget about the consequences of living in a world that isn’t theirs. The kid in his arms is a painful but hopeful reminder that there’s something to keep them together, if only to console Tommy’s selfishness.
If he lost purpose with his brother burying… himself, Tommy’s just found it again, in an entirely different package. He smiles down at the child held tight to his chest, though his vision is still blurred.