Chapter Text
The reef is calmer at dusk.
Not silent, never silent, but gentler. The beginning of the eclipse painting the waters purple to gold. Soft laughter comes from Awa'atlu, a serenity long forgotten after the war. The reef hums, light bending into long ribbons that drift across the sand.
Lo’ak floats just above the surface, fingers brushing the stray coral beneath him, watching the way the sky turns blue into something deeper.
Neteyam swims up beside him without splashing. He always does that: arrives like the water itself made room for him, even as a forest boy. He still moves with the grace of the son of Turku Makto. Lo’ak wishes he could relate.
“You’ve been out here a while,” Neteyam says, voice low, careful not to break the moment.
Lo’ak shrugs. “Didn’t feel like going back yet.”
Neteyam doesn’t ask why. He never does atleast, not right away. He just drifts closer, shoulder brushing Lo’ak’s, solid and warm and real. The kind of closeness that says I’m here without asking for anything in return. That was who Neteyam was… a perfect Sully. Lo’ak splashes him with water at the thought of that. Lucky Skxawng.
For a while, they just float.
A school of fish darts past, silver flashes cutting through the blue. Lo’ak watches them disappear and finally exhales, long and slow, like he’s been holding his breath since they asked for Uturu and left their home… maybe even longer than that.
“Do you ever feel like…” He hesitates. “Like you’re always just one step behind? No matter how fast you go?”
Neteyam’s eyes soften. He turns slightly so he can really look at his brother. “All the time baby bro.”
Lo’ak blinks, surprised for a second before settling in his humour.
“You? Well damn golden boy, where does that leave the rest of us ordinary skxawngs then?”
Neteyam smiles, rolling his eyes. “Being the oldest doesn’t mean you don’t feel lost. It just means you learn how to hold it together quietly when everyone else is watching you.”
Lo’ak lets that sink in, thinking of the pressure his brother must have felt every single day to keep things right. The water rocks them gently, pushing them closer.
“You don’t have to be perfect, you know,” Neteyam adds softly. “Not for Dad. Not for me.”
“I know,” Lo’ak says, but his voice sounds small.
Neteyam reaches out then, resting his hand over Lo’ak’s wrist, grounding him. A simple touch.
“You’re doing better than you think,” Neteyam says. “And even when you mess up, especially then” He squeezes once, firm. “You’re still my brother. Always.”
Lo’ak swallows, nods.
“Don’t get sappy on me now, I won’t fall for it.” He teases but still leans into Neteyam’s shoulder, not hiding it, not pretending he doesn’t need it.
For just a moment, the world feels balanced.
Above them, the first stars begin to break through the surface of the sky as the eclipse finally settles. If they don’t make it back to their Mauri in ten, Jake is going to tie their tails in a knot and put them on fish gutting duty tomorrow.
He turns his head, a smirk already building on his face to tell Neteya-
Oh. He thinks Right.
The space beside him is empty, and Neteyam won’t be coming home to the Mauri with him. Not now, not ever.
The Mauri is quiet when he walks back in. The tension long gone, what rests in their home now is almost worse: absence. Emptiness where emptiness shouldn’t exist.
Neytiri doesn’t acknowledge Lo’ak when he makes his way in. Her eyes glazed over and far away in some other world. Perhaps in a world where she didn’t have bury her first born.
Jake raises his eyebrows slightly at him. You’re late. Lo’ak knows it doesn’t take being a Tíshak to get that message. His ears flatten to his head for a second before he breaks eye contact with his father.
Kiri and Tuk on the other hand hold soft conversation with him as they hand him a steaming bowl. They look tired, sure. Exhausted even but they still smile at him. There’s a gentleness in it he can’t quite find in his parents anymore.
So he makes small talk with his sisters. From bracelets Tuk made from coral and seashells, claiming that ‘they’re for when I see Teyam again’ to new healing techniques Kiri learn from Ronal. The small talk doesn’t last too long, eventually dwindling down as Tuk falls asleep curled up between a disassociating Jake and a sleeping Neytiri. Kiri settles in her hammock.
The reflections of the sea dance against the walls of their Mauri. Lo’ak sits where Neteyam used to sit. Not because he chose to, because his body needed the comfort. Muscle memory is cruel like that. The bowl in his hands has gone cold, steam long vanished, but he keeps holding it anyway. His mother prepared that for them in the deepest of grief, he can’t get himself to toss it. Letting go feels like another kind of loss.
Jake eventually shifts, careful not to wake Tuk. He watches Lo’ak for a long moment, something unreadable sitting heavy behind his eyes. And if Lo’ak wasn’t so absorbed in his own mind, he might’ve seen the slight worry in Jake’s eyes. When Jake finally speaks, his voice is quieter than Lo’ak expects.
“You okay?”
Lo’ak nods too fast. “Yeah.”
The word feels wrong the second it leaves his mouth. It hangs there, thin and fragile, like it might shatter if he chooses to say anything else.
Jake exhales through his nose. He doesn’t push. He just nods once and leans back, eyes fixed on the woven walls like it might explain something neither of them know how to say.
“Tomorrow. Be back before eclipse. We have the Tulkun council tomorrow for Payakan. Behave Lo’ak. Your brother may rest in these waters but we are still forest people. We’ll stick out like a sore thumb.”
Jake’s words come with little to no emotion. Straight to the point. Orders. Lo’ak isn’t suprised, he hasn’t heard gentleness from his dad since the day he got caught by Quaritch.
To his own surprise, Loak nods, replying with a soft “yes, sir.”
Neytiri’s eyes open slightly.
She lays rigid, hands folded in her lap, staring straight ahead. Not at Lo’ak. Not at anyone. She subconsciously pulls Tuk closer, her eyes shifting to Jake’s hands… then Lo’aks. She lets out a sigh before closing her eyes feigning sleep, tail swishing softly against the hammock. Lo’ak feels his throat closing up at that, looking at his own for fingers. Does she regret this? He thinks.
The space where Neteyam should be feels louder than the waves crashing shore outside. Lo’ak feels it pressing against his ribs, suffocating.
He stands quietly, setting the bowl aside untouched.
He briefly makes eye contact with Jake, pleading.
Jake doesn’t stop him, a sense of rare understanding crossing between them.
Outside, the night air hits him all at once. Cooler. Sharper. The stars are brighter out here, scattered recklessly across the sky. He hates them for it, for shining like nothing has changed. Like the very core of his being isn’t lying motionless under the waves.
Lo’ak walks until the sounds of the Mauri fade behind him but close enough to see it. Until the water is close enough that he can hear it breathing.
He sits at the edge of the woven walkway, feet dangling just above the surface.
“Im sorry I did this to you,” he mutters to the empty space beside him. His throat tightens further. “That I never listen.”
Silence answers him.
Figures.
He squeezes his eyes shut, jaw clenched hard enough to ache. His shoulders circling in wishing he could make himself disappear. This time, there’s no steady hand on his wrist. No warm shoulder to lean into. No older brother to pull him out of his mental funk.
“I was right there,” he whispers. “I should’ve— I could’ve—”
The words tangle and collapse under their own weight.
Your brother rests in these waters.
Yeah. Right. And whose fault is that? His own mind throws back at him.
After a long while, Lo’ak feels it something small, but real. A memory. Neteyam’s voice, calm and certain.
You’re still my brother. Always.
Lo’ak presses his palm into the walkway, grounding himself. Breathing in. Breathing out. He looks up at the stars again, blinking hard.
“I’ll try,” he says softly. “I don’t know how… but I’ll try.” He owes him that much at least.
The tide brushes closer, cool against his toes, like an answer.
Lo’ak sits there until the night grows deeper, until the ache dulls just enough to stand again.
Tomorrow, he decides, tomorrow will hurt. But for once he decides he will listen, he will keep to himself at the council for Payakan. Agreeable. Smart. A perfect sully.
But for now, he gets back up.
And he walks home.
Lo’ak rises before the sun, muscles stiff, chest heavy, and tells himself today I will be quiet. Today he will listen. Today he will not give Jake another reason to look at him like he’s a problem to be solved instead of a son to be held.
A perfect Sully.
The council gathers as the reef wakes. Elders settle into their places, voices low, respectful. And finally Ronal and Tonowari take their place in front on the Matriarch Tulkun. The water beyond the open space glitters like it’s unaware anything is wrong.
Lo’ak kneels behind his father, hands folded, eyes down.
Agreeable.
Smart.
Invisible.
Jake glances at him with a look of surprised relief.
The name Payakan ripples through the council like a broken cliff side dropped into water.
Lo’ak breathes in slow and long. Spine straight. Eyes lowered. Breath measured. He repeats it in his head like a vow: do not speak, do not speak skxawang, please do not speak.
Ronal stands first, chin lifted, grief sharpened into something ceremonial and cold.
“The tulkun Payakan broke the way of the Tulkun,” she says, voice carrying across the water. “He struck. He killed. But he has also protected our people against the Sky demons. We as the Metkayina leave it up to the Matriarch to decide his fate.”
A low murmur moves through the Metkayina.
Tonowari remains silent, but his posture is heavy with authority. When he finally speaks, it is slow. Deliberate.
“The law exists to preserve the Tulkun way. To keep us from becoming what hunts us.”
Lo’ak’s jaw tightens.
Don’t speak. Don’tSpeakDon’tSpeak.
Payakan floats just offshore, vast and still. His presence presses against Lo’ak’s chest like gravity. The scars along his head catch the light- jagged, ugly. And like a magnet: they make eye contact.
Don’tSpeakDon’tSpeakDon’tSpeakDon’tSpeak
The Matriarch Tulkun finally speak. And it shakes the very earth beneath Lo’ak. A wave of electricity running up his body.
He has broken the Tulkun Way, not once but twice. He kills. He is no longer Tulkun. Not in the way we are.
Traditions an culture exist to preserve and protect the way of Eywa
This. This is not the way of Eywa
He must be outcast to the furthest corners of the sea. To his birth clan.
Ronal gestures sharply toward him. “Let him speak. Let him answer for what he has done.”
The sea itself seems to inhale at that.
I know the law, Payakan’s song echoes, deep and resonant.
I was raised in it. I believed in it.
But the Sky People did not come as hunters alone.
They came as executioners.
A ripple of unease spreads through the gathered Metkayina.
Lo’ak’s fingers curl into the sand.
I warned the child.
I warned the people of the reef.
They did not listen.
Tonowari’s gaze sharpens. “And still—you killed. That is not the tulkun way.”
The water darkens slightly as Payakan shifts.
I know.
The admission lands heavy.
I accept the judgment.
Lo’ak’s head snaps up. His breath stutters.
Then, it is decided. Payakan you are to be banished to your brithclan, in the far waters for as long as you may liv-
Lo’ak breaks his promise. He speaks.
“No!”
The word is out before Lo’ak realizes he’s standing.
Jake turns sharply. “Lo’ak—”
Lo’ak barely hears him.
“He didn’t just kill,” Lo’ak says, voice shaking but loud. Too loud. “He saved lives. He saved us.”
Ronal rounds on him. “You dare speak in this council, forest boy?”
Lo’ak swallows, chest heaving. He hadn’t meant to. He really hadn’t. But the words keep coming, spilling over the edge he’s been clinging to since yesterday. He cannot loose another brother.
Neytiri looks up at her son, the clear reflection of her husband, pleadingly.
“You say it’s not the tulkun way to kill,” he says. “But it is the Sky People way. And they don’t stop just because we follow rules.”
Tonowari’s expression hardens. “Enough!” His eyes dart towards Jake, Control your son! His expression seems to say.
Lo’ak doesn’t notice, blinded by his emotion he tries to walk up to the Olo'eyktan to speak but is immediately cut off by a strong arm on his shoulder, yanking him back towards the Mauri. As he’s led away from the council he hears his mother sigh defeated. Her oldest wouldn’t have spoken in such a way if he were here. But this is her Lo’ak, not Neteyam. And she loves him all the same. Grief or not. She plans to scold Jake later in the back of her mind for dragging Lo’ak away like that.
Council continues.
It is decided.
Back near the cluster of Mauri, Jake pulls Lo’ak out of the line of sight of the people.
“Dad you,” Lo’ak wheezes out between panicked breaths “you can’t just let them send him away like that! Listen—”
Jake cuts him off, anger rolling off his body in waves. A kind of anger that doesn’t let you register your words before you speak. A kind of anger that overshadows your love for a terrible, awful moment.
He had asked him to behave, why can’t he just… behave?!
“No, you listen!” Jake barks. Lo’aks ears immediately pin back, tail dropping low at the volume of his father’s command.
“This is war, Lo’ak! When you disobey orders people get killed! That’s why I’m always telling you to just listen.” He takes a sharp inhale, overwhelmed, failing to think through his words “but you never do! If you listened, if you hadn’t disobeyed orders, then your brother would still be–"
They both freeze at that.
Guilt and shock wash over Jake like an ice bucket. His eyebrows furrowing. Ears pinning straight back. He opens his mouth to say something. Anything. Anything that could take back the painful words he threw at his son. His only son. His Lo’ak.
The words don’t come.
Yet he has so much to say to him.
And the ones spoken just seconds before hit Lo’ak like a bullet. His body recoils backward, eyes glazed with tears he can’t contain. He shoves Jake back.
"That wasn’t my fault… that wasn’t my fault!" He yells through tears.
He turns before Jake can say anything else, before he can hear another word that might finish breaking him. Behind him, Jake doesn’t follow.
And somehow that hurts most of all.
That he has nothing more to say to him.
He storms toward the empty Mauri where they’ve been storing scavenged weaponry, vision blurred, heart pounding so hard it hurts to breathe. He’s not thinking. Or maybe, he’s thing too much. Too recklessly. He grabs a weapon. Something that’ll match the demon blood in his veins.
The people say when you touch steel, its poison seeps into your heart.
Lo’ak dives beneath the surface, letting the water swallow the sound of his breathing, his grief, his anger, his regret. He finally washes up shore on the far side of Awa'atlu. Gun in hand as he finally collapses into the ground. Sand scratching at his knees.
A couple clicks.
Safety’s gone.
A couple more clicks
In one swift fluid motion, there’s a cold barrel under his chin.
Behind him, the world keeps moving.
He stares out at the water.
Payakan is gone.
Neteyam is gone.
And he is still here, breathing like that means something.
The wind tugs at his braids, carries grains of sand against his face. He lets it. Punishment feels easier than forgiveness right now. Especially now after hearing the very thing he was trying to not believe said out loud.
From his fath- from Touruk Makto.
He thinks of Neteyam the way he was just… there. Present in all the perfect ways he needed to be. How effortless it was for him. How much greatness he had in him only for it to be cut short by Lo’ak.
Lo’ak presses his tongue against the inside of his cheek, hard enough to feel anything at all. His chest tightens until it’s almost painful to breathe.
“You would’ve known what to do,” he mutters, voice rough. “You always did.”
“I don’t want to do this without you” he whispers, pointer finger shaking over the trigger.
For a moment: just a cruel, flickering moment, he imagines Neteyam beside him, sitting with his arms resting on his knees, gaze fixed on Lo’ak.
But the image doesn’t hold.
He’s Terrified
Not in the loud way. In the quiet, sick way. The kind that settles in your chest and whispers don’t, don’t, don’t while your body keeps inching closer anyway. His fingers twitch on the trigger again.
He’s terrified, of what he’s about to do, what he’s doing. But he’s also desperate and in pain. He sits at the edge of the line, something in him waiting for the last final push.
It comes in the form of his father’s voice. Sharp. Controlled. Unforgiving.
If you hadn’t disobeyed orders, your brother would’ve still been alive.
“Lo’ak!”
Lo’ak flinches violently, heart slamming so hard it makes him dizzy. He twists around just as Jake makes it up the sand hill, breath uneven, eyes wide with something Lo’ak has last saw when Neteyam got shot.
Fear.
Jake stops short when he sees where Lo’aks hands are, how close his pointer finger is to cutting his life short. For a second, neither of them speaks.
“What are you doing?” Jake asks finally. His voice isn’t angry.
He can’t decide if that’s worse than the anger.
Lo’ak laughs weakly, a sound that cracks halfway out. “Not listening,” he says. “Apparently that’s my problem.”
Jake takes a step forward. Then another. Slow. Careful. Like Lo’ak might spook and bolt. Or worse, push his index finger down.
“Hey, hey, put the gun down,” Jake says quietly.
Lo’ak doesn’t move.
Jake’s jaw tightens. “Lo’ak.”
“Don’t,” Lo’ak snaps, tears finally spilling. “Don’t say my name like that.”
Jake stops again. His hands curl into fists at his sides.
“I didn’t mean what I said,” Jake says, and the words look like they cost him something. “About your brother.”
Lo’ak shakes his head hard. “You did. You just didn’t think you’d have to find me like this because of it.”
Silence.
Jake swallows. His voice drops. “I was hurting.”
“So was I,” Lo’ak says, raw. “I still am.”
Jake looks at him then, really looks. At the shaking hands. The way Lo’ak’s shoulders are hunched in on themselves. The dark circles under his eyes. At how his hands are clutching the weapon like a lifeline.
All the emotions hits him all at once.
He crosses the distance in three long strides and drops to his knees in front of Lo’ak, hands gripping his shoulders, not rough, not gentle. Just real.
“Baby boy listen to me,” Jake says, voice breaking despite himself. “You are not allowed to leave okay?”
Lo’ak sobs. “I don’t want to stay without him, I did this to him”
“You stay because your sisters need you,” Jake says hoarsely. “Because your mother needs you. Because I need you. Because you have so much to live for”
“Stay in this life Lo’ak”
Lo’aks grip finally loosens, enough to where he removes his finger and hears his father gently pry it from his grasp, saftey clicking back on.
Jake pulls him forward without asking, pressing Lo’ak’s forehead into his chest, one hand cradling the back of his head like he’s afraid to let go even for a second.
How could he have missed so much? Why did it take seeing this for him to be there for Lo’ak. Had he been that blindsided by his fears?
Is their relationship beyond damage?
Jake breaks the silence first.
“When you were little,” he says, staring out at the horizon, “you used to ask questions nonstop. Couldn’t go five minutes without one.”
Lo’ak snorts weakly. “You hated that.”
Jake shakes his head. “No. I Just didn’t know how to answer them.”
“Neteyam… he didn’t ask much. He watched. Learned. You…” He exhales. “You wanted to know why.”
Lo’ak swallows. “I still do.”
“I know.” Jake glances at him. “That’s what scares me.”
Lo’ak’s jaw tightens. “Because I don’t listen.”
“Because you don’t stop,” Jake corrects. “And because when you move, people followeven when you don’t mean them to.”
Lo’ak laughs, bitter. “Neteyam followed me.”
Jake closes his eyes at the name. When he opens them again, they’re wet. “He followed because he loved you. Because he thought if he stayed close enough, nothing bad could happen to you or your sisters.”
Lo’ak’s voice drops. “And he was wrong.”
Jake turns to him fully now. “No. I was.”
Lo’ak freezes.
“I taught him that responsibility meant standing in front of everyone else,” Jake continues, voice rough. “I taught you that disobedience was the worst thing you could do. And then I watched the consequences of both lessons collide.”
The wind kicks up, tugging at Lo’ak’s braids.
“I never wanted him to die for my rules,”
Jake says quietly. “And I never wanted you to think it was your fault.”
Lo’ak stares at the sand. “But it is.”
Jake eyes the gun resting in the sand now, how far he had pushed Lo’ak into that belief that he had no longer wanted to live. Simple words couldn’t reverse that.
“It isn’t, Lo’ak. And if I have to spend the rest of my life telling you it’s not I will. I promise. I’m sorry baby boy, I’m so sorry I pushed you to this. To thinking this would be the answer.”
Loak sighs, “I didn’t—” he starts, then stops. Tries again. “I wasn’t thinking.”
Jake watches him carefully, like he’s afraid to move too fast. “You don’t have to explain.”
Lo’ak lets out a short, embarrassed breath that sounds almost like a laugh. “Yeah… I do.”
He scrubs a hand over his face, avoiding Jake’s eyes. “I wasn’t… trying to” The word won’t come. He hates that it won’t. “I just wanted it to stop for a second, and that...”
Jake’s jaw tightens, but he stays quiet.
Lo’ak’s voice drops. “I didn’t think you’d find me. I didn’t think anyone would.”
The admission sits there, ugly and exposed.
“I feel stupid,” Lo’ak mutters. “Like- I’m not a kid. I know better. And still I was just there like” He gestures vaguely toward the weapon, cheeks hot. “Like that.”
Jake exhales slowly. “Pain doesn’t check how old you are.”
Lo’ak shrugs, defensive even now. “Still.”
He finally looks up then, eyes red, expression tight with shame more than tears. “You weren’t supposed to see me like that.”
Jake softens at that. Not pity but something closer to regret, closer to pain.
Oh, Lo’ak
“When you were little,” Jake says quietly, “you used to hide when you cried. Thought it made you weak.”
Lo’ak winces. “It does.”
“No,” Jake says, firmer now. “It makes you real if anything.”
Lo’ak looks away again. “Neteyam never-”
Jake cuts in gently. “Neteyam cried. Just not where you could see him.”
That stops Lo’ak cold.
Jake shifts closer, still not touching. “You don’t need to be embarrassed about hurting,” he says. “You need to survive it.”
Lo’ak swallows. “I don’t want to be… fragile.”
Jake huffs quietly. “Kid, you’ve been carrying more weight than most grown men I know. Fragile isn’t the word I’d use.”
Lo’ak picks at the sand, voice smaller now. “I just don’t want you thinking I’m… broken.”
Jake finally places a hand on the ground between them. Solid. Present. “I think you’re grieving.”
Lo’ak nods once. Then again. Shame still there but softer now, dulled by exhaustion.
“I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “For scaring you.”
Jake closes his eyes for a second. “you don’t need to apologize for that baby boy, Thank you for staying.”
Lo’aks eyes flutter down as exhaustion takes over him, head leaning against Jake’s shoulder as they sit in the sand. And before unconsciousness takes over him completely, he feels his dad tuck him further into his body repeating ‘I’m sorry’ like a mantra.
It’s been so long since he’s been held like that.