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Tucked behind a concrete pillar with his younger brother and Spider pressed close to his side, waiting for an ebb in the seemingly never ending torrent of gunfire isn’t where Neteyam had hoped this rescue mission would take them. Somewhere out on the open ship deck behind them, several sky-marines pace, waiting for the first hint of movement.
Ears pinned, Neteyam meets his brother's eyes. There's a sheen of terror in them that Lo'ak can’t quite contain that leaves them round and huge, and more than anything, Neteyam wishes for a world where ignoring it wasn’t the only option that would keep him breathing.
Neteyam exhales through his nose, short and sharp. “When I fire at them, you and Spider are going to dive, okay?”
“And leave you?” Lo’ak pants, incredulous. He’s sort of trembling, twitchy in the way adrenaline tends to make him. It’s more of a good thing, at the moment–he’ll be faster, more instinctive–and several times less likely to get hit.
Neteyams tail lashes, slapping against the pillar. “I can take care of myself. We don’t have time to talk about this, Lo’ak, so listen to me for once in your goddamn life and get ready to move.”
Lo’ak bares his teeth, ears flattening in turn, and takes Neteyam’s bicep in a grip so tight it’s just short of painful. “If you get shot or taken, dad is going to kill me.”
A laugh bubbles up from somewhere deep inside Neteyam’s chest, edged with hysteria. He forces it down. It’s sort of funny, to see the roles reversed after so long; Lo’ak has always been the one rushing forward, snapping his teeth at the bit. There isn’t a time Neteyam can remember where he hadn’t been the one to soften the consequences of his brother's spirit.
“Yeah, well good thing what I do isn’t up to you. Spider,” Neteyam ignores Lo’ak’s affronted expression and leans around him to meet the human's eyes, lowering his voice. “This is both of your eight second warnings.”
For a moment, Spider says nothing. Then, his jaw tightens in a way that isn’t pleased, but is resigned all the same. Spider looks to Lo’ak, whose eyes haven’t strayed from Neteyam’s face.
Spider nudges Lo’ak, almost nervously. “C’mon, man. Let’s get ready to roll.”
“Eight,” Neteyam says, turning to peek around the pillar and flinching back violently as another spray of bullets goes by, close enough he can feel the air stir. Lo’ak’s hand still burns a vice around his arm, and for a heartbeat Neteyam lets it. Lets his baby brother hold onto him, press close against his side, and refuses the way his eyes start to burn. “Six.”
“You’re gunna’ be right behind us, right?”
Neteyam's jaw tightens, twinging. “Yes. Four.”
His brother releases him, slipping into a crouch beside an already waiting Spider.
“Two,” Neteyam’s ear twitch, straining for anything, a breath or footsteps that would give them an advantage–
And then he spins, curling a finger around the trigger and unloads it in the general direction that the sky-soldiers had been stomping around in. “Go!”
He doesn’t see when his brother or Spider start to move, or even if they manage to fling themselves over the railing and down into the pool, but bares his fangs and snarls all the same; time is all he can give them. Neteyam whips the automatic weapon back around in another wide, deadly arc, with less thought to precision and more to keep the sky-people down and afraid.
If the boys make it, any splash is drowned out in the cacophony of gunfire and the shriek of groaning metal echoing from all around. Half-feral, Neteyam sort of hopes the demon-ship sinks and takes them all to the hell his father had mentioned with it.
It works for about seven seconds, which is already more than he’d allowed himself to hope for, and then the head of a sky-women pops up and he isn’t quick enough to take her out before she lays her scope on him. He’s recoiling backwards the same instant she unloads her latest clip in his direction, heart pounding so loudly he can hardly hear.
A chunk of the pillar next to his head explodes, and he swallows a yelp as he crouches, crowding back into the corner. It’s Ewya’s grace that Lo’ak and Spider hadn't been forced to retreat back there too.
Several other guns join hers in the spray, even more ferocious than before, as if offended by the fact Neteyam had dared to fire in retaliation. As if the desperate self-defense they’d been waging for hours and hours, years, was anything more than an attempt to go home, to protect themselves and each other.
They’d already lost so much–it wasn’t fucking fair. They’d taken his home, his grandmother, his childhood–
Sucking a breath and holding it deep, Neteyam willed his heart to slow, for the rage simmering to a boil in his heart to ease. It wouldn’t serve anything but to get him killed. And if he died, then there would be no one to stop his siblings from leaping right after him.
Knowing there would be no lull with several sky-soldiers firing at once, Neteyam breathes a quick prayer to Ewya, and sticks the muzzle of his gun out in another attempt at a bluff of blind fire. Only, the stolen machine gut splinters apart in his hands, enemy bullets blowing the muzzle to pieces. Some of the metal scraps ricoshay, shrapnel tearing into the flesh of his hands and hissing, Neteyam drops its twisted remains.
The cold, leaden weight of dread that’s been circling him for hours perks its dark head as the only weapon he had sits disfigured at his feet. The dread that’d appeared the first time his siblings had been strapped to the fucking handrail of this demon-ship hours ago sees his weakness, and rushes his limbs in a torrent of freezing understanding.
It had been a long shot they were all going to make it off of this boat.
But–he’d gotten his siblings to safety. And that was what mattered.
Not the fact that Neteyam would never leave this sky-peoples diseased creation, this ocean mongering ship, somehow the furthest from Ewya he had ever been. Not the fact he was just feet from the lapping blue of the moon pool, where the sleek figures of his brother and Spider had disappeared into the midnight beyond less than a minute earlier.
Has it only been that long?
All at once, how badly he wants his mother roots like an illness in his chest, weaving tight between his ribs. Almost angrily, he sinks his teeth into the weakness of his wobbling lip, pinning its quiver.
But still, he wants the light scratch of her nails as she braids his hair, the gentle scent of mosses and rainwater sunk into her skin from a life in the forest. Neteyam wants his mother so badly he can’t breath, a lump catching in his throat. She would make everything right, because she always did.
He was going to die, and he didn’t want to do it alone.
Another round of bullets rips past him and further crumbles a portion of the concrete pillar that shielded him. Again, he drew back, shuddering.
He has to try. If he was going to die, it wasn’t going to be because he rolled over and showed his belly–it was going to be because he went down snarling like the warrior he had been raised to be. It was going to be in a way that would show his father he had tried to make it back to them.
Maybe if he threw the gun, it would be enough of a distraction–and it had to be. It was all he had left to make count. And it had to count.
Mouth dry and tail curling tight to his thigh, slowly, Neteyam uses his foot to lift the mangled gun to his hands, and waits, listening. One last time, he lifts his eyes to the slot of sky peeking through the overhead opening, watching as the last of the dusk's light dissolved into blackness.
There was no lull in gunfire. There wouldn't be.
Now.
Gathering what icy adrenaline had been sitting, waiting under his skin to keep him alive, Neteyam hurls the gun back towards the deck and darts forward, crouching in preparation to dive–
And for a heartbeat, it works. The sky-people track the moving object on instinct, pelting the already mangled weapon with a torrent of bullets.
Then a dozen bullets whistle towards him instead, and a pinching burn spreads from the center of his shoulder and numbs the length of his left arm in less than an instant. He shrieks, feeling another sink into his thigh before he stumbles sideways, almost blinded by the dazzling, fire-like pain. The dryness in his mouth dissipates as the distinctly metallic taste of arrowheads overtakes it, leaving him gagging in the onslaught.
But then something drops down from the overhead rafters, sleek and heavy and Neteyam is being curled to a chest and rolled before his brain manages to process the thought that he’s been shot.
It’s a Na’vi, Neteyam realizes dazedly, as the man moves quicker than he can keep up with, and brings them to a skidding halt behind some concrete half wall, barely big enough to conceal even one of them. Less than a second later, another wash of bullets fly overhead, and the Na’vi hunkers down harder, shielding him from the rain of red and orange sparks as bullets met steel.
“Neteyam?” A voice grits out, rough and half-breathless. “Neteyam, where did they get you?”
As the cool, wind-whipped scent of his saviour fills his nostrils, it strikes him that this is his father.
Still too stunned to do much beyond pant in the onslaught of the lighting-strike pain, any words he tries to muster wither behind the dry thickness of his tongue. He shivers, and then flinches violently as the next wave of bullets sink into their concrete wall, much closer than they’d been last time.
His ears flatten to his skull, trying in vain to shield him from the painfully sharp crack of metal on metal. It digs into his eardrums anyways, and his tail curls between his legs far quicker and more instinctive than he can control.
It’s something that babies do when they're too small to have any real hiss or bite–he’s fifteen and far past when he should've been coddled.
But the warm hand of his father finds the back of his neck and squeezes, holding him firm to his chest. His father has always seemed large, even for a Na’vi, but at this moment, he's enormous. “It’s okay, kid, you’re okay. Breathe, breathe with me, Neteyam. Just hold on.”
And somehow, the words slip between the chasm of crashing panic and frantic thought, and Neteyam finds his fathers breath, deep and slow. Calming. Little by little, and probably far too slowly for the level of shit they were in, the warrior training he’d been raised with kicks in.
“Sir,” He manages, coming back to himself. His voice is weaker than he’d like, more of a wavering croak than the statement he had meant it to be. As if a reminder, his wounded shoulder pulses in throbbing waves, and he swallows against them. “Are you hit?”
Shielded and half-cradled to his dad's chest, there’s no space to look up and meet his eyes when he asks this. Instead, Neteyam simply feels the stutter of his fathers breath, and feels harsh press of his mouth against the crown of his head. “Oh, baby. No. I’m fine, but we gotta get you outta’ here and get that shoulder checked out. You’re gunna be okay.”
He hasn’t been called baby since he was about five years old–it doesn't matter. The effect of it is instantaneous. The wobble of his lip returns with a fierceness he can’t quite smother, and even though they’re not even close to being out of this situation, Neteyam can’t ignore the feeling that his dad can fix just about anything.
“I’m sorry,” Neteyak forces out, feeling his head loll and fighting to keep it steady as the surety of his dad's presence slows his racing heart. The never ending pop pop pop of bullets continues to ring out from behind them.
“What?” His dad asks, just a puff of breath. “No, no, no, kid, you did so much right. Nothing’s your fault.”
Neteyam lets his eyes sink shut, just for a heartbeat. Just to rest them. Heavier than they’d ever been, it takes a momentous effort to ignore the pull of the darkness they offer. “S’not Lo’aks, either. We..we had to get Spider.” He swallows, throat thick.
The hand supporting the back of his neck tightens. “I–. You’re right. I know. Just stay awake and then you can tell him that yourself, okay? Kid?”
The question bounces around his skull, jumbling and disjointed until Neteyam isn’t sure it was ever a question at all. Fighting with the effort he’d use to swim in quick-mud, he forces his eyelids to lift. This time, black spots dapple his vision, and a new sense of nauseous curls at his gut.
But his dad fits a hand to his cheek and strokes under his eye with a thumb. “Neteyam. C’mon, please.”
He doesn’t ever think he’s heard his dad’s voice waver like this before. So, Neteyam pushes out a slow, controlled breath through his nose, and nods. Overtop of him, his dad’s face is drawn, eyes tight as they search his face. “M’good.”
“Okay.” His dad says, amber eyes flickering between him and where the sky-people waited. “Then hold your breath."
Before Neteyam’s brows can even crease in confusion, his father tugs a canister from his chest wrap and tears the pin from it with his teeth. It’s whipped over the half-wall not even a second later, and then Neteyam is being tossed like a gutted hexapede over his dads shoulder, stomach rolling and shoulder screaming as his nauseous triples, but before he can even open his mouth to vomit or cry out, he’s being dumped over the railing of the moon pool into the torrent of water below.
Jake Sully has been many things.
He has been a human being, a twin, and a marine. He’s been a paraplegic, a drunk, a spy. A traitor. Anything worth mentioning comes after these things: one of the people, a mate, toruk makto. A Na’vi.
Somehow, becoming a father is more to bear than any of these things combined.
This is not to misunderstand; he would die for Neytiri, his equal. The fire to his fire, the fang to his bite; there's no one else on any planet whose soul would match his flicker for flicker. She’s his, as he’s hers. That is why he knows in his bones that she feels the same; that the children they’ve raised and loved, fought so fiercely to protect, have become the foundation of their everything.
The unfamiliar, starbright joy that had seeded in his chest the first time Neteyam had gripped his thumb with his stubborn little fingers, at Kiri’s first giggle, bounced up and down on the knee of her grandmother–dominates all.
The ocean of love for his children stays him afloat. It’s what allows him to fight back, some fifteen years later and more furious than he’s ever been to be caught in a war that he should have truly ended before his firstborn took his first breath.
All the war waged, the responsibility Neteyam had been saddled with when he was yet to reach Jakes hip with the top of his ears; it shouldn't have belonged to him.
Neteyam was, and is a child. His son is just cresting fifteen years old and spends half his time ensuring the survival of three younger siblings, too young for the weight of them all, but too old not to hold it all the same.
All at once, it’s all Jake can see; how young his son is, how slight his frame, how young all of his children are, pressing up against a war they didn’t have the chance to grow up without.
And this is where it has finally led them; crouched behind a concrete half-wall barrier of an RDA ship, his son riddled with bullets and bleeding out in his arms. It’s bad, and it doesn't take Jake being a combat veteran or clan leader of fifteen years for him to know that.
Already, Neteyams eyelids flicker, his gaze hazy and unfocused as he struggles to stay awake. Swallowing tightly and forcing the whip of his tail to still, Jake shifts, supporting where his son's head tries to loll. “Neteyam. C’mon, please.”
He’s ragdoll limp in Jake's arms, his normally deep skin paling to a frightening grey-blue with each shaky breath he takes. It’s not a surprise, with the blood that gushes from the twin bullet wounds, one straight through his shoulder and the other still embedded somewhere in his thigh.
That’s the one that frightens him the most, if anything can be worse than the moment he’d watched his first born be riddled with gunfire, seconds too late and meters too far to stop it. No, Jake is no scientist, but even he’s aware of the major arteries that run through the thigh.
His brave, beautiful boy struggles against the exhaustion and pain that undoubtedly clings to him, and takes small, ragged breaths. When he speaks, it’s little more than a rasp. “M’good.”
The wound at Neteyams shoulder pulses hot as if to disagree, more blood sluicing down over his skin to join the rapidly expanding pool beneath where Jake cradles him. The gunshot on his thigh isn’t doing much better, but there’s nothing that can be done for it now; there isn’t time or material to try for a tourniquet, and applying pressure can only do so much.
Neither of those things will matter because if he doesn’t get Neteyam out of this goddamn ship now, his son is going to bleed out in his arms, and that’s a future Jake cannot allow.
Another shower of bullets rips by overhead and Jake fights a snarl at the threat, grief born hatred burning hot in his chest for the future these people had ripped from his children before they'd even been old enough to reach for it. For what he himself had been.
Coming here as a sky-person was a sin that would always mark him. Ignorant, self-important and ruinous; they're all things he'd unapologetically embraced. He was different now, yes, but still trying to make amends, always leaving his old self behind. It hadn’t mattered; running from the past had done nothing but drag it with them, punishing whatever creature it caught in its path.
The sky-people would destroy everything if they were left to their own devices.
It was Jakes duty to fix it. Not his sons. Not yet.
They might be Na’vi, and on the cusp on what was considered adulthood, but it didn’t fucking matter; they’d lost the majority their childhood to this shitshow of a war. Jake has had enough.
Ears flattening, Jake searches his sons face, desperate for something Neteyam might not have left. It didn’t matter; they were out of time and choices. Gritting his teeth, Jake squeezed the back of his neck once more. “Okay. Then hold your breath.”
It takes everything Jake has to move, to leave their temporary shelter and risk Neteyam again. But, he does.
Taking the final canister of tear gas from his chestwrap and whipping it at the humans, Jake pricks his ears, listening for the tell-tale explosion, and then vaults towards the moon pools rail not even ten feet away. Praying to whatever god might be listening, to the great mother herself, Jake dumps his son's body into the sea.
And then, he unleashes himself upon them.
The first human doesn’t see him coming, still whirling blindly in the haze of greenish fog, and then his bones give and shatter with a blow he has no way to avoid. The second notices Jake and the death of his comrade, but it doesn’t matter. He gets a lucky shot in, one that burns like fire as it rips through Jake's side just below his ribs, and then is promptly crushed by the weight of a ten foot tall Na’vi male.
Jake kicks away the gun and spins, fangs bared and ears cocked as he checks for what other humans hadn’t fled like roaches upon his appearance, but all is silent beyond the faint shrieking of battle outside, and the creaking metal of the bow. He narrows his eyes, weight shifting.
The pricking of hair on the back of Jake's is the only warning he gets. In an instant, he’s rolled himself sideways, hearing the shing of a knife blade where the side of his neck had been seconds earlier.
Jake hisses, dropping deeper into his crouch and drawing a knife from his belt as his attacker whirls to face him. Through the slowly clearing fog, the outline of a Na’vi woman walking upright and armed to the teeth, is what greets him.
“Oh,” Jake says, head tilting and mouth curling in a sneer of a smile. “Just another false-bodied bitch.”
She curls a lip in return, the angle of her knife catching the light and glinting silver. It’s a sharp, beautiful thing. It still doesn't belong on this planet.
The newly made marine in an avatar's body drops into a clumsy crouch of her own as Na’vi instincts war with whatever human marine they’d stuck inside of it. He doesn’t recognize her in this body, and doubts he’d recognize her in her former–and it doesn’t matter regardless.
She’ll think like a human, and move like one too.
So, when she darts forward, Jake Sully rips out her blue, tattooed throat with his bared teeth.
Several things happen very quickly; Neteyam’s stomach drops, the wave of nausea surging as he plunges into the cool evening sea, too stunned to even manage a full breath before the ocean seals itself above him.
Instinctively, Neteyam stretches, trying frantically to swim as his unprepared lungs seize, sucking in a breath against his will; what he gets is a mouthful of seawater and a renewed sense of terror. Lighting forks of pain spring from his shoulder and thigh in the same instant, igniting every nerve with fire, and within seconds he loses whatever semblance of feeling remained in his left arm.
There’s no way he can get himself above the water, not like this; there is so little strength left in his limbs that each action feels enormous, and even if he could it would risk a bullet in his skull-
But his father is still up there. Fresh, delirious panic courses through him, and ignoring the shrieking burn of his thigh, Neteyam kicks out as hard as he can, cradling his wounded arm to his chest.
In seconds that pass like hours, he breaches the surface with a hacking gasp, head tipping back in an effort to keep his mouth and nose above the waves. It doesn’t matter; without his arms, he can’t get high enough to avoid the choppy waves flooding his face, and sinks back under.
Please, please, please-
Struggling through to the air again, Neteyams next coughs are lost to the collision of sound from somewhere above. Gunshots. He doesn’t have enough air in his lungs to cry, so gurgles a shout. “Dad!”
Neteyam sucks in another wet breath, kicking harder as another wave rolls over his face, spitting and choking on the sea. He just has to wait a little longer, has to hold out for the sound of his dad's voice and then he can rest. Just awhile longer.
But, something in his hindbright eases, relaxing into the cradle of the water. He isn’t far from Ewya here at all.
Dark spots dance across his vision again, spinning and blurring the ceiling far above.
Another wave slips over him, tucking his head beneath the surface. This time, he doesn’t choke, or gasp. He sinks. Slowly, the monumental effort that it had taken to keep himself afloat leadens his limbs, dragging him to stillness. Around his limp form the water blooms in crimson, but holds him all the same.
It’s the last thing he feels before there is nothing at all.
The sea gives, and the sea takes.
Wind chimes peal somewhere in the distance, the gentle tickle of sound twitching his ears. There’s other noises, too, like the sea-salt breeze whistling through the round-huts, and the gentle lapping of waves, but Neteyam likes this one the best.
That is, until his mothers quiet humming picks up beside him.
Something thick lodges in his throat at the knowledge that unless his mother had passed with him, he’s alive. He had made it off of the demon ship, and he was in the not-quite home they had made here with the Metkayina, and he was alive.
Experimentally, he twitches his toes, and feels the burn of ruined muscles in his upper thigh as they tried to obey his commands. Neteyam works his way up his legs, little by little, checking for any missing pieces.
He was most definitely alive; he wouldn’t be so fucking sore if he was with Ewya.
The gentle humming of his mother quiets when he reaches his hands, trying to twitch each finger. His right hand curls and stretches; his left one reacts with little more than a twitch.
It’s attached, he tells himself, fighting the irrational urge to cry. He still has an arm, and he’s alive to use it.
“Ronal says the bullet tore through a nerve.” His mother murmurs eventually, closer than he had expected. A calloused hand settles on his cheek, the gesture familiar and comforting.
He knows he has to look at her. That it’s not something he can avoid. But he’s going to know, when he does. And he doesn’t know if he can quite bear it if there’s grief on his mothers face.
Neteyam is incredibly tired of bearing things, even if he loves those he carries.
Yet, there is a certain type of backbone being the oldest has left him with, and he grips it with both hands. Neteyam swallows the thing at the back of his throat and the sickness in his belly, and tries blinking his blurry, sticking eyes. When his vision crispens, it occurs to him that it’s dusks light peeking into their hut, and that he’s been asleep for much longer than he’d realized.
Half of his mothers mouth quirks in what’s not a smile, but part of one, when his gaze finds hers. “Bone pieces in the socket of your shoulder, too. It’s a bad injury.”
There are dark, purple circles beneath her eyes, and tension lines around her mouth, but her eyes are bright when they meet his.
Neteyam’s eyes water, and in an effort not to cry, he presses lips together. It doesn’t seem to matter; tears line his lashes, warm and thin, as something in his soul relaxes with the truth she’d given him.
The words slip out of him, whatever leash he’d held himself on slackening, too. “I thought I was going to die, momma.”
It is a quiet, barely there admission of truth.
The rub of her thumb under his eyes stills. “I know. But, my brave boy, you did not. And you will not.”
Sniffling, Neteyam turns his nose into her palm, nuzzling into it, and tries not to wince at what the small movement takes from him. “It aches. And I…I want to go home.”
A sort of strangled inhale comes from where she kneels beside him, and Neteyam opens his eyes to peek at the expression on her face, already regretting the admission he hadn’t meant to make. “I’m sorry.”
“I do as well. Every day.”
Neteyam’s lip trembles, and this time he doesn’t bother to stop it.
His mother looks down at him, beaded braids tinkling with the motion, and so much older than she'd been months before. “And that is not weakness.”
The conversion lulls, something easy and welcome in the silence that cradles them. Neteyams family is alive, and so is he. Things might not be good but they’ll be okay, because they have each other.
Sleep comes to Neteyam at some point he doesn’t remember, but it’s fully dark in their house when he opens his eyes next. It’s his shoulder that woke him, undoubtedly; even like this, spread carefully on his back with cushion propping him, pain rolls from it like the sea, throbs like a brand under his skin.
Sweat is cooling on his skin, leaving him uncomfortably damp; he needs whatever pain meds Ronal had been dosing him with so badly he can’t breathe. When he opens his mouth to call for his mother, only a sort of strangulated moan comes out.
It wakes the figure he hadn’t noticed curled beside him, who speaks with a voice sleep riddled and deep. “Neteyam?”
“Dad?” Neteyam whimpers, almost rigid with pain. “It really hurts, really bad.”
His dad is moving before he’d finished the sentence, reaching for a pot of something that smelled faintly medicinal as soon as the clay lid was lifted. He’s back before Neteyam can ask what it is, reaching one hand under his neck to help lift his mouth to the rim of the bowl.
“I know, my boy. This’ll help, you just gotta’ give it a minute to kick in.”
The liquid that meets his tongue has a faint milky taste to it in addition to whatever herbs had been added, still surprisingly warm. His father sits with him until he finishes the whole pot, and slowly, as the comforting mixture settles like a warm glow in his belly, the dull throbbing ebbs.
Warm, drugged, and more or less pain free, his eyelids droop once more. Still, curiosity gets the better of him. He knows distantly that everyones alright, but hearing it spoken aloud is different. “Everyone okay?”
There’s the gentle click of the ceramic meeting the woven floor, and the outline of his father turns to face him. The darkness does little to obscure the strange mixture of pride and remorse that flickers across his face.
“Yeah, they’re all good. Mom’s in the next room with Kiri, Lo’ak, and Tuk all on her bed. Spider’s in an extra room for now, too. No one's hurt.”
“Cept’ you.” Neteyam disagrees drowsily, nodding to the wrap of white fabric around his dads midsection.
Huffed, quiet laughter comes from his father, and carefully, he crawls back to his sleep pad beside Neteyam. “I’m fine. A bullet went in and out and missed everything important.”
“Oh,” Neteyam manages. The sweat on his skin has dried, and exhaustion runs thick like sap through his muscles, a tempting siren song of a lullaby. “S’good.”
Again, the waves and the windchimes dance.
“I love you, Neteyam.” His father says in English, unexpectedly. And then, back in Na’vi; “I see you.”
In the dark, Neteyam feels for his hand and squeezes it. “See you, too, dad.”