Chapter Text
I was born knowing too much.
Not in words. Not in visions that made sense. Just a weight, as if something ancient had settled into my chest and decided to stay. I do not remember a moment without it. I do not remember becoming aware.
I simply was.
Eywa was not a voice then.
She was pressure. Warmth. A pull behind my ribs.
Dad used to say I was an easy baby. I did not cry much. I watched. My eyes followed movement too closely for an infant, my hands too still. Mom noticed first.
She would cradle me against her chest, humming old songs under her breath, and sometimes she would pause, just for a heartbeat, and look down at me as if I had spoken.
“You feel her,” she whispered once.
Growing up in the Sully family meant noise, movement, and collision.
Lo’ak was loud from the beginning, all limbs and questions and skinned knees. Neteyam carried responsibility like it had been placed on his shoulders before he understood what it meant. Kiri drifted between worlds even as a child, listening to things no one else heard. Tuk arrived like sunlight, all laughter and clinging hands.
And me?
I knew, even as a child, that what I carried was not meant to be shared.
When other children learned stories around the fire, I remembered different ones, metal birds cutting the sky, a burning world not born of Eywa, faces that did not belong to Na’vi. I knew the shape of weapons I had never seen. I knew fear that did not belong to this life.
I learned quickly how to pretend I didn’t.
The clan noticed before my family did.
Children can feel difference the way animals do. Some avoided me. Others tested boundaries, daring each other to get close. I did not push them away, I simply did not reach for them.
Lo’ak hated that.
“You’re weird,” he told me once, pouting when I refused to race him through the roots. “You never wanna play.”
“I play,” I said.
“Then why not now?”
I looked at him, my twin, and felt the ache rise sharp and familiar.
“Because I am tired,” I answered honestly.
He stared at me, then grinned. “That’s stupid, we just woke up!”
Maybe it was.
But I stayed calm.
Detached, they called it.
I don’t correct them.
Spider was… complicated.
He lived among us but never with us, not really. The others accepted him the way children do: without thinking too deeply. Kiri loved him fiercely. Lo’ak and Tuk treated him like another brother. Neteyam watched over him.
I kept my distance.
Not because I hated him.
Not because he was human.
But because every time I looked at him, the memories came to my mind stronger.
Metal halls. Cold floors. Human voices echoing through masks.
Spider saving the man who will cause so much suffering to my family.
I was never cruel to him.
I was never warm either.
Mom noticed.
She did not push.
My mother understood my silence.
She did not demand explanations. She did not ask questions I could not answer. When I sat beside her at the base of Hometree, staring into nothing, she simply sat too.
Sometimes she placed my hand against the bark.
“Listen,” she would say softly.
With her, I did not need to pretend that I was only a child.
She never asked what Eywa showed me.
She only made sure I was okay.
Dad was different.
He loved loudly. Actively. He wanted problems named so they could be solved. I did not have a name for what lived inside me, so I avoided his questions.
Still, when the memories became too heavy, when images pressed too close behind my eyes and breath came wrong, I found myself drifting toward him without thinking.
I would sit nearby. Lean against a post. Watch him sharpen arrows or repair gear.
I never spoke.
Neither did he.
But sometimes, his hand would rest on my shoulder, grounding, solid, and the world would stop spinning.
That was enough.
Eywa spoke to me differently than anyone else.
I felt her.
In roots wrapping gently around my ankle before I fell. In animals pausing instead of fleeing. On the way the forest grew quiet when I walked alone.
I knew things were coming.
I knew loss would return to us.
I knew the Sky People were not done.
But I did not tell anyone.
There was a moment, small, easy to miss, when something shifted.
I was older. Old enough to hunt. Old enough to understand that my siblings were not just echoes of familiar faces that I once saw on a screen.
Lo’ak was playing in the water with Neteyam and Spider, grabbing each other from the tail and making them fall. Kiri was laughing, joining the playful fight. Mom and Dad were watching us, mom seemed disgusted about Spider’s presence, Dad was looking over us with love in his eyes.
I was sitting close watching them and felt something crack.
Not pain.
Recognition.
They were not characters.
They were not shadows of a story I already knew.
They were mine, my family.
The memories did not disappear after that.
But they stopped owning me.
I didn’t miss my old life, but there was this single person whose absence made my heart ache. It made me feel incompleted.
My darling, my love, my beautiful wife.
I do not know where my other half is.
I know she exists in this life, the way you know the moon exists even when clouds hide it. Sometimes, in dreams, I feel her warmth.
Her breath. The echo of her laughter against my chest.
I never saw her.
Eywa did not let me go look for her, it was not the right time.
Eywa gave me only certainty, that I was not alone, that my darling was with me in this life too, Eywa told me to wait.
So I waited.
Calm. Detached.
Not lost.
Just waiting.
For the reason of my happiness.
I wake before the sun.
I always do. I don’t sleep much, everytime I close my eyes I see her, her smile, the way her eyes sparkled every time she saw something she liked, every time she looked at me. Thinking about her makes me miss her even more.
The forest is still dark, the air cool and heavy with mist, and for a moment—just a moment—I expect to feel her beside me. The weight of her arm across my chest. The steady warmth of her breath that used to anchor me, no matter where we were.
But there is only empty space.
Again. I lie still, staring at the woven ceiling of our marui, listening to the quiet rhythm of my family’s breathing. My mother’s inhale, slow, even, unwavering. My father’s deeper breath beside her. Tuck is between them, her face against our father’s chest. Somewhere nearby, cuddle up beside father, Neteyam shifts in his sleep, alert even in rest. Kiri murmurs softly, sleeping beside our mother, caught in dreams that always seem to stretch beyond the edges of this world.
And Lo’ak.
I know where he is before I hear him. A restless pulse of emotion, sharp and unguarded, brushing against my awareness like heat against skin. He is awake too. He often is when I am. All my family is cuddled in a mix of limbs.
I close my eyes and let the ache settle in my chest.
She is not gone, I remind myself, as I do every morning. She is simply… elsewhere.
Eywa has never let me believe otherwise.
By the time the first threads of sunlight filter through the canopy, I am already moving.
Domestic life grounds me. Father says routine sharpens the mind. Mother says it steadies the spirit. For me, it keeps the memories from rising too fast, too loud.
I help Neteyam prepare his gear, checking the tension of his bowstring, tightening the binding on his arm guard. He watches me with that quiet focus he carries so naturally—responsibility worn like a second skin.
“You were up early,” he says.
I shrug. “Couldn’t sleep.”
He studies me for a moment longer, then nods.
Everyone in this family knows.
They do not ask. They do not push. They know Eywa’s presence rests heavier on me than on most, that she has given me things meant for elders and shamans, not children. Feelings. Echoes. Knowing without words.
Kiri watches from across the clearing, eyes bright and distant all at once.
She senses it too.
Mother hands me a basket of fruit to clean. Her fingers brush my wrist, brief, grounding. She smiles, soft and knowing.
“You dreamed again,” she says quietly.
I nod.
She does not ask what I saw.
She never does.
Lo’ak drops beside me near the stream, splashing water with unnecessary force as he settles. “You’re doing that thing again.”
I glance at him. “What thing?”
“Staring at nothing like it’s supposed to answer you.”
A faint smile tugs at my mouth. “Maybe it is.”
He snorts. “Figures.”
There is affection beneath the teasing. Lo’ak lives loudly, emotion first, thought second. I live differently.
Watching. Listening. Holding. I can't help but think that he would get along very well with my other half.
He nudges my shoulder. “You gonna tell me what’s got you all quiet, or am I supposed to guess?”
I hesitate.
There are things I tell Lo’ak. And things I don’t.
I know the Sky People are not finished with us. I know the calm we live in now is fragile. I know there are places we will be forced to go, choices that will cost us more than we expect.
I say none of it.
Instead, I answer, “Just tired.”
He narrows his eyes, unconvinced, but lets it go. “Well, when you decide to stop being mysterious, I’m here.”
I meet his gaze, softer now. “I know.”
Later, I walk alone to the Spirit Tree.
I always do when the ache grows too heavy.
The tendrils glow faintly as I approach, responding before I touch them. Eywa’s presence settles around me, vast, ancient, familiar. I kneel, pressing my forehead to the roots.
“I’m still waiting,” I whisper.
There is no accusation in the words. Only the truth.
She does not show me images. Not fully. Only sensations, salt on skin, laughter carried by wind, the memory of hands that fit mine too well to belong to anyone else.
My wife.
My chest tightens painfully.
I know she lives. I know she has been reborn. I know our bond was not broken when our bodies were.
But waiting is the hardest part.
“I trust you,” I murmur. “But it is lonely without her.”
Eywa answers the way she always does.
Not with explanation.
With patience.
That night, I sit with my family as Lo’ak turns a simple hunt into legend. Father pretends not to smile.
Mother shakes her head fondly. Kiri listens more than she speaks.
I watch them all, committing this moment to memory.
Because I feel the weight of what is coming, even if I do not name it.
The peace will not last.
The forest will not hold us forever.
And somewhere beyond the trees, beyond the horizon I have not yet seen, the sea waits, with her in it.
I say nothing.
I carry the knowledge quietly, like an ember kept close to the chest.
And when I finally lie down to sleep, alone but not abandoned, I whisper into the dark.
“Find me.”
And far beyond leaf and root and reef, something answers, not in words, but certainty.
I am not alone in the waiting.
The forest does not sleep the way people do.
Even at night, it breathes. Insects hum low and constant. Leaves whisper to one another in voices too old to bother with words. Somewhere far off, something large shifts its weight, roots groaning softly beneath the soil.
I am awake.
Not because of a dream.
Because the forest hesitated.
It is subtle, so subtle that most would miss it. A pause between sounds that should flow naturally into one another. A breath drawn too sharply, held just a moment too long.
I sit up slowly in the marui, muscles tense, ears straining.
Nothing is wrong.
Not yet.
But the stillness presses against my skin, uncomfortable in a way I have felt before.
Far above the canopy, beyond what my eyes can see, the sky changes.
Mom and dad are on a date night.
She and my father take these flights sometimes, alone, when the clan sleeps and the world feels briefly, dangerously peaceful.
Somewhere above high ground my father tenses up looking at the sky.
He squints into the darkness.
And he sees it.
A point of light.
Big. White. Unmoving. Wrong.
The fire does not sound like an explosion.
It sounds like the sky tearing open.
A roar too vast to echo properly through the trees rips across the night, flattening the air, pressing sound into the ground. Heat follows, not a wave, but a wall rolling outward from an unseen impact point.
I am on my feet before the ground finishes trembling.
The forest screams.
Animals bolt in blind panic. Birds erupt from the canopy in a chaotic storm of wings. Somewhere close, something large collapses, its death cry cut short by another, closer roar.
Ash begins to fall like black snow.
Eywa does not speak.
Not because she is absent.
Because she is overwhelmed.
I feel her everywhere at once, not guiding, not warning. Her presence stretches thin, pulled in too many directions as roots burn and creatures die faster than she can cradle them.
This is not a message.
It is an injury.
I stagger as the sensation hits fully, my breath leaving me in a sharp, involuntary gasp.
No.
My hands curl into fists.
Not yet.
But even as the thought forms, I know it is already too late.
Mom and Dad ran away from the fire. animals screaming in distress beneath them.
Below, the forest ignites.
Trees older than any living Na’vi explode into flame as metal giants descend through the canopy, their engines vomiting fire into sacred ground. The night turns orange, then white-hot, then black with smoke so thick it chokes the stars from the sky.
Mom makes a sound, a cry, something torn from her chest as she watches the destruction spread.
Father doesn’t speak at all.
He looks at the destruction with my mother in his arms.
And somewhere far below, in the heart of the clan, I stand amid fleeing animals and falling ash, knowing with sickening certainty.
This is only the beginning.
Ash reaches us before the sound does.
It drifts down through the canopy in slow, spiraling flakes, glowing faintly where embers cling to it. At first, some mistake it for pollen, for spores shaken loose by some distant storm. A few children reach out instinctively, and are pulled back by their parents.
The ash is warm.
Too warm.
The forest’s colors begin to dull, as if the land itself is drawing inward, conserving what little strength it has.
Leaves curl. Vines tighten around trunks. The ground beneath my feet vibrates faintly, not enough to knock anyone down, but enough that every adult stills at once.
This is no thunder.
This is not Eywa’s voice.
This is something forcing its way into her body.
I move automatically, catching a young hunter who stumbles as the ground beneath us trembles once again, eyes with terror in them. An animal nearly tramples us both before vanishing into the trees, its panic so sharp it feels like a physical thing scraping along my nerves.
“Inside!” someone shouts. “Get the children inside!”
The marui erupts into motion. Mothers gather infants to their chests. Fathers grab weapons that have not tasted blood in too long. Warriors exchange quick, tense looks, questions flickering in their eyes that no one can yet answer.
I scan the treeline, heart hammering.
Not because I don’t know what’s happening.
Because I do.
And because knowing does not make it easier to watch.
Another tremor rolls through the ground, stronger this time. A distant roar follows, low and sustained, vibrating through bone and leaf alike.
Metal.
Fire.
Memory slams into me with brutal clarity: towering machines punching holes through the forest, flame raining from the sky, animals dying in droves before anyone understands why.
Bridgehead.
The name coils in my mind like a curse.
My throat tightens.
I force myself to breathe.
If I break now, I will help no one.
Mom and Dad arrive in a storm of displaced air.
Their ikran screech as they land, wings snapping wide, talons digging into the earth as if even they do not trust the ground anymore. Mom dismounts before the ikran fully settles.
Her eyes are bright with a fury so raw it makes the surrounding warriors instinctively step back.
Dad follows a heartbeat later, movements sharp, efficient,Toruk Makto replaced by Olo’eyktan in an instant.
“They’re back,” he says.
The words land like a blade driven into the center of the clan.
A low murmur ripples outward, disbelief and fear tangling together. Someone swears under their breath.
Someone else lets out a quiet, broken sound.
Mom turns in a slow circle. Her hands tremble as they curl into fists.
“They burned the forest,” she says, voice shaking despite herself. “No warning. No mercy.”
Her gaze lifts briefly, instinctively, toward the Great Tree.
Nothing moves.
No sign.
No comfort.
Eywa remains silent—not absent, not uncaring—but buried beneath pain too vast to shape into guidance.
I feel it like pressure behind my eyes.
Kiri stands near the edge of the gathering, her face pale, brows drawn together in concentration. Her queue trembles faintly where it rests against her neck, as if responding to something she cannot quite grasp.
“She’s… loud,” Kiri murmurs, more to herself than anyone else. “But not clear. Like, like trying to hear through water.”
There is frustration in her voice. Confusion. Not revelation.
Dad nods once, grim. “That tracks.”
Mom closes her eyes briefly, jaw clenched. “Eywa feels our pain,” she says. “But she does not tell us what to do.”
Orders come quickly after that.
Dad moves with the confidence of someone who has done this before, I know that he hates that he has to do it again.
“Scouts to the south and west. High ground only. Do not engage,” he commands. “We need eyes, not heroes.”
Warriors snap into motion, grabbing bows, checking blades, securing gear with hands that shake only slightly. Mothers usher children deeper into the marui, voices low and steady despite the fear vibrating through them.
I help where I’m needed without being asked, lifting supplies, tightening straps, steadying trembling hands.
My body knows what to do even as my mind races ahead, leaping from this moment to all the ones that follow.
The retreat.
The arguments.
The sea.
Lo’ak appears at my side while I’m securing a rack of spare arrows, his expression tight, mouth drawn into a hard line.
“You knew,” he says.
Not loudly. Not accusingly.
Just certain.
I don’t look at him. “Everyone knows now.”
“That’s not what I mean.” He steps closer, lowering his voice as another distant rumble rolls through the forest. “You weren’t surprised. Not really.”
I pause, fingers tightening around the leather strap in my hands.
Careful.
Always careful.
“I felt something was wrong,” I say. It is true. Just not the whole truth.
Lo’ak exhales sharply through his nose. “You always say that.”
I finally turn to face him.
My twin stands there with ash dusting his braids, eyes sharp and searching—so much like mine it almost hurts to look at him.
“You always act like you’re carrying something you’re not allowed to share,” he continues. “Like you’re waiting for the rest of us to catch up.”
Because I am.
Because if I say too much, I unravel everything.
“I didn’t know when,” I say slowly. “Only that it would happen eventually.”
His eyes narrow. “Eventually.”
The word hangs between us, heavy with implication.
Before I can respond, the ground shudders violently enough to knock a few people off balance. A deeper sound follows, closer now. A sustained, mechanical thrum that does not belong to any living thing.
Every conversation dies instantly.
The forest holds its breath.
There it is.
The sound that does not belong.
Lo’ak’s gaze flicks toward the horizon, then back to me. For a moment, something like fear cracks through his bravado.
“What do we do?” he asks.
I swallow.
I want to tell him everything, that this is only the beginning, that running will save us and break us all at once, that the ocean will become both refuge and exile.
I say none of it.
“We stay together,” I tell him instead. “No matter what.”