Work Text:
To be honest, Jake didn’t stop to think about everything that happened with Spider until it was well and truly done. And who could blame him? Neteyam had died and his family had been displaced and Quaritch had come back from the dead in an avatar that Jake couldn’t help but feel as though it was done specifically to taunt him, and the whole ordeal with Varang and the Mangkwan and the RDA – well, Jake had been too busy to think about anything else other than surviving, and keeping his family safe, and just putting one foot in front of the other.
So, he didn’t think about it at all, not until he rounded the corner into the marui pod his family called home to see his children all clustered together, Spider seated in the middle with his legs stretched out in front of him, and his weight braced on his hands behind him. While Tuk and Lo’ak reapplied Spider’s blue stripes with dips from fingers into the wooden bowl filled with the paint they had made, retracing the stains of years’ worth of previous applications, Kiri sat behind him and carefully and gently braided a length of his long hair around his recently developed kuru with nimble fingers adept at such a task where Spider would’ve failed.
“Is it strange?” Tuk asked, scooping more paint up into her hand. “Without the mask?”
“Yeah,” Spider said. “I keep going to check it and then freak out when I don’t feel it. And I get hit in the face a lot.”
“It’s true,” Lo’ak added cheerfully, and Spider moaned, as if he knew what was coming. “Yesterday he swam into a bunch of kelp, and I had to unwrap them from around his neck before he choked himself.”
“That’s not true,” Spider retorted, but it was high-pitched, a lie and a bad one. “You’re exaggerating. It was dark, okay? I didn’t know it was there.”
“Even when I said, “brother, look out for the kelp, it’s right in front of you’?”
“Shup up, Lo’ak.”
Lo’ak sniggered and Tuk grinned, and for a moment, Jake, standing in the entrance and hidden partially by the woven wall, was struck by how similar they looked. The same mischief in their eyes, the promise of trouble in the point of their fangs as their lips were pulled back in teasing laughter. “I am glad you didn’t drown,” Tuk told him seriously. “It would’ve been very sad for you to forget how to breathe.”
“You’re lucky I can’t get my hands on you,” Spider warned her, feebly waving his hands in her direction as if to reach for her. “You'd better run, Tuktirey, because when Kiri is done, you’re gonna get it.”
Both Tuk and Lo’ak snickered. Even in his dreams and this newfound blessing from Eywa that nobody quite understood yet, he couldn’t catch them, no matter how hard he tried. Kiri wasn’t smiling, though. She was looking down at the purple tendrils at the end of his kuru in her hand with a sad, thoughtful expression.
“Kiri,” Lo’ak asked, tilting his head to the side as he watched his sister’s inspection. “What is it?”
But Kiri only shrugged and returned to manhandling Spider’s hair. She moved on from his kuru and began tugging at his dreadlocks despite his protests. But Tuk ducked around Spider’s body and snatched up the end of his kuru and brought it forward to wave the tendrils in front of his face. “Have you done Tsaheylu yet?”
“The bond?” Spider mused, taking the end of the kuru from her and turning it back and forth. “I have, but I don’t think it counted.”
This was news to Jake. The new developments with Spider’s breathing and the growth of his kuru and the apparent blessing of Eywa were all so sudden and unexpected that they hadn’t really gotten to unpack that yet, but Jake would never have expected for Spider to have already gone through his first Tsaheylu and for him to claim that it didn’t count. Coming from Spider especially felt odd. Jake remembered his own first Tsaheylu, and he would never really forget it and could not imagine Spider just brushing it off like it was nothing.
But as always, it was his oldest daughter who answered his questions for him. “Varang,” She spat, her face twisting in disgust. “She was his first bond.”
“I wasn’t even conscious, Kiri,” Spider tilted his head back so he could peer at her upside down. “That’s why it doesn’t count.”
“She hurt you,” Kiri said, twisting Spider’s hair the way she would twist her hands, and he yelped, finally detangling himself from her grasp and shifting so that Tuk was between them, his hands on her shoulders as if using her as a shield. Tuk giggled at being manhandled. Jake knew that Kiri would feel apologetic about Spider’s rough treatment later, but she was currently too angry to care. “She violated you; she allowed Quaritch to take you and - ”
“Kiri,” Spider said tightly, lowering Tuk back down to rest on her haunches on the ground. Over his shoulder. Lo’ak was staring at the back of his head as if his kuru could give him the answers, his eyes darting to Kiri with the unspoken demand to explain herself, worry written in the crease of his brow. “Come on, it’s not that big of a deal. It’s all over now, right? I don’t even care about it.”
“Maybe we should talk to dad,” Lo’ak said, wary in a way that he never was and became only after Neteyam’s death. Jake would almost cherish this new trait if not for the circumstances that encouraged it. “Maybe he could… I don’t know.”
“Maybe you can do Tsaheylu with dad, and then that can be your real first time?” Tuk said innocently to Spider as she leaned back against his chest to lay her head on his shoulder.
Lo’ak and Kiri were too busy staring intently at each other, passing along some wordless message in a way that all the siblings always seemed to share, and missed the small, sweet smile Spider gave Tuk as he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close. “That sounds like a plan. I’ll ask him later.”
Jake knew that Spider had no intention of asking him for anything. Jake had always liked Spider, had always appreciated his tenaciousness and the way he treated his children, his joy and kindness and understanding so infectious that they flocked to him just as often as he sought them out. Only recently had he started to see Spider as more of a son, and he was ashamed of that, but he had always cared for the boy, always worried about his welfare and made sure he was being taken care of, for his children’s sake more than anything else. They would be devastated if anything happened to their best friend, and Jake would never forgive himself if anything happened to a child under his watch.
But Spider still acted as though he was separate from their family, even though Jake had called him son, even though Neytiri had claimed him as her blood, even though Spider had been forced to his knees and had looked at Jake with tears in his eyes as he called him dad and asked do you still love me? Neither of them had brought it up again, probably because bringing it up would require them to mention that Jake had been about to kill Spider before he lost his nerve. The memory still filled him with shame and revulsion. He loved Spider. Admittedly, he had for a long time now, even when he hadn't wanted to admit it ot himself.
Which is how he knew that Spider would never ask to do Tsaheylu with Jake, the same way Jake would never ask him the exact details and circumstances that resulted in him being able to suddenly breathe the Pandora air. Not now, at least. Maybe he’d ask Tuk, or Lo’ak, neither of whom seemed shocked by the revelation, whereas Jake felt like his whole world was crumbling around him and being rewritten while he and Quaritch watched them be held captive by the Mangkwan. They’d probably tell him if he played his cards right.
Clearing his throat, Jake stepped into the marui and acted as though he hadn’t been listening by the entrance for the past five minutes. The kids all looked up at him as he joined them on the floor, crossing his legs beneath him as they gave him their full attention, Tuk still leaning against Spider’s chest.
“Hey,” Jake greeted them all with a smile. It wasn’t forced, and it was genuine. It might’ve been one of the easiest things he could ever do. “What’ve you guys been up to?”
“We made new paint for Spider’s stripes,” Lo’ak held up the wooden bowl and tilted it forward so Jake could see the remains of the blue paint they had made and applied to Spider’s skin. “He’s very red, do you know that? Not pink at all.”
It was true. After over a decade of being outside at the Omatikaya Village and the forests, Spider’s skin had acclimated to spending so much time under the sun that it had tanned to accommodate the constant exposure, but the relentless heat and blistering sun of the Metkayina reefs were something else entirely, and Spider was paying the price for it more than the rest of them. “It’s called a sunburn. It’s because his skin can’t handle so much sun,” Jake said as he frowned at Spider. His family didn’t really have to worry about sunburns. Norm had already assured him that Na’vi don’t really burn, and their forest home was shaded by the tree canopy in ways that he never had to think about. But Spider’s skin was red-raw and burnt, peeling in places and painful looking. Maybe he should figure out the Na’vi version of sunscreen for him, even if that meant slathering him in wet clay mud. “But the stripes are looking good.”
They were. Spider had been applying them so often, over a decade, that his skin had been stained enough times that it was easy to repeat the patterns he’d made as a young boy because the colour never really went away. Even during their eight months of unwilling separation, Spider had come home with the markings. As if they were as much a part of him now as he was a part of their family.
“Spider wants to ask you something,” Lo’ak suddenly said, giving Spider a not-so-subtle nudge.
“Shut up,” Spider reached back to punch Lo’ak in the arm. It didn’t have much of an effect. “No, I don’t. He’s being stupid, Jake, don't worry about it.”
“You’re the one who won’t just ask him,” Lo’ak continued, unperturbed. “The worst he can do is say no, and then one of us can do it.”
“Lo’ak,” Kiri said sternly, her hand resting on Spider’s knee. “It’s his choice. If he doesn’t want to, then so be it. The first time was bad enough. I can understand not wanting to repeat it.”
“Well, then he already knows that it can’t get any worse,” Lo’ak bit back, sticking his tongue out at his sister. Kiri scoffed and rolled her eyes. “Come on, bro, just ask him. He’ll do it right.”
Jake knew that Spider wouldn’t ask. He wouldn’t even look at him, too busy tracing the spiralling pattern of Tuk’s stripes with a finger, ignoring Kiri and Lo’ak bickering above him. And the worst part was that Jake couldn’t blame him. He hadn’t really been all that supportive in the past, and if Kiri was right and something terrible did happen to Spider the first and last time he had bonded with somebody then he couldn’t imagine him racing to repeat the experience with Jake, the guy who had treated him as more like a family pet than the son he had become and brought him into the woods to kill him. So Jake didn’t push, and he didn’t ask for an explanation even though he wished Spider would ask.
“Dad,” Tuk interrupted her siblings' arguing. Everybody turned to look down at her, but she wasn’t looking at them, just looking at Jake with her hand wrapped around Spider’s wrist. “Can you do Tsaheylu with Spider?”
It was like all the air was sucked out of the room. Spider gaped down at Tuk like she’d personally betrayed him, and Kiri and Lo’ak exchanged shocked glances, and Jake drew in a rough breath that physically hurt. “Uh -"
“He says the first time was really bad, because it was with Varang and she didn’t do it right,” Tuk continued, a curl of her lip that made her look so much like her mother, either unaware or unfazed by her family's stunned silence. “But you’ll do it right, so do you think you can do it with him, so he knows what it feels like when it’s done with someone who loves him?”
Her innocent request was met with wide-eyes and bated breath, and Jake dragged his eyes up from his daughter to gape at Spider, who had turned a deeper shade of red that had nothing to do with his sunburn, his hair fallen forward to shield his expression. “Well,” Jake said carefully, cautious of every word. “If that’s something that Spider wants, then I’d happily do that with him, but he has to want it, baby girl. I know you’re trying to be kind, but it’s not up to you.”
“But you’d do it?” Kiri asked, her tail lashing against the ground. “You would bond with him?”
“Of course I would. Just like I bond with any of you,” Jake said. “But -"
“He wants it!” Lo'ak said quickly and much too loudly, jumping up and grabbing Spider by the shoulders to shake him roughly, making his head bobble harshly on his shoulders as he tried to pull free. “Come on, bro, you've got to tell him you want it! I know you want to!”
“Fine!” Spider snapped, yanking himself out of Lo’ak’s grasp and glaring over his shoulder at him. “Fucking fine.”
But still, Spider didn’t ask. Jake sighed. “Spider, if you want to...”
“I do,” Spider said stiltedly, so stiff he could’ve almost been mistaken for a tree in their forest. “Yes. Please.”
In all the many years that Jake had known him, he had never been so hesitant, so unsure, so weary. Spider was supposed to be instinct and confidence, big smiles and loud laughs, blunt teeth bared like fangs and body moving in ways no human would ever think to move. But this Spider was nervous, uncharacteristically so, as if worried about Jake’s reaction. Silly boy. Jake had loved him for years, even if he hadn’t been able to name it that. It would be an honour to do Tsaheylu with Spider- it was something that Jake should’ve done from the start, when he’d first learned that he had grown a kuru, instead of waiting this long. No Na'vi child would’ve had to wait this long for their first Tsaheylu. There was no reason why Spider had to wait any longer than he already had.
“Alright,” Jake said after a moment of contemplation. But only a moment. “Everybody out. Spider, you stay.”
“What?” Lo’ak protested immediately, ears swivelling upwards to point at the ceiling. “No way, that’s not fair!”
“Spider’s our brother,” Tuk whined. “We should be there.”
Jake shook his head, and he watched Spider’s shoulders slowly start to relax from where they were bunched up around his ears at Jake’s easy refusal. “You remember your first time, right? When it was just your mother and me? How special and vulnerable and private that was?” All three of his children nodded. Too young at the time to remember much of anything, they would always remember that. “Well, don’t you think that Spider deserves the same thing?”
It was the magic words. Kiri urged Tuk and Lo’ak to their feet, and they joined her easily to smile down at Spider, who looked so young as he blinked innocently up at them that the sight almost took Jake’s breath away. “Don’t worry, Monkey Boy,” Kiri said as she brushed her hand down his face. “Eywa is with you. You have nothing to fear.”
Lo’ak gripped both of Spider’s shoulders tightly in his and squeezed him. His expression was serious, but Jake knew his son well enough to see the slightest tilt of his lips, the twinkle of mischief in his eyes that he couldn’t get rid of no matter how hard he tried. “You won’t know yourself, brother. It’ll blow your mind.”
Tuk dove forward and wrapped her arms around Spider’s significantly smaller body and pressed her face into his chest. “We love you, Spider!” She said, sounding giddy and excited.
As Spider’s hands came down to wrap around her, his eyes were wide as he stared at Jake. “I’ve connected to Eywa before, you know,” he told them, but his usual confidence was lessened in the face of this uncertainty. “Why is everybody making it sound like I’m going to die?”
“You’re not going to die,” Jake told him calmly. “Out you get, come on, let's go. We’ll call you when you can come back in.”
As Kiri, Lo’ak and Tuk cleared out, already talking about what they could do while they waited, Jake permitted himself to just look at Spider. He’d known the boy since he was very young, but still, he found that there was somehow more to learn every time. He met Jake’s eyes, stalwart and unafraid, but his hands were clenched tightly on his lap.
“We don’t have to do this,” Jake assured. “I know that the kids pushed you into it, but it’s your choice. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”
“I know,” Spider took a deep breath. “But I’ve been curious, you know? I connected with Eywa, and that was… unbelievable. There are so many things I’ve always wondered but have never been able to experience, and now that I can, I want to understand them all. And I guess this is one of those things.”
One of the many things that Spider had always been was curious. “What happened the first time, with Varang?”
Shrugging, Spider glanced down at his hands and silently worked some of the gritty sand out from under his nails. “When Kiri and I were running from Quaritch, she got a hold of me and connected our kuru’s and knocked me out. I don’t really know what she did. I don’t remember it. But Kiri gets mad every time it’s brought up, so I guess it must’ve been bad.”
Jake recalled what Varang had done to Quaritch and decided that Kiri was right to be upset on Spider’s behalf. “When you’re ready, we can do this. It’s not like connecting with an ilu, or with Eywa and the spirit world, or anything like that. It’s something all on its own – it’ll just be you and me. A child’s first Tsaheylu is typically between their mother or their father, so it only makes sense that I do yours with you. Unless you want me to get Neytiri…”
“No,” Spider said quickly. “No, thank you, this is fine.”
“That’s what I thought,” Jake chuckled. He shuffled forward until he was sitting opposite Spider, their knees touching. He held out his hand, palm up and fingers spread. “Here. When you’re ready.”
After a bout of hesitation that was barely a fraction of a second, Spider reached behind him and gathered up his neatly braided kuru and placed it in Jake’s hand. Jake smiled at him, feeling as though this was an honour and a trust that Spider didn’t fully comprehend. Placing his kuru into someone else’s hands with barely a thought about the potential consequences… well. It’s a good thing that Jake wanted nothing but good things for the boy.
Smiling reassuringly, Jake reached behind him and brought his own kuru forward, and he watched as the tendrils at the end extended and moved instinctually towards the tendrils exposed from the end of Spider’s own kuru. Instead of asking if Spider was sure again, he continued to bring his kuru forward until the tendrils touched and interwove on the palm of his hand, and just before he could warn him, he was sucked into a memory as their minds connected and the Tsaheylu was formed.
It was Jake’s own memory, the very first time he had transferred into his avatar and woke in that pod with blue skin and two working legs and no chronic, unending pain. The first time he had stood on his own feet since the incident, the first few steps he had taken and the first time he had run. Meeting Neyteri and falling immediately in love with her, even if he hadn’t known it at the time, meeting her family and making a fool of himself in front of her tribe. Bonding with his first ikran, becoming Taruk Makto.
Spider’s memories were softer, blurred around the edges, like looking through the lenses of an old camera. He saw Spider as a toddler running through the sterile halls of Hells Gate, laughing and playing and hiding as Max and Norm chased him around the compound. Neteyam teaching him to hiss just like them and bare his blunt teeth like fangs, and Lo’ak teaching him to climb the trees and swing through the branches, Kiri helping him paint his skin in blue stripes, and Spider carrying a sleepy Tuk on his back as he walked her home.
“Whoa,” Spider said from somewhere in his periphery, intangible but still there, a solid presence at Jake’s side. “This is…”
“Yeah,” Jake agreed, as he watched the memory of him raising Neteyam to the Tree of Souls, and he swallowed through a lump in his throat. Spider surely noticed, but he did not comment. “You wanna keep going?”
“Yeah,” Spider replied, breathless. “I mean, can we?”
“’ course,” Jake told him. “We can stay as long as you like.”
He watched their memories pass them in nonsequential order. One moment, he was watching Kiri’s birth from behind the plexiglass barrier as Norm cut her from Grace’s comatose avatar and handed her gingerly into Neyteri’s arms, and the next moment he was watching his children be cornered by Miles Quaritch and the RECOMS, pulling at their hair and holding tight to their kuru’s until his eyes had settled on Spider, and he’d felt the fear that Spider had felt then, with people he loved at the mercy of someone he loathed, as his father staked a claim to him that he had no choice but to endure.
Spider’s memories were much more fascinating than Jake’s, especially the ones about his family he had never known about. Neyteri being the one to teach him how to fire a bow, hissing in annoyance the whole time and smacking him in the back of his head with a quarter of her typical strength to keep from breaking his neck, but eventually he had learned under her stern and expert tutelage, receiving a nod in approval and his own bow as a reward. Jake had always wondered but had only assumed. He had never known that Neyetem had been the one to teach Spider how to fight with his hands, learning everything he could from his lessons from Jake and the other warriors and hunters of the clan before rushing off to teach Spider the same skills and techniques until he could pin Neyetem to the ground with ease.
He saw the senseless death of the tulkun, the treatment of the Ta'unui clan, and Spider’s desperation, heartache and despair throughout it all. He saw Spider reluctantly turn back for Quaritch and drag him out of the water, and though he could tell that Spider at his side was expecting him to react with rage or hatred, Jake felt none of that. It was hard for anybody to leave someone to die like that, especially a boy as gentle and kindhearted as Spider, especially their own father, even if their father was Quaritch, so he reached out through the bond with a gentle touch and tried to tell Spider he was forgiven for his imagined slight.
He saw Natetem’s death as it happened, escaping from the SeaDragon and breathlessly telling them he was shot with the confusion of a man who didn’t know he was dying, Spider and Lo’ak carrying him through the water, and Jake had to look away until the memory passed. He felt Spider press up close against his side, offering his own heartache until the memory shifted to a different one.
He saw Neytiri hold a blade to his throat and saw her slice across his chest, drawing blood and leaving a scar that never truly faded. He saw himself take Spider gently by the shoulder and lead him into the forest, force him to his knees, and endeavour to end his life, Spider's heartache and pain and fear and longing burning in Jake's chest like a brand, because even on his knees with Eywa's prayer in his ears, all he wanted in his final moments was for Jake to love him. Seeing it like this, from Spider’s point of view, made him feel sick and ashamed. They hadn’t talked about that day. Every time Jake had tried, Spider had conveniently found a way not to, but seeing it again, seeing Spider looking so small and young as he looked up into Jake’s face and asked if he still loved him… well. Maybe he should try harder to have that conversation. Maybe he should try harder with a lot of things, but a conversation, he could manage that.
He saw Spider running through the forest with Kiri, Lo’ak and Tuk, his rebreather beeping harshly as it ran out of air, orange warning signs almost blinding him in the darkness. Jake felt his fear, the tightness in his chest as he slowly suffocated. Lo’ak carried him on his back, and Tuk cried for him. Kiri had spoken with a voice that reverberated with otherworldly power as she took off Spider’s mask and put a sprite into his mouth. Suddenly, miraculously, as his children mourned him, Spider took a breath of pure Pandorian air without his mask.
“This is how it happened, then?” Jake asked, though he knew the answer. Was seeing it with his own eyes. Was seeing Tuk sob over Spider’s body, was seeing Lo’ak hold his sisters close as he used his body to shelter his friend, watched Kiri cry out to the Great Mother as she cradled him, watched thin glowing mycelium veins crawl up Spider and burrow into his nose, his mouth. “How you learned to breathe.”
“Yeah. I uh, I don’t remember this part. I guess this is Eywa,” Spider sounded unsure, but no less awed. “Maybe she wants me to know.”
It made sense. Eywa worked in mysterious ways, and it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility for her to place a seed within Spider. She’s already filled his lungs with plant life. “I can’t think of anyone more deserving.”
“Thanks,” Spider said, sounding both bashful and proud. It was endearing. Jake wondered if Spider could feel that through the bond.
And then something changed. He couldn’t put a finger on it. One moment he was watching Lo’ak flirt with Tsireya on the sandy shores while Spider waited impatiently yet fondly for him to finish – and though Lo’ak would deny it, flirting was exactly the right word for what he was doing, and he was grateful now to have confirmation for what he had suspected for some time now – and then they were in some sort of lab, like Hells Gate but worse, filled with avatars in combat gear and scientists at stations, and Spider was being dragged out of a small box-like room with nothing but a table and an observation window and into a wider room, kicking and hissing and biting at the guards dragging him forwards.
At his side, Spider was suddenly filled with fear, the kind of fear that Jake could taste on his own tongue through the connection, prickling like the sour skin of a dawnfruit and stinging-burning like the seeds of a fortunesfruit. Jake tried to seek him out, reaching for him through their bond, but he couldn’t quite make contact.
“Wait,” Spider said, sounding frantic. “Wait, no, don’t watch this. Can you change it? Can you make it go away?” Though he had no body to feel panic, his breathing started to sound like it did that night when his mask had run out of charge while he was sleeping, and he slowly started suffocating. “Don’t look! Jake, you can’t -!"
“What? Spider, what is it?” Jake asked worriedly. He reached out and found Spider’s elbow and grabbed hold of him, pulling him close. It didn’t have the same effect that it usually would have, but for now, it would have to do. “It’s alright. It’s just Tsaheylu. You’re safe here. There is nothing that I can see that would change that.”
In the memory, Spider was being dragged up into some type of standing machine, strapped in with medical-grade belts with a guard shoved between his teeth. He thrashed and writhed in his restraints as a needle was shoved roughly into his arm and a mask was affixed to his face, and he was shut within the machine like the lid of a coffin slamming closed.
“Jake. Dad,” Spider was breathless with his fear. Jake could feel his intangible form trembling like a leaf in a gale. “Don’t look. Please, you shouldn’t see this.”
But Jake couldn’t look away. His son was begging him not to watch a painful memory, and Jake couldn’t tear his eyes away because the General ordered the scientist to switch on the machine, and suddenly, Spider was screaming.
Once, as children, Jake had taken Neteyam, Kiri, Lo’ak, Tuk and Spider to the river. It was a clear day, and the fish were abundant, and he had wanted to make a day of it. Lo’ak and Spider had been wrestling while Jake helped Kiri, and Neteyam helped Tuk cross the canopy, and Spider had missed a step and had plummeted dangerously far before Jake and the hanging vines had caught him, screaming in fear the whole way down, the sound staying with him for many days after as he was painfully reminded of just how human the boy really was. And still, Jake had never heard Spider scream like that.
He was shaking, writhing, jerking in his bonds as the machine was activated again and again and again, blood pouring down his nose and his eyes rolling into the back of his head, the pain so overwhelming and all-consuming that Jake could feel it, feel it like it was happening to him, as this boy who he loved was tortured like a lab rat.
They were looking for Jake, for his family, and Spider wouldn’t tell them anything. His mind was ravaged, his thoughts were violated, and his body was crumbling under the strain, but Spider resisted enough to keep his family safe. And despite it all, Jake had almost killed him.
When Quaritch arrived and turned off the machine, Jake was relieved beyond measure. He could hardly imagine how Spider must’ve felt to be released from that torturous device by an enemy he hated but couldn't help but love, in that moment. Beside him, Spider was quiet, but not the kind of quiet he got when watching the sunset dance across the ocean surface, but the quiet of a child after a nightmare, not wanting to wake the rest of his family. Jake knew the sound well, after all these years, after five children.
“You weren’t supposed to know about that,” Spider said quietly. “It’s not – it looks worse than it was.”
Jake didn’t know what to say. Memories kept scanning by, his and Spider’s alike, but he couldn’t pay them any attention as he forced his body, his real body sitting across from Spider in the family marui, to react. His hand moved forward to untangle the tendrils of their kurus to withdraw them from their Tsaheylu, and then the two of them sat there, silently.
Everybody’s first Tsaheylu was challenging, but it seemed like Spider’s had taken more out of him than Jake had expected. It must’ve been his human body, or his age. He wasn’t sure. His chest was heaving with the size of his gulping breaths, his shoulders rocked with it. His skin was a little pale, clammy, and his eyes were the size of saucers as he stared down at his hands, the tips of his ears pink.
“Spider,” Jake managed. “Spider, look at me.”
Just when Jake was starting to wonder if he would have to make it an order, Spider finally looked up and away from his hands folded in his lap, nails picking dirt from his cuticles. “You weren’t supposed to see that,” Spider said. “I wasn’t going to tell you.”
“You weren’t going to tell us that you were tortured?” Jake demanded, and if he didn’t know any better, he’d say that Spider flinched. Spider never flinched, not really, but Jake used to be human once, was still human deep down inside, and he knew when human bodies reacted in ways that the mind wished it wouldn’t. “Why didn’t you tell us what they did to you?”
It made sense now. The headaches that would strike suddenly and fiercely, that would send Spider scuttling inside to rest in his hammock and hide from the sun in the cool shelter of their marui. The blood noses that he would get sometimes, which always seemed to take him by surprise, and would have him cupping a hand beneath his chin to catch it all. Norm had checked him out for changes after he’d been blessed by Eywa, but seeing that, seeing what had been done to him, Jake thought now that maybe he had been checking for the wrong thing.
“It doesn’t matter,” Spider shook his head. He wasn’t looking at Jake’s face, but at some point over his shoulder, but Jake suspected that this might be the best he was going to get. “It happened so long ago now, and so much has happened.”
“I don’t care about that,” Jake retorted. He reached out and placed his hands on Spider’s shoulders. His hands were so large compared to Spider’s small frame, and he looked fragile. Jake’s large hands and long fingers practically enveloped Spider’s shoulders and arms, making him look so small, so young. Jake had watched him grow up, had watched him bleed and kill and laugh and cry, with the aid of his children, he had taught him how to fish and how to string his own bow and how to climb the tallest trees with his blunt human nails and his weak human strength. He knew that Spider was anything but fragile, and yet. “I care about you. About what was done to you. You should’ve said something.”
Spider shrugged, barely a rise and fall beneath Jake’s hands. “I didn’t think it was that important.”
“Of course it’s important,” Jake breathed. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Spider, you’re important. To me, to our family, to our people. What happened to you was important, and terrible, and you did not deserve it, and you should’ve told us. I don’t care how long ago it happened. I know that I haven’t been there for you in the past, but I want to be here for you now, alright? And to do that, I need to know when these things happen to you, the same way I need to know when they happen to Tuk and Lo’ak and Kiri and - and Neteyam. It’s the only way that I can keep you safe, alright?”
The way Spider was looking at him made him feel invincible, like nothing bad would ever happen to him as long as he stayed within Jake’s orbit. But of course, terrible things had already happened to him, Jake had seen it with his own eyes, had almost been the cause of them himself, both indirectly and not, and terrible things could continue to happen to him as long as he was on the RDA’s radar. And there wasn’t anything that he could do about that.
“Yeah,” Spider swallowed thickly. “Yeah, Dad, alright. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I just didn’t want you to worry.”
“Don’t be sorry. I’m a father – your father – it’s my job to worry,” Jake dropped one of his hands to rest on the ground between them and brought the other hand up to cup the back of Spider’s head, feeling his kuru beneath his palm. “You were with the RDA and Quaritch for eight months before you found your way back to us. I’m sorry we didn’t get you back sooner. And I’m sorry for… well. You know. For everything.”
“Don’t be sorry,” Spider mimicked, that same cheeky lilt to his voice that he used when teasing the others. “Just don’t do it again.”
Jake huffed a laugh, unexpected but not unwanted, but before he could reply with a remark of his own, a little head poked through the opening of the marui, and Tuk blinked innocently out at them. “You’re done! You took forever,” she leaned backwards and called over her shoulder, “They’re done now! I told you so!”
“Shut up, Tuk,” Lo’ak said as he and Kiri joined Tuk at the opening of their marui pod, entering inside. Jake and Spider were still pressed knee-to-knee on the ground between their hammocks, but neither moved. Lo’ak fixed a discerning eye on Spider. “You good, cuz? Dad didn’t break your brain into tiny little pieces, did he? Because that would just be the worst.”
“Nah, I’m good, bro,” Spider saluted Lo’ak with a lazy two fingers. “I’m not that fragile.”
“Last week your ilu went into the water a little too fast, and we thought you broke your neck,” Tuk pointed out, moving swiftly to reclaim her favourite spot in Spider’s lap. “You really are fragile, like a seashell.”
“Careful, Tuk-Tuk,” Spider warned in a menacing voice that had too much humour in it for it to truly be terrifying. “Keep it up, and not even the great Toruk Makto will be able to protect you.”
Jake immediately put his hands up, trying not to smile. “Keep me out of this.”
Kiri crouched down to peer into Spider’s face, reading something from the slope of his mouth or the sheen of his eyes or the tension of his jaw. Jake didn’t have a word for it – he didn’t think that anybody had a word for it – but there was a connection that both Spider and Kiri shared with Eywa these days, different and yet similar in innumerable ways, that Jake would never understand. Something that just the two of them shared, that made them uncanny and wise and powerful beyond their means. Nobody else had been blessed by Eywa the way that they had been. And they were still coming to learn exactly what that meant.
“You’re okay, Monkey Boy?” Kiri asked softly, bringing a hand up to cup the side of Spider’s face in her massive hand. He sighed through his nose and settled his head into the curve of her palm, looking content. “It wasn’t too much?”
“It was great,” Spider assured her. “You were right. I want to do it again already.”
“Then what are we waiting for?” Lo’ak demanded as he sprang up. “Let’s go already! We’ve all got to do it before someone tells mum and she beats us to it or yells at us.”
“Hold up,” Jake tried to protest. “Give him a rest, alright? He’s just had his first Tsaheylu, you know how much that takes out of a person.”
“But Spider’s tough, right? That’s what you always say?” Tuk asked, eyes wide and innocent, grinning around her fangs.
That cheeky twinkle was back in Spider’s eyes, as if the Tsaheylu and the memory of the machine were nothing but that – a distant memory. “I don’t know,” he said. “But for you? I could try.”
Lo’ak whooped and heaved Spider to his feet, dislodging Tuk from his lap and dragging him out of the marui. Tuk laughed, and as she darted past, Spider reached out and snatched up her tail, and she pretended to nip at him as it wrapped around his wrist. Kiri was quick to follow, rising gracefully from her crouch and her hand finding its way into Spider’s long hair as they walked, the deep blue of her skin standing out as it was swallowed by the wheat-gold of his hair.
Jake’s body decided before his mind could catch up to his mouth, and before he knew it, he was calling out, “Spider?” When Spider leaned back on his heels to resist the pull of Lo’ak and Tuk and turned back to look at Jake with a curiously open expression, Jake managed, through a swollen tongue and numb lips, “I’m proud of you, son. For all of it. And I love you.”
Spider’s expression cracked open like sunlight through cloud cover. “Thanks, Dad.”
His siblings could wait no longer, and as Lo’ak and Tuk urged him onwards with a gentle nudge from a smiling Kiri, Spider was finally pulled from the family marui, onwards to some sort of adventure, and Jake was left alone on the floor of the pod, wondering how the hell he had ever thought that he wouldn’t ever be able to love Spider like the son he was, and had honestly always had been.