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It was a peaceful night.
The evening at Awa'atlu was always peaceful, with the sloshing of the waves beneath them and muted conversations from other Na’vi settling down for the night all around them; it was an easy and comfortable backdrop to fall asleep to. Especially when Jake had his family close, getting to listen to their snores, their sleepy mummering and their deep breathing. No matter how stressful or eventful the day had been, spending time around his family always made everything seem worth it.
But they were no strangers to nightmares – Jake had gotten pretty used to silently blinking awake and shaking off the afterimages like a chill that stubbornly clung to him, and Neytiri was always too composed to do anything more than gasp a great breath, hold it in her lungs and slowly let it out as she woke up and realised. Practised, experienced, a tale as old as time.
Lo’ak sometimes jerked out of his hammock with a startled shout, sprawling across the floor and reaching for a weapon he no longer wore, blinking sleep from his eyes sheepishly. Tuk would wake with a cry and immediately fly towards the hammock that Neytiri and Jake shared, and would only fall back asleep squished between the two of them. Kiri would sometimes break out into sobs, these pitiful-sounding things that seemed to be torn from her very soul as if Eywa herself was crying with Kiri’s eyes, curled up and small in her hammock.
Everyone got nightmares. It was only natural, after so much trauma, after so many terrible things in such a short amount of time.
Jake knew that Spider must’ve had nightmares too, but he’d never seen them. Sometimes, he’d think he was the first to wake, only to find Spider hunched over the cookfire, trying to ignite it for breakfast. “Nightmare,” Spider would explain with a shrug whenever Jake asked. “No big deal.”
It didn’t feel natural for a child to have such quiet nightmares. Everything else about Spider was so loud, so boisterous, so in-your-face, to the fluency in which he spoke Na’vi to the way he moved like them, in ways that no human should be able to move, and how he was always climbing and jumping and bounding off of things. Always telling jokes, dancing silly dances and trying to make people laugh. His hugs were crushing, his laughs were gut-aching, and his touches were gentle.
And, Jake had learned, his nightmares were silent.
He knew that Spier did have nightmares occasionally because he had seen them, once or twice. He’d happened to be awake during another sleepless night or on the tail end of his own nightmare, and he’d seen Spider in the throes of his own bad dream. They were so quiet. Spider sucked in a sharp breath and snapped upright, clamping a hand over his mouth and blinking hard and fast as his lungs heaved and his tight shoulders trembled. His eyes struggled to adjust to the darkness, and he glanced frantically around as if to make sure he was still in the same place he’d fallen asleep in. When he finally relaxed, he slung his legs out of the hammock and tiptoed on near-silent feet to the entrance of the pod and left on the walkway. Jake had stayed awake until he returned. Sometimes he was back as quickly as ten minutes, but the longest he’d ever been gone was half an hour, quick jaunts in the fresh sea air to recentre himself before he’d return home. Sometimes he’d go back to sleep. Sometimes he didn’t.
Spider never made a big deal about the times when he had nightmares, so Jake hadn’t wanted him to know that he’d seen them. Even if they weren’t loud enough to wake the family up, his other children often informed them over breakfast if they had a nightmare the night before, but never Spider. He just made herbal teas and lit calming incense and rubbed backs and held hands and patted hair like he was made for it. It was strangely comforting to know that Spider was so good at it when Jake sometimes felt that he still didn’t know how to be soft and gentle and caring when his hands were used for nothing but bloodshed and war for so long.
Tonight was just like every other night. They ate dinner together. Kiri threatened to throw Lo’ak out of the marui to splah in the water bellow and Spider braided new seashells into Tuk’s hair. They went to bed, swinging to sleep in their separate hammocks, lulled by the waves.
And then, what might’ve been no time or a long time later, Jake was woken by a shout. He was immediately alert, jerking upright and waking Neytiri at his side until they were both up and glancing around. Slowly, the rest of his family was coming to, Lo’ak sitting up and reaching for the knife in its holster and Kiri brushing her hair out of her face, Tuk sleepily wiping drool from her face.
Though Spider’s hammock was moving, juddering and shaking wildly like a fish caught in a net, he didn’t seem to be rousing. He was making these small, choked noises, like screams trapped in his throat, tearing up his insides and spilling blood all over the ground. How had Jake ever fooled himself into thinking that Spider wasn’t his son, when the sound of his distress still made Jake feel like someone had reached through his ribcage and taken hold of his heart?
“Spider,” Jake said as he rolled out of the hammock, Neytiri following after him. “Spider, hey.”
But Spider didn’t hear him. Usually a light sleeper who woke at any sound or any sudden disturbance, Spider didn’t rouse. He was twisting and writhing in his hammock, his whole body strained to painful-looking extents, breathing hard and fast. “No!” he cried, half-hysterical. “Stop! Please!”
“Spider,” Lo’ak was hovering over Spider’s hammock, hands raised as if wanting to touch but not sure what to do. This was Neteyam’s job, not Lo’ak’s. He never had the chance to learn from him. “Bro, come on, wake up.”
“Get off me! Fuck you!” Spider was screaming, his face going red with the strain, spittle flying from his mouth, a vein in his neck bulging with the tension. “I won’t do it! I won’t tell you!”
“Monkey Boy,” Kiri reached out and grabbed hold of Spider’s shoulder, shaking him roughly. His head bobbled loosely on his shoulders, and he lashed out to swipe at her, but she reared back before he could connect. She looked helplessly at Jake. “Dad - ”
But Jake knew what to do even less than she did. None of his other kids had reacted to nightmares like this, and he’d never comforted Spider during one, had never woken him while he lashed out and quieted him while he screamed. He'd never seen this before in his life. Neytiri pushed past, impatient with Jake’s indecision, and tried to place her hands on either side of Spider’s face, her large hands wrapped all the way around his head. “My son,” she said in the fierce type of voice she used that nobody could disobey, not even in their sleep. “You must wake.”
Jake thought it would work. It worked on all their other children, when their nightmares got so bad that nothing but their mother's stern orders could wake them. But if anything, it just made Spider thrash and fight harder, reaching up to scratch and claw at the backs of Neytiri’s hands until she had no choice but to release him, fearing he would hurt himself. “You’re gonna have to kill me!” He shouted, lashing out with a foot and nearly kicking Tuk in the face. She scrambled back to hide behind Kiri before anything else could happen. “It hurts! It hurts; make it stop! Dad!”
Hissing in fright, Lo’ak pushed past Kiri and Tuk and wrapped his hands around Spider’s upper arms and used all his might to shake him fiercely, the whole hammock jumping and jerking with the force of it. “Spider!” he shouted, hissing right into Spider’s face. “Wake up already!”
With a gasp that sounded like it hurt him, Spider’s eyes snapped open, wild and unseeing. In one moment, he was held in Lo’ak’s worried grip, and in the next, Lo’ak was stumbling back into Neytiri with a hand held to his face as blood streamed from his nose, and Spider’s limbs were lashing out, grabbing for Kiri and kicking at Jake, hissing a sound that could’ve been mistaken for something that came from Neytiri’s mouth, his expression wild and angry and so damn scared that Jake felt it in his soul, like every other time one of his children had looked to him in fear but magnified by ten, because Jake had no idea what could’ve scared Spider this much.
When Tuk screamed, ducking away from Spider’s foot as it sailed inches from her head, Jake finally gathered his wits and stepped forward. He grabbed both of Spider’s flailing hands and pinned them down with one of his own, and with his other hand, he grabbed Spider by the chin and held him still, his fingers digging into the hinge of his jaw, not enough to hurt him but enough to ground him a little. “Spider, that’s enough,” Jake said, shaking him a little, just to centre him. Because he knew that Spider was awake, just not aware, caught in that in-between place where your body reacted before your mind, when you weren’t sure what was real and what wasn’t. “Come on, son. Wake up now, it’s us. You’re safe.”
With a gasp, a wet-sounding one as if it were filled with tears, Spider went still and slumped like a discarded child’s toy and blinked up at Jake with watery eyes. He was breathing heavy, his whole body heaving with the force of it, and his whole body was filled with these tiny, minute tremors that shuddered through his small human frame as he went limp in Jake’s hold. Blood dribbled from his nose. “Jake?” he asked, bleary and confused, voice raw from all the shouting. “What’s…?”
“You’re okay son,” Jake released Spider’s hands and curled his arm around his shoulders, migrating his hands from his jaw to gently grasp his chin, keeping his eyes on him, and not on Lo’ak with fresh blood on his face as he was tended to Neytiri, or on Kiri who had Tuk held on her hip, angled away from his hammock. “You’re okay now, just breathe, alright? Just take it easy.”
“Spider!” Tuk shouted in that childlike way she did when she didn’t totally understand the tension in the room. “You’re okay!”
Blinking, Spider pulled his eyes away from Jake and glanced at Tuk and Kiri, his face lined with confusion. He sought out Lo’ak and Neytiri before Jake could stop him, and his eyes went wide as he saw Neytiri holding a bloodied cloth to Lo’ak’s nose with his head tilted back. He brought his hands up as if to reach for him and saw the blood slicked on the back of his knuckles. Spider was a smart boy. He understood what had happened without having to be told.
“It’s all good, bro,” Lo’ak told him shakily, offering him a thumbs-up. “Don’t worry ‘bout it.”
But Spider was very much worried about it, and Jake saw the moment the realisation hit him. “Oh my god. Holy shit,” Spider reared away from Jake and scrambled off the hammock. He hit the ground with a heavy thud and stumbled to his feet. “I’m so sorry. Oh god, I’m so…”
“It’s alright. Spider, it’s alright,” Jake tried to console him with his hands up, taking slow steps towards him. “It happens to the best of us. We don’t hold it against you.”
“About time, I say,” Lo’ak tried to joke. Considering his voice was muffled with Neytiri’s hand pinching his nose, it didn’t really work. “Not fair that you’re the only one who doesn’t get nightmares.”
Kiri had put Tuk down and was taking slow steps that mirrored Jake’s. “Spider. Monkey Boy. Please, it’s alright. You have done nothing wrong. Just stay. Just stay with us.”
But Jake knew, as soon as his eyes caught on Tuk’s bright eyes peering out from behind Kiri, that he was going to leave. He always did after a nightmare, but he’d never had a nightmare that caused pain and fear in the people he loved most. Spider was backing up towards the entrance of the marui, eyes fixated on Tuk.
“Bro,” Lo’ak was saying, trying to push his mother away. “Come on, bro, come on.”
Spider turned on his heel and sprinted out of the marui. The woven walkway didn’t even shift under his weight as he bolted away and towards the beach, gone in an instant.
“Spider!” Tuk cried into the night. “Don’t go! Come back!”
“Mum, I’m fine, it doesn’t even hurt,” Lo’ak finally succeeded in escaping Neytiri’s grasp and shimmied away. “Kiri, come on, let’s go.”
“Where do you think you’re going?” Jake asked as he stepped in front of the entrance.
“To go get him,” Lo’ak said, like it was obvious. “You don’t really think that we should just let him go, do you?”
Neytiri settled her hand on Lo’ak’s shoulder, even as she was looking in the direction Spider had disappeared. “If distance is what he needs, then we will let him have it,” she said. “We will wait for him to return.”
“What makes you think he’ll come back?” Kiri demanded, eyes darting between her parents and the entrance as if she had half a mind to disobey them and run out after Spider anyway. “Maybe he doesn’t want to see us.”
Jake sighed. Assured that Neytiri had Lo’ak well in hand, he moved to Kiri’s side and hugged her against his chest. “He will, baby girl, you know he will. He always comes back.”
There was a rustling from the entrance, and Jake pulled his face from Kiri’s hair to see Tonowari standing in the doorway, dressed hastily and still half asleep, but looking worriedly into their marui. “Jake Sully. Some of our people have come to me, saying they have heard fighting from your home, that it woke them in the night. What has happened here?”
Raising a hand in greeting, Jake turned to his friend. “Brother. I am sorry to disturb you. It was just… just a nightmare. No need for concern.”
Frowning, Tonowari glanced around the marui, glancing at each occupant. “Of this, I understand all too well. My own children… well. But where is your son? Where is Spider?”
“He will be back,” Neytiri assured him. “He needs solitude. We will give him that. But he will return when he is settled.”
Lips pursed, Tonowari nodded. “Very well,” he said. “Inform me if he does not return by the morrow. I will send my children to help you search.”
“Thank you, brother,” Jake inclined his head to Tonowari as the Olo'eyktan took his leave. Jake sincerely hoped it wouldn’t come to that, and doubted that it would, but nothing like tonight had ever happened before either, so what did he know? “Come on. Let’s settle in.”
“Come,” Neytiri tugged Lo’ak back towards the hammocks. “We will wait for him.”
Reluctantly, Lo’ak and Kiri were marched to their parents' hammock, where they climbed up and joined them. It was much smaller than the woven basket bed that their family shared back in the forest, but they didn’t mind piling on top of each other, interconnected and joined every which way. Tuk hesitated, wringing her hands as she stood on the outskirts.
“Spider isn’t scared of anything. He’s the most fearless pinkskin in the world,” She said, and it sounded like something Spider might’ve said to her to comfort her once that she’s believed every day since. It wouldn’t be surprising. Tuk had a tendency to take everything Spider said as fact. “So why was he screaming?”
“I don’t know, baby girl,” Jake said. Though it felt like a lie, he knew it wasn’t. He didn’t know what that was about, but he had his suspicions. He held a hand out towards her, and this time she took it, happily crawling across Jake and settling between him and Neytiri. “We’ll ask him when he gets back.”
For two hours, they waited. It was by far the longest time Spider been gone after a nightmare, but nobody complained or fell asleep, not even Tuk, who was watching the entrance to their marui with pursed lips.
“He’s never been gone this long,” he said to Neytiri. “Usually forty-five minutes, tops.”
“He’s done this before?” Kiri asked.
“Not this bad,” Jake said. “But after nightmares, he leaves for a bit. But he always comes back.”
“I didn’t know,” Lo’ak was staring up at the ceiling. His nose wasn’t broken or anything, but there was still dried blood crusted above his lip. “He’s my brother, and I didn’t even know that he was having nightmares and leaving. He never told me.”
Jake rested his hand on Lo’ak’s ankle. “It’s not on you.”
Deep down, Jake thought, and didn’t say: I’ve known about it the whole time and didn’t do anything about it, because I didn’t want to say the wrong thing and make it worse.
Eventually, Spider returned, just as they knew he would. He was covered in sand, and his hair was dripping wet, and he looked drained, as if he hadn’t slept at all. His footsteps were light as always, but no matter how quietly he moved, his family would always hear him coming. He froze in the middle of the marui when he glanced at the whole family gathered together in the hammock and their eyes all turned to him, but he forced himself to keep moving, and trudged towards his own hammock where he climbed up into it and lay back down with a sigh.
“How’s your face?” Spider asked into the silence.
“You punch like a child,” Lo’ak told him. “You didn’t even break anything.”
“Good thing I was asleep then,” Spider replied, but Jake could tell that he was trying not to laugh. “Wouldn’t want to give poor Tsireya anything worse to look at.”
“Hey,” Lo’ak protested, openly grinning now. “She happens to like my face.”
They fell back into silence, the familiar banter not strong enough to pop the bubble of tension that had settled back over their family home. Tuk shimmied out from between her parents and slipped off the hammock. She padded on tiny feet over to Spider and peered up at him over the edge, eyes wide and hopeful. Spider looked down at her, hesitation obvious, before he sighed and helped her clamber up to join him, and she settled down on top of him with her head on his chest, and her tail looped around one of his legs.
“Spider,” Jake urged. “Come on, son, talk to us.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Spider said stiffly, staring straight up at the ceiling instead of his family gathered in the same hammock. “It was just a nightmare.”
“That was no nightmare,” Neytiri said, her eyes looking keen in the darkness. “It was something worse. You have never told us what you did while you were gone. Or what was done to you.”
Taking a deep breath, Spider fell silent again, his hands finding their way into Tuk’s hair. Just when Jake was starting to think he wasn’t going to say anything, he released the breath he was holding slowly through his nose, the sound very loud in the anticipatory silence.
“When the RDA had me,” he said at length. Jake was immediately alert, and he felt Neytiri tense at his side. “There were things that I had to do for them to help them, or they would do... things to me. I had to show them how to get an ikran, even though I tried to get it to eat them. They,” he swallowed thickly. Tuk made a sound and tightened her hold, burrowing closer. “I translated for them and was there when they burned down the Ta'unui village. I was there when they killed the Tulkun. I tried to make them stop. I begged them. But they didn’t care what I had to say. And the consequences if I didn’t help them...”
He trailed off, lost in thought. Lo’ak was the only one brave enough to speak. “What would they do to you? If you didn’t help them.”
“They wanted to know where you were, wanted to know really badly.” Spider’s voice went quiet, as if speaking the words out loud might make them come true. “They used this machine... it was the worst thing I’ve ever experienced in my whole life. And they were going to use it again if I didn’t help them. I didn’t want to, but I had no choice.”
Tortured, said the part of Jake that knew all too well what the RDA was capable of and knew they’d spare no mercy for anyone who stood in their way, even if that person was an innocent child. They tortured him.
“Spider,” Neytiri said, her words ending on a hiss. Anger, barely constrained and without direction. “Child, what did they - ?”
She didn’t get to finish the question because Spider was talking over her before she could. “It doesn’t matter. Don’t worry about it. But the point is that sometimes,” he gestured angrily at himself. “My stupid brain doesn’t want me to forget, even though I’m over it now. Sometimes I wake up, and I forget where I am. It’s like I’m back there.”
“That's terrible,” Kiri breathed, wet and sad. “Why haven’t you ever said anything?”
He shrugged. On his chest, Tuk rested her ear against his heart and held on tighter, wrapping her arms and legs around his body, wiggling in as close as they could be. Unconsciously, Spider’s breathing slowed and evened out to match hers, and his hand continued to slowly pet through her hair, the beads clacking and clicking together. “Were you scared?” She asked him in that teeny-tiny voice that only children could use.
“Yeah. Yeah, I was,” Spider told her, brushing his hand through her hair.
“But you’re not scared of anything,” Tuk said. It sounded like she was trying really hard to believe it, to cling to any sense of familiarity and normality on a night where everybody was lost and confused. “You told me so.”
“And I meant it, alright? When I walk by, Fear trembles at the sight of me.” Spider put on a funny voice that made him sound like a caricature of Jake, and Tuk giggled, the tips of her fangs peaking out under her lip. “But I was scared about what they might do to you if they ever got their hands on you. And I was scared that I’d never get to see you again.”
“But you’re here now,” Kiri said. “And you’re safe. And they’re never going to get you ever again.”
Jake knew that Kiri couldn’t make promises like that because there was just no way for her to keep them. Spider knew it too, and he sighed as he fumbled for the blanket that was hanging off the edge of his hammock in his hasty exit, and draped it over him and Tuk, taking extra care to tuck in all her limbs and even the end of her tail, apparently intending to spend the rest of the night with Tuk’s weight against him. “I’m sorry for waking you," he said, sounding suddenly so tired that Jake could’ve been convinced that he hadn’t slept in days. “It won’t happen again.”
“Yes, it will,” Jake said, and when Spider finally glanced up at him, his eyes were wide and round with fear, as if he hadn’t taken that possibility into account, and Jake’s confirmation suddenly made it real. If anybody knew what he was talking about, it was Jake. “You’re going to have plenty more nightmares, and some of them are even going to be as bad as they were tonight. But that’s alright. Because Sully’s stick together, and that means you too, even though nightmares.”
Spider didn’t seem to know what to do with that. He was flagging, Jake could tell, his eyes heavy and lashes fluttering against his cheeks, and he muttered something that Jake couldn’t quite catch before he was asleep, loose-limbed and heavy, Tuk curled up on top of him.
Jake was glad for it. He knew all too well that sometimes you had nightmares so severe that you couldn’t get back to sleep after them, but Spider seemed to be too tired to follow that trend. At his side, Kiri and Lo’ak were speaking in low whispers, fast and quiet. Neytiri was already looking at him, her lashing tail the only sign of her distress.
“Jake,” She said quietly, almost a whisper. “I will kill them.”
He didn’t tell her that all the people who had hurt Spider were probably already dead, or that killing more Sky People wouldn’t be the thing to automatically fix all of Spider’s problems, or even that she was no match for the RDA, no matter how formidable and fearsome she was. Instead, he knocked his forehead against hers and muttered. “I know, baby. Me too.”
In the morning, the marui was a flurry of commotion. For once, Spider was the last awake and seemed to be still recovering from the spurt of adrenaline from last night. But Tuk had climbed off of him and had slung the pouch she wore to collect seashells over her shoulder, waiting for Neytiri to join her.
At the cookfire, Kiri and Lo’ak were arguing in low, hissing tones.
“You’re doing it wrong,” Kiri told Lo’ak as he ground up herbs with clumsy, uncoordinated motions. “You haven’t even boiled the water. You’re not making tea, you’re making dirt paste.”
“Shut up,” Lo’ak hissed at her. “I know what I’m doing.”
“You don’t, because if you did, you would know that - ”
“Fine! Then you do it, if you know so much!”
Lo’ak shoved the herbs into Kiri’s arms, and she stuck her tongue out at him as she started to grind them into a much finer powder. His ears twitched to the back of his head as he ignored her and turned to light some calming incense, blocking her from his sight.
Spider was still asleep, sprawled in his hammock, snoring softly. Without his mask, he seemed to be able to do that now. Jake wondered if he snored when he was in High Camp or with Norm and the others, when he could breathe the air unaided. The blanket was tucked around him again, haphazard and rumpled and sloppy, as if Tuk had risen to her toes and had done her best to tuck Spider in, just like he had tucked her in the night before, and many other nights previous.
Jake crossed to where Neytiri was cooking breakfast. “What’s all this?”
“Tuk wishes to collect seashells for Spider,” Neytiri told him. “And Lo’ak and Kiri… I do not know what they are doing.”
They were too busy hissing and making faces at each other, so Jake didn’t bother asking any more questions. “When are you leaving? I’ll come with you.”
“No,” Neytiri said as she stood. “You will stay with Spider and be here when he wakes. You will make sure our children do not kill each other, or poison Spider with their tea.”
“I can do that,” Jake smiled, honestly glad to be given a task, and such an easy one, too.
He watched as Tuk and Neytiri left the marui hand-in-hand, and he listened with half an ear as Lo’ak and Kiri continued to bicker around the cookfire. He crossed to Spider’s hammock and peered down at where he was sleeping, sprawled out and snoring. Jake hoped that his dreams were kinder.
Jake fitted his hand in Spider’s hair and brushed his fingers through the locs, and with a soft, sleepy sound, Spider tilted his head to rest more fully in Jake’s hand, turning towards him as he slept. And Jake, content to stand there for as long as it took for Spider to wake, settled in for a long haul.