Chapter Text
The glow of the computer monitor was harsh against his vision, to the eyes that had grown accustomed to the bioluminescent softness of Pandora’s nights. Jake sat hunched in his wheelchair, fingers flying across a keyboard that felt too small, the clicking of plastic grating on his ears.
He was looking for a way in.
The Avatar Program was an exclusive club for the brilliant and the wealthy, or the genetically fortuitous. Jake currently lacked most of those things. So he had to cheat.
He navigated to the secure servers of the RDA’s xenobiology division. He didn’t have a login, but he knew the emergency override codes for the exterior comms array - there was a time when Norm had drummed them into his head. He doubted the passwords would change from that time, so he had to try.
Somehow, it worked. The firewall blinked, then dissolved.
That was... much easier than he expected.
He began to type. It was tricky to transliterate Na'vi to the Latin alphabet with its consonants and vowels, but he had to get it right. He pulled up Grace Augustine's books on all of the Na'vi-related information the human world currently had. He had to do some digging in what was omitted - for the lack of knowledge - and think carefully of what type of information he could give out. He typed his sentences as he would talk to Lo'ak, none of them knowing a thing about science, but having a clear idea of the plants that Neytiri was about to crush into paste and treat their reckless wounds. Measured explanations to a son, a kid who was lost to time and distance.
(He broke down halfway through, images of a happy family burning with the sinking ship. Just when hell seemed to be over, he was thrown back with no consideration of what was to happen.
He wondered if it was Eywa's way to punish him for messing up one job he had - be a good father, protect them, protect Neteyam and his siblings, protect Neytiri. All that was left of them - a shell of his memory.)
He described the silronzem, how it grows in the skirts of the Omatikaya clan, how the People use its juices to make remedies, and how it resembles a huge mushroom, nestling close to the tall trees.
Then, he wrote some more, memories of the reef still fresh in his mind. He wrote about the shapes and colors of the reefs, which ones are great for jewelry making, and which ones are there to serve as food for sea creatures.
He addressed the file to Dr. Grace Augustine, marked with a priority flag that he knew she used for "samples requiring immediate containment."
It was a gamble. But Jake knew Grace. She couldn’t resist a mystery, and she definitely couldn’t resist knowing a little more than she already did about the place she could call home.
—
The response didn't come from Grace directly - physics still dictated a delay in communications between Earth and Pandora - but it came from her proxies on Earth, the gatekeepers of the program who monitored the quantum links.
They had flagged his message. They had panicked.
Seven days later, Jake sat in a sterile white room, facing a panel of three administrators and one hologram. The hologram was a delayed projection of the head of the Xenobotany department, looking tired and skeptical.
"Mr. Sully," the administrator in the center said, looking down at a datapad. "You are a former Marine corporal. Your file says you have zero scientific training. Yet, you sent us descriptions of flora that match classified samples Dr. Augustine uploaded to the localized drive yesterday."
"I know things," Jake said, his voice flat. He gripped the armrests of his chair. "And I know more."
"How?"
"That’s my price," Jake countered. "You want to know more? You want to know where to find the unobtanium deposits you haven't scanned yet?"
His form in his chair was unmoving as he spoke next.
"I want a seat on the ISV Venture Star. And I want an Avatar."
The room went silent. The hologram flickered.
"That is impossible," the woman on the left scoffed. "Avatars cost billions. They take six years to grow. Even if we had a blank, you are... compromised." She glanced at his legs.
"I have a twin," Jake said. "Same genome. You have the tanks. You have the tech. You figure it out. Put me in a spare, grow one on the way, I don't care. But I’m going on that ship."
He paused, letting the silence stretch, channeling the cold authority of a Olo'eyktan. He had to beg Eywa for forgiveness for what he was about to say next.
"Or I go to the press with the coordinates of three major deposit sites that your competitors would love to drill."
It was a crude bluff - he wouldn’t actually help anyone drill Pandora, the thought alone made him wince - but they didn't know that. They only saw a crippled vet with impossible knowledge holding a grenade to their profit margins.
The "Green Light" came down from the top six hours later.
—
The week leading up to the launch was a blur of needles, scans, and humiliation. He went through hell that was getting all of the tests cleared - the medical, psychological, neurological - all of them in the brief version of what is supposed to be done by the protocol. RDA didn't care enough for him to get through all of the safety measures, and it worked in his favor - he had already done it the same way, after all. He waved a carrot that was his special knowledge once or twice, when the suits' eyes had traveled to his wheelchair. He hated to do it, but it worked.
Soon, he was all clear to go.
Jake had forgotten how heavy gravity felt on Earth. He had forgotten how weak this body was.
One evening, alone in his apartment, he had tried to transfer from his chair to the bed. His mind, still wired for the agility of a ten-feet-tall Na'vi warrior, signaled his legs to push off and pivot.
Nothing happened.
Momentum carried his upper body forward, but his legs remained dead weight. He crashed to the floor, his hip slamming into the metal bedframe of his cot.
"Fucking—agh!"
He lay there for a moment, cheek pressed against the cold floor. The smell of dust and old cemented flooring filled his nose. Under his bed, right on the brick wall, he could see black dots growing - mold covering the corner of this concrete box that sky people call an apartment. He looked at his hands - pale, small. Pink. They looked like raw meat.
He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to summon the feeling of the sand of awa'atlu under his feet, the rough skin of a skimwing, the warmth of Neytiri’s hand.
I am not this, he thought, a mantra against the dark. He couldn't feel his legs. This is not my home. I'm coming back, soon.
He dragged himself up by his arms, sweating and shaking, hauling his dead weight back onto the mattress. He sat there, panting, staring at his useless limbs with a hatred that burned hotter than it ever had the first time around.
He had to get back. He had to get back to his real body.
—
The launch facility was a gray scar against a gray sky. The air smelled of ozone and burning fuel.
Jake sat in the staging area, the massive bulk of the shuttle looming behind the glass. He had avoided Tommy for seven days. He was a coward like that; he hadn’t answered the calls, hadn’t replied to the texts. It was better than lying to his face, because he knew he would be forced to do it anyway. And lying was making him feel sick.
"Jake?"
The voice was tentative. Jake turned his chair.
Tommy stood there, holding a duffel bag, looking like he’d seen a ghost. He was wearing the RDA program attire, looking so young, so clean.
"Hey, Tommy. How is your shoulder?"
"Jesus, Jake," Tommy breathed, walking over. "I thought... they said you were on the manifest, but I didn't believe it. What is going on? How did you...?"
Tommy stopped. He was looking at the digital slate in Jake’s lap. It was displaying the results of the final aptitude tests required for clearance.
Xenolinguistics (Na’vi): Native Fluency.
Tommy looked up, his eyes wide.
"Native fluency? The hell, Jake, you barely passed Spanish in high school. How the hell do you know Na’vi?"
Jake locked the screen and shoved it into his bag. He looked at his brother - really looked at him. The grief of losing him, the joy of seeing him, and the guilt of the timeline he was altering swirled in his gut.
"I told you, Tommy," Jake said, his voice rough. "I did my homework."
"That's... impossible." Tommy shook his head, looking at the wheelchair, then at Jake’s face. "And an Avatar? They're prepping a tank for you."
The previous talk they had back in the hospital resurfaced in their minds. Jake knew, they thought about the same thing.
I'm going to make myself indispensable.
"Jake, what did you promise them?" Tom looked sternly at him, like the worried older brother that he was.
"I promised them I'd do the job," That wasn't a lie, technically. He just wouldn't keep his promise. He reached out, grabbing Tommy’s hand. His grip was iron-hard, a marine's grip. "I’m not letting you go alone. That’s the end of it."
Tommy searched his face, looking for the reckless screw-up brother he knew. He didn't find him. Jake hoped that whatever he saw in his expression wasn't as withered and ugly as he felt.
"Attention all personnel," the intercom blared, saving Jake from having to explain the unexplainable. "Cryo-prep initiation in T-minus ten minutes."
"We gotta go," Jake said, spinning his chair toward the gate.
Tommy jogged to catch up.
"We are talking about this when we wake up, Jake. I mean it. Six years gives you a lot of time to come up with an explanation."
Jake huffed but didn't answer. He rolled onto the shuttle, the vibration of the engines humming in his teeth.
When we wake up, Jake thought as the cryo-techs began to hook him up to the monitors, everything changes.
The lid of the cryo-pod lowered. The cold hiss of gas filled the chamber. Jake Sully closed his eyes, and for the first time in weeks, he didn't dream of drowning. He dreamed of Blue.