Chapter Text
The vent gave Spider a breath with the same steady patience it gave anyone.
In.
Pause.
Out.
The rhythm was mechanical, but it held the room the way firelight holds a circle—something everyone kept glancing at to make sure it was still there.
Spider lay slack beneath a thin sheet, the tube taped clean at the corner of his mouth, a clear line of condensation blooming and fading with each cycle. One side of his face was smeared with dried salt and grit; the other had the faint print of adhesive where someone had ripped something off in a hurry. His lashes didn’t move. His throat didn’t swallow. His chest rose because the machine insisted it would.
The monitor didn’t offer comfort. Just truth in bright digits that kept changing.
Norm stood at Max’s shoulder, present in the way he always was when something mattered enough to get quiet about it. Eyes flicking between his patient and the numbers.
A tech handed him a syringe with dark blood in it.
Norm glanced once, then nodded. “Run it. Now.”
The tech disappeared to the counter. A printer chirped somewhere in the back like it was trying to pretend this was routine.
Max didn’t look up from Spider’s face. He watched the skin at Spider’s mouth, the movement under the tape, the way the vent’s breath made the throat shift. He adjusted the mask seal at Spider’s cheek—habit more than need—then checked the tubing line again like the line could betray him if he trusted it.
Through the clear seal, Kiri pressed both hands flat to the barrier, her palms leaving faint fog marks as she breathed.
Lo’ak stood beside her, close enough that their shoulders brushed, gaze locked on Spider’s chest like staring hard could make it rise by itself.
Jake and Neytiri waited a step back from them. Because the front line belonged to the kids right now, and everyone knew it without saying.
Norm raised two fingers in a small, sharp motion toward the Sullys—*hold*. His attention didn’t lift from the murmuring with Max.
Max’s voice cut low. “He’s maintaining.”
No victory in it. Just a status report that wasn’t terrible.
The monitor tone stayed tight and even.
Norm finally looked up and walked over to the entrance.
His eyes met Kiri’s through the plastic—one beat of shared understanding, then he turned to the latch and opened the seal.
“Two,” Norm said. “Then switch.”
While this was not a hospital on Earth, it was a way to ensure the space stayed manageable, the only way Spider didn’t end up drowned in bodies and grief.
Kiri went in first.
Lo’ak followed her like he’d been tethered.
The seal hissed shut behind them with a clean, final sound that made Kiri flinch anyway.
Inside, the air felt different—neutral.
She didn’t go straight to his face. She went to his hand.
Spider’s fingers were bruised at the tips where the pulse clip had been moved and moved again. There was a faint line of dried blood at his knuckle, like he’d scraped it on a strap or a rail. Kiri slid her hand under his and held it gently, palm to palm, like she could remind his body what it belonged to.
Lo’ak stopped at the foot of the bed.
He looked like he’d been punched again.
Spider wasn’t just pale. He was utterly washed out—the blue marks Lo'ak had always associated with Spider’s stubborn, feral insistence on being seen were faded down to ghost-traces, smeared thin by sweat and grime and whatever they’d done to him in bright rooms. It made him look younger and wrong, not the free spirit he really was.
Lo’ak’s eyes flicked up the tube, the tape, the vent line, then snapped away like looking too long might make it true forever.
“You look…stupid,” Lo’ak said under his breath.
It should’ve been a tease. It came out ragged.
Kiri squeezed Spider’s hand once. “He doesn't look like him.” she whispered.
Lo’ak’s laugh was a sharp exhale. “Yeah. I know.”
He stepped closer, stopping himself before he crowded the head of the bed. His fingers hovered near Spider’s shoulder, then lowered to the sheet instead touching the blanket. He pressed down like he could anchor Spider by sheer force.
Kiri leaned in until her forehead almost brushed Spider’s wrist.
“Hey,” she said softly. “We made it back.”
Spider didn’t move.
But Kiri swore swore something in his hand answered. Not a squeeze. Not even a twitch she could prove. Just a minute change in warmth, as if her skin had found his through the fog and he’d recognized it on instinct.
Kiri’s eyes burned. She blinked hard and kept her voice steady because the room didn’t have room for her breaking yet.
“We’re at High Camp,” she told him. “Lo'ak's here. Norm and Max are here. Dad’s here.” A pause, then, like admitting it mattered: “Mom’s here.”
Lo’ak’s throat worked. He looked up at Kiri like he wanted to ask her if Spider would understand that last part.
Kiri didn’t answer the unspoken question. She just kept holding Spider’s hand like it was her job.
Behind them, Norm moved around the bed with controlled speed, checking what mattered without making it a show. He adjusted a dial. Checked the condensation line. Leaned to read the monitor, then looked at Spider’s still body like the numbers didn’t count if he didn’t see it with his own eyes.
A tech came back with a printout and held it out.
Norm took it, scanned it, then nodded once. “Okay.”
Max’s shoulders eased by a fraction. Not relief but a little bit of permission to breathe without holding it.
Lo’ak caught the shift and flinched like he didn’t trust it. “What does that mean?” he asked, voice too sharp.
Norm looked up and answered softly. “It means he’s not falling off the cliff right now.”
Lo’ak swallowed hard. The anger in him didn’t disappear. It redirected toward waiting, which was worse.
Kiri looked at Norm. “Will he..” Her voice caught, then she tried again. “Will he be okay?”
Max answered without dressing it up. “If we keep him supported and nothing throws a complication at us, he’s got a real chance.”
Kiri hated the word keep. Like Spider was something you had to keep from slipping out of your hands.
Lo’ak’s gaze snapped to Spider’s face again. His voice dropped. “I thought he was—” He couldn’t finish it.
Kiri did. Quietly. “Gone.”
Lo’ak nodded once, hard.
Norm didn’t look away from Spider when he spoke again. “You did what you were supposed to do,” he said to Lo’ak. “You got him out.”
Lo’ak’s mouth twisted. “I tried so hard to stop them from taking him.” He let out a sound of frustration.
Norm’s eyes flicked to Lo’ak. “No,” he said, and the word landed like a hand on a shoulder. “They’re the reason. Don’t carry their work for them.”
Lo’ak stared at him for a beat, like he didn’t know what to do with a sentence that wasn’t punishment.
Then his gaze dropped to Spider again.
“Okay,” Lo’ak whispered, like he was trying the word on. Like it didn’t fit yet.
Kiri leaned closer to Spider’s hand. “Do you hear hear us?,” she asked, even though she knew he probably didn’t. “You always do.”
Spider’s lashes didn’t flutter. His face stayed slack under tape and sedation.
But Kiri kept talking anyway, because talking was the only thing that didn’t feel like helplessness.
“I’m going to be annoying,” she murmured, almost smiling through the burn in her eyes. “I’m going to talk at you until you come back just to make me stop.”
Lo’ak made a sound that could’ve been a laugh in another life.
Max glanced between them and finally spoke the word that mattered most in this moment.
“Switch,” he said gently.
Kiri’s fingers tightened around Spider’s hand.
Norm held her gaze without blinking. “You did good,” he said, and then because he knew her added, “You can come back in later.”
Kiri nodded once, sharp.
She leaned down and pressed her forehead to Spider’s knuckles; careful, brief, not tugging anything that mattered.
“Come back to us.” she whispered into his skin.
Then she stepped away, forcing her feet to move.
Lo’ak lingered half a second longer, staring at Spider’s face like he was trying to memorize it the way it was now, in case the world stole him again.
“Don’t be a dick, Bro.” Lo’ak muttered, voice breaking on the last word.
Then he turned and followed Kiri out.
The seal opened. Kiri didn’t realize she’d been holding her breath until it escaped in a shaky rush.
Lo’ak’s hand shot out and gripped her shoulder to steady her.
Jake’s hand found Kiri’s upper arm at the same time, steady and warm. Kiri leaned into it without looking, like her body knew where safety was even when her head didn’t.
Neytiri didn’t rush them.
She watched Kiri’s face, watched Lo’ak’s posture, watched the way both of them tried to look like they were fine and failed.
When the seal closed again behind them, Neytiri stepped in close to Jake—just close enough that her shoulder brushed his.
Her voice was barely audible. “Now.”
Jake nodded once.
They went in together.
Inside, the room felt smaller with them in it—not because of their bodies, but because of what they brought with them.
Jake moved to Spider’s side and stopped.
For a long second, he didn’t touch.
He looked.
It was the same thing he’d done in other wars, other bedsides—take inventory, take in damage, let the truth land before you tried to do anything with it.
Spider looked like he’d been carried through hell and set down gently at the end of it.
His lips were dry. The tape at the tube pulled one corner of his mouth up in a grimace he hadn’t earned. The faded blue markings on his cheek made his face look unfamiliar, like the kid had been rubbed down to the base layer.
Jake’s throat tightened.
He put his hand on Spider’s shoulder, careful not to jostle anything. The contact was solid. A father’s weight. A promise made with skin instead of words.
“Hey, buddy,” Jake said, quiet.
His voice didn’t crack. It did something worse—it went soft.
Neytiri stood on the other side of the bed and stared at Spider’s face as if he was a question Eywa had asked her and she hadn’t known how to answer.
She didn’t reach for him right away.
Her hands curled at her sides, half flexed, like touching him might make her lose control of whatever line she’d been walking for months.
Jake glanced at her, just once.
Neytiri’s breath came shallow.
She stepped closer.
Her gaze dropped to Spider’s hand—thin, bruised, Kiri’s warmth gone from it now.
Neytiri’s fingers hovered there for a heartbeat, then settled lightly on the sheet beside it.
Contact, close enough to say *I am here* without risking that her voice would betray her.
Jake’s hand tightened slightly at Spider’s shoulder as if he felt it too.
Behind them, Norm didn’t intrude. He stayed at the head of the bed with Max, watching the tube and the vent line like a hawk watches wind.
After a beat, Norm spoke low, steady. “He’s exhausted,” he said. “This is the best thing to give him body a break.”
Jake didn’t look away from Spider. “He's always been stubborn.”
Norm’s mouth twitched, like that almost hurt to hear. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “He is. He's also just a kid.”
Neytiri’s eyes stayed fixed on Spider’s face. Her voice came out rougher than Jake had heard it in a long time.
“He does not look like himself.”
Jake’s jaw tightened. “They tried to take a part of him. I just hope they haven't succeeded in some way.”
Neytiri swallowed. Something bright sat at the edge of her eyes, refusing to fall.
Jake shifted closer to her.
Neytiri spoke again, and this time it wasn’t anger.
It was fear stripped clean.
“I thought…,” she started, then stopped like the words were too big.
Jake waited.
Neytiri’s breath shook once. “I thought Eywa would take him before I could decide what he is to me.”
Jake’s eyes flicked to her, sharp with emotion. “You don’t have to decide it alone.”
Neytiri’s fingers tightened on the sheet until the fabric wrinkled under her hand.
For a moment, she looked like she might step back, like she might put the walls up again.
Instead, she leaned forward—slow, careful—and touched Spider’s knuckles with two fingers.
A feather-light contact.
Her voice dropped to almost nothing. “You live,” she whispered in Na’vi. It was a half prayer, half command, like she didn’t trust the world to do the right thing without being told.
Spider didn’t move.
The vent gave him another breath.
In.
Pause.
Out.
The rhythm held.
Max cleared his throat softly. “We’re going to keep him like this for a bit,” he said. “Let him rest while we watch the numbers.”
Jake nodded once. “We will be here.” A promise to to his surrogate son.
Norm’s eyes didn’t lift from Spider as he said, “I wouldn't expect anything less.”
Jake looked at Norm and saw the crease between his eyebrows, as if Spider was a puzzle that he couldn't figure out. They sometimes forgot that Norm helped raise the kid.
Neytiri didn’t move away from Spider’s hand.
She simply stayed there, fingers resting like a prayer that didn’t need words.
After a few more breaths, Norm shifted his stance and nodded toward the seal.
“Let him settle,” he said quietly. “Then we’ll let the kids back in.”
Jake’s hand slid from Spider’s shoulder to his forearm, a last grounding touch. Then he stepped back, because he knew the drill: you don’t get greedy with time at the bedside when the line is still thin.
Neytiri withdrew her fingers last.
She looked at Spider’s face one more time, as if imprinting it.
Then she turned and followed Jake out.
The seal closed again, leaving Max and Norm and the techs with the machines and the careful, unglamorous work of keeping someone alive.
Outside, Kiri was waiting like she’d been holding her breath the whole time.
Jake barely got the seal open before Kiri surged forward and grabbed his wrist—tight, desperate.
“How?...”
Jake nodded. “He’s still here.” It was the only comfort with words he could give.
Kiri’s eyes closed for a beat like she couldn’t afford to look at anything else. Then she opened them and stared through the plastic, watching the rise of Spider’s chest like it was the only language she trusted.
Lo’ak stayed beside her, silent, knuckles white on the strap he was gripping.
Neytiri stood on Kiri’s other side, not touching her, but close enough that the warmth of her presence could be felt.
For a second, Kiri leaned sideways until her shoulder brushed Neytiri’s arm. Kiri knew her Mom was trying and she would allow the comfort being offered.
Neytiri didn’t pull away.
Jake watched that small contact happen and felt something in his chest crack open in the quietest way.
They stayed there, the four of them, facing the med bay. Facing this the only way the Sully's knew how—together.