Chapter Text
Eclipse didn’t fall on Awa’tulu the way it did in the forest.
There was no sudden hush, no chorus of insects deciding the day was done. The reef kept its own time: the sun thinning into copper across the water, the wind easing into softer breaths, the whole village shifting from work to food the way a body shifts under a blanket—small adjustments, familiar, almost unconscious.
Platforms creaked under bare feet. Nets were shaken out and hung. A last haul of shells clinked into a basket and was carried away with a hip against the weave to keep it from spilling. Somewhere, a woman laughed and scolded at the same time. Somewhere else, a child shrieked because the game was apparently life or death.
It was peaceful. Which didn’t mean quiet.
Peace on the reef looked like life continuing without asking permission from whatever had happened to you.
The Sully family had been back for two days.
That detail should have mattered more than it did, but the village didn’t treat it like a homecoming. Awa’tulu didn’t gather and stare and make big gestures. It made room in the only way it knew how—by absorbing them into the flow like they’d never left.
Tuk had been all over Spider since they got back. She fell into step like nothing had ever shifted, talking about absolutely nothing: a fish she’d seen, a game she’d invented, a shell she’d decided looked like a smiling face. Her small hand kept finding him—his wrist, his sleeve, the edge of his shirt—as if touch could nail him to the world.
Spider enjoyed the attempt at normalcy and honestly, it beat the alternative. Sideways glances with pity echoed throughout each look.
Still Spider found himself slipping away as the light changed.
He edged outward until he could breathe without feeling every pair of eyes, every shift in tone, every little sound.
He sat where the village ended and the forest began—where woven platforms gave way to sand and root, where the smells shifted from salt and fish oil to leaf and damp earth. A place that had shadow even at dusk.
He could hear Awa’tulu behind him. He could also hear the forest. Two rhythms overlapping.
It made his head feel less crowded. There was so much to dwell on given the past few days and he didn't know where to begin.
He picked at a strip of bark with his fingernail, not really seeing what he was doing. His thoughts moved the way the tide moved—circling back, pulling away, returning anyway.
Bright rooms. Smooth metal. The kind of clean that didn’t come from care, but from control.
He remembered the research center’s cold as a pressure. It wasn’t temperature type pressure. It pressed down on his skin, on his lungs, on the back of his tongue. Even the air had felt owned there. Measured. Filtered. Delivered.
The people had been calm while they hurt him.
That was what his brain kept snagging on. No frenzy. Just the steady voice of someone reading results while his body did what bodies did when they were pushed too far.
They’d wanted all of what was running through his system. They’d wanted it so badly they’d treated everything else—his fear, the fact that he was a kid—as background noise.
Spider pressed his palm flat to his sternum.
Under his hand, his heart thudded steady. Under that—faint as a second pulse you weren’t sure you imagined—there was the symbiote’s presence.
It was there.
But it felt… tucked away.
Before the RDA, it had been a subtle thing. Easy to ignore most days. He’d felt it in odd moments such as running hard, after panic, after injuries - like something in him had shifted its weight and then settled again. A quiet awareness. Nothing that demanded attention.
When they’d taken him, it had stopped being subtle.
The symbiote had reacted. It had pressed back. It had made itself known in ways Spider still didn’t have language for; like a reflex that wasn’t his, like a hidden hand bracing his ribs from the inside when everything else was failing.
And he remembered the echo of agitation. Sharp, restless and wrong right before the air became a fight.
That was the part he didn’t know how to place. The part that kept looping back and scraping at him.
He didn’t know where the line was.
How far would it go to protect itself?
How far would it go to protect him?
And if those things weren’t the same… what did that make him?
Another question tossed into the universe with the certainty of knowing there would be no answer.
And then they’d rescued him.
And it had gone quiet.
Norm and Max had confirmed it wasn’t gone. The symbiote was still there, still doing whatever it did that made Spider’s body work. If it wasn’t, Spider wouldn’t be sitting here breathing salt air like it belonged to him.
But it wasn’t reactive now. Not even slightly.
Almost like it knew the difference between help and harm.
He didn’t know what to do with that.
It should have comforted him. Instead it made him feel exposed in a new way. If something inside him could recognize safety, then it could recognize danger too. It could change based on who held him. Spider shook his head in an attempt to clear it but failed.
He didn’t know where he stood with it anymore—what counted as strain, what counted as harm, what might wake it or shut it down again. What he could do by accident. What he might trigger without meaning to.
The RDA would keep coming. They would. Spider didn’t have the luxury of pretending otherwise. He’d seen the look in their eyes. He’d heard the words they used when they thought he was too out of it to comprehend: outcome, subject, viability, replication.
They didn’t need him to be a person.
They needed him to be repeatable.
Dusk made everything look softer than it was. Spider turned and stared out at the waterline until his eyes stung. He was falling deeper into his head and he wasn't sure how to dig himself out. What was he to do now?
A shadow shifted beside him.
Kiri sat down without speaking, folding into the space like she belonged there, like her presence didn’t need permission.
She didn’t force conversation. She didn’t fill the air. She just sat with him, and the silence didn’t feel like a test.
Most times they didn’t need words. They could sit like this for hours, watching the reef breathe, watching the forest settle, letting the world do what it did without asking anything of them. It was one of the only times Spider was actually still—when he was with Kiri. She brought him a kind of calm he didn’t know how to manufacture on his own.
They sat for a long time with the village noise behind them and the forest breath around them.
Then Kiri said, quietly, “You ran off again.”
Spider huffed. “I walked.”
“Mm.” She didn’t argue. “You didn’t tell anyone.”
Spider picked at the bark again. “I didn’t go far.”
Kiri’s voice was gentle but the words landed. “You are.”
He glanced at her, irritation flaring because she was right and he hated that she could say it so simply.
Kiri met his gaze calmly with her eyes bright with the knowledge that he needed to hear this.
Spider looked away.
“It’s fine,” he said, because saying it was fine was easier than admitting it wasn’t.
Kiri’s mouth twitched like she’d almost smiled. “It’s not.”
Spider let out a breath through his nose. “We’ve only been back a couple of days.”
“I know,” Kiri said.
He waited, annoyed at how patient she was.
She just stayed beside him until his own words loosened.
“I can’t stop thinking,” Spider admitted finally. “Not about… everything. Not even about them.” He tapped his sternum once, careful. “This.”
Kiri’s gaze dropped to his hand.
“It’s quiet,” Spider said. “Too quiet.”
Kiri didn’t pretend to understand it. She didn’t give him a soft answer to make the question go away.
“Quiet like… gone?” she asked.
Spider shook his head. “No. It’s there. I can feel it if I focus.” He frowned, searching. “It’s like something curled up. Not asleep. Just… not moving.”
Kiri’s fingers pressed into the sand. “Norm and Max checked.”
Spider nodded. “They confirmed it’s still there.” He paused, then added because this was the part that kept his jaw tight at night, “They said it didn’t react even when they were," He paused again and swallowed tightly. "When they were keeping me stable.”
He barely remembers what happened after he was rescued. Only bits and pieces. Flashes of hurt, not being able to breathe and the safety of Jake's arms around him as he felt himself fading.
Kiri’s eyes flicked to his face.
Spider swallowed. “It's like it knew.”
“Knew what?” Kiri asked, softer.
Spider stared at the water, throat working.
“That I was safe,” he said, and the word tasted strange.
Kiri didn’t say anything for a moment. Her hand moved, slow, and rested lightly against his forearm. A simple touch that translated into an anchor that he needed for grounding.
Spider’s shoulders dropped a fraction, like his body had been holding itself up too long.
“I don’t know what it means,” he muttered.
Kiri’s thumb brushed once against his arm “Why does that scare you?”
Spider swallowed again. “Because I don’t know what hurts it now.” He didn’t look at her when he said it. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to avoid. I don’t know what I already did that I can’t undo.”
Kiri stayed quiet, listening.
Spider’s voice went lower. “Because if it learned this—” he tapped his chest again, too hard, then stopped himself—“then it can learn other things too. There is too much unknown.”
Kiri didn’t ask him to explain. She waited.
“They’re not going to stop,” Spider said quietly. “Not after the data they gathered.”
Kiri’s fingers tightened once. “No,” she agreed.
Spider let out a breath that didn’t feel like enough.
He didn’t want to say the next part. Saying it made it real in a way thoughts didn’t.
“I keep thinking that if they come again,” he said, voice low, “all of you will be caught up in my mess.”
Kiri’s gaze sharpened.
“They have already come for all of us,” she said.
Spider looked at her then, frustrated. “You know what I mean.”
Kiri didn’t back down. “I do.”
Spider's gaze went back to the waterline. “I don’t want to be the reason.”
Kiri’s hand slid a little, palm against his forearm. “You are not the reason.”
He smiled tightly. A grin that didn't meet his eyes and they both knew he didn't believe it.
He didn't respond and instead let the stillness between them breathe.
Kiri’s voice was quiet when she spoke again. “Do you remember when we made it to High Camp?”
Spider’s stomach tightened at the shift. The memory lived close to the surface lately, like it didn’t trust him not to forget.
“Pieces,” he said.
Kiri nodded. “Do you want to talk about it?”
He should have chosen an easy out.
Unfortunately, they weren’t any.
Spider’s eyes went unfocused for a second.
Then the world slid—the way it did when your brain decided it was done keeping the past behind a door.
High Camp Med Bay — eight days ago
Spider’s throat hurt before he even understood he was awake.
Pain—raw, scraped, deep.
He inhaled and something resisted. Something wrong lived in his airway.
His eyes flew open.
Light stabbed at him. It was too bright. The ceiling was a blur of cables and panels. He tried to move and his body didn’t listen.
Panic hit fast, sharp and animal.
There was something in his throat. He gagged.
A cough ripped through him and it felt like it tore skin. His mind was so muddled, it was like his brain had been scrambled and thoughts flowed in like static.
“Spider.” Norm’s voice cut in close. Hoarse. Strained. “Hey. Hey—good. Cough. You need to cough.”
Spider coughed again, violent, desperate. His eyes watered. His chest seized. He tried to claw at his own neck and someone caught his wrist—firm enough to stop him, careful enough not to hurt.
Max’s voice, low and steady: “Easy. We’ve got you.”
Spider's eyes fluttered open and his vision swam. The edges of everything were smeared. He heard movement—hands, quick words, a hiss of suction.
Norm leaned in, face too close, eyes bloodshot with days of not sleeping. “On the next cough,” he said, firm like a command Spider could obey even through fog. “Cough.”
Spider coughed.
The tube slid free.
Air hit his throat like a blade and then like salvation.
He dragged in a breath—ragged, heavy, real. It scraped. It burned. But it was his.
His lungs worked like they were learning their job again.
A mask - he needed to have a word with someone about this - was pressed to his face with warm air pushing in, making breathing less brutal. Spider’s chest rose and fell, deep and ugly, but it didn’t stop. His head bobbled as he tried to gain some faculty over his body. He tried to swallow and felt like glass was sliding down his throat.
Through the blur, he saw shapes in the room.
Jake, a dark figure near the back, too still, arms crossed as he stared intently at Spider's movements. He gave would could be designated as a small grin when he saw Spider looking his way—a bit of the tension in his body melting away.
And Neytiri was there, closer than Jake, eyes locked on Spider’s face like she was afraid to blink. She was rigid as Neytriri tended to be when she was deep in her own head.
Thoughts were not adding up and Spider tried to focus on her but his mind slid sideways. His body was too exhausted to hold the moment.
The room tilted.
He fell back into dark.
As he drifted, voices reached him like sound underwater.
Jake’s voice was rough, controlled but with an edge of concern, “Is this normal?”
Norm’s answered as he always did with steadiness and practicality, refusing to let fear become the loudest thing in the room, “Yes. He’s exhausted. He’ll be awake minutes at a time. His vitals are good. That’s a great sign he’s on the mend.”
Then, quieter, like Norm had remembered Jake needed one more piece: “All of him is stable.”
Jake’s breath sounded like someone learning how to breathe again.
Time didn’t move right after that.
Spider woke in fragments.
Sometimes he surfaced to dim light and hands. Sometimes he surfaced to dryness so intense he could taste blood in the cracks of his lips. Sometimes he surfaced to nothing at all and sank again before he could grab onto the world.
When he woke clearer, the mask was gone. A nasal cannula looped under his nose instead with thin tubes delivering help without smothering him.
His throat still burned when he swallowed. His chest still ached like bruised muscle.
Kiri was there. Her eyes fixed on him like she’d been holding her breath for days and didn’t dare release it yet.
Spider tried to speak. His voice scraped out as nothing.
He licked lips that were dry and cracked.
Kiri’s face shifted—relief so sharp it made her eyes shine.
“You’re back,” she whispered.
Spider blinked slow.
Kiri lifted a cup, guided a straw to his mouth with hands that trembled only a little. Spider sipped, and the water tasted like life in the most literal sense.
Kiri set the cup down and cradled his cheek softly. They both needed the comfort and it had been so long since she felt safe enough to touch him.
Spider drew a deeper breath without meaning to, like his body was trying to make up for lost air. His chest pulled tight, then eased.
“Easy,” Kiri murmured, voice soft and wrecked. “You’re okay.”
Spider didn’t feel okay.
But he felt here. That was enough for now.
Days later—real days, not fragments—he was sitting up. Speaking. The fog thinning. The world holding shape. The nasal cannula was no longer needed; a huge step in Spider's recovery.
They were all in the med bay. Lo'ak and Kiri surrounded his bed while Jake, Max and Norm talked in low voices about the trip back to Awa'atlu. How to support Spider’s breathing if the journey stressed him, how to pace it so his body didn’t react negatively, what to watch for if his lungs started to tire.
Spider listened and didn’t understand all of it, but he understood enough. Lo’ak kept talking, filling the gaps on purpose. Something dumb, something confident—like if he could make the words light, he could make the rest of it feel normal. Kiri listened more than she spoke, eyes on Spider’s face, reading him the way she always did.
Lo'ak made another joke and a snort slipped out of Spider before he could stop it.
It caught halfway through his chest. He froze, breath held, then cleared his throat carefully to avoid a coughing fit.
The room shifted.
Lo’ak’s grin fell away. Kiri’s hand went still on the edge of the mattress. Even Jake’s voice cut off mid-sentence.
For a beat, nobody moved.
“Hey,” Spider rasped, eyes flicking around the room. “I’m… good.”
Kiri didn’t look away. “Sure you are, Monkey Boy.” The words were teasing. Her hand was steady where it rested near him, like she was afraid to prove she’d let go.
He knew they’d ease up eventually. For now, he let them hover. They were going home.
Present Day
The memory loosened. Spider blinked hard and found himself back under the roots with dusk thickening and Kiri’s hand still on his arm.
He exhaled slowly, like he was convincing his body he didn’t need to fight the thoughts right now.
Kiri didn’t ask if he was okay.
She said, “You’re here.”
Spider swallowed. “Yeah.”
Spider stared at the waterline and let his voice come out rough. “I don’t know how to do this part.”
Kiri tilted her head. “What part.”
“The part where I’m back,” Spider said. “The part where I’m supposed to forget what they did to me in there. Again.” His jaw tightened. “And everyone’s looking at me like they’re waiting for me to be normal.”
Kiri’s mouth softened, then steadied. “They don’t know what else to do.”
Spider’s gaze stayed on the water. “Neither do I.”
A beat.
Kiri didn’t reach for a lesson. She just stayed close enough that Spider could feel the warmth of her without having to look.
“You don’t have to act fine,” she said.
He picked at the sand until it stuck under his nails. “I don’t know where to put it,” he said, voice rough and small. Anyone else wouldn't understand.
Kiri’s hand settled lightly against his wrist. “Here,” she said. “With me.”
Spider didn’t answer. He didn’t move away.
Kiri’s voice softened. “You don’t have to be better quickly.”
Spider’s shoulders sagged. “I don’t want them looking at me like I might break.”
Kiri’s expression didn’t shift into pity. It sharpened into something protective. “They look at you like that because they almost lost you.” A beat, then, quieter: “Because we care.”
They locked eyes.
Kiri continued, calm and sure: “That isn’t the same as thinking you’re weak.”
Spider was afraid that if he spoke, his voice would crack. The truth landed and stuck.
He moved his hand to his chest again, fingers splayed over the center of his sternum.
“I don’t know what it means that it went quiet like this,” he admitted. “I don’t know if that’s good.”
Kiri was silent for a moment, gaze distant—thinking, weighing.
Then she answered like she was giving him something he could stand on.
“We will learn,” she said simply.
Spider let out a breath. He knew she was right. There was no other choice. The uncertainty would sit with him no matter how badly he wanted to solve it.
From the village, a voice called—Lo’ak’s, too loud on purpose.
Kiri glanced back. Then she looked at Spider.
“Come,” she said.
Spider hesitated. The shadows felt easier.
Then he nodded and stood.
Kiri rose with him. They walked back toward Awa’tulu as dusk deepened and lamps began to glow.
Dinner was already underway when they reached the main platforms.
People shifted to make space without making it obvious. Bowls were passed. Someone shoved a piece of fruit into Spider’s hand like it was the most normal thing in the world.
Lo’ak was there, half sitting, half sprawled, Tsireya beside him with her calm presence smoothing his sharp edges.
Lo’ak’s eyes landed on Spider and something tightened behind the grin he forced into place.
“Took you long enough,” Lo’ak said.
Spider’s mouth tugged. “Shut up.”
Lo’ak’s grin cracked into something real for half a second before he caught it. “Eat,” he muttered like an order. “You look like you’re about to float away.”
Tsireya’s gaze touched Spider lightly, kind without hovering. “Eat,” she echoed, as if feeding him was a simple act of belonging.
Spider sat. He took a careful bite and swallowed.
Tuk was already there, chattering as she ate, telling Kiri something urgent about a toy she’d made from woven fiber and shell. She bumped her shoulder against Spider’s arm like a claim and smiled up at him like he was something shiny.
Neytiri sat across from them, Tuk close to her side. Her hand rested on Tuk’s back almost constantly—small pressure, constant reassurance. Her eyes moved across the group in quick, precise sweeps the way a hunter’s did, but there was warmth in it too, and exhaustion, and something tender she didn’t know how to put down.
When Spider’s gaze flicked to her, Neytiri caught it.
For a heartbeat, something slipped across Neytiri’s face—raw and unmistakably soft.
Her hand tightened on Tuk’s back without thinking. Tuk leaned into it, still talking, still safe.
Neytiri kept her eyes on Spider.
Something in her gaze eased even further. Just a little.
Spider’s throat went tight. He looked down and took another bite like it gave him somewhere to put what he felt.
Tuk said something loud and ridiculous—something about how her toy was “stronger than Lo’ak’s head”—and Neytiri let out a sound that was close enough to a laugh that Tuk grinned like she’d scored a hit.
Jake stood a little behind them at first, watching the whole scene like a perimeter. Then he eased closer, as if letting himself join was its own kind of risk.
His eyes tracked Spider in the way they always did now, never fully letting him leave Jake’s awareness.
Neytiri’s gaze slid to Jake. Something passed between them—wordless. Shared. Heavy.
A memory flickered for Jake, sharp enough to taste.
Neytiri at High Camp—standing over Spider’s unconscious body while the oxygen mask fogged faintly with each breath. Spider had been as stable as one could on a precarious ledge.
Neytiri had turned to Jake with wet eyes she refused to let spill.
“I must go,” she’d said, voice tight. “Tuk needs me.”
Jake had nodded once, throat closing, because he understood. Because he hated the war for forcing choices like that.
They pulled in close, foreheads touching as they breathed each other in deeply.
Before leaving, Neytiri had stepped closer to Spider’s bed. Her fingers hovered over his cheek like she didn’t trust herself.
Then she touched him—lightly, carefully, as if her love might bruise him.
A goodbye he would never remember.
When she pulled her hand back, it shook.
And then she’d straightened and walked away like a warrior, because if she stopped moving she would have shattered.
Jake had watched her go and swallowed the sound he wanted to make.
Now, in Awa’tulu, watching all of them—Tuk laughing, Lo’ak grinning, Kiri steady, Spider a little dimmer but there—Jake felt the truth settle in his ribs:
This wasn’t over.
Because the RDA knew enough to keep trying.
And because the thing that kept Spider alive was still mostly unknown.
Jake didn’t mind not knowing when the truths belonged to Eywa; he could live with mystery. But this mystery had already been hunted.
Jake watched him, jaw tight. Spider met his eyes for a heartbeat with a raw, flickering acknowledgment before looking away. Jake stayed where he was, a silent sentinel. Under the table, Neytiri pressed her hand to Jake’s wrist—a brief, grounding pulse of shared grief and hope.
Her eyes were twin ambers in the low light, reflecting a weariness only a mother knows. This family is our fortress. The old vow felt heavier now, tempered by the salt and ash of their lives. The reef held them, indifferent and steady, providing a home for hearts that hadn't quite caught up to their bodies.
Spider was alive. The symbiote was still. In the safety of the lamplight, with a single bowl of food before him, Spider finally let down his guard. He stopped waiting for the world to break him and just existed.