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—
Lo’ak supposes it’s his fault everything goes to shit.
But they’d banished Payakan. He fought for them. He saved their lives. His only crime was that he’d had the nerve to want to defend his clan, to not want to roll over and die.
And they’d cast him away for it.
Lo’ak’s outburst is a loud, messy surge of emotion at best. Tonowari and Ronal had been caught between silencing him and silencing Tsireya.
Pointing fingers might’ve been overkill, in hindsight.
But he hadn’t known how else to make them see.
Mom looked like she understood, though she made no move to confront the Council.
Dad refused to pipe up, completely indifferent to Lo’ak’s pleading.
But that…
That he’d been expecting.
Dad grips his arm, growling Make a hole at the crowd. They part to let them through, and the last thing he sees before Dad starts tugging him away is the fear on Tsireya’s face.
Lo’ak wrenches his arm free.
“What are you doing?” Dad hisses.
He whirls on him. “You never stand up for me!”
Dad stops, then takes him by the arm again.
“Come with me,” he says under his breath. Distantly, he hears Tonowari command the Council to proceed.
Once they’re further away, the floodgates open.
“We’re at war. You understand that? If you disobey orders, people get killed. With Spider here, we’re trying to keep a low profile. But that rogue is out there,” he practically spits, though Lo’ak can hear the desperation in it, “he’s stirring up the young bulls. He was gonna bring the whole RDA down on us.”
“You want him gone…” Lo’ak murmurs, unable to help the faint accusation in his tone, “that’s why you didn’t say anything.”
Dad presses his lips together, forcing air out his nose.
“He’s a loose cannon. He’s just like you,” he grits through his teeth. Lo’ak flinches. “In fact, if you hadn’t gone to him in the first place—do you—do you realize how close Neteyam came to dying? First the train heist, and again on the ship. How many times do you think you’re gonna get lucky, huh? How many close calls does it take? All you had to do was stay put, and if you’d just done as you were told, if you hadn’t disobeyed orders, then your brother wouldn’t have gotten—”
He inhales sharply.
And there it is.
Lo’ak can pinpoint the exact moment Dad’s brain catches up with his mouth. But the words are out there, and the world doesn’t end, not like Lo’ak had pictured it would once his father finally said what he’s been saying for weeks with his indifference. In his head, he’d imagined the worst. Some eruption, or a moon blowing to pieces above them.
There’s nothing explosive about it, but the ground beneath him still feels like it’s going to give.
The world doesn’t end, and none of it can be unsaid.
Shot.
Neteyam wouldn’t have gotten shot.
His breath leaves him all at once, shuddering past his lips. Hot, fat tears carve down his cheeks.
Something flashes like lightning across Dad’s expression, some emotion he can’t make out. Regret, maybe, but it doesn’t linger long enough for him to be sure.
He doesn’t take it back. Couldn’t, even if he wanted to.
“Say it,” Lo’ak whispers in a voice he doesn’t recognize as his own. He doesn’t know where that comes from.
Dad does something strange with his face. He looks wounded, somehow. He hadn’t been expecting that either.
Lo’ak’s hands come up and he shoves. Dad stumbles back a little, surprise in the knit of his brow.
“Say it!”
He doesn’t. He doesn’t need to.
Dad takes a step toward him.
“Lo’ak—”
But he’s already running.
Dad doesn’t follow.
—
The reality is, there’s nothing Dad can say to him that he hasn’t said to himself a million times over.
—
He has no idea how long he’s been running, how far he’s gone from the docks, but somehow he ends up at a shore he doesn’t recognize, waves crashing at his ankles and the spray of the sea on his face.
Suddenly he’s on his hands and knees, legs too numb to keep him upright. He gathers water into cupped hands and washes away the tears on his cheeks, if only to feel the coolness against his skin, to taste brine on his lips.
He looks down. His face warps in the water.
His eyes grow heavy, weighed down by exhaustion and regret and guilt, and he just wants to close them and let them stay that way.
“Lo’ak.”
He does shut his eyes now.
“Go away.”
Predictably, Neteyam ignores him. He just crosses the distance between them in shallow, labored breaths and sits down next to him.
Lo’ak keeps his gaze firmly on the sand between his legs, forces himself not to look at Neteyam, because his gaze will inevitably drift to the bandages.
That was your doing.
“Lo’ak,” Neteyam tries again.
“You’re supposed to be at home resting.” He doesn’t mean to sound harsh, but he doesn’t know how else to make him go.
Neteyam shrugs, like his own health is the least of his worries. “Needed to work a cramp out of my leg.”
A lie, but he doesn’t call him out on it.
“Little bro—”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine.”
True to form, Lo’ak goes on the defensive. It’s what he’s best at. “I’m not the one in bandages.”
Neteyam huffs. “That’s not relevant.”
Lo’ak snorts.
“Right,” he says bitterly. “I got you shot, but all that matters is how I’m doing.”
“This—” he gestures to the bandages wrapped around him, “—you didn’t do this. The Sky People did this.”
“It’s my fault it happened in the first place.”
Neteyam goes quiet.
“That’s not true,” he says. His arm moves, like he’s going to reach for Lo’ak’s shoulder, but he thinks better of it. “What Dad said. It’s not true.”
Great. Neteyam heard everything.
“It is,” Lo’ak says hollowly.
“I don’t believe that. He doesn’t believe that.”
“He does.”
“No, he doesn’t. He is just…” he searches for a word, “…scared. For us. For Mom. For everyone. It doesn’t excuse what he said to you, but that doesn’t mean he meant it.”
Lo’ak stays silent, not trusting the sound that’ll come out of his mouth if he opens it.
Neteyam sighs. “Sometimes people say things they don’t mean when they’re scared.”
Lo’ak swallows. The waves crash louder.
“It doesn’t matter if he meant it or not. He was right,” he whispers, voice splintering. “We could have escaped, but I made us go back for Spider.”
“And we had to go back for him.” He nudges Lo’ak’s shoulder with his own. “That’s not your fault, baby bro.”
Tears prick at his eyes and he almost curls in on himself, feeling completely undeserving of the nickname.
“We weren’t even supposed to be out there. I got us caught because I disobeyed orders.”
“You were just trying to help Payakan.”
“How can you say that? Even you told me not to go.” He brushes two stray braids behind his ear in frustration, unsure what else to do with his hands. They just fall back in front of his face, undaunted. “I didn’t listen. And you paid for it because I dragged you into my mess.”
A beat passes.
“Again,” he adds miserably.
“You didn’t make me follow you.”
“Bro, yes, I did. Just because I didn’t drag you by your arm doesn’t mean I didn’t force your hand.”
“You did not force anything. I could have stayed back. I could have gone to Mom and Dad. But I followed you. That was my choice. And if I’d known that I’d get shot—”
Lo’ak’s breath hitches. Neteyam’s hand does find his shoulder now. His grip is gentle, but steady.
“If I’d known I’d get shot,” he says again, firmly this time, “I still would have gone. I would not have chosen differently.”
That’s the problem, Lo’ak wants to say.
Every choice I make gets you in trouble, or hurt, he wants to say.
What if—
He can’t finish that thought. His whole face crumbles. The tears come back with a vengeance.
“You’re my little brother. If something happened to you while I wasn’t there…”
He trails off.
“I would do it again,” he whispers. “Even if it killed me.”
Even if it killed me.
It almost did.
Lo’ak had attended the funerals after the Skirmish at the Three Brothers, watched the Metkayina lay their loved ones to rest at the bottom of the reef, watched the anemones enfold them gently.
Neteyam very nearly joined them.
“I would do it again, Lo’ak.”
—
Again and again and again.
—
Neytiri cannot bring herself to stop pacing. Her ear pricks at everything, hoping it is her sons returning home.
Behind her, the sound of Jake refilling his cup grates on her.
She turns on her heel. The cup is halfway to his mouth when she plucks it from his hand and pours it into the fire.
“Go to him, Jake,” she tells him softly, ignoring the affront in his expression. “You almost lost one son to a bullet. Do not lose the other to your pride.”
He looks away from her, his face clouding over. “I’ve got nothing to say to him.”
Stubborn, stubborn man. She may as well have thrown a rock into the water and told it to float.
“Do not blame Lo’ak. You said you could protect this family. That, you could do.”
“Yeah.” He does not take his eyes away from the fire. “I thought I could.”
“The war followed us here, Jake.”
“I was wrong.” His voice is like gravel. “What do you want me to say? That every decision I made for this family was wrong? I almost got our son killed?”
“No,” she says. “You did not. But blaming Lo’ak is no better.”
Jake’s head falls back against the fabric of the marui.
“There’re only so many ways I can tell him to be more careful before it comes to tying him to a post and praying he doesn’t just chew his way out.” He shakes his head. “It’s like everything I say goes in one ear and right out the other.”
She kneels down in front of him.
“You do not listen to him any more than he listens to you.”
He looks at her now.
Her husband does not seem to have anything to say to that.
“You think you can protect him from himself by making a soldier out of him.”
She places a hand on his knee. She is tempted to drag him to his feet and make him go, but she also knows that Jake and Lo’ak must make amends on their own terms.
“He is your son. He is your son before he is anything else.”
—
Dinner is eaten in silence.
Lo’ak feels like he’s suffocating.
Kiri glances up at him every so often, concern written in every line of her expression. She can see right through him. There’s a question there, one he can’t bring himself to acknowledge. Tuk watches him with big eyes. She sits close, like she’s afraid he’ll disappear, like being near enough will keep him there. He finds himself fascinated by the tiny space between their knees.
Neteyam tries to catch his gaze, once or twice.
Dad hadn’t been home when he and Neteyam came back.
He’s relieved for that. He doesn’t think he could stomach seeing his father right now.
“Ma’itan,” he hears Mom call softly. “You are not eating.”
He blinks at his food. He hadn’t even realized he’d been picking at it, fish flaking into something indistinguishable. It barely resembles fish at all.
But he can’t say that he’s not hungry, that every swallow hardens to stone in his gut, threatening to come back out the way it went in.
“Sorry,” he murmurs, because that’s all he can say. Explaining himself never takes him very far. Sorry is all he has left to give.
Sorry for worrying you.
Sorry for causing trouble.
Sorry for almost killing your son.
Lately it’s like she’s half expecting that her children will not return to her in one piece.
She looked so relieved when he and Neteyam came home.
“Do not be sorry, Lo’ak,” Mom responds gently. “Just… eat. Please. As much as you can.”
He swallows thickly and nods, more at the ground than at her.
He can see her watching him out of the corner of his eye, like she wants to say something. Like she wants to reach for him but doesn’t know how—he’ll fall apart and scatter in the wind if she tries.
She sighs, letting it go.
Vaguely, he hears Neteyam ask Tuk about her day. She’s reluctant to take her eyes off Lo’ak. He tries his best to smile at her, hoping she takes it as encouragement. She smiles back. It doesn’t reach her eyes.
She turns to her eldest brother to answer. The conversation thins into a faraway, shapeless murmur.
Kiri looks on, knowing too much and nothing at all.
I would do it again, Lo’ak.
—
Again and again and again.
—
Lo’ak doesn’t sleep that night.
He doesn’t remember how he winds up on the beach with Dad’s rifle.
He used to love the feeling of it in his hands. Had liked the sound of the magazine clicking into place, had memorized the recoil, the weight. Had quickly learned to appreciate the care it took to work the thing, more than he ever had with a bow.
Neteyam was always better with a bow anyway.
He once flattered himself into thinking he could fire the rifle while riding his ikran, and soon learned that he was getting too far ahead of himself.
Now it just drags behind him, carving a lone trail in the sand next to his footprints.
He falls to his knees.
The rifle sits cold and heavy in his lap. He’s not even looking at it. He’s staring, unseeing, at his fingers.
Na’vi. Human.
The lines blur.
Something somewhere between a laugh and sob escapes him.
He still has a scar from when he was eleven, at the base of his pinky. He’d had the genius idea of removing the fourth finger from each hand. Maybe then the clan would stop looking at him the way they did.
He’d started crying the minute he pierced skin. Couldn’t bring himself to do it—it hurt too much, in more ways than one.
Neteyam later found him crouched in the grass, sucking on the cut.
The truth was too embarrassing, so he’d just told him he tripped and fell.
Just another cut, just another bruise.
He wills the memory away and forces his limbs to move.
The muzzle bites into the underside of his chin, all cool steel and poison.
He lets the poison seep in, into his skin, into his heart.
Payakan. Tsireya. Spider. Tuk. Kiri. Mom. Dad. Payakan. Tsireya. Spider. Tuk. Kiri. Mom. Dad. PayakanTsireyaSpiderTukKiriMomDad—
Neteyam—
I would do it again, Lo’ak.
Again and again and again.
His thumb finds the trigger. The rest of him is shaking, but his hands are frighteningly steady.
He presses down. Nothing comes, and immediately he feels the heat of frustration burning at the nape of his neck. He knows this gun; he knows the pressure the trigger needs—
Something tightens in his chest—he tries to close his eyes, but everyone he loves is tattooed to his lids, and suddenly he just wants to be held by his mother—
A sob wracks him.
He can’t breathe.
He can’t breathe.
—to see pride in his father’s eyes. Like from before. Before everything, before the war, before—
Before.
When Dad used to smile more, when the most he could say to hurt them was that he’d forgotten to bring home their favorite fruit.
Another memory surfaces, uninvited, of the first time Dad showed him how to shoot this rifle, back when the Sky People first returned and it all fell apart.
It’s better that you know how to use it and not need to, than to need to and not know. But that doesn’t mean go out there looking for a gunfight with something to prove.
He thinks of every stupid little thing he’s ever done just to be seen, to be heard. To prove himself.
Listen to me, son. You go looking for trouble, it’ll find you every time. I promise you that.
But trouble always seems to find him even when he’s not looking for it. And somehow it always ends up being Neteyam’s mess to clean up.
He doesn’t want to die.
But his brother loves him and he takes everything that comes with it.
Burden.
Blame.
Bullets.
He doesn’t want to die.
But he doesn’t think Neteyam will survive him—
He doesn’t want to die.
But Lo’ak exists on some periphery that goes unnoticed until the noise becomes too loud to ignore. Until he bargains fleeting moments of joy for anger and disappointment later on, because anger and disappointment at least means being noticed and is better than not being noticed at all, better than existing on that periphery.
He doesn’t want to die.
But Neteyam won’t choose himself first because selflessness ought to be reserved for older siblings.
He doesn’t want to die.
But when Dad looks at him, he can see it, can see it written on his face when Neteyam takes the fall, when Neteyam takes the bullet, when Neteyam takes the blame.
Dad looks at Lo’ak and it’s like—
Lo’ak is the son who seems to always escape his dues. The son who never learns.
He doesn’t want to die.
He doesn’t want to die—
A scream rips from his throat.
—
The rifle lands in the sand somewhere off to his right.
He can’t stop the tears when they come. His strength has left him—he stays on his knees. The stars reflect in the water, sparkling and oblivious to the numbness between his ribs.
He thinks he hears his name. Once. Twice.
It takes him a while to realize it’s Tsireya.
Kiri is there, to his right. Absently, he registers them checking him over frantically.
His sister looks over her shoulder, at the gun lying heavy in the sand—Tsireya follows her gaze, the hideous truth of what he almost did plain to see.
What he failed to do.
Kiri tries to turn his head toward her, tries to make him look at her. He can’t.
“Stay in this life, brother,” she whispers, hand cool on his face. “We need you.”
“We love you.” Tsireya’s voice cracks around a sob. Something cracks in his chest.
Kiri’s grip tightens.
You have greatness in you, she says.
She wraps her arms around him. Tsireya’s head falls against his chest.
And he looks on at the endless stretch of sea before him.
—
Kiri goes off to return Dad’s rifle to the marui. She’d wanted to take it and bury it somewhere—somewhere he wouldn’t find it. The expression on her face suggested she’d very much like to launch it into the sky, back to where it came from, if she had the means.
But he begged her to put it back. He didn’t want Dad opening the crate in the morning only to find it missing. That would invite questions, and he just… can’t.
They can’t know what he’d come close to doing tonight. Not his siblings. Not Mom. And especially not Dad.
Kiri didn’t look very willing to keep this a secret, but eventually she relented.
Tsireya’s tears have dried on her cheeks. He hates that she saw him like this. Hates that he scared her. Hates that he hurt her. Hates himself.
She digs up his mother’s bow from the sand, unfolding the cloth he’d buried it in. She presses her hand to his chest, then, and he lets the warmth thaw him from inside, lets her words soothe the ache there.
A bow can be fixed, she says, and he latches onto it.
A bow can be fixed.
—
Tsireya walks him back, both clinging to him all the while and trying not to crowd him. They stop a few feet shy of the marui.
She takes his hand in hers, thumb brushing against his pinky. Fresh tears pool in her eyes, and all he wants to do is tell her how sorry he is, but he can’t find his voice.
She wraps her arms around his shoulders and holds him close. What little strength he has left is spent bringing his arms up around her back.
She pulls away and he lifts his gaze to hers. The ocean looks back at him.
“I will see you tomorrow.” It almost sounds like an order.
She will see him tomorrow because he will be there.
He nods. That’s all he can manage.
She squeezes his arm, looking very reluctant to leave.
“Goodnight, Lo’ak.”
He swallows thickly. “Goodnight.”
He watches her go until she glances at him once more, as if to make sure he’s still there, before she walks around a bend and out of sight.
Kiri steps out of the marui. It’s not cold out, but she has her arms wrapped around her middle like she’s shivering.
He still can’t look her in the eye.
“Get some sleep, brother.” As if sleep will change any of what she witnessed tonight.
He wants to ask her how she knew to find him, how she knew something was wrong, but he can barely fill his lungs, let alone push enough air out to speak.
He’s rooted in place. She takes his hand and leads him inside. He forces his thoughts to slow so he can focus on keeping his footsteps light.
His eyes flick around the room. First to Spider, then to Tuk, then Neteyam, then Mom and Dad. He tries not to let his gaze linger. Dad has a weird sixth sense for knowing when he’s being watched.
He lies down on the floor instead of in his hammock, tucking himself as close as he can to the wall, because that’s where he’s supposed to be. On the periphery.
He traces patterns in the weaving of the marui with his eyes.
Kiri joins him.
“Sleep.” She’s careful to keep her voice down so that no one wakes.
“Kiri—”
“You haven’t been sleeping, Lo’ak.”
“Kiri, please,” he begs shakily. He sounds like a child even to his own ears. “Please just—just go to your hammock.”
She’s only trying to help. He knows she is. But it’s hard to hear the softness in her voice when shame and regret keeps him from even looking her in the eye.
She’s silent for a moment.
“You don’t have to be okay right now. Just…”
He tugs at his pinky absently. Kiri stops him with a gentle hand.
“Tomorrow,” she whispers, voice breaking. “Please, Lo’ak. Can you do that?”
Tomorrow.
The word snags somewhere in his head.
His problems will all still be waiting for him in the morning.
Kiri squeezes his hand.
He turns on his side, unworthy of her comfort, and curls in on himself. Keeping his eyes open is taking up energy he doesn’t have.
Sleep takes him.
—
Neteyam lies awake in his hammock watching the ceiling, wondering what to make of what he’s just heard.
—
The first thing Lo’ak notices when he wakes up is the tension in his muscles.
The floor hadn’t been kind to him. He sits up and tries to stretch the soreness out of his limbs.
The second thing he notices is the light filtering in through the mouth of the marui.
It’s well past daybreak. How long was he asleep?
The third thing he notices is that the marui is empty.
Mostly.
Neteyam looks up from the arrow he’s fletching. He’s been trying to fill his time with simple tasks, because sitting and lying down and sitting some more is driving him crazy and simple tasks are all Mom and Dad are willing to let him do while he’s still healing.
Lo’ak’s mouth opens and closes. He debates darting out of the marui.
“Um,” he says intelligently, “morning.” It comes out sounding like a question and he winces.
Neteyam puts the arrow down. “Good morning. Sleep well?”
Lo’ak rubs the back of his neck. “Yeah. Yeah, I—yeah,” he finishes lamely. “You?”
“Fine. Is there a reason you were sleeping on the floor?”
Lo’ak blinks. His nails dig into his palms.
The truth claws at the backs of his teeth, but he can’t tell him that he couldn’t sleep in his hammock—that after what he’d almost done, he couldn’t bring himself to try and fit himself back into place, into this space that he doesn’t feel he belongs in.
“I, uh,” he fumbles for an answer. It’s like grasping at smoke. “I dunno. I just felt like it.”
That’s the best you could come up with?
Neteyam narrows his eyes at him. “You ‘just felt like it’?”
Lo’ak tries not to bristle under his scrutiny. “Yeah. What’s wrong with that?”
Neteyam eyes him for a moment, then shrugs. “Nothing. It just doesn’t look very comfortable.”
Lo’ak pointedly ignores the kink in his neck. “It was fine.”
That’s his story and he’s sticking to it.
Neteyam doesn’t have the decency to look convinced, but he doesn’t comment on it any further.
“If you say so,” he says instead. “Hungry?”
No. He hasn’t been hungry in a long time.
“Did everyone eat already?”
Neteyam goes back to his arrow. “Hours ago.”
Lo’ak looks behind him. There’s a leaf set aside for him. He gets to his feet and tries very hard not to grunt at the stiffness in his legs while Neteyam’s around to hear him do it.
That would just prove his point.
He crosses the marui in tense strides and unfolds the leaf.
He eats slowly, but he eats. Or at least tries to look like he is, so Neteyam doesn’t ask questions.
He can feel his brother’s gaze burning into the side of his head, so he keeps his eyes on his food.
The sight of it makes him think of Mom.
Every bite turns to silt in his mouth.
He folds the leaf back together and puts it down.
“No one woke me up.” Not that he’s complaining. Dinner last night had been difficult enough without Dad there. Breakfast would have been worse with him.
He wouldn’t have been able to eat with Kiri there either.
Thinking about it makes bile rise in his throat.
“Mother told everyone not to. She said we should let you rest.”
Lo’ak bites the inside of his cheek, then nods once.
Neteyam’s ear flicks—he’s trying to work something out in his head. He opens his mouth, as if to say more, but is interrupted by an arrival. They both turn their heads outside.
Tsireya.
She sends Lo’ak a small smile. His conscience rakes at him.
She used to smile at him with her teeth. The first time he’d let an accidental “Reya” slip out, she’d smiled so hard it looked like it hurt, before looking away shyly.
He’d truly scared her last night, and now she smiles carefully—worried she’ll do it wrong and he’ll flee like a cornered animal.
“Good morning,” she says softly.
“Morning,” he says back. His voice is hoarse.
Something in her face shifts—something warm.
Her eyes flick to his brother. “Good morning, Neteyam.”
He nods a polite greeting. “Morning, Tsireya.”
If Neteyam can tell something is off between them, he doesn’t show it.
She looks back at Lo’ak. “I’m going to weave some carrying slings today. Do you want to help?”
An invitation. Just to do something, to take the day and not stew in his guilt.
She lets the question hang between them, patience in every second she allows to pass while he sits there staring dazedly.
He doesn’t know why, but for some reason his gaze drifts to his brother.
Neteyam just looks at him curiously, then does something with his face that might mean say yes, skxawng.
Tomorrow, Kiri had said.
Well, it’s tomorrow.
“Sure,” he says finally, and is almost startled by the way his voice doesn’t waver.
Tsireya’s face breaks into a toothy smile.
—
That was strange.
Lo’ak hadn’t been himself lately, that much was obvious. Nodding his head yes and shaking it no and hardly more than that.
With Dad, it’s strictly Yes, sir. No, sir. Head down. Minimal eye contact. Never an objection, never a challenge, never so much as a hiccup of hesitation.
Disappear for hours every day helping around the village, come home late, eat little, sleep, rinse, repeat.
Every instruction is followed to the letter. Lo’ak walks in a straight line and never strays from it.
It’s odd.
It doesn’t bring Neteyam any relief. It just unsettles him.
What worries him most is when he catches Lo’ak staring blankly into the distance, into some faraway, unreachable place.
It’s like looking at a stranger wearing his little brother’s face.
His injury was harder on Lo’ak than it was on him.
It all came to a head at the Tulkun Council.
Lo’ak’s first act of rebellion in what felt like ages.
His argument with Dad.
Neteyam had hoped he’d reassured Lo’ak last night.
But Lo’ak and Tsireya’s exchange makes him wonder. Under any other circumstances, Lo’ak would have jumped at the opportunity to help Tsireya with anything she asked of him if it meant getting to spend time with her. Today, his brother seemed unsure.
He doesn’t think they fought, or that Lo’ak had said something to her he shouldn’t have, because she’d looked happy to see him all the same.
Relieved to see him, actually, now that he thinks about it.
Kiri, too. He’d overheard bits and pieces last night, and this morning, his sister had spent breakfast watching Lo’ak sleep, like she were half expecting not to see him there when she woke up.
A vague, uneasy feeling settles in Neteyam’s chest.
Lo’ak’s given up on pretending he hasn’t been counting the passing days since—
Since.
The last six weeks have largely been spent in Tsireya’s company.
The first day she came to him, he helped her with the carrying slings. On the second and third day, they repaired the mooring lines together. Made small hand nets on the fourth day. Helped with storm preparations on the fifth. And it went on that way for almost two months.
Nearly every day, she would come to the marui with something new and lead him off somewhere they could work alone together. He’d swear she can sense when his guilt is particularly heavy, or when he’s especially missing Payakan, because she would hush the noise and the heartache with the sound of her own voice.
She’d never looked at his fingers or at the hair above his eyes and seen something wrong, never looked at his jagged edges and thought to sand them down.
She’d become his anchor.
They haven’t started fixing Mom’s bow yet. It’s still too harsh a reminder of that day. But Tsireya doesn’t push him.
He knows she’s keeping it somewhere safe, and he knows it’s there waiting for him when he’s ready.
On the days she either had duties to attend to as tsakarem or had her diving lessons with the little ones, he’d find himself hunting with Ao’nung and Rotxo.
Neteyam eventually heals fully, and on the seventh week, Ronal takes off his bandages for the last time and gives him the green light to join them for their next hunt.
Lo’ak does his best not to stare at the scar the bullet had left behind.
Hunting had always come naturally to his brother. It takes him a little getting used to at first—he spends the first hour relearning his ilu, but before nightfall, he and Lo’ak were racing through the water, and together they caught enough game to feed the family for the next three days.
Lo’ak is almost envious of how easily he bounces back.
Almost.
Really, he’s just relieved. Relieved that his brother is okay. Relieved to share that exhilarant smile with him after a long day in the reef. Relieved, because this is the part where everything goes back to normal. This is the part where Neteyam goes back to being their parents’ pride and joy, and Lo’ak goes back to never measuring up.
He can’t even find it in himself to dread that.
On the tenth week, after spending the whole day callusing their fingers on the nets, Neteyam challenges him to a race.
“Bro, I think the ilus need a break,” Lo’ak laughs.
Neteyam pats his back and walks across the marui to where Lo’ak keeps his belongings. He picks up Lo’ak’s riding chaps and tosses them to him. They land on his head and he yanks them off his face with an indignant scowl, but he can’t really put his heart in it. Not when his brother is in such a sickeningly good mood.
“Who said anything about ilus?” Neteyam smiles.
—
As incredible as the ocean is, as beautiful as the reef glows at night, it just doesn’t compare.
Neteyam has missed the sky. Has missed the feeling of the wind carrying him. It beats at his face. His braids whip every which way.
Lo’ak flies his ikran like he rides his ilu.
His legs sweep behind him when he dives as if cutting through water. When he ascends, it’s a steep climb. He looks like he’s coming up for air after being under for a long time.
His little brother took to the sea a lot faster than he had. Even in the sky, he carries it with him.
The sea becomes him, Neteyam thinks.
Lo’ak looks over his shoulder at him suddenly, a lopsided grin playing at the corner of his mouth.
Neteyam knows that look.
Before he has time to react, Lo’ak banks toward him and performs a barrel roll right above him. Neteyam feels a barely there brush of wind—the wing of his brother’s ikran nearly grazes the top of his head. Lo’ak does it again, but this time, Neteyam’s ready for it and he dips sharply before leveling out again.
“Skxawng!” he laughs. “Watch where you’re going!”
Lo’ak just shrugs. “Sorry, bro. Hard to see you when you’re lagging behind me.”
Neteyam takes exception to that.
“Oh, that’s how it is?”
Lo’ak can have the sea, but Neteyam’s not about to be outdone like this.
He steers close enough to Lo’ak that his brother is forced to hook left, then urges forward until he overtakes him.
“If you were any slower you’d be going backwards, baby bro!”
Lo’ak makes a noise of mock offense, but Neteyam hardly misses the challenge in his little brother’s eyes.
Eventually it becomes less of a race and more a show of elaborate maneuvers to upstage the other.
Sometimes they coordinate their moves together, nosediving and weaving their flight paths together in winding spirals, just because they can; no one’s watching, no one’s there to keep score. For a moment, Neteyam can pretend they’re back at the Floating Mountains. He can pretend the Sky People haven’t returned, pretend they are not being hunted by a psychopath with a horribly obsessive chip on his shoulder.
He wonders if Lo’ak can see that he aches for the clouds the same way he does for the tide.
Further ahead, he spots a ledge at the seawall terraces and urges his ikran to slow, before landing at the lip of the uppermost basin. He dismounts and Lo’ak follows suit moments later.
Lo’ak breathes out, the exertion catching up to him. “That was insane, bro.”
Neteyam grins, then pulls his brother into a headlock. “I won.”
Lo’ak hisses. “Ow, Teyam, let go!”
He laughs, bringing his hand up to ruffle the top of Lo’ak’s head. Lo’ak has just enough room to turn his head slightly, and Neteyam only barely catches the look on his face before his brother twists in his grip and pitches forward, and before he knows it—
“Lo’ak, wait—!”
—they’re both crashing into the basin.
Lo’ak’s already cackling when Neteyam surfaces from the water spluttering.
He clicks his tongue. “Lo’ak, you—”
“Skxawng?” Lo’ak finishes for him in a drawl.
“I was going to say dumbass.”
Lo’ak just snorts, then hauls himself out of the water to sit at the edge of the terrace pool with his feet dangling in the water. Once Neteyam gets his bearings, he joins him.
The Metkayina have all retired back to the village, where tiny specks of light dot the coast—it’s late enough that it’s just them there on the other side of the reef. It’s partly what prompted him to suggest this excursion in the first place, where he can talk to his brother away from the commotion.
He hasn’t been able to shake that troubling feeling ever since that morning after the Tulkun Council.
Something is terribly, terribly wrong.
Lo’ak likes to think he’s subtle, but Neteyam knows how hard he’d taken Payakan’s banishment, how hurt he’d been after his argument with Dad. And even though enough time has passed that Neteyam’s injury should by now feel somewhat like a distant memory, he has not failed to notice his brother’s restlessness, his scarce sleep.
He notices because his own sleep has been fitful as well. On nights when he wakes from a bad dream in a cold sweat, across the marui in his own hammock, Lo’ak almost never looks like he’s faring all that much better on that front.
Sometimes he mumbles in his sleep, and Neteyam can never quite make out exactly what he’s saying, but in between the tossing and turning and incoherent nothings, he can hear Lo’ak say his name.
Neteyam’s never heard grief sound like that.
Lo’ak still blames himself.
“We should probably head back, bro,” Lo’ak says, making to get up.
Neteyam stops him with a hand on his shoulder. Lo’ak furrows his brow at him.
No point beating around the bush.
“Have you talked to him?”
“Who?”
“Dad.”
Lo’ak sends him a puzzled look. “We talk all the time. You were there this morning when he told us to—”
Neteyam shakes his head. “That’s not talking. That’s taking orders and carrying them out.”
Something passes in Lo’ak’s expression. Uncertainty. Or apprehension, maybe. But he schools it quickly before Neteyam can linger on it.
“I don’t know what you’re—”
“Yes, you do.”
He knows what Lo’ak’s doing. He’s deflecting, trying to act like concern is unwarranted. Neteyam had expected it. That is, after all, his brother’s tried and true method for dealing with anything.
Lo’ak works his jaw, but doesn’t respond to the question. He doesn’t need to. Neteyam knew the answer when he asked it.
Then, “What happened that night? After the congregation?”
Lo’ak stills.
“You were there.”
Neteyam’s not having it. “You weren’t.” He searches Lo’ak’s gaze, but for as bad a liar as his brother usually is, his eyes betray nothing. “I woke up that night and you weren’t there. I almost went looking for you, but then you came back. Where were you?”
Lo’ak looks away, watching the way the water ripples around their legs. Whatever haunt is lurking behind his eyes disappears in an instant when he shakes his head.
All Lo’ak gives him is: “Out.”
Out.
Hell of a non-answer.
“What were you doing?”
Neteyam has to make a conscious effort not to grimace at how interrogative he’s being. Pressing too much and too callously won’t get him anywhere. But Lo’ak won’t appreciate being handled like a live grenade either.
So bluntness is always his recourse.
Lo’ak shrugs. “Nothing. I just needed some air.”
“What was Kiri doing with you?”
Surprise and something that looks like panic begin to show on Lo’ak’s face, then. His ears pin to his skull and his tail flicks slightly.
Suddenly he looks eerily like the little brother he is.
Sometimes Neteyam forgets that it’s only a year and some between them. Lo’ak has always had such laughter in his eyes that age never seems to have touched him at all.
But lately he looks like he carries more heartache than should be possible for someone only fifteen years old.
Neteyam’s not trying to make him feel cornered, but he doesn’t know how else to reach him.
Lo’ak huffs. “She was doing the same thing you are.” Catching the look on Neteyam’s face, he elaborates, but not before rolling his eyes once for good measure. “She just wanted to talk.”
Neteyam knows there’s more to it than Lo’ak’s letting on, and it bothers him that, whatever it is, he’s refusing to share it with him. But he lets the silence hang between them, hoping his brother will fill it. Preferably with the truth.
He doesn’t. And so Neteyam reroutes the conversation back to the more glaringly obvious issue.
“So you’ve talked to everyone but Dad.” It’s not a question, just a statement of fact.
Lo’ak bristles.
“Bro, it happened months ago.”
“That doesn’t mean it hurts any less.”
His brother’s expression turns stony.
“If he wanted to talk about it he would have by now,” he says, trying and failing to hide the bitterness in his tone. “But he doesn’t.”
He stands up abruptly and walks over to his ikran. Neteyam tries to catch his arm but Lo’ak’s already too far out of reach.
“And neither do I,” Lo’ak finishes, before taking off.
Neteyam can only watch him go.
He sighs, then mounts his own ikran.
—
The next day, Lo’ak seeks Tsireya out, rather than the other way around.
He hasn’t seen much of her this past week—her Coming of Age ceremony is tomorrow, the Calf Communion’s less than a week later, and she and her mother have been busy with preparations. Ao’nung and Rotxo have been similarly occupied with the chief.
He and Neteyam had been spending a good deal of that time helping around the village together. But after their conversation last night, he steers clear.
He’s worried. He’s worried his brother will see something in his face and just know.
He knows Kiri hasn’t said anything, but if Neteyam wants answers badly enough, he’ll find a way to draw them out of her. His prodding can be very calculated that way.
Lo’ak’s burdened enough people with the weight of what happened that night. He doesn’t think he could bear it if Neteyam were added to the list.
He lied awake all night with the sudden urge to fix Mom’s bow. He wonders if his brother’s interrogation plays into that any.
He’s been putting it off for weeks. There was always something. Knots needing tightening, lines needing sorting.
Excuses, really.
He finds Tsireya with Kiri near the shore. They’re training Tuk to ride her ilu. He debates turning back, feeling, for a fleeting moment, shy.
As if sensing she’s being watched, Tsireya’s head cranes. She spots him, and any possibility of changing course disappears when she waves cheerfully at him. After a moment Kiri sees him too, and something must show on his face because she murmurs something to Tsireya before turning back to Tuk.
Tsireya wades out of the water and walks toward him. He counts the steps it takes her to reach him, nervousness churning in his gut.
He nods at the shore, where Tuk is steering her ilu in slow, careful circles. “How is she doing?” he says by way of greeting.
Tsireya smiles, looking over her shoulder briefly. “She is learning fast.” She reaches for his hand. “Did you want to join us?”
He shifts slightly. “No, I wanted…” he trails off, losing his nerve. She squeezes his hand.
He sucks in a long breath, quiet as he can. “Can you tell me where you’re keeping my mother’s bow?”
She blinks, surprise flits across her features.
Then she smiles softly.
“Come with me.”
—
That she insists on helping him is a given.
He can’t find it in him to deny her, even if he wanted to.
—
They work all night.
She holds one limb while he scrapes shavings of wood from the other, tightens leather around the grip while he rasps a smoothing stone over the arch of the bow’s back.
Above them, Tsawke rises over the curve of Naranawm’s lush blue horizon.
They finish at midday. It’s the most fulfillment he’s felt in a long, long time.
There are dark circles under her eyes and a bizarre, content sort of fatigue in the small smile she gives him.
—
He’s on the rocks watching the water distort the stars when he hears footsteps behind him. Without looking, he knows who it is.
He reaches for Tsireya’s hand and guides her down next to him.
He’d attended the ceremony long enough to be respectful. He wishes he could’ve seen her get her first tattoo, but his dad is there, and that had been tense enough as it is.
Neteyam’s there too.
That’s a whole other can of worms.
“Let me see,” he murmurs, tilting her chin gently with his thumb and forefinger so he can get a better look at the new tolu markings.
She’s quiet, fidgeting with a lone piece of seagrass from her loincloth, a small tell of her nerves.
It looks good. He likes it on her, and he tells her as much.
She smiles lightly at him and heat crawls up his neck.
She takes his hand. “Come to the festival.”
“No, no, no, no,” he urges softly. He’s about to tell her not to miss her own celebration, but she just settles back on her knees.
“Then I will just stay here with you.”
He smiles faintly, then looks down at the space between them, mind a million miles away.
“Lo’ak,” she says quietly, her expression somewhat pensive, “I should not tell you this, but… my Tulkun Sister says they have been hearing Payakan.” He perks up slightly. “Very faint, calling to his birth clan.”
“Where?” he asks immediately.
She hesitates, shaking her head minutely. “Tulkun Song travels very far through the water, Lo’ak.”
Desperation seizes him. He squeezes her hand gently.
“Please.”
—
She runs a shaking hand down the belly of her bow, the blue bindings trailing from the grip.
It looks just as it did the day her father had given it to her.
She looks at her son. He gives her something that she wants to call a smile—a blink and it is gone. The reticence in his eyes is as still as a landscape.
He had done this?
She draws back the bowstring, as far as it will go.
A sob escapes her. It is the one thing she has left of home, of her father, and her son had taken pains to mend it and bring it back to her in one piece.
She turns around and he is already in arm’s reach. She draws him to her, pressing her cheek to his crown.
“Lo’ak.” It is all she can say. There are not enough words that can express her gratitude, and if there are, they elude her.
She breathes him in. He smells of brine and the spray of the sea.
“Bye, Mom,” he whispers into her shoulder, and he is gone from her arms too soon.
She catches his elbow. Something in the way he had said it sends a wave of sick fear through her.
“Where are you going?” she asks.
Lo’ak shrugs.
“Just out.”
Out, he says. Like it is simply an errand.
It does nothing to assuage her worries.
After a moment, he adds, quietly, “There’s something I have to do.”
And then he is gone.
She feels as though she has just seen her son off to war.
—
Lo’ak waits until the reef is asleep.
He clicks his tongue and his ilu surfaces. He gives it a brief brush of his fingers in greeting, before fastening the harnesses and riding straps.
He brings a spear. He hopes all he’ll need it for is catching a meal.
“Little late for hunting, don’t you think?”
Shit.
He shuts his eyes.
When he turns, all he can really make out is his brother’s silhouette and the syuratan dotting his skin.
This feels familiar.
“I’m not going hunting,” he says.
“Then where to?”
“Just for a swim.”
“With a spear?” Lo’ak can practically hear the raised brow in Neteyam’s voice. Y’know. If he had eyebrows.
He affects a shrug, tries to pour more nonchalance into it than he actually feels. “Just being careful.”
Neteyam hums. It’s the least convincing sound Lo’ak’s ever heard.
“Then I’ll join you,” he says, and then has the nerve to start beckoning for his own ilu, like it’s already been decided.
Lo’ak huffs. “I don’t remember saying this was a group activity.”
If Neteyam’s put off by Lo’ak’s dismissal, he doesn’t voice it.
“I saw the bow,” he says conversationally. Lo’ak blinks. “It looks good. Was that you?”
“Yes.” He hopes that’s answer enough.
There’s a follow-up question drifting in the silence between them.
Yes, I fixed it, Lo’ak thinks but does not say. Because it’s Mom’s. And one day it’s going to be yours. And I’ve taken enough from both of you as it is. So I fixed it. It’s the only thing I can fix.
“Just you?”
Lo’ak splutters with all the dignity of a fish out of water.
What he’s implying isn’t lost on him and he’s in disbelief that this conversation is even happening right now.
“No,” he says impatiently. “Not just me. Happy?”
There’s a small, teasing smirk on Neteyam’s face. “Just asking, baby bro.”
His ilu reaches the pier and he immediately starts gearing it. Lo’ak just watches him, dumbfounded.
“Ready?” he asks once he’s done.
“I don’t need a babysitter,” Lo’ak carps, then hates how much he sounds like a pouty child.
“I’m not here to babysit you.”
“Then why are you here?”
“I’ll answer that as soon as you tell me where you’re really going.”
“I already told you—”
“And I don’t believe you.”
“I can’t just want to be alone?” he snaps.
“You can,” Neteyam says easily. “And I’ll let you. If you tell me where you’re going.”
Lo’ak’s lip curls.
Let him.
“I’m not going to do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’ll follow me,” he says tightly, because it should be obvious.
“And I’m going to follow you anyway if you don’t.”
And then they’re at an impasse.
“You’re going to Payakan, aren’t you?” he asks finally. For all the arguing they’d done the first time Lo’ak went out looking for Payakan, to warn him about the pingers, Neteyam doesn’t sound all that upset by it this time around.
Lo’ak’s tail lashes in agitation behind him. This is exactly why he’d wanted to leave before anyone could find him.
He knows his brother. He knows him well enough to know that he’d go after him.
He’d known it then, too.
Lo’ak’s not partial to the idea of Neteyam potentially getting hurt again because of him.
“What happened that night?” he asks, for what feels like the millionth time. “And don’t say you ‘just needed air’.”
Lo’ak’s fists bunch together, but underneath the irritation is a lingering sense of guilt and alarm. “We already talked about this.”
“You’ve never been a very good liar.”
Lo’ak’s restraint turns to stone, dropped somewhere at the bottom of the ocean.
“Would you let it go!” he explodes, teeth flashing.
Neteyam doesn’t at all seem deterred by his outburst.
He sucks air in through his teeth, trying to calm himself down. “Just… go home, Teyam. Please.”
As he turns away, he gets the smallest glimpse of the frustration creeping into Neteyam’s expression, but he’d rather his brother be angry with him than—
Than the alternative.
“Lo’ak, wait—” Neteyam wraps his fingers around his shoulder. He jerks Lo’ak back around to face him, maybe a little more forcefully than he means to.
Before Lo’ak can remember to be in control of his limbs, his other arm comes up.
His fist connects with Neteyam’s cheek. Neteyam staggers back, stunned.
Shit.
“Shit,” Lo’ak whispers. “Shitshitshitshit. I’m sorry. Bro, I’m sorry. Are you oka—”
Neteyam swipes the back of his hand across the corner of his mouth. It comes away wet with blood.
When his brother looks up at him, he knows immediately what’s coming next.
—
Neteyam tackles him off the pier, just shy of the shore. It’s not a long fall, but his breath is knocked clean out of him when he lands on his back in the sand.
For one bizarre moment, nothing else happens.
And then punch comes to kick comes to push comes to shove.
—
Look at what he did, Neytiri’d said, showing him the bow Lo’ak fixed for her.
Jake had been impressed, if a little startled, by the handiwork. He shouldn’t have been all that surprised though. Lo’ak’s always had a remarkable hand for craftsmanship.
Toys for Tuk. Armbands for Neteyam. Bracelets for Kiri and Neytiri.
Jake once caught him trying to make a fucking IED.
Seeing the bow had made an uncomfortable memory surface, from when he’d taken Lo’ak and Tsireya to scout for guns. They’d somehow happened upon the remains of it amidst the wreckage of the SeaDragon and plopped it into the boat.
He remembers Lo’ak’s crestfallen face when he’d scolded him for it. At the time he’d just been thinking about Neytiri, about sparing her the pain of grieving her father for a second time.
But between fussing over Neteyam’s wound during the day and practicing with other bows at night, she’d grieved anyway.
He had no idea Lo’ak kept it.
But then again, Jake had very specifically told him not to let his mother see it, and Lo’ak then proceeded to very specifically do the opposite.
Par for the course, he thinks, somewhat wistfully.
Lo’ak had given it to her, and then left.
He has an inkling of where.
This is his path.
But no matter how much faith Neytiri places in Lo’ak, no matter how much faith she asks him to place in Lo’ak, the father in him still worries.
Months ago, he’d said something he shouldn’t have, and every day since that he’d worked up the resolve to try and fix what he’d broken—every day that Lo’ak couldn’t look him in the eye—he’d get this sinking feeling in his gut that it was irreparable.
So he’d let Lo’ak disappear with Tsireya for hours everyday, had, from a distance, watched him help her and Ao’nung and Rotxo, and eventually Neteyam, around the village.
Had told himself that however Lo’ak was coping, he was coping. And whatever it was he was doing, it had to be healthier than his own methods. Certainly healthier than pacing up and down the shore, looking up at the stars in search of answers that don’t exist. Like what he’s doing right now.
And now his boy—his baby boy—is off fighting a war Jake isn’t even sure he’s aware of.
You almost lost one son to a bullet. Do not lose the other to your pride.
He should’ve sought Lo’ak out when Neytiri told him to, all those months ago.
Despite his best efforts, he can’t reason out a way that she might’ve been wrong that night. Every time he tries, he winds up in the same place.
For a long time, he’d tried to convince himself that Lo’ak was a product of his environment, and in a way, that was partly true. As soon as he was born, Jake had taken one look at the additional fingers and the eyebrows and known then that Lo’ak was going to have it harder than Neteyam ever would.
It wouldn’t matter how Na’vi Lo’ak was, the human in him would show on his face, on his hands, and the clan would always see that first. They hadn’t even lasted five whole minutes in Awa’atlu before Ronal took Lo’ak’s hand and called everyone’s attention to the demon blood running in his veins.
So his son always dove headlong into everything with something to prove.
Lo’ak wants so badly to be independent, but he’s got enough wanderlust, stubbornness, and sheer audacity to make trouble come as easily to him as breathing.
Jake remembers when they first came to the reef, and Tonowari had urged him to start with an ilu before trying to break in a skimwing.
Jake refused.
I got this.
He very much did not have it. At least not at first.
He wouldn’t have been surprised if Lo’ak tried to ride a skimwing on his first day himself. If anything, he’s surprised he hadn’t, because:
a) it’s Lo’ak,
and b) it’s Lo’ak, and he has many impulse-driven eccentricities like pursuing the chief’s daughter and befriending excommunicated drifter Tulkuns and trying to make IEDs.
Riding a skimwing not twenty minutes into being a reef-dweller is right up that alley.
And that’s where it all circles back to: his youngest son is just too much like him, in more ways than the ones outside his control. The impulse, the willfulness, even when he means well.
But the heart Lo’ak wears on his sleeve…
That’s all Neytiri.
Jake had thought that things would be easier if he ironed out the worst parts of himself that his son inherited from him, if he raised him to be—
To be what? Less like him?
Jake scoffs quietly, more at himself than anything else.
He must’ve been walking longer than he’d thought, because suddenly the pier is in his line of sight. There’s a figure to his left.
Tonowari.
The chief’s eyes flick to him briefly, in a way that confuses him, before they fix back somewhere down the shoreline. For a moment, Jake entertains the idea that Tonowari’s out for the same reason he is, that he’s pondering the joys of fatherhood.
But that’s not the gaze of someone staring off into the distance, lost in thought.
He’s watching something.
Jake follows his gaze. He strains his ears and hears…
Voices that sound awfully, awfully familiar.
He squints.
And squints.
And squints.
His eyes widen.
Is that—?
In a heartbeat, he’s stalking toward the pier.
Tonowari grabs his arm.
“Leave them be,” he says.
Jake tries to wrench free, but the chief’s grip is iron. “They’re beating each other—”
“They are healing old wounds.”
“Sure as shit doesn’t look that way.”
Quite the precise opposite of healing, actually. Visually speaking.
Tonowari is silent for a moment.
“This is the easy part. The hard part comes after, when they use their words.”
Jake turns to look at them.
Neither of them are pulling at braids or kurus or tails, careful not to make desperate, dirty plays. No hits below the belt. Clean. A complete and thorough shitshow, but clean, nonetheless.
Jake weighs the consequences of waiting this out.
Then he sighs, reluctantly conceding that he probably should.
“These fucking kids, man,” he mutters under his breath.
Tonowari laughs quietly, like it’s funny or something.
—
They’re covered in sand and fresh bruises. Neteyam catches one of Lo’ak’s wrists when he tries to push him off. Lo’ak uses his free hand to grab at the back of his brother’s neck.
But Neteyam’s stronger—he’s always been stronger, and so to Lo’ak’s frustration, he can’t seem to wrestle the upper hand.
“Would you get off—”
“Would you—ow—would you stop—!”
Neteyam wraps his fingers around Lo’ak’s other wrist.
He’s out of options—
Lo’ak headbutts him.
A last resort.
It hurts. Lo’ak had always thought they were only supposed to hurt the person on the receiving end. Those movies Norm showed them are full of shit.
“Ow,” Neteyam grunts, rolling off and onto his back. “Skxawng.”
Lo’ak rubs at his own head with a groan, a fuzzy, dazed sort of feeling curdling behind his eyes. “Yeah, okay, timeout, bro.”
They both go very quiet. For a while, they only lie there, bruised black and blue, the sound of the tide the only thing filling the silence.
Lo’ak turns his gaze away from Naranawm’s banded surface to look at his brother. Neteyam must catch him in his peripheral because he looks back.
Lo’ak’s mouth opens and closes around words that don’t take shape. He isn’t even sure what he means to say. An apology? An insult?
Neteyam looks like he wants to say something too, but nothing comes.
Eventually, Lo’ak blurts out, “I think I just gave myself a concussion.”
Neteyam blinks.
Then a chuckle slips out. “Yeah,” he says, throwing an arm over his eyes. “I think you gave me one too.”
Lo’ak makes a sound caught somewhere between a laugh and a huff.
Neither of them know what to say after that. It feels like a stalemate. But something in his chest loosens, smooths the tension off his shoulders. Just a little.
And so they stay like that, laid back next to each other on the sand, heads tilted to the side to watch the waves lap at the shore.
Lo’ak’s ears perk at the approaching sound of footsteps.
A shadow casts over them. They lift their heads—
Crap.
“You boys get it all out?”
They’re both too exhausted to scramble to their feet, let alone stand at attention.
They share a look, then a shrug, and with as much dignity as they can muster while still flat on their backs, manage a chorus of “Yes, sir.”
Dad watches them for a long, long time.
Then, “Good. You’re grounded.”
Neteyam snorts, and Lo’ak all but sinks back into the sand in his chagrin.
—
Dad doesn’t ask who started it. He never does. And Lo’ak is glad for it, because Neteyam would have just tried to take the blame to spare him the brunt of the verbal broadside Dad’s about to launch at them.
He always does.
Lo’ak thinks he would have started swinging again if that’d been the case. Or maybe he would have tried to beat Neteyam to the punch this time. He wants a chance at martyrdom. He wonders what his brother’s face would look like.
Dad marches them a little further away from the shore, but not to the marui, so it’s just them braced against the looming anger of their father.
But when Dad stops and turns around to face them, he doesn’t look angry.
He just sighs, like he’s not sure what to make of what he’d just witnessed.
“I don’t know what all that was about,” he starts. “And I’m getting the impression neither of you are going to tell me.”
Lo’ak glances sidelong at Neteyam.
“You’re old enough to scrap, then you’re old enough to sort it out among yourselves. So I expect it to be sorted before you come back home.” That last thing feels aimed more at him. “You read me?”
“Lima Charlie, sir,” they murmur.
Dad’s gaze lingers, like he’s debating saying more, but he seems to decide against it.
“Alright.”
And then he leaves.
The silence that follows isn’t uncomfortable. Just… busy.
It’s Neteyam that breaks it.
“Does it hurt anywhere?” he asks, because he always defaults to making sure Lo’ak is okay first.
Lo’ak rolls his shoulders, a twinge pulls at his left arm. He feels blood drying at his cheekbone.
“A little. Not bad. You? Is your…” He nods his head vaguely at—
At the spot where Neteyam had been shot.
A fresh wave of guilt rolls over him, pressing against his skull.
“No, it doesn’t hurt,” Neteyam says, always quick to reassure, even after everything.
It doesn’t work.
Lo’ak’s ears fold back. “Sorry.”
Neteyam pulls a face. “My head hurts more than anything else.” He pauses, before throwing in, just for good measure, “Skxawng.”
Lo’ak’s mouth twitches, but only a little.
“I’m sorry too,” Neteyam says after a beat.
He shouldn’t be, but there’s no use telling him not to apologize.
His brother makes no effort to hide that he’s watching him. Pearl-white light reflects off his face.
“I heard you and Kiri talking that night,” he says, finally.
Lo’ak winces.
How many times has he heard the words that night, such loosely defined wording as if Neteyam somehow knows that something permanent nearly happened and doesn’t want to say it aloud because that might make it true.
“What did she mean by ‘tomorrow’?” he presses. Lo’ak hears the real question underneath.
He looks out at the water and wishes the world weren’t so quiet on nights like this.
Tears begin stinging his eyes.
“Please,” he whispers. He’s lost track of how many times he’s said that word. “Please just let it go.”
“Lo’ak, look at me.”
When he shuts his eyes instead, Neteyam grips the back of his neck. Not roughly, but enough that his eyes snap open, and then his brother is standing in front of him.
“Look at me,” he says, softer this time.
Lo’ak does—really does. Neteyam has clear eyes, the eyes of the older brother who always promised to protect his younger siblings and who would follow him into a bed of hot coals, scorching the soles of his feet carrying him out if need be.
The eyes of a boy only older than him by a year but still carrying so much silence in his chest it’s almost breaking him from the inside.
“I still see it in my dreams,” he says quietly.
Nothing changes in Neteyam’s expression. He waits, patient.
“You.” He’s not even sure his brother hears it. He doesn’t bother clearing his throat even though his voice sounds like someone’s shredded it to bits with a blunt knife. “On the rocks,” he suppresses a hiccup. “The blood—”
He stops there.
What he doesn’t say is that in his dreams, they hadn’t gotten so lucky.
How many times do you think you’re gonna get lucky, huh?
How many close calls does it take?
Neteyam takes him by the shoulders. “That’s not your fault,” he says. “We’re at war, and the fault lies with the people who keep waging it. Dad shouldn’t have said what he said to you.”
Lo’ak wants more than anything to believe him. His eyes are wet with his own tears. He can’t even move his hands to wipe them away.
He’s tired of crying.
“But that’s not what I asked.”
Lo’ak almost wants to laugh then. Neteyam’s bluntness still takes him by surprise sometimes.
He looks at his brother with glassy eyes.
“I—” he tries to take in more air into his lungs but ends up gasping. His shoulders tremble with the effort to keep from just screaming it out. “I just—I was so tired of getting you hurt and—and I thought that—”
His voice breaks.
Neteyam stills. Dread seeps into his expression—Lo’ak wonders what’s going on in his head.
“You thought what?” he asks hoarsely, hands tightening on Lo’ak’s shoulders.
Lo’ak takes in a shaky breath.
He wants to tell him how impossibly lonely it feels to have a brother miles away in exile and another he feels the need to keep at arm’s length for his own good.
What comes out of his mouth instead is: “I thought that everyone would be better off if…”
If.
Neteyam’s expression does a million things all at once. Lo’ak sees the cogs turning in his head, filling the blanks he’d been missing from whatever bits and pieces he said he’d overheard.
His eyes widen. Horror replaces confusion.
He looks as though someone’s taken a knife to his heart.
Lo’ak can’t bear to see him like that. Neteyam brings his hands to the sides of his head and forces his gaze back up.
“You’re not allowed to do that,” he croaks desperately, almost angrily. His hands are on Lo’ak’s shoulders again, grip almost painful, and he shakes. “You do not get to take the agency from my decision and make it your mistake to pay for with your life.”
Neteyam’s eyes fill with tears now.
“I did not follow you out of obligation. I followed you because you’re my brother and your battles are my battles.” A sound escapes him, one that Lo’ak would hate to describe as pain. “You believe that I couldn’t understand, and maybe I didn’t then, not enough, but—” he breathes shakily. “But what you are not understanding is that remaining by your side is a choice I make because I love you. Not because I have to. Not because Mom and Dad tell me to. Because you’re my brother and I love you.”
Lo’ak understands then that Neteyam’s been waiting for him to be okay so he can be okay; waiting for him to come back to him all along.
But that’s what makes it so hard, he thinks wretchedly.
He breaks. His brother pulls him into his embrace, and Lo’ak’s arms come up around his back.
Neteyam swipes him upside the head lightly.
“Skxawng,” he whispers brokenly.
—
The water laps at their feet.
How long they’ve been sitting there is anyone’s guess. The bruises from their fight earlier are now a dull, distant ache.
He breaks the silence before his brother does.
“I’m scared,” he murmurs. Neteyam turns his head, but Lo’ak keeps his eyes fixed across the reef. “I’m scared that one day you’re going to kill yourself trying to save me.”
“You cannot think like that. You cannot see it that way.”
Lo’ak makes a sound of frustration. “What other way is there to see it? When you make a mistake, you make a mistake. When I make a mistake, we make a mistake. I can’t—” His breath hitches. He isn’t even sure if what he just said makes any sense at all. He’s never had to talk this much, never had to articulate out loud what safely existed as noise inside his head. “I don’t want you to live like that. I can’t live like that.”
For once, Neteyam doesn’t seem to have an argument.
“I wanted to go alone because…” Lo’ak sighs. “At least then, if something happened, it would only happen to me.”
Neteyam stares at him, tilting his head in a way that reminds him of Mom. “When did you grow up, Lo’ak?”
Lo’ak shoots a scowl at him. Neteyam interrupts him before he can express his indignation.
“You think you’re so…” he scrunches his nose in search of a word, “expendable.” He tugs a braid free, one with beads, several of which Lo’ak had given to him. “But you’re not. Losing you…”
Lo’ak looks up. Naranawm looks back, vast and imposing.
“It would rip us apart,” Neteyam finishes.
Lo’ak tucks his knees to his chest. “I have to see him.”
“I’ll come with you.”
He closes his eyes. The stars shine so bright they glare past his eyelids.
“I got us in enough trouble with Dad as it is,” he says. “You just got better. Don’t give him and Mom another scare.”
“That’s no say-so of yours.”
Lo’ak’s shoulders tense. “You can’t just sit this one out?”
“Would you?”
Lo’ak blinks. “What?”
“If it were the other way around, would you sit it out and let me go by myself?”
He flounders, jaw working. What does he even say to that?
“I—wh—what does that have to do with anything?” he argues, mostly to be obstinate. “You’re not the one going out to look for him, so it doesn’t matter.”
Neteyam watches him.
Then something unsettlingly decisive passes in his features and he rises to his feet.
“Fine. I’ll go find Payakan. You stay.”
Lo’ak balks.
“Excuse me?”
Neteyam shrugs, like he’d just said the most normal thing in the world. He starts walking back to the pier, where everything went wrong to begin with, where it all started.
“You were right. At the Council. He saved us. None of us would be here if not for him.”
Lo’ak scrambles to his feet and follows him, because he doesn’t know what else to do.
“He shouldn’t have been outcast,” he continues.
“Where are you going?” Lo’ak calls after him, lengthening his stride to keep up.
“I just told you.”
“That's—wh—how do you plan on finding him anyway?” Lo’ak throws his hands out to his sides. “You don’t know where he is. And he won’t expect you to be looking for him.”
“I’m hoping he and I share a similar philosophy.”
“Which is what?”
“The brother of my brother is…” he trails off, then gives up and comes up with: “my brother.”
“You’re banking on that?”
“Yeah.” Neteyam purses his lips, then adds: “And if that doesn’t work, I’ll just shave the side of my head and hope he confuses me for you.”
Lo’ak rolls his eyes. “That’s not funny.”
“I wasn’t joking.”
“What—” Lo’ak can’t believe what comes out of his mouth next, but, “What about Dad? He told us we had to go back home.”
“No,” Neteyam says casually. “He said to sort things out before we go back home. Which we did. He didn’t say anything about going back home tonight.”
“It—you know what he meant.”
“No I don’t. He should’ve been more specific.”
The reversal of roles would be funny if not for the fact that Lo’ak’s head is spinning.
They reach the pier. Neteyam clicks his tongue for his ilu. It’s already equipped, so he dives into the water head first and emerges seconds later with a large gulp of air.
“Bro, okay, seriously—where do you think you’re going?”
“Out,” Neteyam drawls. With his eyes away from Lo’ak’s, it’s like he’s mocking him.
“I hate you,” Lo’ak grumbles under his breath.
“Fine lines and all that, baby bro.”
Then, after a good deal of watching Lo’ak stare at him with his mouth flopped open, Neteyam says, “I’m going. That is my choice. I can’t make you stay—”
Make him sta—?
“—so it’s up to you to decide if I made that choice for myself or for the both of us.”
Lo’ak looks around, wondering if he’s hallucinating the gauntlet his brother just threw down at his feet.
The quirk of Neteyam’s lips suggests that whatever expression is on his face right now is an unbecoming look on him.
He barks out a loud, loud laugh.
—
Lo’ak dives in after him.
What else is there to do but that?
—
The next day, they’re in the middle of nowhere fighting off a shoal of Tsyong.
Ao’nung, Rotxo, and Tsireya find them.
Her face is the last thing he sees before his vision goes white.
—
He comes to to the sound of Tsireya calling his name.
Apparently he spends far too long hugging her because when he looks over her shoulder, there’s a very stupid smirk on Neteyam’s very stupid sunburnt face.
Lo’ak flips him off, though its effect is diminished somewhat by the fact that he still hasn’t extricated himself from Tsireya’s embrace.
—
“I see you, brother,” he says, pressing himself to the side of his Tulkun Brother’s head, and his heart swells when Neteyam greets Payakan with no less admiration.
—
Ta’nok has a horrifying tale to tell.
They take her to the reef, so she has the chance to, so the Matriarch and the Elders will have no choice but to hear what she has to say.
Lo’ak’s got nothing but a sunburn and a dream, but it’s worth a shot.
Neteyam claps him on the shoulder, and suddenly it doesn’t seem like such a faraway dream after all.
—