tsaheylu

TSAHEYLU

It's like that: you—or Lovecraft, if Grace's really fucking cross with you—have only ever known Hell's Gate. Not Pandora, not really anyway, but the four times twenty-five thousand (possibly, probably) walls of that ugly facility instead. 

Home. 

It's where your parents were born, way back when, after that mass exodus from Earth. Them, and hundred others. It's where you, in 2134, breathed your first breath (much to the distress of your teenage mother, who had gotten frisky with that one classmate a few months ago, sure, but had not anticipated her bathroom break turning into an impromptu existential crisis, with questions such as should I flush it floating at the forefront of her mind). 

But, here's the thing: there's a sickness within these one hundred thousand walls—cockroaches as Grace would say, whatever the fuck those are. It’s spreading wide and far, soon to become a full on infestation. And you—well, you can’t let that happen. 

Hell’s Gate, in all its grey, colossal, modernized glory, sucks, okay, even more so since the school (mostly since the school), okay, but it’s home. And if the three strange, but oddly suited-for-each-other adults in your life have taught you anything, it’s to fight tooth and nail for what’s yours. 

(You failed once, and it cost you Sylwanin.)

So, you plan. 

Your first order of business is to disappoint both mom and Grace, and to add insult to injury, to do it simultaneously. Rip the exopack off, or however the saying goes. 

"I'm going into engineering," you tell them, and chaos ensues. The incoherent sputtering from mom is expected; she's never been really good at keeping her composure, unlike her (absolutely) worse half, who's watching you with narrowed eyes, her suspicions almost tangible. 

"You mean to tell me," Grace starts, voice eerily even, "that you'd give up your life-long dream of being a scientist—"

"A zoologist—"

"Yes, so a scientist. For…engineering." 

Swaying, mom tries, "biological engineering, perhaps?" 

You ignore her. "Technically, engineering does use scientific principles to—uh…yeah, and I'll need my knowledge in biology, mathematics, chemistry—I, I mean, it was a nice dream. Zoologist. The animals. All that. I just. It's not what I want anymore." And isn't that the biggest lie you've ever told anyone? "The transfer's already been approved."

In the background, mom wails in her lab coat. "The animals, she says!" 

Grace's face remains closed off when she leans in. A six foot tall omen, really, but you're not eleven anymore, and you've outgrown the intimidation tactics just as you've outgrown Grace herself, even by a mere inch. "I don't believe you." 

"I don't care." 

Cue a staring match you both lose when mom interrupts, "what about your avatar?" 

Your entire body tenses around a flinch. "What about it?" 

"Surely, with how they never miss a chance to remind us how costly the regrowth—" 

"It's replacement, mom. And, yeah, well. It's…damaged goods, so—"

"Oh," mom whispers your name, empathetic, and you think that word sounds a lot like pathetic and, quite suddenly, there's like a fist in your throat and you forget how to breathe and your eyes sting and— 

"It's fine," you manage. "It's not like—it's fine." 

(It's like that: in 2134, you're the first baby on a long, but distant list of Second Generation Padora-borne Human Babies, and, as such, have no one but almost-adults to entertain your fast growing brain. Your fast growing curiosity. 

It happens in the blink of an eye. Mom twirls her hair at a splendid fungus growth while dad makes eyes at Pandora: A Brief History, Volume VIII, and you're gone. 

It's Grace, the blue version, who finds you. Outside. 

From here on, cases and points are made. Tests are run. Then, genomes sequenced, tissues, blood and cells sampled. Someone is given the go ahead, and five years later, you're the youngest avatar ever. 

At this point, the second generation babies are popping out right and left. The Scimod is run over by toddlers and the scientists, the mad ones, which is to say, all of them, decide being a good parent involves putting their kids through the tests. 

Thank fuck the vast majority does not, in fact, drop dead after four minutes outside. What's more, most of them pass the initial testing for the Avatar Program with flying colors. After that, it all comes down to potential: kids with the highest motor coordination skills, mental acuity and resistance to mental fatigue. 

But very few embryos survive into early organogenesis, fewer still grow past the three months mark. 

Either way, that entire process becomes something of an unofficial but mandatory first step into nerdy parenthood at Hell's Gate.)

(Before the school, nine second generation baby avatar-lings were running around, entirely in synchronization with their other self, familiar with it in all the ways a Earth driver could never be. 

After the school, only four remained.)

Your second order of business is to tell dad. Which is fine: he's always been less verbose than mom, though a bit more obscure in his phrasing, and, anyway, it's dad. He's happy if you're happy. 

"I'm going into engineering," you tell him. "Mechanical." 

He looks at you over the top of his glasses, eyebrows raised so high you lose sight of them in his forehead wrinkles. "...engineering?" 

"Yeah."

"Okay."

"Okay. Great. Cool." 

And that’s that, until—

"What about your avatar?" 

You had time to think about it since your hurried departure from the biolab, nine minutes ago. Yes. You have a rational, constructed speech prepared. "I—", I'm not giving it up, they'll probably need me to link up anyway, easier for, uh, heavy lifting and all that, maybe, I'm not giving up on research, or the Na'vi, or, or anything really, I'm just. "I can't," is all that comes out. 

Dad softens. "Okay." 

There. 

Now, you only need to learn everything there is to know about aircrafts of all kinds, high-tech devices, and least but certainly not last, weapons of mass destruction. 

Someone once told you that defeating an enemy is not a matter of strength, but one of understanding instead; for, to understand your enemy is to learn it, and to learn has always been the key to making, and if you can make, you can unmake in equal measure. 

You've tried to understand people before. It didn’t work. You're going for machines next. 

. . . 

2154.

Two years into your self-imposed exile from the link room, which is to say seven months after your sudden change of heart, you're doing…well. Better than expected, for sure. You're not as good at reading an AMP blueprint as you are at analyzing the behavior of, say, an ikran, but being average is not being bad at it, and you're satisfied with that. 

Though the magnitude of what you're trying to do has you gnawing your fingernails bloody and scratching the skin of your left elbow raw, you try not to think of all the ways it could backfire on you most spectacularly at a moment's notice. But the thing is, you've never been really good at turning your brain off. What if s are hell and all your anxiety is here. 

So, you do the next best thing: scheduling. Organization is so close to compartmentalization that, naturally, you're terrible at it. But it's...soothing, almost, to stay up late and rearrange, for the fiftieth time, how you should live your life for the foreseeable future, or really, the next monday. 

The allotted twenty minutes you've given yourself to stare blankly at your ceiling are put to good use—panic attacks and slight existential crises on a daily basis do wonders for the soul, namely, it makes you feel a bit like a bruise. But it's not like feeling tender is new—you'd go as far as to say that engineering your own hurt, being able to control where and when it hits, is a gift. The alternative you're not about to refuse, at any rate. 

You've also made sure all your evenings are free, so you can be in your quarters for some much needed you-time, or, when you feel like your sanity is hanging by a thread, so you can linger in the biolab—until, of course, everyone starts side-eyeing you knowingly. Ugh. 

All things considered, you're absolutely nailing this whole thing. Your sleep schedule is on point, your lunch breaks coincide with Grace's, you hole up in your room on week-ends and no one's suspicious because, damn, you have a lot to catch up on, and your Wednesday afternoons are blessedly free, which allows some time for your one true passion; zoology.  All is well.

You just didn’t expect today, a Thursday of all days, to put all your efforts to fucking waste. It could have waited another month or two, you think, fate, destiny, or whatever it is that people call it these days—that phenomenon known to drastically change a life, alter its trajectory entirely. Or, as the poets would probably say, the first day of the rest of your life. 

It goes like this: 

───────

You start your week at the ass crack of dawn, yawning in your cereal and dragging your feet when the Chief Engineer tells you the dragon needs a fix-up, you're on team two, which you barely understand. Seven minutes later, you realize the dragon is, in fact, the Dragon Assault Ship, one of the five remaining, usually under the command of one Miles Fucking Quaritch, who's standing right there, scarred, ugly and too old, in your humble opinion, to be strutting around Hell's Gate as if he owns it. 

You feel the polite mask you don in these parts slips from your face. Your teeth are showing, you know—not hissing at him is a hard won battle, one you have to fight all over again each time you cross paths with him.

When he smiles at you, it's more teeth than lips as well, and you wonder where he learned that from. Pointing guns at Na'vi, probably—his fondness for it is rather well known around here, after all—and mirroring his opponents in the hope of being half as intimidating as them. You hate to say it, but it kind of works. Fuck. He greets you by name, and you wish he was dead. 

Instead, you ignore him, because you're good at that. He doesn't push, because he doesn't care enough to. What he does care about though, is the sound of his own voice, so he keeps talking at the officer in front of him before you have a chance to put on your glorious, life-saving, acid pink noise canceling headphones. 

"New faces today, uh? I'm optimistic." Ah, yes. The people from Earth. A batch of them comes once a year. Mostly military, so you never bother to keep track of when, exactly. But Quaritch certainly does, what with having all of them under his thumb. "I think I've found myself a new dog." 

At that, you're confused. Dogs are not allowed at Hell's Gate since the Incident, which left thirty-six kids traumatized after the cutest, and most importantly, the only golden retriever they'd ever seen, died five minutes into its introduction. So, yeah, what the fuck. 

"Oh?" the man says, "what is it this time?" 

"Jarhead." 

The officer makes a noise at the back of his throat. "Be careful, Colonel. Wouldn’t want that one to go rabid." 

The smile on Quaritch's lips makes you shudder. "It couldn't even if it tried." 

Your confusion increases tenfold. Briefly, you wonder: what kind of dog is that? But rationality catches up. While most people might think you're an idiot, which, okay, fair, you are not entirely stupid. Your deduction skills are through the fucking roof, alright, on par with what your former (but also still very much so) chosen profession requires. Zoology demands one to observe and, from those observations, to theorize, to reason, to conclude. Logic in its most basic form. 

Quaritch is not talking about a dog. 

───────

That evening, you're a mess. Your daily visit at the biolab is met with stink eyes and judgmental sniffs. Grace's have your heard of showers is given the adequate amount of attention. In other words, you walk past her, middle finger raised and beeline for mom's messy workstation, on which you promptly collapse.

Mom screeches, "my papers! My research! Get," she snatches the closest clipboard and hits your head with it, "up," your arm, "you," your tight, "absolute," your ankle, ouch, "menace!" 

"Mom." 

"You're getting dirt and, oh my god, grease! You—greasy little shit! On my work!"

"Mom." 

"Do not speak to me right now." 

"I saw Quaritch today." 

Mom's flutters and mutters pause. She swallows audibly, frowns down at her desk when you slide off, right into the pristine chair on its right. "Oh. Well." Her hands pet her lab coat absently, "how—how are you doing?" 

You flap your own hand in the air, the universal sign for it doesn’t matter, and lean forward. "What's a jarhead?" 

She makes a face. "Funny you should ask that." 

"Why?"

It's not mom who says, "it's a marine," but a masculine, entirely unfamiliar voice. 

When you turn around, Grace's looking long-suffering, which is really not out of the ordinary, but the recipient of her disapproval is. Buzzcut, wheelchair, and a shirt that has seen better days. Quirked eyebrow, left side of a mouth lifting slightly in what could either be a smile or a grimace, and a unsure wave sent your way. You have a lot of questions, but you only say, "a marine." 

"Military," Grace supplies. 

"Ah." Of course, you had guessed as much. In fact, you already knew as much. But—well, your preoccupations have very suddenly changed, and your brain's still catching up. Temporarily. Really, it'll only take a minute. "Who are you?" 

"Jake. Sully. Jake Sully." 

A tall, scrawny man you haven't noticed before, but who's been standing there the whole time, offers a chipper, "I'm Norm Spellman." 

And maybe you stare too long, because Grace huffs, "the one frowning at you with a terrible poker face is—" and she gives them the ridiculous nickname she came up with, all those years ago, five minutes after you introduced yourself with your actual, much favored name, which you now have to squawk indignantly so these two strangers don't go around thinking mom and dad have bad taste, of all things, "—rather tolerable if you can overlook the incessant rambling and frankly appalling lack of manners—"

"Fuck you!"

"—also one of the best drivers I've had the misfortune of working with."

Okay, now that's a compliment. Though not completely unexpected—Grace is, after all, capable of such a feat, but they've been few and far between since you had all but abandoned (read: ran away) the program—it is, however, unwelcomed. More accurately, uncomfortable as fuck. 

"Oh. Oh!" Norm grins, "Miss Lovecraft, right? The youngest—" 

"I am she. Nice to meet you both. I have to go." 

You try for a smooth escape, but Grace's not having it. "Na-uh." She catches your arm, turns you around, puts both hands on your shoulders, and says, "all her evenings are free, and she spends most of them here, anyway, so—"

"What?" you squawk, again. God, your reputation! "First of all, I do not, and—and they are not!" 

"Oh, yeah? Please, do enlighten me then." 

(Here's the thing: you're a lying liar who lies. Or, really, you just do not mention things that should, by all accounts, very much be mentioned. You make up grand, moving internal monologues about preserving your home, not even sure it still is, if it ever was, to justify a course of action that is, at its very core, of a very selfish nature. 

That is to say: you are not altruistic, never have been. You made peace with it—Hell's Gate quite literally becoming hell's gate. Home is the first grave, and all that. You know. You've always known. In other words: if it wasn’t for the school, for Sylwanin, for yourself—your second self, that body you know almost better than your own—you might have turned a blind eye to it all. Or: there's a secondary, somewhat lesser, as you like to tell yourself, motivator behind you choosing engineering. 

And you need your evenings to work on it.)

"Uh, I have to…learn? I mean. I'm so far behind, it's ridiculous. All the reading I have to do. I'm swamped in work. I don't—" 

Grace cuts in, "I'm not asking. Spellman's Na'vi needs some work and Sully's…everything, too." 

Norm is looking at you expectantly, while Jake is just…watching. Mom's smiling encouragingly, thumbs up. And Grace is obviously trying to communicate something telepathically, what with the way her eyes are boring down into yours. 

Uh. You know what this is about, and you don’t like it. You huff, crossing your arms over your chest. "I know what you're doing." 

"Then you'll indulge me." 

"I'm fine."

"No. You're in dire need of a project." 

I have a project! you want to say, several of them! You're just about ready to word-vomit when you remember dad's advice pertaining to Grace-induced outbursts. Well— vaguely remember, more like. It's definitely something along the lines of deep breath and don't commit arson without me, or murder! Thanks, dad. Eventually, you settle on a barely high-pitched, "and you think that," and point at Jake and Norm, "is going to go over well? There’s—Grace, there's nothing I can do that you can’t do better. I don’t get it." 

"I don't have time to give that guy the full cursus. I'm working, day in, day out. But you do." 

"I'm working every day, too!" 

"You're apprenticing. And there's like, what, hundreds of people out there with better skills than yours? But, here? Come on. Don’t make me be nice for longer than I have to, you know my brain's allergic to that kind of thing." 

You take a deep, deep breath and look at the ceiling. Rationalize and internalize—those should be the words branded on your tombstone when you finally snap and get the capital fucking punishment for strangling your mom's girlfriend to death. Ugh!  

So, okay, okay—you could teach these guys about Pandora, about the Na'vi, no matter how much it hurts to even think about, because it always hurts even more to walk away from the avatar compound, the link room, the biolab and, most importantly, its damp, dark, dusty backroom—where half of your soul has been sleeping, undisturbed, for the last two years. 

(After the school, after you woke up in the hospital wing instead of your link bed, after you were told about Sylwanin, about yourself, you ran. Not away, not this time. But once you found it though—the amino tank, the body, what remained, what was lost—that’s when.

You wish you could say you never turned back, not even once, but you did, you do, every fucking day.) 

"Are you going to make me link?" you finally ask. 

"Not if it isn’t your decision." 

"Okay. Fuck you, but okay. Okay! Fine." Not letting yourself time to think too much about what you're doing—though your mind supply you with a rather unimpressed she didn’t even insist that much, you pathetic, miserable, pining fuck—you turn toward your newly acquired students. "You. Norm, right? Is it short for something?"

"Uh…no?" 

"Your parents must hate you, then. That's nice. I can work with that." You face Jake next, who's snickering at a dumbfounded Norm. "You. You're in a very unfortunate situation—" he starts to frown at that, lips thinning, "—you'll get my bad angle at all times, which is terrible for my self-esteem but some things can’t be helped, I guess. All I'm asking is that you still respect me after seeing my chin hairs up close, got it?" 

He looks perplexed, or amused, or both, but he just says, "got it." 

"Okay. Great. Cool. Flash test," you switch to Na'vi as if you hadn't spent the last two years actively avoiding speaking the language at all costs.  Don’t think, don't think, don't—"tell me anything. Go. " 

Norm doesn't miss a bit, and you think he looks a bit like that golden retriever before it dropped dead. "It is an honor to be able to work with you."

"Overly formal," you say, and Grace makes a noise of agreement. You point a finger at Jake, "your turn." 

"Uh…" 

"...okay. Great. That's fine. List ten toxic plants native to Pandora." 

He scratches the back of his head. 

"...Five mammals." 

He smiles sheepishly. And it's a cute look on him, sure, but—

"What the fuck," you deadpan, searching Grace's face for clues pertaining to the ninety-nine questions running through your head with, at the very top of that long list: what the fuck. 

"Told you. I don’t have time for that." 

You swivel back to Jake. "How—why are you here? I mean, no offense, but…" 

"Ah, they, uh. My brother, Tommy. He was the one supposed to, uh, do that," he makes a vague hand gesture at the workstations. At biolab, you realize, as a whole, "he died. So, yeah." 

What.

"What."

"What he's trying to say," Grace sighs the sigh of the tried, "is that he and Tom were twins. The better brother got into the program, cooked him an avatar even, but he had the audacity of going and getting himself fucking shot—" (at that, you try your fucking best not to flinch. Briefly, you think: is it going to be this hard forever?) "—so, now we're dealing with his entirely inadequate replacement because—"

"Identical genome. That's…interesting." 

"Call it whatever the fuck you want, just—take care of it for me, will you?" 

"I already said I would." 

Mom, who's been eerily silent during that whole exchange, shrieks. "Oh, my baby!" 

Mortified (and half running away), you say, "well, it was my absolute pleasure. I'll see you tomorrow. Oh! Jake, I suppose you can read or you wouldn’t have made it that far, so take—" you rummage through the mess around mom's workstation, and with a triumphant ah! brandish Na'vi Physiology and Pandora: Flora & Fauna, "—these. Here. Make sure you read the brochure on linking, too. And—well, Norman, I guess you can just, uh, keep doing what you're doing." 

You fast walk your way out. 

───────

(In you quarters, it's just you, the bed, and a desk overrun by a sheets of paper, covered in illegible algorithms, calculations, and designs. Blueprints, too, by the dozen: AMP suit, link bed mechanism, a fucking tank for some reason, just to name a few. And the Box, naturally. The one you drag from under the desk, that gets heavier by the day. 

It's all ritualized, by now—opening the Box while fishing for parts and pieces down your pockets, your shoes and, for the biggest ones, right down your pants, tucked between skin and belt. Emptied of all your contraband, you sigh, tie your hair up, wash your hands, your face, your hands again, crack your back, sit on the floor. Then, you get to work.)