A/N: So this is one of those ideas that won't go away. I had to write it. And I don't think it's been done before, either, which makes me really excited. :)

All characters are not mine except for Mandi, Kendra, Evan, and Dr. Hayes. They belong to me.

THIMBLES! And on with the fic…

Wishing the Unknown

Chapter 1

"Kites rise highest against the wind, not with it." ~Winston Churchill

When my mother, Kendra Voclain, was seven months pregnant with me, she got in an accident.

She and my father, Evan, were living in a posh, but small, apartment in San Francisco. The city itself was a wreck, all smog and ruins, but they remained there. The apartment had been provided for my family by the RDA, who my father worked for. He's a high-ranking official in the company, in charge of their public relations department.

Anyway, my mother was in a cab, driving through the streets of the city, returning home after a visit to the doctor. Dr. Luke Hayes had just determined that both she and the child she carried were in good health. Mother was delighted, smiling and singing some little song under her breath.

That was when the truck hit.

The truck carried precious cargo: some of the last remaining fossil fuel supplies. A few remaining lumps of low-burning lignite coal. In a small metal jug, the last drops of crude oil from a well 300 miles off the coast of Florida. A few small tanks of liquefied natural gas. Enough power to light and heat a small studio apartment for maybe six hours. All in a large, old-fashioned pickup truck, driven by a man who'd had way too much to drink before getting behind the wheel.

The truck had been going about 70 miles per hour, the police estimated, when it collided head-on with my mother's cab. The two vehicles then spun out of control and into a small, wooden shack that had been home to a family of five. The family and both drivers were killed instantly. The cargo fell out of the back of the pickup truck. The jug of oil cracked open, leaking petroleum onto the ground. The coal scattered across the floor. The natural gas tanks ruptured, allowing the liquid to spill out. And the truck itself caught fire.

Only my mother was left alive at the scene, screaming with pain and fear, trapped by one of the cab doors, which had crushed her. The fire spread from the truck quickly, thanks to the large amounts of fuel that littered the ground. As fires flared up around her, she was forced to inhale noxious gasses, and it was later discovered that, somehow, some had entered her bloodstream as well.

The emergency crews arrived only five minutes after the initial collision, and already the entire house was engulfed in flames. Somehow, Mother was still conscious and screaming, and the emergency crews managed to dig her out.

They had barely gotten her out of the cab when they discovered she wasn't screaming entirely from the crash. The stress of the accident had caused her to go into labor two months early, and the baby was coming fast. They barely had time to get her into the ambulance before I was born, a two pound three ounce girl. My screams, I was told, were so high and shrill that the doctors were worried something was wrong with my throat. The ambulance doors had been open the whole time, for there weren't hands to spare. Mother's injuries were too severe to be ignored, and my birth was too quick for them to allow for anyone to close the door. So the first air I inhaled was coated with the smoke and stench of the crash and the fossil fuels. With the immediate crisis averted, the nurses now swung the heavy doors closed, preventing any more of the smoke from entering.

One of the nurses wrapped me in a towel and tried to secure an oxygen mask to my face, which was smaller than the mask was. I was born after 29 weeks of pregnancy, which meant I was at risk for problems. Combine that with the stress of the accident, and I'm pretty sure the doctors didn't expect me to survive.

But survive I did. Placed in an in incubator, IVs in my veins, I fought for the life that I so deserved to win. Mother, too, fought against the severe burns and crushed legs that tried to defeat her.

Father showed up at the hospital almost as soon as we had arrived there. He waited for hours, pacing in the lobby, until he was allowed to see his family. And even then, he wasn't permitted to see me. That wasn't allowed for another two days, and when it happened, he had to wear a surgical mask, sterile gown and gloves. He couldn't hold me. Instead, he reached in through the flaps of the incubator and caressed my cheek. I was told that, when I felt my father's touch for the first time, I wiggled towards him and put my hand on his. He likes to think it was because I knew it was him. But my theory is a bit harsher. I was so starved for human contact that his affection was akin to an oasis in the desert. The doctors and nurses had touched me, sure, but none of them with as much love as Father. It was then that I was finally given my name: Mandi Voclain, after my paternal grandmother.

Mother was released from the hospital after three weeks, with casts on her legs and scars on her hands, face, and arms. I, on the other hand, still needed close observation by the doctors for another month and a half. When mother returned to have her casts removed, she was told that it was unlikely her leg muscles and nerves would ever work properly again without expensive surgery. Father's job for the RDA paid him very well, and he could afford it, but Mother refused. She said she didn't want to forget what had happened, and she didn't want anyone else to forget it either.

You see, Mother had this obsession with teaching people things. I don't mean things like reading, writing and arithmetic, either. I mean things like morals and other such valuable life lessons. She was confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life, but she used the chair, and the questions she received because of it, to lecture people on how important it is to be careful driving, and how bad alcohol is, and why we should be glad that the RDA is mining unobtanium on Pandora instead of the dangerous chemicals our ancestors used here.

Yes, my mother used her injury to spread propaganda. So what? She couldn't get a job herself anymore, and her husband did work for the RDA.

They took me home directly after mother's casts were removed. We lived in relative happiness for a few months until, one Friday evening, Father noticed that I wasn't moving normally. My movements, rather than being fluid and easy, were labored and jerky. What's worse, Mother was having the same problems, but to a lesser degree than I was. Panicked, he rushed us to the hospital.

They kept us there for observation overnight. But this time, I was in a little crib in Mother's room, and she was able to feed and care for me herself.

The next morning, I had difficulty swallowing as Mother attempted to breastfeed me. And Mother couldn't stop shaking. The nurses drew blood from us, checked our vitals, and left, adding that the results of the blood test would be ready in a week or so. If we weren't any worse by the evening, we'd be able to leave and wait for the results at home.

Evening came, and Mother and I were in the same condition, so we were sent home. However, by the following Wednesday, Mother's tremors were so bad she could barely function by herself, and now my breathing was labored as well. Father, terrified, once more rushed us to the ER.

The nurses gave us IVs and oxygen, still allowing me to be in a crib in Mother's room. Thursday morning, much to Mother's surprise, Dr. Luke Hayes, her obstetrician, walked into the room with Father and our nurses. He held a piece of paper and wore a grim expression. Father sat beside Mother on her bed, where she sat upright, pale-faced and holding me close. I was sound asleep, breathing easily, thanks to the oxygen. While the nurses looked on, Dr. Hayes sat on the end of her bed and gave her the news that would change everything.

The smoke from the fire, with its potent mix of chemicals, had a permanent effect on our immune systems. Both Mother and I had white blood cells that were, slowly but surely, dying off, one by one. There were medicines to control it, like with HIV, but it couldn't be stopped. Our problems now were due to an uncommon illness. The only reason we caught the disease in the first place, Dr. Hayes said, was because of our weak immune systems. The illness itself could be treated, but there would be more. There would always be more.

And, as if that wasn't enough, there was one final blow. I was a preemie. I was already vulnerable to sickness, which could explain why the doctor's hadn't noticed the weakness while I was in the incubator. The weakness was sure to affect me worse than it did Mother. He didn't expect that I'd live past age 6 or 7.

Whenever Father tells me this story, his voice gets choked up and he rushes through the aftermath of the announcement. How Mother lost all her joy in the world. How she stopped speaking to Father, stopped coddling me, stopped lecturing innocent citizens. How she simply took her pills and sat and stared out the window at the smog and people below.

She wasn't really there anymore after that, he says. She didn't blink when I learned to walk, or when I said my first word ("Medin," my babyish pronunciation of "medicine," when Father almost forgot to include one of my pills with dinner). She just sat by her window. She slept there, ate there, drank there. It took all of my father's effort to get her to use a bathroom. She rarely bathed. She never left the house.

I was four years old when Mother finally threw a heavy metal vase at the window.

Father was in a right state when that happened. Earth's air, especially in cities as large as this one, was already poisonous, and that was for healthy people. He ran out of the bedroom with me as fast as he could, securing an Exopack to my face before running back to the bedroom and wheeling Mother out of there. He slammed the door shut and yelled at her. Even though I was young at the time, I still remember the fight that followed.

"What the hell were you thinking?"

She said nothing.

"Do you want to get yourself killed? Get our daughter killed? You still have something to live for, Kendra! You have me, you have Mandi, you'd have your friends if you'd ever just let them come see you."

Then, she spoke the only four words she'd say in her defense. "It doesn't matter anymore."

Father yelled at her for another fifteen minutes at least, using words I didn't understand at the time. Now that I do, I'm appalled that he ever said such cruel things. But when he felt Mother had been sufficiently scolded, had the window repaired and the house decontaminated. We wore Exopacks in our home for two weeks following the accident. The air didn't do anything to me, but Mother got terribly ill. Now I think that was her goal the whole time, but then I was worried about her. At four years old, I didn't understand why Mother had gotten so sick that I wasn't allowed to touch her. I had to say my final farewell to her through a protective plastic suit so that I wouldn't get sick as well.

We buried her exactly three weeks after she broke the window. Her gravestone reads, "Kendra Voclain. Beloved wife to Evan, loving mother to Mandi." This is followed by a quote. "To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die."

As far as I'm concerned, the gravestone's inscription is a lie. Mother is dead. She has been dead to me since I was four months old.

After that, Father dove into his work with a horrifying sort of fury. His work seems to have paid off; he was promoted to Vice-President of the RDA within a year of Mother's death. When I was six, he paid Dr. Hayes to quit his job as an obstetrician and work for him as a live-in doctor of sorts. Dr. Hayes agreed. He sleeps on a cot in the living room, but he doesn't seem to mind. As for me, I love it. Dr. Hayes is always there when I need him. Father isn't.

I lived beyond Dr. Hayes's original expectations for me, celebrating my seventh and eighth birthdays without any major problems. As far as Dr. Hayes is concerned, it's a miracle. But all Father sees is the weakness. Its hold on me is increasing all the time, to the point where I need what looks like SCUBA gear to go outside safely. A full face mask, a purified oxygen tank, the whole nine yards. A single pathogen could be the end of my life. I think Father is afraid of the pain of losing me to death.

Not me. I accepted my fate long ago. I've already told Father and Dr. Hayes what I want my funeral to be like. I've picked out my casket. I even told Dr. Hayes what I want inscribed on my gravestone, after my name and the dates and all that rubbish about my family. It's a quote from a series of books by J.K Rowling. They're hundreds of years old, sure, but they've been published many times over, and they were my favorites as a child. Dr. Hayes has read them to me more times than either of us can count.

"When I'm gone," I had told him on one cold December day, "that's what I want on my gravestone."

We were sitting together, curled up on his cot, reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone for the umpteenth time.

"What?" he asked, looking up from the pages he'd been reading.

"'To the well organized mind, death is but the next great adventure,'" I recited. "I want that on my gravestone."

Dr. Hayes let out a nervous chuckle. "Don't let your father hear you talking like that."

"I won't."

He agreed, then, to my request. I had been thirteen years old.

Today is my seventeenth birthday. Father is at work, just like any other day. Dr. Hayes is here, though, bustling about in our kitchen as he tries to make something delicious out of the RDA's algae. I'm seated on his cot, my thin legs curled under me, wrapped tightly in a wool blanket. As Dr. Hayes cooks, he tells me tales of the olden days, when there were so many different kinds of food a person could live a lifetime and not try even half of them. The stories make me smile. They remind me that things weren't always like this. That, once upon a time, Earth was as beautiful as the TV specials about Pandora that bring me so much joy.

Along with Dr. Hayes and my books, the television has been my constant companion. I've seen everything, I think. War documentaries, news reports, movies both old and new and- my favorite- tales of Pandora.

The planet seems almost mythical to me. I want to believe that something so wonderful is real, that it actually exists, but I don't dare. And even if it did, I know, I wouldn't last a day there. The reports are very clear that Pandora is dangerous and deadly. It's probably even worse for a half-dead girl like me.

But it's my greatest wish in the world to go there. On television, they tell tales of avatar drivers. They're scientists that are linked to a body made of a mixture of the DNA of themselves and the natives of Pandora, the Na'vi. They show Dr. Grace Augustine, the head of the program, in her avatar body, taking samples of plants as she passes them. The reporters, I'm sure, are trying to make her look like she's crazy, some kind of wild woman. But all I see is the beauty of the place, the freedom of her avatar body. Dr. Hayes often teases me by saying I'm a little in love with her. And he's right, but not in the way he expects. Dr. Augustine, to me, is a role model. I want to be like her: just as free, just as happy. But I can't be. The weakness won't allow it.

Dr. Hayes gives up on the algae. "We'll just eat it as usual tonight," he says with a heavy sigh and a roll of his eyes that makes me giggle. He smiles at my laughter. "I have a present for you," he says to me. He sits beside me on the cot and reaches under his mattress. After a couple of seconds, he pulls out a manila envelope. "Happy Birthday, Mandi."

I take the envelope and open it. My slender fingers easily reach into it and grab the single sheet of paper it contains. I look at Dr. Hayes in puzzlement.

"Read it," he urges me.

I obey and read the paper. It's a short, official-looking letter, addressed to Dr. Hayes. But he gave it to me, so I read it.

Dear Dr. Hayes,

We have received your application for your patient, Mandi Voclain, and would like to inform you that we have decided to grant her wish. A representative will be arriving at your place of residence on March 15th, 2147, to interview you both, along with her father, at seven PM. Please make sure you are available at this time. If you need to change the date or time of your interview, please contact us at (254)-967-8023.

We look forward to meeting the three of you on March 15th.

Sincerely,

Logan Tribling
Associate Director of Wishes, Wishing Star Organization

I stare at the letter, confused. I never made a request for a wish. I never told Dr. Hayes what my deepest desire was. The Wishing Star Organization was one of the few wish-granting organizations that hadn't gone bankrupt in the last fifty years. It specialized in teenagers who had been sick for their entire lives. The requirements were complex. For example, the illness couldn't be caused by the intentional actions of the wisher, their parents or any other family members. The wisher had to have surpassed the expectations of survival that doctors had given them. And the wisher needed to have a wish so big and bold, most people would laugh it off.

What had Dr. Hayes told them?

I reread the letter, my eyes resting on the date of the interview. March 15, 2147. My heart jumps as I realize that today is March 15, 2147. And it's already 5:30.

I stare at Dr. Hayes, astonishment plain on my face. "But… the interview is today!" I say to him, at loss of anything else to say.

He smiles at me. "Do you like it?"

"What did you say my wish was?" I ask him.

"To go to Pandora," he replies frankly. "I told them you didn't care if you didn't live to see Earth again. You wanted to see Pandora before you died. That wasn't wrong, was it?"

No, I want to tell him, no, that was exactly right. Pandora was the only want I had that I'd believed to be unreachable. And now Dr. Hayes had made it possible. I want to scream with delight and tell him what this means to me, but I don't have enough words to explain it. So I fling my arms around his neck, giving him the tightest hug my frail arms can manage.

He hugs me back, and I know I've said all that I need to. For good measure, I add, in perfect Na'vi, "Irayo."

He pulls away from the hug. "Where did you learn that?" he asks.

I grin at him. "Father was a bit careless about where he left his Na'vi language guides."

"And why does your father have Na'vi language guides?"

I sigh. Dr. Hayes should know this by now. Then I remember that he pays more attention to me than to Father's work, and I'm nothing but grateful once more. "Every RDA employee gets one," I reply. "Father left his lying around, so I nicked it. He doesn't use it, anyway. He's not going to Pandora any time soon."

Dr. Hayes chuckles and nods. "That is true. But you didn't know you were going, either. So why did you steal his book?"

"Because I thought that, if I could talk like them, I could pretend I was there."

"You don't have to pretend anymore," says Dr. Hayes after a slight pause, failing to hide that my comment has shaken him. "You'll be there before you even know it."

A/N: Reviews, comments, and (respectful!) constructive criticism are all welcome!

GLOSSARY:

Irayo: Thank you.