He woke up.
Jacob Aaron Sully, better known as Jake Sully, woke up. It wasn't something he had expected to ever do again. He had been fighting-again, and sometime during his fight he had gotten injured. Badly. He remembered bleeding out fast, remembered Neytiri, his beautiful wife, crying next to him, remembered begging Eywa for another chance, a chance to make things right. But that chance wouldn't come, it was far too late for that. Becoming Toruk Makto-in the end, even that had not mattered. Sure, that first battle for Pandora the Omaticaya had won, but as the saying goes … the battle was fought, but the war had not been won that day. The sky people had come back, in bigger numbers than before, and with every intention to fight, to kill , and to take what wasn't theirs. And he could do barely more than to stand by and watch.
A lone tear rolled down the side of his face as he wished he hadn't woken. All it meant at this point was seeing more of his people dying.
Suddenly he heard a voice, a voice he hadn't heard for longer a long time, and had not expected to hear now either.
"Jake, Tommy, wake up!" It was the voice of his mother. And the voice of his father followed not far behind. "Come on you two. School is starting soon. Wake up, we have made breakfast. You wouldn't want to be late on your first day now, would you?"
Confused Jake opened his eyes.
Was he dead? He thought he was alive, but his parents had died in a car accident when he and Tommy had been 16.
He stared at what looked like the ceiling of the bunk bed he had shared with his brother when he had been small.
"Come on Jake, we're going to school. Get up!" Tommy. Right. School. He remembered. Tommy had always been enthusiastic about learning new things.
If he was dead, it made sense he was with his family again, and since Neytiri probably-hopefully was alive, she probably wasn't here yet. But that was ok. He would wait for her.
He sat up in the bed, putting the legs-and his small, human, functioning legs on the floor and stood up. For some reason he thought his body felt smaller than it should. He looked up (away from the floor, away from his legs) and looked again. There was Tommy, and he had no doubt that this was Tommy, his brother, his twin, but what he was seeing … he couldn't belief it. He was so small! Tommy, his Tommy looked no older than six!
"Are you coming, or what? Hurry up Jake!"
Not saying anything, Jake just nodded and went to put up some clothes, before he went to the kitchen for breakfast.
His parents and Tommy were talking, but h still hadn't said anything, and it seemed his mother finally noticed it. "Are you alright, Jake? You seem a bit off. Are you nervous about school? Don't worry about it. Or are you getting ill? You were just fine yesterday"
"It's not nervous, I just had a bad dream."
"Want to tell me what it was about?"
Jake hesitated. It seemed neither his parents, nor his brother seemed cognizant of the fact that they were supposed to be dead, and he didn't really want to remind them of it either. So he was just shaking his head. "No."
"Ok then, but we're here if you change your mind, alright?" He nodded. "Sure."
After breakfast his father drove Tommy and him to school. School was boring, but, he supposed it was just the first day, and all they were doing right now were introductions.
No, he was dead. But even if he wasn't, he would first have to learn to read and write, before lessons would become more interesting.
But he was dead.
But his school was one such that he would stay in the same building complex until it would be time for college.
He was dead.
Maybe he could skip a class or two, or learn other things out of class.
He was dead.
Maybe, if he was a good student, if he proved himself smart enough, he could get to Pandora again, on his own merits this time, and with Tommy beside him.
He had died.
He wanted to be on Pandora again.
Why wasn't he with Eywa? After all, wasn't he dead?