A/N - Finish my other fanfics? I try, but this is what happens when you do 'research' on your favorite celebrity...

Anyway. Avatar fic written in a fairly choppy manner, following an OC. This started out non-romantic, but yea. It's complete and short, only 4 chapters, and written in less than a week. Not my best work, I'll admit it. But I liked writing it. *sticks out tongue and flounces away*

Chapter 1

Realities

Flying, any way she could do it, that was how Gina spent her life. When she was a kid, she'd found an old para-sailing rig that she patched up, jumped off the nearest cliff with, and had a massive argument with her parents about when she got out of the hospital. If it could be jumped off or out of, she'd done it. From jumping out of aircraft to the north face of Mount Everest, she risked her life to experience the adrenaline rush and temporary freedom of flight.

After one too many run-ins with the authorities, she was given the choice of serving her country in its air force or spending the next twenty years of her life repairing aircraft while literally chained to the ground. It was an easy choice. Being a pilot dodging enemy fire in rough bush was an entirely different kind of awesome.

But being under the thumb of the chain of command chafed almost as bad as being grounded. Every other week she was being written up for insubordination, dangerous aerial stunts, or some combination thereof. Her scientist parents died of some flu pandemic on the lunar space station they were developing interstellar life-support systems at. When her tour was over, she accepted the job offer from RDA. It was a surprise to find an RDA representative waiting for her with a private transport immediately after signing the discharge paperwork. Piloting Samson aircraft in the most hostile place in the known galaxy sounded the next logical step in her hunt for adrenaline rushes.

They took blood and tissue samples, her palm scans and signature and gave her an advance to get her affairs in order. One week later, she closed her eyes in the cryo chamber.

"Ginaya Trakova." Gina reported to a woman in a flight suit, clearly waiting for her.

"Trudy Chacon." The senior pilot with six years experience on Pandora shook her hand, then gestured over her shoulder. "That's my bird. She's what we'll be training you in, try to keep you from dying on this moon."

There were dents in the thing. Long tears that were probably claw marks from a Pandoran monster were being sealed over by a maintenance crew. A tiger was painted on the side of the cockpit.

"We fly the science sorties." Chacon continued.

Gina nodded, her attention already lost. A Samson model aircraft was a workhorse, designed to haul cargo and personnel. The bucket was a point A to point B utility bore. It would never win any speed or stealth competitions. But it could fly almost anywhere, under any conditions, and was about the most durable aircraft ever flown. She was in love.

Fingers snapped in front of her face. Chacon grinned at her. "I know that look."

Gina pulled at her sweaty clothes. "What look?"

"That look every pilot gets when she's imagining doing the thing she loves most." Hand on hip, Chacon turned to face the squat bird. "Flying."

Her own smile blossomed.

The Na'vi were enormous. Gina knew that. Everyone knew that. It didn't stop her from staring up at the blue and slightly feline avatar of Dr. Grace Augustine the first time they met.

"Hello? Is there anything in there?" The doctor thumped Gina's head and huffed. "We're on a schedule." She turned to Chacon, ignoring Gina's snarl. "Where did Selfridge find this one, the recycling pits?"

"Pilot Trakova hasn't seen one of you up close yet." Chacon replied.

"Trakova?" Augustine turned back to Gina, interest in her eyes. "As in the Trakova bio-cyclers? You can't possibly be the brains behind those."

"My parents," was the irritated response.

"Ah." The interest sputtered out. "Shame they didn't pass their brilliance on."

"They did, but my sisters died before they could shine." Gina snapped. "My parents didn't spawn any more before the Egin Flu killed them too."

Augustine stiffened and glanced back. Gina silently wished that the woman would give her an excuse to find out what colors Na'vi bruised. The doctor only gave her a thorough looking over before climbing into the Samson. "Come on, Chacon. I don't have all day."

Chacon squeezed her shoulder. "The doc hates anyone who isn't scientist or Na'vi. Try not to take it personally."

When Colonel Quaritch gave his little speech about how everything on Pandora would love to eat her eyeballs for candy, he wasn't kidding. Every living thing on the forest moon defied the human infestation. Banshees, bat-like reptiles as brightly colored as the flora, regularly swooped down from the skies, giant blue warriors astride them.

An arrow punched through the window as easily as a bullet. Gina scrambled for emergency breathing mask, her eyes glued to the beasts. Fresh air, tainted with the stench of rubber blew across her face. Chacon was scrambling to evade further attack and the door gunners were unloading into the flight of warriors. "Do you think a human could ever do that, ride a banshee?"

Chacon spared her a quick, disbelieving look and pulled her own mask on. Dr. Augustine started laughing. "Not in your life, kid."

In the chow hall, the doc was regaling the story about the rookie pilot who believed in fairy tales. Gina was jabbed in the ribs by Chacon. "Pandora attracts only the craziest of idiots in the galaxy."

"After meeting you, I believe it," was the grumbled retort.

Chacon laughed, and Gina wanted to ask what had driven the laid-back pilot there. She ate her dinner instead.

One time, she even saw an enormous orange and red banshee. It was big enough to eat her, Chacon, and their entire compliment of science pukes for lunch.

"The Omaticaya call it toruk, last shadow." Dr. Augustine commented. Gina was flying solo by then, and it was Chacon's off day. "Don't ever end up underneath it."

Gina nodded and kept a careful eye on her scanners as she maneuvered them away from the great beast's vicinity.

Gina was in the middle of a really terrible book when Chacon slapped her on the shoulder and told her to come watch the sun set with her. The sharply flat tone she used had Gina powering down her reader and hopping up to follow without hesitation.

"Ever miss it?" Chacon took a swig from the canteen in her hand. It stank of bitter alcohol.

"I miss sunsets all the time." Gina slowly sat down on the rooftop.

"Earth."

From blues to yellows and oranges, the sky was morphing. Pandoran sunsets were exactly like a hundred other terran sunsets she had watched. If she ignored the giant gas planet that was always visible in the sky. And the other moons that danced around. "Not really."

Chacon looked at her. "Why not?"

"No one there worth missing. Too many sad memories."

"I don't believe a woman as attractive and friendly as you didn't have friends on every continent."

A snort puffed out of Gina. She chuckled, but it faded quickly into melancholy. "When you say it that way, I suppose there are a couple people I wouldn't mind sharing beers with again." Quite a few, if she was being honest. It wasn't enough though. Not nearly enough to make her want to be so close to the places where loved ones had died. Soldiers she had served with. Friends she'd adventured with. The scales were too heavy with sadness. People died regularly on Pandora, yet it was different. Here, she hadn't made any friends, didn't plan to. She just wanted to fly and die.

"I have a kid that turns seventeen today."

"What?!" Gina started. She knew for a fact that Chacon was only twenty-seven. She would have had to pop that kid out as soon as she hit puberty.

"Cryo sleep makes age relative, remember?" Chacon replied.

Questions burned at Gina's tongue. The canteen was offered, and she drank gratefully. She coughed. "That shit is raw!"

"Home brew."

Reds and oranges set the sky on fire. They watched that fire be put out by the approaching violets and indigos. It was dark for a few seconds before the light of the gas giant turned the sky into blues again. Outside the perimeter fences, Gina could see the natural glows of Pandoran life.

The canteen was passed between them until Chacon's head dropped to Gina's shoulder. "I wasn't ready for a kid, and his dad was a soldier on temporary leave. The guy left me some money and the decision and shipped out after a week."

Gina looked at the mess of black hair, fiddled with her hands.

"I carried him to term, went through the trouble of giving birth and nursing him for a few weeks, then gave him to this wealthy tech-developer who couldn't have kids of her own. I wasn't sure why I did it until I saw her hold him." Chacon shifted a little, drank, draped more of herself on Gina. "When I realized I wanted him back," she trailed off.

Gina wrapped her arm around Chacon and squeezed.

"The adoption terms were that I could never see him unless he asked for a meeting. He'd have to be old enough to understand and make that decision." Chacon breathed. "He figured out he was adopted when he was ten, wanted to meet me."

Chacon didn't say anything else. Curiosity and worry eventually drove Gina to ask, "What happened?"

"We had lunch together, walked through a park. When we got back to his adoptive mom, who had waited at the edge of the park, he told me it was nice to meet me, thanked me for giving him life, and said he didn't want to have more than one mom. He said goodbye and left. I signed up with RDA a couple months later."

Words tumbled about, made Gina's mouth dry. "I don't know what to say."

"Don't have to say anything. Just," Chacon actually chuckled. "Keep hugging me, Trakova."

"Gina." It was automatic, spitting out her informal name like that. Being called Trakova after having such an intimate conversation was too many shades of wrong. "Call me Gina."

Dark eyes lifted from her shoulder to look at her. "Only if you call me Trudy."

The side of her mouth lifted, and she kissed Trudy's forehead. "Deal."

"Miss Trakova."

Gina looked up from her breakfast to see a man she didn't recognize. "Who's asking?"

"I'm head of a science department that you're being offered a new job in."

Eyes narrowing, she set down her spoon. "What kind of the job?"

He smiled enigmatically. "The kind that you have to accept before you're cleared to know what it is."

"Why in the stars would I do that?"

"Because you love to fly, and you will never find an opportunity like this again."