I borrowed heavily from the script for the first paragraph of description and also the first few lines of dialogue.
This conversation canonically takes place just before Jake links to his Avatar to find his spirit animal (script only,
no movie). In my version, it's yet a couple of days off. My Grace Augustine has some psychological problems that
aren't present in the movie. Short, and fairly dark. I may use it later as a lead-in to a longer piece.
One of Pandora's uniquely powerful magnetic storms was raging through the Hallelujah mountains. Strange horizontal
lightning branched through the floating mountains, twisted by the magnetic fields. The sky was black and heavy with clouds.
A similarly powerful storm was raging inside the metal cocoon nestled into the side of the cliffs. It was dark inside, lit only
by the glow of monitors and the strobing lightning.
"Jake, listen!" Grace grabbed his shoulders as he wheeled away. "No matter what you prove out there - " she gestured
at the rain-lashed plateau beyond the window "you are still in here." She held his shoulders and went to stand in front of
him. "Right here!"
Jake shook his head. "No." He tried to wheel around her. "I have to go all the way - become one of them - "
"Goddamnit Jake, you can never be one of them!" Grace practically shouted. She had a white-fingered grip on her forgotten
cigarette. Norm was watching her, his mouth slightly agape
"Our life out there takes millions of dollars of machinery to sustain," Grace continued. "You visit - and then you leave!"
Jake wheeled around to face her. "Leave?" he demanded. "Leave for what? To sleep. And to eat, and make those goddamn
video logs. And then I go back. It's different for me than it was for you - "
"You can never truly be with her, Jake," Grace interrupted, more softly.
They stared at each other for a moment as lightning flickered through the windows. "You know why I'm here?" he finally
asked. "Quaritch sent me. To figure out how to screw the Omaticaya out of their home. Or how to force them out."
"I know," Grace said.
"You - " Jake stopped, momentarily derailed. "You knew?"
Grace snorted, grabbing an ashtray from atop a monitor and twisting her cigarette out. She put a new one between her
lips. "You think he didn't try to run the same game on me when he took over here?" she said, flicking her lighter. The tip
glowed as she took a deep drag. "But he knew a lost cause when he saw one."
Jake exhaled slowly, letting his head fall back to stare at the dark ceiling. "What do you want me to do, Grace?"
"I don't know," she said. "But you can't keep this up for much longer. She gestured vaguely at him, leaving ghost-trails
of cigarette smoke in the air. "You look completely strung out."
Jake shook his head. "You did it. I can do this."
Grace smiled tiredly. "I did it, and if the clan hadn't banished me, I'd be dead by now." She hesitated and glanced over
her shoulder, looking for Norm. The scientist had reluctantly left for one of his frequent video-chats with Trudy. Grace
rolled up the wide sleeves of her lab coat and then began folding away sleeves of the cotton shirt beneath.
"Doc, what - "
Then he saw the white slashes - the dozens of scars that ran up Grace's arms. They began faintly, just above her wrists -
slightly above where her shirt would cover - and criss-crossed and straight lined up the inside of her arms, becoming
more pronounced as they went on. None of them looked recent.
Grace watched his face in silence, and then began speaking quietly.
"It got to the point where I didn't even feel alive here anymore," she said. "When I was here - " she around at the lab, the
machines " – it was like it wasn't real anymore. I was so - enraptured by Pandora, in love with the Na'vi, that lost interest
in everything else, everything that wasn't out there."
She lifted her arms slightly "All this - it was just so I could feel something when I was awake. Anything. I would smile
while I did it, crying at the same time - " she trailed off and took another drag from her cigarette. "I'm not a psychologist
Jake, but I do know what's going on in your head. I went through it too."
Jake didn't say anything.
"And I know it's worse for you than it was for me," Grace went on. "I know what we've been asking, to have you do what
you're doing, to have you living two lives. But you need to remember which life is real, and which one is the dream."
"Yeah," Jake said, giving a half-hearted laugh. "That sounds real easy."
Grace nodded. "I know it's not. I didn't understand the difference until they banished me. And that made me realize, I could
never be one of them. I - we're outsiders, Jake."
The former marine shook his head, then looked up with a trace of steel in his eyes. "Doesn't matter, doc. Look, I joined up
with the marines because I wanted to find something to fight for other than me. That's why I came to this rock. Only difference
now is the side I'm on. I'm not the guy I was when I got off that ship. And I'm not gonna give up on this now. I gotta finish this."
"Jake," Grace said quietly, shaking her head. "This is going to end some time – and soon. Look - "
"I really gotta get some rack," Jake cut over her. He turned and wheeled away from her into the gathering darkness of the lab.
Outside, the storm was still raging. He could imagine Neytiri, crouched on one of Hometree's outermost branches, watching the
forest sway with the force of it. He wondered if she was thinking of him.
Behind him, he heard Grace speaking softly, recording the data Jake had gathered for her, everything that
had once seemed so alien to him, and now so natural.