Hey everyone! Part 2 is out, finally. Thanks again to my lovely beta! She's amazing.
Walking down the hallway, Rebecca tried to calm her heart. It was pounding against her ribcage as if it wanted to pound its way out. But she wasn't about to give in to the nerves that threatened to make her knees weak. She straightened her shoulders and reminded herself that she would be strong. Her brother needed her, and she would be there for him. She slowly took a breath through her nose, slowly calming her body down. Her heart refused to slow down though, and Rebecca willed it to stop entirely if only her pulse would not be so loud in her ears.
"So, why are you here?" Rebecca looked to her left, surprised that one of the men would actually speak to her.
"Parker asked me to come." She looked him up and down before raising an eyebrow. "I'm sorry, what was your name again?"
"Norm. Norm Spellman." He looked at her awkwardly before the group fell into silence.
"So, Rebecca, what is it that you do for a living?" Max asked, finally breaking through the tension. She remembered his name simply because it was a generic name. Norm was a name that required her to actually think, and with these two she wanted to be as aloof as possible.
"I'm a nurse." Short, terse, that was the way to be with anyone you didn't want to deal with for a long time. She didn't care what they thought, what they wanted, or what they thought of her. Parker was the one goal on her mind right now. The quicker she could get to Parker the more at ease she would feel. Then she relax, and finally see her brother again after six long years.
Norm walked ahead of them and moved through the sliding door before she could reach. Classic male. She snorted, before grabbing on a face mask. It suctioned to her face, and Rebecca couldn't help but grimace. She'd never been a fan of the exopacks, she'd tried one on while she was on Earth and had hated it even then.
As she walked by Max and through the doors, she ducked her head and mumbled a quick, "Here we go."
The sun stung her eyes as she stood out into the open air. It was so bright here on Pandora, unlike Earth. Back home, the sun was nothing but a circular haze on the gray sky. She had read in books that there had been blue skies once, but she couldn't imagine it until she had stepped off of the ship here in Pandora. Her eyes watered from the light, and she raised a hand to block the sun for a moment.
"It's a little bright the first time you see it, isn't it?" Max asked as he laid a hand on her arm.
Rebecca blinked a few more times before nodding. Lowering her arm, she stared up into the sky, avoiding looking directly at the sun. "Yeah, it's so different from home." Looking at the Max, she smiled tightly. "I'm sure you remember the state that Earth is in." At his nod, she added, "Then you realize why the RDA is here then."
She tried to walk down the steps as carefully as possible. After four years of being in cryo, and having all of this excitement in such a short amount of time, her knees shook alarmingly. She didn't want to fall in front of these two men. The last thing that she wanted to do was to embarrass her brother. From the rumors she had heard on Earth, he had made quite a name for himself here. Rebecca didn't want to be the little sister that ruined that for him.
So instead of looking up as she had first planned, she focused on her feet. Every step was planned out before hand, since she was carefully paying attention so she didn't fall. But each step was making her knees feel closer to collapsing.
When she reached the bottom of the steps, she slowly collected her breath. She had made it down the steps without falling. Now all she had to do was be ready for everyone to be staring at her. She was used to the staring, a woman that was six foot four inches was not something that was seen every day on Earth. In fact, her height mostly made people point rather than stare. As Earth had gotten older, it seemed like humans had started to shrink. The average height for a woman was about five feet. The average height for men was still about six feet, which was the reason why Rebecca had landed square with the tall genes. Her father had been a giant among men, reaching about six foot eight inches. Her mother always used to joke that he had been her Goliath. Rebecca had just been the daughter to inherit those genes.
She closed her eyes and told herself to focus. Now was not a time to be walking down memory lane, but to be making her brother proud. It was time to think like a Selfridge and actually take charge of the situation. Or, at the rate that these two men were walking, she would never get to see her brother. But Rebecca was so nervous she was ready to bolt. Her entire stomach felt like it was going to cave in on itself. So she took another deep breath through her nose, and held it for a few seconds. Nothing bad was going to happen to her, she would find Parker and be done with it. But Rebecca couldn't help but get the feeling that something wasn't being told to her. Shaking her hands, she rolled her shoulders and looked up.
She had expected to see a large amount of military personal walking around, or maybe pausing when they saw the giant walking down the step. She had even expected to see Parker in handcuffs at the end of the stairs, or something along that line. But instead, she was faced with no humans at all. Stunned, she stared around at the people… creatures… things walking around or speaking to the remaining humans. She knew that these had to be the Na'vi, the indigenous peoples that lived on the planet. Still, even knowing this fact, she couldn't believe what she was seeing.
Rubbing at her eyes, she blinked again. Seeing these creatures, it was like something out of a dream. She didn't expect to see one at all. Parker was always so protective of her that she didn't expect to be introduced to most of the staff, let alone the natives. And it was a rare treat to meet something humanoid that was actually taller than her. She watched Norm walk towards one of the Na'vi, an extremely heathen looking one with feathers in his hair and tiny cuts all over his body. They saw her staring and waved her over, but all of a sudden Rebecca's vision was tunneled.
They walked towards her, and she could vaguely hear them trying to talk to her. Squinting, she vainly tried to focus on what they were saying. Unfortunately, all she could hear was a rather annoying blur of words that ended up sounding like babble. Shaking her head slightly, she raised a hand to her head. It was like she was underwater. All she could hear were dulled sounds, and her vision was continually getting smaller and smaller.
As she realized she was going to faint, Rebecca weaved where she was standing. "You need to get those cuts looked at before they get infected." That was the nurse in her speaking. But she continued to weave, and the tunnel vision worsened. It was the worst time for her to be startled into oblivion. Now Parker was going to be livid. His sister, the nurse, couldn't even stand the sight of a native. How in the world was she going to treat the wounded? "You know, I really should go find Parker," she murmured before she tumbled forward in a dead faint.
Max cried out as the woman fell. He couldn't imagine what was wrong with her. She couldn't be poisoned. She couldn't be ill because she had walked this whole way without falling at their feet. So he stood watching her body tilt and wondered how the world had suddenly slowed down. He watched in slow motion as Norm desperately tried to grab the woman, and Jake wrapped his arms around her crumpling form.
Jake slowly lowered Rebecca to the ground, brows furrowed with worry. It was an odd thing to see eyebrows on a Na'vi. The natives didn't have them, and it was one of the ways that he could always pick Jake out of a crowd. Norm was already bent over the girl, gently shaking her shoulders and trying to get to her open her eyes. She was propped up against the stairs, her head bent at an odd angle. Reaching down, Max gently shifted her head so that she wouldn't have a neck ache when she awoke.
"Jake!" Neytiri had reached them, and she was scowling down at the woman as if she was scum from a lake that had somehow managed to stick to her. "Is this the girl you told me about?" She looked nervously at the woman laying on the ground.
"This is the woman that was left behind yes."
Norm stood quickly. "She said that she was a nurse. Perhaps we could convince her to help us with the injuries from the fight."
"Perhaps." Jake looked at the woman with a skeptical look. "I doubt she'd help though. She's Parker Selfridge's sister. If she's anything like him she's not even going to consider helping us."
"But before she fainted, she wanted to look at your cuts Jake!" Max pointed out. "If she thought of that before she fainted, perhaps she would help. It seems likely that someone worried about your injuries would also be worried about others."
Neytiri shook her head and made a tsking sound with her mouth. "I doubt it. As Jake said, Parker would have much influence on his sister. She doesn't realize he's already left. She knows nothing of the Na'vi, or the plants on this planet that can heal. She could harm us, whether she planned it out or not."
A low groan made them all turn towards the woman on the steps. Rebecca saw only blurry shapes as she started to come to. She though she was having a dream that she'd gone to visit Parker and saw some kind of blue alien instead.
Another groan escaped her mouth when she realized that it wasn't a dream. Sitting up, she waved at the hands that suddenly settled on her shoulders and tried to push her back down. "I'm fine, I'm fine." She blew a breath out of her mouth and shook her head. "Sorry to faint."
Looking up, she realized that there were now two Na'vi before her instead of one. Shaking her head, she added, "You are extremely tall."
Reaching up towards Max, she grasped onto his arm and pulled herself into a standing position. When she weaved, hands reached towards her again. Growling, she slapped them away. "I'm not a child, I can stand on my own thank you very much. But I could use some orange juice if you had it. And where is Parker?"
She was startled, yet again, when Max Patel shook his head. "We don't have orange juice here." At her look he shrugged. "It was expected in the next shipment."
"Well then get me something with sugar in it." She growled at him. He gave her a stern look.
"I'm sorry, did I stutter? If I don't get sugar I'm going to faint again." She smiled tightly at him. "If you don't, I'm sure Parker would resolve this issue for us."
Max's lips tightened into a thin line, but he nodded tightly. She watched him entire the building to assure herself that he was actually going to get her something to drink. "I'd like to sit down again."
She sat with a thump onto the steps, and wasn't surprised when they all stared at her. "There's no need to stare, I'm fine. Go back to what you were doing."
"Why does she keep asking for Selfridge?" The female Na'vi asked in her native language. It was at this moment that Rebecca was glad that she had took the time to learn the language before she had arrived on the planet. When she had learned that there was a chance of her coming to live with Parker on Pandora she had done all the research she could. She learned the language for fun, and had devoured the informational books about the planet. It was fascinating to learn about a place other then earth had could contain life.
"Look, I just want to know where my brother is." Rebecca retorted. "These two men told me that my brother was in trouble and needed my help. Is he hurt? Is that why you're taking so long? I want to see my brother! I don't understand why this could be taking so long." She didn't answer in the woman's language. As of now, she didn't know whether or not Parker wanted her to converse with the natives. If it somehow got out that she knew the language, she wasn't exactly sure how he would react. "As of now, it seems like this would be moving faster if I tried and find him myself, since Norm is just standing there and Max is getting me a drink."
She could see both of the Na'vi get angry at her words. A red blush climbed up her neck, but she refused to admit that she was embarrassed to have unintentionally insulted the two men. She hadn't meant to be so rude, but it was impossible for her to understand what was taking them so long. If Parker was in trouble, she should be with him now, not later. But the more she asked about him, the less they wanted to take her to him. Frustration was clouding her mind, but she didn't know what to do about it. She couldn't wander off and find him on her own! She knew the basic layout of the place, but she didn't know where Parker was. At this point, she was ready to tear at her own hair.
By the time Max returned with an apple juice, the tension between the four people on the steps could have been cut with a knife. Slowly handing the juice to Rebecca he asked, "What happened?"
Neytiri answered, "I have better things to be doing right now," and left, while Jake and Norm continued to glare at the woman on the steps. Astonished that something bad could have happened that fast, Max turned to look at Rebecca. She was sitting on the steps with a vacant expression on her face, delicately sipping at the juice. Sensing his eyes on her, she looked up and met his eyes.
"Yes? Is there something I can do for you Max?"
He blinked a couple times at her cool tone. "Uh, well." He scratched the back of his neck. "You said you were a nurse?" At her nod, he continued. "You see, there was a rather large fight here just a few hours ago. We still have a lot of wounded that are set in a camp not too far away from here. It would be a huge help if you could assist some of the healers. I know that Neytiri voiced concerns about you not knowing how to use the planets here medicinally, but that can be taught."
Rebecca's blood pressure jumped. "You're asking me… what?"
"To help our people since you are a nurse?" Jake answered with a grin.
Speaking slowly and annunciating the words as if they didn't speak English, Rebecca said, "I. Want. To. See. Parker."
Norm shook his head. "I don't understand why you wouldn't help us. As a nurse, isn't it in your better nature to be helping that are hurt?"
"You have got to be kidding me!" Rebecca snapped. "I want to see my brother! How hard is that to understand? Why are you trying to change the topic?"
"Parker wasn't interested in this planet at all. He wanted the unobtanium, and that was it." Norm replied. "We didn't expect any help from the RDA. But you could help us quite a bit.
A red blush returned to Rebecca's cheeks, and a spark returned to her blank expression. Setting the juice on the step beside her, she stood and swiped at the dirt on her backside. "I'll say it one more time for you. I want to see my brother, now!" She gritted between her clenched teeth.
She caught the look that passed between Norm and Max, and she felt anger spike her blood pressure. Walking closer to the two, she asked tightly, "What? What was that look?"
Max gulped before answering. "Well, actually… You see… There was a slight… well no, not slight but…"
"Your brother left on the same ship you came to, all of the humans except a choice few are gone. Except you." Jake answered.
Rebecca stilled. "What do you mean?"
"It means that you are here without our knowledge. And that you are stuck here until we can somehow figure out how to send you back home." Jake told her.
Groping for the railing behind her, Rebecca sank down onto the steps. Her expression was stunned. She couldn't believe what they were saying. She was stuck? Where was her ship? The one that she had arrived on? She shook her head. "That's not possible."
Had Parker known about this? Did he plan it? What other reason would he have to lock her in that room? He must have known that they would be attacked and forced onto those ships, so why the hell would her brother had left her alone. "And this would be the battle I heard while in that room? It was a battle between the humans that Parker worked for, and…" she pointed at Jake. "Them."
Max nodded, and then leaned towards her as if to pat her on the shoulder. She flinched, "Don't touch me!" She slapped at his hand. "You lied to me asshole! Get away from me!"
It seemed as if Jake didn't like the idea, but Max hustled both him and Norm away before they could question him. Meanwhile, Rebecca remained on the steps rubbing at her chest. The clenching pain was back, and she could only put it to heartbreak. Her brother had left her on this planet? By herself? And after everything that she had done for him, spending five years in cryo sleep. She'd never get those years back!
Head in her hands, she tried to figure out what she would do now. The ship couldn't come back until it returned to earth. If it couldn't return, that meant that she was utterly stuck here for a least a decade. Her chest clenched again at the thought. She couldn't stay here! She didn't know anyone. She didn't even know what she would do here. Would she end up living in the jungle fighting off everything that came in her sight? Would she end up dying? She sent a prayer to heaven for some kind of guidance.
Why in the world would her brother ask her to come here? Groaning, she dug her fingernails into her head. She didn't want to have a panic attack, not again. Maybe later, when she was settled down for the night she could cry. But now she had to regain her mentality. A few tears slid down her cheek before she dashed them away with rough hands. Pinching her arms, she gritted her teeth and focused on the task at hand.
The most important thing right now would to be dealing with the question of how she was going to protect herself. She hadn't given the people here any reason to take care of her. Rebecca had never liked to be a burden. Max had said something about her helping out with some injuries that the natives had obtained during the fight. She had to fight down the urge to believe that they actually deserved it. She was on her brother's side of this fight, but she knew how to heal people.
Maybe if she helped with the natives, Norm and Max would allow her to stay here at the base. In return, she would do everything within her power to heal their people and keep them alive. She lifted her head. Making eye contact with Max, who she wasn't surprised to see was watching her from a few yards away, she nodded at him. When he walked to her, she said, "I'll help the injured." She raised her hand when he smiled. "But on a few conditions. I want to be taken care of. I don't expect the golden treatment. But I want protection, food, water, and shelter."
Max nodded slowly. "We would have given to that you no matter what you chose. But we will be glad that you will help us out." Holding out a hand, he continued to smile at her. "Come with me. We're housing the wounded here until a new Hometree can be found. You'll be working mostly outside since the Na'vi can't breathe our air."
Thanks for all your wonderful reviews! Don't worry about the flamers because I'm not. So, rate and reviews would be wonderful! Thanks for reading my story darlings!
-Emm
