Okay, kiddies. Here we go. New Chapter.

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Filling the Empty Cup

It took Norm and Max two days longer than they'd said to find the answers they wanted to find. It was two days more than I expected, two days more than I wanted. But I kept myself occupied as often as I could, looking at Amelia's logs, her messages to Tommy and his messages back to her. Over the four days it took Norm to find what he wanted to find, and for me to go a little stir crazy, I was able to look at almost all of their transmissions to each other, and I couldn't believe what I saw. It looked like the most extreme case of a long-distance relationship I'd ever seen in my life, but the fact that they were almost five light-years apart didn't seem to bother them. And it became obvious three weeks after the first trial injection when Amelia appeared to have miscarried to first trial run of the experiment.

Amelia looked more defeated than I'd seen her in weeks, a lot like I'd looked three months after Quaritch had sent me into Neytiri's camp to find out how to make them relocate. Seeing her like that made me think about how I'd felt that night before I'd gone back to base to report to him, and I wanted more than anything to tell her that everything turned out okay. Ava was beautiful, and she was safe now with me. Tommy did it for me, and in the strangest way.

"Grace said it'll be a month or two before we can try again," Amelia had said, crying softly and trying not to look completely broken apart. I knew that feeling too. "She wants my body to heal before we try again, but I'm still going to have to get my injections every morning. I just don't understand. Everything was going so good, and even Grace said it looked like it would work. I didn't want to say anything, but I woke up, and I think I knew something was wrong. I can't explain it. And it's not in that I'm-a-woman-I-know-my-body way. It's something else. With everything Grace has told me about them, I can't help but think I'm supposed to ask permission for us to do this. But that's crazy, right? That's crazy."

Hearing her talk like that, I couldn't help thinking about what had happened to me when I'd been "chosen" by The Great Mother the night Neytiri had found me in the forest. Some days, I still wondered exactly what I'd been "chosen" for. But with what I knew about the People, even some of their most basic rituals and ceremonies required at least a bout of praying and connecting with the life around them. Was it possible the land had known about Amelia and what she was there to do? I remembered Neytiri telling me I would need permission to make my first kill. Was this the same thing?

"You have every right to be disappointed," Tommy told her in his transmission to her the next morning. "You've been wanting this for so long, and it's only normal. But you're doing a good thing. Your sister would be proud of you that you're there doing something you've always wanted to do. Sometimes, I wonder if Jake is proud of me. When we talk, all I can tell him is how much his life isn't over and that he can do something with his life. I always hope he listens. And I hope you listen to me now. You're going to be okay. And this is just a small bump in the road. If Dr. Augustine can try again in a couple of months, then you'll try again in a couple of months. You just can't quit. You're doing something now that's going to make a difference in someone else's life, and I admire you for that. I get closer to you every day, and when I get there, you'll see. And that's a promise. If you want permission, look at where you are. Dr. Augustine can help you. You want my advice? Plant a tree, for all the trees that have been cut down. Plant more than one. Plant them where they can't be cut down. Gods like gifts."

I couldn't have made a better suggestion.


Over the next two and half months, Amelia's attitude improved gradually, and Tommy's transmissions to her seemed to help. She apparently planted dozens of trees in the courtyard of the compound, and a few of them were close enough to the electrified fence for someone to climb over the top and get to the other side. Of course, there was a 50 meter kill-zone directly on the other side, but that didn't seem to bother her. And it looked like Grace admired her for her perseverance. I had to admit I was proud myself.

She and Tommy even celebrated her birthday, which appeared to be October 25th, and even though they had to do it at two different times, it didn't look like that bothered them to talk to each other over the distance. She reported her second trial injection that night, and I could tell she'd gained a new perspective on the event thanks to Grace, especially when she talked about how much Grace was teaching her about the People.

"Grace is talking about taking me to her school if the second trial is successful," Amelia said in her log, a curious smile crossing her face. "She says if it works this time that I will have gained a new level of her respect. I guess I've passed most of her tests. I think she expected me to give up before the shuttle got back on its way home. She probably doesn't know that it was her actions that made me determined to do this more than I was when I got here. And everything she's taught me about the People only makes me what to learn more about them. If this works, I'm going to need to know it. For the baby."

I remembered Grace's school from what she'd told me in the few months I'd known her, thinking of the story she'd told me about how Neytiri's sister had been killed by RDA soldiers after she'd set fire to a bulldozer. Grace's school had been closed down after that, and she hadn't been back until I showed up. That had obviously happened during Amelia's time there, but she hadn't mentioned it yet. I honestly had no frame of reference for what time it was. Back home, Tommy was talking about the last nine months of training he had before his departure time. All I could think about was the fact that he was nine months away from dying. Watching his last nine months of transmissions to Amelia only made me think about how I wish I'd talked to him more than I had.

It made me miss him all over again.

"Norm keeps asking me about what I'm doing in my room at four in the morning," Tommy told Amelia in his transmission to her the morning after her birthday. "He says I must have a girl hidden in my habitat somewhere. I guess I'll just let him keep thinking that until we get there so he can meet you. I know he'll like you. Even if he's more into research than he is hands-on stuff, he would love to learn everything he could about something like this. It's all he ever talks about. I think he's more excited than I am, but it's for a completely different reason. I keep wanting to tell Jake about you, but I'm not sure why. Every time I try to talk to him about anything, it's like talking to a guy on Death Row. I keep wondering what it's going to be like when I get there. I know it takes almost six years to get there, but once I get on the ship, I'll be in the home stretch. And no matter what happens, you keep learning everything you can possibly learn. That way we'll be able to talk more when I get to you. And that's a promise."

Ava seemed oblivious to the time we spent on the base, especially since I took whatever time I could away from her mother's logs to teach her what I could without being in the Clan. Norm also taught her when he wasn't in the lab, and she learned faster than he thought possible. After the first two days, I decided to let him do most of the teaching so she wouldn't get confused by what I was going to teach her when we got back to the Clan. And I'd been able to figure out that she wanted to stay with me since I was most familiar to her. And I realized that I wanted her to stay with me more than I had when I'd found her.

Thomas explored the courtyard every day, finding little animals small enough to crawl through the fences and making messes that Norm had to clean up behind him. Norm tried to look frustrated, but I could tell he liked spending time with Thomas when he wasn't tied down in the lab with Max.

I woke up the fifth morning on the base knowing that I'd spent too much time there. I'd spent most of my time watching Amelia and Tommy. I had no way of talking to Mo'at to find out what was going on in the Clan, and I was actually starting to get comfortable. And I didn't like that.

The night before, I'd watched the last batch of Amelia and Tommy's logs to each other, along with some of Grace's, getting a time-line for Amelia's pregnancy as she carried the baby the way any woman would. She looked so beautiful, like Neytiri had before she'd had Thomas. Amelia talked about how excited she was, and she was a few months along when Grace took her out to her school with the Omaticaya. She actually said how much they liked her and were interested in her baby. Tommy was excited too, suggesting names and thinking about things he was going to do with the baby when he got there, even though he admitted she wouldn't be a baby anymore.

And then something went wrong with Grace's school.


I'd heard Grace tell me the story once, remembering how insane and cruel it seemed for guys with guns to kill a few kids with bows and arrows for burning down a bulldozer, but watching Grace and Amelia talk about it in two totally different ways made it feel even worse. I could still remember how calm Grace had been, and she was just as calm now, talking about it like she'd expected it one day.

"Eytukan forbid us from coming back to the village," Grace reported diligently, like someone who'd just been told that a long-lost relative had died, and not a small group of students she'd known and cared about. "I have to admit that I don't blame him. There was no way I could have predicted what happened, but with the way Sylwanin stopped coming to school and then this, I guess it was inevitable. So from now on, we'll be doing short-distance missions only. And with my two new guys getting ready to leave in the next couple of months, I guess it'll be a few years before we're going to implement any newer ground rules. No one leaves without an escort, and no one stays out passed curfew. And as far as Amelia, I'm moving her outside to the Long-House. With her only a couple of months from being due, her tolerance for the atmosphere is 200% higher than I could've hoped for. She's been spending most of her days outside anyway, albeit isolated from the others. But now, I guess they'll be her protection detail." Grace kind of laughed then.

"Of course, no one else would be able to do it. So I guess it works out for the best. And since we were only given enough injections for her, no one else is going to know why she's able to walk around outside without a mask. She just does. Lisa and Warren will look after her, and since most of the security personnel never come around here, she should stay hidden until I can find a better place her. I'm not sure if I should let her keep talking to Dr. Sully, but it seems to keep her sane, so who knows? Maybe he can look after her when he gets here. I just want to be very clear here. I never thought I would say this, but Amelia's important now. With the things we've learned from her being here, we can cure an entire multitude of incurable diseases. And I don't want anything to happen to her. So I'm going to do everything in my power to keep her safe. If that means exposing her to the Avatar population so she'll be protected if things go sour, then that's what I'll do. And when she gives birth, it'll have to be in Pandoran air so the baby will be able to breath properly. We'll have to set up the Ambient room for the birth, but it'll need to be when only people with the Program are there. None of the security guys need to know about this. I know what they would do if they ever found out about her."

Grace talking about Amelia made me think about Thomas. When Neytiri had been pregnant, I'd been worried about how people would treat him because I knew he would be different from everyone else. I never once thought of Grace as a mothering type, not even after how she'd treated me after three months at remote camp. But it sounded like she was talking about someone she considered a daughter. It made me even more sad that she was dead. Had Amelia even known about her death?

Amelia was much more emotional about not being able to go back to Grace's school, and she was worried about the children who could have been killed. She grieved for Neytiri's sister, calling her by name and whispering a Na'vi blessing along with asking for forgiveness from the Great Mother. I'd never seen a Human do that before, and it shocked me that she'd learned so much in such a short period of time. Not necessarily as quickly as I'd learned it, but she'd learned it at her own pace and in her own way. She was the first Human since Grace and Norm that I'd seen who honestly understood what was going on around her, and Tommy understood it too when in his transmission to her after she told him about what had happened. Of course he would have. He had trained with Norm, and I guess I should have expected it.

Grace documented every moment of the last four weeks of Amelia's pregnancy, having just about everyone who could keep Amelia in their sights and not just with their eyes. There were early mornings that were spent in the lab doing measurements and scans of the baby, and there were late night counseling sessions that were spent talking and researching for the baby's physiology. It was at that point in the scans that they'd determined the baby's gender. They'd also noticed all of her Na'vi physical traits, including her tail, her queue and the fact that she was twice as big as a Human baby her age in her mother's womb. At one point, Grace had actually been worried that Amelia wouldn't be able to give birth to her and they would have to do surgery. But Amelia had been determined, more determined than any woman in her position should have been.

The last four weeks of her pregnancy witnessed an increase in her logs and her transmissions to Tommy, and him to her, until his last one got to her the day he died. And even though I didn't want to watch it, with it being attached to Amelia's log, I didn't really have much choice. I'd spent the last several months worth of logs watching the two of them falling in love, and it was obvious by Tommy's last transmission to her that he'd been looking forward to seeing her more than working with his Avatar. I'd never seen him like that before, and it made the fact that he was dead feel a million times worse than it had the day I'd been told about it. And that had been almost sixteen years earlier.

"I'm literally counting down the days here," he told Amelia in his transmission. "I'm already packing, going through all my stuff here to decide what to take with me. Norm's actually got me pegged now, so every time he comes into my room, he checks under the bed for the girl I'm hiding in here. I think I woke him up last night listening to your last call, but I don't know if he heard anything good. Honestly, I don't care. I'm going to tell him about you tomorrow, and that way, he can relax about me trying to hide members of the opposite sex in my room. I'm going to see Jake just before I leave, and I'm going to tell him too. He needs to know I'm not going to be by myself while I'm there, and I honestly think he'll like knowing about you. He's my brother, after all, and anything I like, he'll like — usually. I know after this week that it'll be a few years before I can talk to you again, so I'm going to go ahead and tell you now so you won't have to wonder for five years if it's true or not. I love you, Amelia Shaw. I love that baby growing inside you, and I can't wait to be there with the two of you. Hopefully when I get there, you'll still have me. Nga yawne lu oer. Kìyevame ulte Eywa ngahu."

I watched him rise from his chair in his room and turn off his link, knowing that the next time I'd seen him, he'd been dead, lying inside a flimsy cardboard box at the Crematorium ready for them to burn. I hadn't known anything about the last several months of his life, and not just because he hadn't told me. I hadn't known because I'd been too busy wallowing in my own self-pity. I hadn't known because I hadn't been paying attention. And now, it was the one thing I was regretting more than anything I ever had in my life. Even the one I was living now.

So when I woke up for the fifth morning on base, I knew it was time to go whether Norm was ready for me to go or not. I was done reliving the past. It was time to start making everything right, and I couldn't do that here. I needed guidance, from Mo'at and Neytiri, and there was only one place I was gonna get it.

The last log I watched was Amelia giving birth to Ava, and while she had lived through the experience with Ava, the one thing that had caught my eye was the date-stamp. Ava had been born the day I'd left Earth to come here. She was only sixteen years old. The only thing I didn't know was how long she'd been in the forest, but it didn't matter anymore. I knew what I was gonna teach her now, and when Mo'at said it was okay, I would start teaching Ava what Neytiri had taught me when I'd first come into the Clan. I knew Ava was strong enough, and that settled it for me. And I think that would've made Tommy proud.


So you know the drill. Tell me what you think. I know the last few chapters have sort of felt like a trainwreck down memory lane, but I promise it's all for a really good reason.

Translations:

Nga yawne lu oer. Kìyevame ulte Eywa ngahu - I love you. Goodbye for now, and may Eywa be with you. (This came directly from Mr. Paul Frommer, so I guess it should be considered canon.)

I honestly couldn't have asked for the attention this story has gotten, and I'm glad so many people have added it to their favorites and alerts. Don't forget to leave me a review if you can.

Also, this story is going to be changing rating to M, just in case, so anyone reading it will know where to find it.