Thanks to everyone who read and reviewed.

I got a question about where Denan came from. We know from the movie that Tsu'tey had an ikran, but I couldn't find any canon information on it beyond its coloring. So, in this story, his ikran is female, she survived the battle mostly intact, and her name is Denan.

Before anyone says anything, a friend of mine did point out (a little late), that according to the language guides that exist, the Na'vi language isn't supposed to have 'd's'. However, since most of the time when they said Jake's name I heard it as Djake, I'm thinking the sound gets in there somewhere. Or, possibly, my hearing is just going. Either way, for the purposes of this story, her name is going to stay Denan.

/speech/ = Na'vi

Tsu'tey sucked in his breath sharply, and a half-finished thought sent Denan into a sharp dive, putting them neatly in the shadow of the Sky People's building. There were four ikran above them, and while he couldn't make out exactly whose ikran they were since the angle of the sun obscured their coloring, he could see clearly enough that they had riders. And since they were headed for the Sky People's compound with obvious purpose, he could make several good guesses as to their identity.

"Um…hide," Jake said, his neck still craned to look upwards.

Tsu'tey hissed down at him. "What an excellent idea, I would never have thought of that. Hide where?" If they left the shadow of the Sky People's building to go into the forest, he would be flying an ikran with primarily blue and violet coloring over a vast stretch of brown ground. The riders above would have to be either blind or fools to miss them. Cutting around to the hanger entrance would also take them out of the building's shadow and in that case almost directly into the riders' path….they might have a chance if they landed in the shadows and remained still, but it was no certain thing. Especially if the ikran circled at all before making a landing.

"The Avatar compound," Jake said.

Tsu'tey barely spared him a glance. Their best bet was probably landing in the shadows. If they stayed behind Denan, or under her wings, a casual observer might think that she was just sunning herself. Of course, if they were in the shadows, she'd be sunning herself in the shade which was just absurd, and—

"Tsu'tey, the Avatar compound," Jake repeated, this time giving Tsu'tey's forearm a sharp squeeze at the same time. "It's just around the corner; you've probably seen it from the air before. We can hide in the shelter and sneak back in through the hanger after they've all gone inside."

'Just around the corner' was closer than trying to sneak off to the forest, and the less time they spent flying over barren ground where they were clearly visible the better, Tsu'tey decided. And since the corner Jake indicated was in the opposite direction that the ikran were coming in from…. With a shake of his head, he sent Denan winging around the edge of the building.

He had seen this place from the air, he realized as they approached, but he'd had no reason to dive on this side of the building so he'd never examined it particularly closely. Unlike the rest of the Sky People's compound, this building was quite small and open on all sides. And there was actually greenery around it, and if it was arranged in strange patterns…well, any greenery was a definite improvement over the rest of this place.

A few moments later, Denan alighted inside. At his insistence. She wasn't at all happy about it, though, and he understood immediately as he saw the bodies lying in the bunks. Lying as though dead. /What in—/ His first thought was that they were Na'vi, but they were dressed in Sky People costumes and the smell wasn't quite right, so—

"They're Avatars," Jake said quickly. "And relax, they're alive."

Tsu'tey cocked his head. He had no reason to believe that Jake was lying, but they were all so still. But…well, there were tubes going into them, and the strings of metal called wires as well, attached to their heads and chests. Chests that, when he looked closely, did seem to be rising and falling just the slightest amount.

"They're alive," Jake repeated. "And I kind of need those ribs, so ease up, would you?"

Tsu'tey glanced down and then relaxed his grip with a muttered apology. "What's wrong with them then?"

"Nothing, but like I said, they're Avatars. Specifically the scientists' Avatars. And since the scientists can't transfer into them any more than I can transfer into mine with all the pods out of commission, the bodies are just sleeping all the time."

"Why the tubes, then?"

Jake shrugged. "How long could you last without food? These bodies are the same way. If they aren't fed, they'll just waste away and die."

"So they're like the ones they put in me." They did seem to attach in the same way, at least.

"Yeah. Well, that and then there's a lot of monitoring going on." Jake waved a hand at the small machines beside each bunk that the wires ran into. "For a while they—the scientists—were talking about bringing the Avatars inside and putting them in the barracks or something, just so it would be easier to get to them if anything went wrong, but since the monitoring equipment was already out here and it's not that easy to move a bunch of 350-pound bodies …." He shrugged. "I told them I could do it with an AMP easily enough, but I think they were afraid that I'd damage them by accident. Which is kind of silly since the AMPs are used to handle explosives that are a whole lot more sensitive, but…." Another shrug. "I guess if something does go wrong, the monitors will sound the alarm and they can worry about getting whoever's it is inside and fixed then."

"But yours is not here?" Tsu'tey checked. "Your Avatar?" He remembered Jake saying that his Dreamwalker body had been taken to the new Hometree, but there was none of this equipment there. At least there shouldn't be, and even for Jake, he would not be happy to learn differently.

"No, but he's getting soup dumped into him a couple times a day in place of feeding tubes," Jake said, apparently understanding his question. "I told Mo'at that she could just drop him off here and the scientists would take care of everything until the pods are fixed—or until we can try the ceremony, whichever comes first—but she said 'no' pretty damn firmly."

Tsu'tey could understand her position since having Toruk Makto with the clan, even if he remained asleep, would be good for morale, but he still found the idea bizarre.

With a frown he swung Jake down onto the first unoccupied bunk and then slid off Denan's back himself. He didn't have his crutch with him, but the posts at the end of the bunk served him well enough to brace against.

The /displeasure/fear/ he felt through the bond with Denan increased exponentially as he dismounted, and after impressing upon her the need to return shortly, he broke Tsaheylu and let her take to the air again. She had been here for as long as he had, after all; no doubt the healers had seen her flying around alone before.

"Uh, she'll be back, right?" Jake asked, twisting to watch her go. "Because there's no way in hell that I can drag myself all the way back to the hanger before someone notices that I'm missing, and I don't think trying to hop back would end so well for you either."

"Of course she will return for us. And soon. But she does not like it in here." In truth, all of the too-still bodies made him uneasy as well. He considered the nearest one with a frown, leaning over to examine the face. "This is Carla's." As he'd already noted, it was wearing a version of the Sky Peoples' garments, but now that he looked closer he saw the hands and feet with the extra fingers and toes, as well as the ridges of hair over her eyes where there should only have been skin. He poked one thin arm lightly. "There is no strength here."

"Yeah, well, muscle atrophy's kind of a bitch."

"Muscle…?"

"Atrophy." Jake shrugged, dragging himself around until he was seated on the edge of the bunk with his legs hanging over the edge. "Muscles are use-it-or-lose-it, and since the Avatars have just been lying here since the battle…." Another shrug. "It's like how your arms aren't as strong as you expect them to be since you haven't been using them as much as you normally would. Or like there's no muscle left in my legs anymore."

The last was said with some reluctance, and Tsu'tey shrugged as well and then poked the Carla-Avatar's arm again. "Your Dreamwalker body will be like this also then?"

Jake grimaced. "Probably. Hopefully not quite as bad since I'll be starting out with more muscle in the first place, but it won't be pretty. And I thought it was a pain getting him into shape the first time around."

Tsu'tey twisted to look at him. "You call 'in shape' what you were when you first came to us?" He sneered. "Weak. You called yourself a warrior, but you could not have stood against a child."

"Hey, I managed to outrun a Thantor—Palulukan—so shut it," Jake retorted. "And anyway, that was all of my second day in my damn Avatar with what the scientists called good muscle tone, which isn't my definition by any stretch of the imagination. Like I said, you should see what they call a good obstacle course."

Tsu'tey stared at him for a minute longer and then turned away to hide a grin. Since Neytiri had been tasked with Jake's training when he'd first come to them, it had been her duty to make him fit to the standards of a Na'vi hunter. But since he was a warrior now, he was quite firmly in Tsu'tey's jurisdiction, and while Jake had become a friend, he knew himself well enough to know that he'd enjoy harassing him until he was up to par.

"You know, if you think your leg's going to be in any better shape, you're dreaming," Jake said.

Tsu'tey twisted back to face him. "What?"

"I don't know if you've ever had any broken bones before, but I busted both my arms growing up. One when I was seven, and then the other when I was about thirteen. And even with regen treatments, when a cast comes off, there ain't much muscle left."

"So it becomes a test to see which of us gets back first, then," he said, seeing an echo of the same challenge in Jake's eyes.

Jake grinned. "Looks like."

Tsu'tey poked the Carla-Avatar one last time and then hopped the step-and-a-half necessary to take a seat on the empty bunk beside Jake. There wasn't a great deal they could do besides wait for Denan to return, unfortunately…it was just a matter of sitting here and hoping that their absence wasn't noticed.

"Oh, crap," Jake said suddenly.

"What?" He paused. "It is not helpful when you say things like that." Nor did it ever seem to lead to anything good.

"Sorry. But I just realized my wheelchair is just sitting there on top of the platform in the hanger."

"Yes." Tsu'tey frowned at him. "So is my crutch. We will return to them when Denan returns to us."

"Yeah, but while the healers might pass off your crutch lying around as just you being stupid about using it, if they see an empty wheelchair, they're not likely to take it as a sign that I went off dancing."

Tsu'tey frowned and then broke into a grin. "No, but they might believe that Denan ate you."

"Oh, thanks, that's very helpful."

"It is likely that they will land their ikran outside the hanger." Denan might be willing to sleep inside it, but he doubted that many other ikran would be so accommodating. "They may not even see it."

"I guess we can hope."

He didn't sound particularly hopeful, and Tsu'tey shrugged. There was nothing that could be done about it now. "Why are there empty bunks?" he asked after a minute.

"Well, not all of them were occupied in the first place, but that one down there is mine," Jake said, pointing towards one on the far end. "Although I only got to use it a grand total of once. And that's Norm's beside it." He paused. "And this was Grace's." He indicated the bunk they were sitting on and then reached out and touched an image attached to the wall at the head of the bunk lightly.

Tsu'tey cocked his head and then leaned down to look over Jake's shoulder. He remembered when Grace had first brought a camera to the school…this image had to have been from about that same time. Toktor Grace was recognizable enough, that was Tezan beside her, and it looked like Eykir behind him. He shook his head. It did not feel that it had been that long ago, but they both looked so young.

He shifted upright again. "She was…important…to you." It wasn't a question—that had been perfectly obvious during the attempt to transfer her completely into her Dreamwalker body, and even more so when the attempt failed—but Jake shrugged and answered anyway.

"We didn't hit it off so good, but...yeah, I guess we got used to each other after a while." He grinned. "She didn't take shit from anybody, which, scientist or not, I could respect."

"Your brother was a scientist and yet you can say that?"

"Oh, don't get me wrong. I don't dislike scientists. I mean, Norm is cool, and Max, and most of the others. But they do tend to get on my nerves sometimes. And for the record, being brothers didn't mean that Tommy and I didn't annoy the hell out of each other sometimes too." His grin grew. "Back when we were kids, whenever we ran into something new, his first reaction was always to ask a million questions about it. My first reaction was usually some variation on 'hey, let's poke it with a stick and see what happens.' It's probably a good thing that I could kick his ass in a fight, because otherwise I think he'd have murdered me long before we reached adulthood."

"The one time I did that with an insect that I hadn't seen before, Sylwanin smacked me right out of the tree," Tsu'tey admitted. It hadn't cured his occasional desire do such things, but it had gone a long way towards curing him of acting on them.

That got an easy laugh. "Nice."

"What—'hit it off'?" He was pretty sure that he hadn't heard that phrase before.

Jake shrugged. "Our first meeting didn't go so well. To the point where I think I actually enjoyed meeting you more than I enjoyed meeting Grace."

"I wanted to kill you," Tsu'tey pointed out. "I very nearly did so."

"Yeah, well, okay, knocking me off the branch really wasn't cool, but I'm not so sure that her thoughts were that far off murder either. And at least you didn't make any smartass cracks about my dead twin."

"I didn't know that you had had a brother when we met."

Jake shrugged and then glanced sideways, reaching out to touch the image again.

"You are not at fault for her death," Tsu'tey said after a moment.

"Yeah I am. Oh, I didn't fire the gun, but if it hadn't been for my stupid legs and her and Norm having to lift me in, she would have been inside the Sampson before me. Where Quaritch couldn't touch her. I'm the soldier; I'm supposed to take the risks. And then afterwards…." He shook his head. "I've seen friends die gut-shot before; I knew how bad it was as soon as I saw the wound. She did too. Tried to pretend, but…." Another shake. "I should have been faster."

"You rode Toruk. I don't think that's something that can be rushed."

Jake shook his head a third time, and then again, more sharply, before looking up. "Hey, Sylwanin was Neytiri's sister, right?"

"Yes." That was an odd change of subject, but Jake clearly didn't want to talk about Grace anymore, so he let it go.

"What happened to her? I saw Grace's schoolhouse…she wouldn't say anything about it, Max wouldn't say much, and I wasn't about to push Neytiri, but there's no way in hell that that wasn't a targeted attack."

"She was killed." He opened and closed his hand against the bunk, remembering that day. "You knew that, though, yes?"

"Yeah, I figured that much out, thanks. Just can't get a handle on why."

"It was several years ago. One of the what you call bulldozers rolled through Anzuri."

"What's Ansurey?"

"Anzuri," he corrected automatically and then shook his head and made a dismissive gesture. "It is not important; it's just what we called a place where we used to play when we were all children together. But the bulldozer went through on its way to wherever they were sending it, and..."

"I know what a dozer does," Jake said.

Tsu'tey nodded slightly. "Anzuri was destroyed. Completely. And the things we had buried there…shells from the sea, pebbles from the river, interesting twists of bark and wood that we had found…it was all gone. There was nothing of value to anyone but us, but…it did have value to us." He glanced down at Jake, who nodded in understanding. "I was a warrior by then also, but I wasn't with them when they found what was left of it. Sylwanin, and also Riytan and Pennat. They were very angry. The tawtute had no right to be there, the bulldozer had no right to be there..." It was his turn to shake his head. Anger still burned in him when he thought of those ruins, even though it had been years before and much worse had happened since. "They decided to destroy the bulldozer before it could do any more damage. Eytukan had not agreed to this—and I do not believe he would have, if he had known—but they decided to do it anyway. And so they took their weapons and attacked the next morning. Without having told anyone of their plans."

"Shit," Jake muttered. "I guess you can stop there; I've got a pretty good idea of how the rest of the story goes."

"They succeeded in setting fire to it, but the tawtute warriors followed them back to the schoolhouse afterwards," Tsu'tey continued anyway. "They had not expected such a response, and they thought Toktor Grace could help them."

"Not if they torched a dozer. Quaritch—and Selfridge—would have had a fit, and it wouldn't have mattered what she said."

He nodded. "The children at the schoolhouse were all able to escape back to Hometree safely, but Riytan, Sylwanin, and Pennat were killed. Riytan and Sylwanin immediately; Pennat survived long enough to tell the story of what had happened." Just. It had been a frightening thing to see, even for a warrior.

Jake shook his head. "Crap. Of all the stupid things to do."

Tsu'tey snarled, and he held up a hand.

"Relax, I wasn't talking about Sylwanin and the others. Well, going after the dozer wasn't such a great idea either, but at least I can understand that."

"Oh, man, are you two in trouble," an entirely too familiar voice said from behind them before Tsu'tey could say anything.