Chapter 18: Revelations

The day had flown by like a breeze. After Charlie had helped Clemens back up and asked a medic to check on him, Elynin had continued her demonstration of direhorse riding. Thinking riding was a bit too advanced for him on his first proper day driving his Avatar, Charlie had instead decided to focus on the obstacle course. After all, he still had to get used to this new body and its capabilities. Also, it was simply too distracting to be that close to Elynin.

Just after their initial encounter, Elynin had needed some distraction as well. She was feeling a lot of things, which might best be summarized as feeling conflicted. Her mind was telling her she had only just met this individual, while her heart told her this was Charlie, the one who had spent a lot of time to help her, to defend her, and to understand her.

Another factor that was complicating things for her was the lingering thought that she would completely destroy any chance of ever being accepted back into her clan if she got too much involved in this relation. Her mind told her she had to treat him as an alien, an outsider, a threat. But her heart told her that, strange as it may be, she had found her mate in him.

They could already be considered a mated pair in a purely relational and mental sense. Physically this wasn't the case; and neither was this the case in Eywa's view. But how different was it really from mated pairs where one partner had a physical deformity or later injury which affected their relation in this way? Charlie, as a human, was whole in his own right, but not as one of the Na'vi. And because he wasn't one of them physically, he was in that sense, crippled. And now, as a dream walker, he could bridge this gap and be fully whole. Elynin guessed that knowing this was the main reason she was so excited.

She had been both thankful and disappointed when Charlie had wandered off on his own towards the obstacle course. At least in this way she would be able to focus on the more mundane tasks at hand, but she wouldn't feel complete without him around. To distract herself, she had put a lot more effort into teaching all kinds of things to the other dream walkers for the rest of the day.

Only when evening had arrived, and most dream walkers had either gone into the main building or into the wooden house on the grounds, had she dared to approach Charlie again. She had spotted him sitting alone atop of a tall climbing frame, which had a wooden platform at the apex.

After she quietly reached the platform and announced her presence with a sigh, she wordlessly sat down against him and gently leaned her head on his shoulder. She also rested one of her feet on his, silently concluding that he must have discarded his shoes at one point during the day. She had expended a lot of energy today; perhaps that had indeed been the best outcome for now.

Charlie appeared quite drained himself, with his eyes half open, admiring the view of the great orbs of the sky with a little smile. He didn't say anything in response to her invading his private space unsolicited, but merely put his arm around her, which she immediately clung to.

He was playing with a lock of her hair, when she asked him a question with a soft voice: "You look tired. Why don't you go to sleep?"

"If I go to sleep in this body, I will wake up in my other body. That's how it works. And then I won't be with you." Charlie answered calmly.

"Why do you want to be with me?" Elynin then asked, quite out of the blue.

Charlie was surprised by this question, but figured she was still processing the fact that he now had an Avatar body. "Why wouldn't I want to be with you? You're a great person. You're compassionate, you never lie, you…" He said before he was interrupted.

"I am not a good person. The day you found me alone in the jungle… I was alone because I am exiled from my people." Elynin said drearily.

"What? How can that be? Honestly, I don't believe you there." Charlie replied openly. "I thought you said before that you were by yourself to commune with Eywa?"

"This was only the first of two reasons." Elynin revealed cheerlessly.

"Alright, so your clan doesn't like you. Well, my clan doesn't like me either. If it wasn't for Dr. Nitschke, I would likely have been sent back to Earth already, probably in a cryo freezer with steel bars on it." Charlie said with some slight humor in an attempt to show her that his situation wasn't much better than hers.

Elynin then sat up to look him in the eyes before replying: "I was exiled because I am a… tspangyu."

Charlie had to think for a moment on that word. He couldn't remember having ever heard her use it before. He guessed she didn't know the English equivalent, or she would have used that instead.

When she saw that he didn't understand, she elaborated bluntly: "I killed my parents!" Saying this out loud definitely caused her emotions to swell. She started sobbing uncontrollably.

Charlie immediately embraced her and let her bury her face in his chest. "I am sorry… but I am here for you now." he whispered into her ear.

Once Elynin appeared to be somewhat soothed for the moment, he expressed his thoughts: "I think there must have been a mistake. How can you have killed anybody? You avoid violence, you avoid weapons. You're a real pacifist."

"I saw a vision of a storm. I convinced them and some of our friends to stay in the village to avoid it. They believed me. And the storm passed right through... The Tsahìk was right in the end and she had… thankfully convinced most of our people to follow her to shelter. She saw me as a threat, and she was right." Elynin revealed in between her sobs.

"Hey, but something like that can't be your fault. People make choices and sometimes the outcome is bad." Charlie said, trying to convince her she shouldn't blame herself for these circumstances.

"They believed me!" Elynin reiterated with a raised voice.

Charlie felt it was best that he revealed a secret as well to make her see a different viewpoint: "So, you think that I don't want to be with you because you think you're a killer? How do you think I came to be here? Back on Earth there was a time when it was either kill or be killed. And I killed a lot of people to stay alive."

"You protected yourself." Elynin said to immediately justify his actions.

"And you were just trying to help." he quickly said in response.

Elynin turned her face to make eye contact with him. Her eyes were still full of tears. First, she was willing to attack herself and now she was defending him against himself. It didn't make any sense to Charlie.

"Why does any of this matter when we have each other?" he continued. "If you insist you're a killer, then I insist to you I'm a killer as well. So that is no reason I don't want to be with you. Even better, we can simply agree that in both our situations the events were beyond our control, and that neither of us really wanted to be there and have that happen to us."

"I see you." Elynin then said to him, not as the traditional Na'vi greeting, but as a sign she comprehended what his intentions were, and that she accepted and respected this.

"I see you." Charlie said in return, conveying the same thing to her, before returning to more mundane matters. "We'd better get back to the longhouse. I don't know about you, but if I fall asleep here on this wooden plank, I'm going to feel sore all day tomorrow."

He caught a glimpse of a small smile on Elynin's face as they moved to climb down. This told him enough.

All other drivers had already parked their Avatars on the beds of the longhouse, or inside the main facility. Charlie used his identification badge to open the safety fence that protected the interior of the longhouse from night predators. Then, he went inside and allowed Elynin to come with him.

They lay down together on one of the empty beds; too tired to do anything else, or to care about what would happen in the morning.

When Charlie finally dozed off, he found himself staring at the inside of the coffin-like link unit. He left the lid closed for a moment as he reflected on the events of the day, trying to edge them into his memory forever.

That night, Astrid found herself unable to fall asleep. Once again, Ralf was the cause. He was lying beside her; away from the real world, but active in his own. He breathed irregularly and loudly. Sometimes, even words could be distinguished.

"Get… get the sawn-off." he said to no-one in particular.

Astrid did have earplugs, but they didn't help much against the noise. She now pushed him until he rolled over on his side. It seemed that maybe this would help. However, soon after he spoke again.

"A gazillion bullets… a sea…full of 'em." he said in a kind of tranquil amazement, like a child dreaming of a sea full of candy.

She supposed it was just a harmless dream he was having. However, she didn't like it one bit that his subconscious brain was apparently more interested in his job than in her. She decided to kick him, and didn't care if it was deserved or not.

"What? Who? How many are there? Where's my weapon?" he asked, rolling over half-awake and not really aware he was just in their quarters, and not out in the field.

"Here's your weapon." she said, as she guided his forearms so that one hand was resting on her chest and the other on her thigh. "No one's out there. But your weapon needs cleaning. So, start stripping it."

Ralf tugged at her t-shirt and pajama bottoms for a bit, but then started snoring again. Nothing else happened after that.

"Hey! Did I give you permission to slack off?" Astrid exclaimed.

"No, drill sergeant!" Ralf answered as a kind of instilled reflex. He proceeded to tug her t-shirt again, this time moving it up and partially exposing her chest before the effort collapsed again and he continued snoring without pardon.

Astrid was fuming now. She then decided she might as well go to work. She would take one of the early gunship patrols and be gone the entire day. Wanting to get up out of the bed, she found he was now grasping her shirt so tightly that she could hardly move. She wriggled herself out of it with determination and walked off towards the shower.

Ralf finally awoke when some very loud music boomed through the bedroom.

"What in the blazes?!" he called out as he sat up, immediately noticing Astrid was gone and he was merely clutching her shirt. He then made his way through their quarters to find the source of the hellish noise. When he finally found the remote, he pressed the stop button. But instead of peace and quiet, he found something else.

Astrid immediately exited the shower and, not even bothering drying herself off or putting anything on, approached him threateningly. When he panicked, she straight went after him.

"Are you bloody insane?!" he shouted as he was being chased around the table.

"Do you love me?!" she asked menacingly.

"What?!" Ralf exclaimed at the out of place question. "What's that got to do with anything?!"

When she almost slipped on the wet floor, Astrid stopped chasing him. However, she then proceeded to throw at him anything throwable she could get her hands on.

Ralf protected his head with his arms as spoons, coffee mugs, tablets and dishes were launched at his body. Half of the objects crashed into the wall behind him. Eventually, he dove back into their bed and held up the blanket as a shield.

Astrid proceeded to crawl up on the mattress on all fours and stopped only when her face was right in his.

"You're out of control! You're a wild tiger!" he shouted desperately.

"And you could have tamed me. But it's too late now. Pigs don't know how to tame tigers. Only men do." she said with anger still in her voice. That last one certainly stung.

She then got up from the bed and went back to continue showering. Ralf was left sitting in the proverbial ruins of their quarters.

Ralf, who had a day off today, spent the entire morning cleaning up. By this time, Astrid had left to go on her gunship patrol. Yesterday it had been Charlie. Now it was Astrid. Just what was going on here with these people?

He concluded he had to show to them that he had not devolved into some pencil-pushing porcine prick. When he was done cleaning up, he opened up his closet and took out the armored suit he had worn during Operation Hawkeye.

As he was putting it on, he had to zip up the front. There was a problem, though. Something was in the way. His paunch was sticking out, and not just by a few centimeters.

"Come on." he said to himself as he stubbornly tried to force the zipper upwards as if everything was fine. Predictably, it wouldn't move.

Next, he held in his stomach and tried again. Still, he did not succeed. Suddenly, the zipper broke altogether. Ralf then slowly shook his head to himself and said in disbelief: "Too fat for my armor…"

He didn't have another choice but to get dressed in his regular uniform. After he had done so he started wandering around the base, trying to think up his next move while searching for opportunities. He first went over to the Avatar compound to watch the grounds there. He got the urge to vomit when he spotted Charlie in his tall blue alien body and that native clinging to him like an excited schoolgirl.

As he was walking back through the base in an attempt to exorcise the image from his mind, he overheard part of a conversation. Some grunts were discussing a tournament. More specifically, they mentioned a racing tournament. Ralf was instantly intrigued. Driving; that was his skill, his trade. Why hadn't he thought about this before?

He abruptly intruded into the conversation and demanded to know who was organizing this so-called tournament. When they didn't answer quickly enough, he proverbially threw in their faces, his rank of senior squad leader, with two white dots on a black domino-like patch. Soon they started talking. According to them, it was 'Trombone' Thorpe, who was at the spaceport right now.

Ralf wasted no time. He stormed off, put on the nearest breathing mask he could find, went outside and walked until he reached the loading docks. Half out of breath, he eventually slowed down when he noticed something peculiar. A man had just walked past him, seemingly in a hurry. But this man was walking awkwardly, as if he was carrying something heavy. Soon, he concluded that the man was imitating Ralf's own walking gait; walking as if his body was a big round barrel which could topple over at any moment and which his legs were barely able to carry.

As he came to a halt, Ralf started blasting off steam inside his breathing mask. The man was Ulysses 'Trombone' Thorpe himself. Green-eyed, red-bearded and with an unusually flat back of his head, it could hardly be anyone else.

"Don't take it personally, man." a nearby woman said. "His momma dropped him on his head one too many times as a baby. You'll get used to him."

Ralf didn't know who she was, but guessed she was one of Thorpe's cronies. Now that he looked around, there were more people here, who walked towards him and formed more or less a circle around him.

Thorpe then climbed on top of a nearby pallet stack and stood there triumphantly as if he was the king of the docks.

"So." Thorpe said haughtily. "I heard a rumor you want to race."

Quite clearly those grunts in the corridor had been his cronies as well. They must have radioed to warn him Ralf was coming his way.

"You got that right." Ralf said coolly in reply.

"You're R. Philips? Ralf?" Thorpe then asked him quasi-innocently. However, it was pretty clear from his grin that he already knew the answer to the question. "Then where's C. Simmons?" he continued in the same tone. "Oh, wait, he's that limp-dick cunt who was the first casualty during the invasion, am I right?"

Thorpe's cronies burst into laughter. Obviously, they weren't going to make this easy.

"I broke away from him." Ralf said simply.

"You mean you broke up with him?" Thorpe mercilessly tried to correct him. The people standing around Ralf continued with their mocking laughter. "Alright, alright. Cut the man some slack." he proceeded, unexpectedly lenient all of a sudden.

Thorpe then quickly flipped up his breathing mask, blew on two fingers to produce a piercing whistling sound, and flipped the mask back down.

One of the nearby cargo containers seemed to come to life. An engine was fired up; sounding like a jet plane was being started. Ralf recognized the sound instantly. Then, the vehicle gently rolled out of the container and into view, the streamlined wedge-shaped body, with gull-wing doors and a pitch-black paintjob with the large Tempest logo covering the hood.

Ralf couldn't believe what he was seeing. Somehow, they had the Negotiator standing right here on Pandora. It had been modified, though. It had originally been a road car, and obviously there weren't really any decent roads on this planet. They had now given it an extended undercarriage with larger wheels, making it suitable for offroad terrain.

"Ooohh, now that's a game face." Thorpe commented upon seeing Ralf's expression.

"She's mine!" Ralf barked at him.

Thorpe then signaled crudely and somewhat rudely with his hands for his cronies to come and do something. A small woman came forward and started thoroughly wiping a spot at the side of the vehicle. A man stepped in to help her, holding several tools and materials. They appeared to be cleaning the area that showed in white letters the names R. Philips and C. Simmons.

Ralf initially didn't get why they were doing this, as the car already looked very clean. Then he realized what they were actually doing. The woman started to spray-paint over their names, making the area pitch-black just like the rest of the bodywork.

"She's part of the collective now." Thorpe said just after climbing down from the stack of pallets.

"Then let me race. To win time to drive her." Ralf said as he was forced to swallow away his pride, staring at the large exhaust pipes that released heated and completely clear air.

"The only reason we even know of this mean machine is because your driving skills made her famous. You'll get one of the standard buggies from us, no problem. They are easily upgradable and parts are cheap. Welcome to the club." Thorpe said, finishing off by slapping Ralf on the back like they were old buddies.

Back at the Avatar compound, there was quite some consternation being experienced by some of the program's members. Inside the dome which housed a kind of mini Pandoran biosphere as a research and training center, someone was using the artificial waterfall in the scenery at the back for a different purpose.

Charlie had just entered through the side, carrying two large buckets filled with plant debris. He had been collecting the stuff outside in the garden. As he went over to the indoors shed to store these samples for later analysis by the scientists, he noticed a relatively large congregation of Avatars near the edge of the artificial pond.

"Don't you fellows have anything better to do?" he commented as he passed them on the way back.

"Simmons, isn't it? Can you help us with something? Do you know that person?" one of them asked. Charlie recognized her as Dr. Mdabe.

Charlie frowned as he looked into the direction she was pointing at. Someone appeared to be using the waterfall at the other side of the pond as a makeshift shower. It was a male Avatar, and he was stark naked.

"Well… how about that?" he said simply. "I take it he's not from your clique, then?"

"I wasn't aware there were cliques." Mdabe answered reservedly. "We were just discussing who it could be. Evidently, he hasn't read the code of conduct."

Charlie looked around for a moment to see who was standing nearby, crossing them off in his mind as he tried ruling out at least who it couldn't be. He figured he could take a trip down the narrow path between the wall and the pond to take a closer look to get a definitive answer. He quickly decided not to as it really wasn't his problem.

"That's just Pete." Xinyi Yuen suddenly announced, as she, driving her Avatar, unconcernedly pushed her way into the circle of people. "He looks lonely out there, don't you think?"

"Mulholland." Charlie said to the group with a knowing nod, when most of them didn't seem to realize who she meant. He then continued in a kind of warning tone: "I would keep my distance if I were you. He's stuck in that tin can up there all the time, always wearing that bucket on his head. You wouldn't be well adjusted either."

He wasn't necessary defending Mulholland; rather he was attempting to highlight that some of the people currently in the program had some rather questionable moral standards.

As he had been giving his explanation, he had noticed Yuen walking towards the edge of the pond some distance away from them.

"Alright, scumbags, who's a wuss now?" she announced, before swiftly stripping off everything she was wearing and diving right into the pond. She left pretty much everyone here speechless.

She swam towards Mulholland, who immediately accepted her presence when he noticed her. He helped her up onto the rocks as both of them climbed up further. At a certain height, they jumped off together into the water below, even holding hands as they did so.

After surfacing again, Mulholland proceeded to bridal carry Yuen back to the waterfall. As the water was falling down on them, he demonstrated his strength even further as he held her up as high as he could, which was partially above his head. Then he playfully threw her away from the rocks and into the water.

Oddly enough, Charlie found himself empathizing with them. Here were two people simply freeing themselves, enjoying themselves, not caring what anybody else thought of them. Charlie had no clue if they already knew each other, but it appeared that they did. Maybe they were already a couple? They certainly behaved as if they were.

Nevertheless, the scene gave him a double feeling. These were two people who were known mass murderers. Of course, officially they were brave soldiers at best or dutiful executioners at worst. However, Charlie was convinced they liked killing; that they found pleasure in those thoughts and those acts. And now here they were, frolicking like two innocents. The Ripper and the Mountain of Death.

Maybe he had once been a killer like them, but he agreed with Elynin's view that for him it had purely been out of a necessity, and not for self-gratification. Also, it had been his choice in the end not to pull the trigger on Elynin when he had first met her. How many triggers had they chosen not to pull?

As Charlie was still sunken in thought, he was startled by someone suddenly blowing a whistle.

"Alright, playtime is over." Dr. Singh then announced, revealing herself as the whistleblower. "You two, go analyze those samples that Charlie just brought in. The rest of you, stick to your schedules like you're supposed to."

Next, she turned to address Mulholland and Yuen: "And you two lovebirds over there, if you're not out of the pond and dressed in one minute, I'll file an official complaint to the Leader himself. I've already got the form filled-in; I just need to press the send-button."

Charlie headed back outside, confident that Dr. Singh had the situation under control. He supposed there was at least one good thing which had come from all of this: all gossip and rumors would be focused on Yuen and Mulholland for the next few days. If Charlie and Elynin would only be half as blatant as them in showing their affection for each other, they would still pass right under the radar. And surely, they could be a lot more subtle than that even.