Avatar is the property of people who aren't me. This work of fiction is not authorized by those people.
Natalie spent the day doing her homework. Her house's main floor had been taken over by her father's team of saboteurs, all of whom were immersed in a virtual environment which mimicked their mission objective.
At first, they dealt with their setbacks collegially; however, as the day wore on, Natalie heard ever more shouting and swearing come down the stairs. Vertex, who was otherwise comfortably napping at her feet, often raised his head at the shouting – once even barking back.
Despite her daylong concentration, or attempts to concentrate, Natalie found her homework to be more challenging than was typical for this time in a semester. She knew the difficulty had nothing to do with the subject material, but with the fact that she was no closer to resolving the troubles from this morning.
She had come to terms with her parents' roles in the troubles afflicting Pandora. They were not monsters lacking morals, but they had too coldly calculated the benefits humanity was supposed to have gained by exploiting Pandora against the costs to the Na'vi. That did not make them evil, just too human.
Natalie revered her mother for enduring every misfortune which befell them in her father's absence. She still remembered her father for all that he was to her when she was a child – a devoted father who went past the ends of the Earth to ensure her future. That was the portrait she desperately wanted to hold on to, even if current events were fast overtaking those memories.
With regards to Tseyo, however, her conclusions were less settled.
Natalie tried her best to view him only as an alien, a temporary visitor who would, when his mission was over, go back to his home world and carry on with his life. As two species with vastly different physiologies, the deepest relationship they could possibly have would be to respect each other's sentience. Anything after that was sheer fantasy.
She tried to take that impersonal view, and she failed. Tseyo had become a friend in the course of their very brief relationship. That did not surprise her too much, as she was usually quick to make friends.
What distressed her was how often she found herself looking beyond his yellow, lemur-like eyes and blue, brightly freckled skin to see a much more attractive personality. When their eyes met in these moments, he would never avoid her eye contact or appear offended, but instead he would give her a courteous smile – and then she would be the one to look away.
But she needed assurance that was just her human psychology at work. She was certain Tseyo was incapable of looking at her the same way.
After her conversation with Max, she went back to her first edition set of Grace's books about Pandora. In the volume about the Na'vi, Grace had written, "Mated couples share intense intimacy on both the physical and emotional levels. This may be due to the way they are able to couple with their queues, forming a bond of the minds in the most literal sense, but it may also be due to the fact that Na'vi appear to take great care in selecting a mate prior to making this bond.
"It does not seem uncommon for Na'vi to have spent most of their adolescence vetting partners prior to adulthood and mating; although there have also been observed some very young couples, which may also suggest that the Na'vi are just as capable of finding a partner shortly after achieving maturity as humans – or that the vetting begins as early as childhood."
Tseyo had come to her house Friday morning. It was Sunday evening. In that time, they had spent perhaps a few hours short of a full day in each other's company. The latter editions of Grace's work, fleshed out as she and her researchers collected more data, had only reinforced the fact that the Na'vi are particular about who they considered for a lifelong partner. It struck Natalie as unlikely that Tseyo would, in less than a day, determine that a human was a suitable partner, even if humans might.
That, of course, presumed that Natalie was looking at Tseyo as a potential partner, and she was very keen to convince herself that was not the case.
Yes, she had been less than particular in selecting some partners in the past – instances where she was grateful that her father was in another solar system – but Tseyo was not a record-holding athlete on her swim team, an insightful, dreamy-eyed boy in her advanced English class, or a local boy working in her community's landscaping team for the summer. He was an alien.
Then why would she stare?
Vertex barked, interrupting her thoughts, and then sprinted away upstairs.
"Vertex!" she called after him. When he did not come back, she muttered, "Shit," and then grabbed her cane. She hurried upstairs to find that Luke was already dragging Vertex, whimpering, away from the garage door.
"Does he always do this?" he asked. Natalie shook her head, taking hold of Vertex' collar. "Weird. They must sound different coming back than either you or your mom do."
"I think he's smart enough to know we weren't the ones gone in the first place," she replied.
"Maybe," Luke said with a shrug.
Her father, Norm, and Tseyo took long enough coming in from the garage that she was able to get Vertex upstairs, passing her mother on the way, and back in confinement. Natalie was back downstairs in time for the recently arrived trio to enter the house.
Before they had any time to settle, however, Dawn said, "Boss, we have a problem."
"Of course you do," her father said with a heavy sigh. "It's that kind of day."
"We can't get to the executive level," she said, brushing off his commentary
Abe furrowed his brow and asked, "Why not? You and I did when we ran the simulation."
"That's because you didn't have an alien in tow," Matthew said. "We made it when it was just us, but then I modified my avatar to be ten-feet tall. The only elevators that will carry Tseyo are the service elevators clear across the building – the same elevators the guards use to deploy to our floor."
"And the stairs?" Abe did not sound confident when he asked the question, and did not seem surprised when Matthew only shook his head in response.
"We modified the protocols to account for the guards being pre-occupied with the diversionary mob," Dawn said, "but unless you get sixty percent or more of them outside – or unless they're really confused – it's just not possible."
"Not unless we go in shooting," Luke said.
"No," Abe replied. "If even one person dies, we lose the moral high ground." Natalie was sure her father intended to say that, if even one person were to be murdered, they would all spend the rest of their lives in jail. "Where are we supposed to get an arsenal of guns, anyway? We have two…"
"Three," Krysta interrupted.
"…three guns in this house. That won't cut it."
"Then let's hear what the Soldiers had to say," Luke pressed. "Did they even agree to anything?"
"They wanted us to wait until next week."
The kitchen fell into an uneasy silence, and then Matthew offered, "Maybe that's not the worst thing. We can…"
Abe cut him off. "No."
"We don't have a plan in place to pull this off tomorrow, Abe!" he pleaded in response.
Natalie's father brashly threw a dishtowel into the sink and said at a volume just below shouting, "Let me tell you all what's going to happen tomorrow morning. Chairman Savage is going to sit down with his executives, get them up to speed on what happened over the weekend, and then together they'll find the resources needed to shut us down. By this time next week, if we wait, we'll be lucky to be in jail."
"Versus if we go tomorrow, in which case we'll all be dead."
Abe was about to respond when Krysta stepped in. "Abe, this has gone on long enough. Seven people and an alien can't barge into RDA Central and take down the organization. It will never happen."
"I know that," he said. "That's why we went to the Soldiers."
"And it's in their interests to have you jerked around as long as possible until either RDA gets rid of you, or they can figure out how to get rid of you and RDA at the same time." She let out a short, harsh laugh and said, "You're smarter than this, Abe. Pick up the damned phone to a news organization and put an end to this farce!"
"RDA will crush the story before the person who answers the phone has a chance to transfer us to a producer."
"Then pile everyone in the car and drive down there first thing in the morning. SecOps isn't posted in every studio in the country."
Abe nodded. "Okay, and then while we're busy fighting a PR war, while the government slowly spins up its wheels to investigate RDA, ICA, and, oh yeah, itself, SecOps lands its armada on Pandora and drives the Na'vi to extinction. We'll be soon to follow when the full weight of the government and RDA lands on us."
He looked around the kitchen and asked, "Is everybody okay with that?" He locked eyes with Natalie and said, "Ask Tseyo if he's okay with that."
"Daddy—," she started with a sigh. "Of course he won't be."
"We can't do anything without an army behind us," Matthew said. "And if the Soldiers aren't going to come through, then public opinion might be a substitute."
"They're right," Norm said, indicating Krysta and Matthew. "Your plan is finished. Frankly, the Soldiers were a stupid choice for allies in the first place. And I'm sure when people hear what we – what Tseyo has to say, things will move faster than you expect."
Abe sneered and said, "You sure about that? I'd have figured you'd believe the vox populi has been smothered by corporate media."
Norm might have responded had the video phone not rung at that moment to interrupt them. Everyone scattered out of the camera's view before Krysta answered. "Scheller residence," she said blandly into the screen.
Where there normally would have been displayed the caller's image, or a static picture identifier at minimum, was instead pure static. The caller's voice was neither male nor female, nor a digitized facsimile of either of the two, but was a synthesis of all three. It made Natalie uneasy. "Abe," it demanded.
"Abe won't be back for quite a while," Natalie's mother responded. She sounded convincing, as she had been giving that response for years. "Can I help you?"
"If Abe isn't there, then how did his van get to your house?"
Krysta bit her cheeks and shot Natalie's father – who, if she wasn't mistaken, looked surprised – a disapproving look. He then responded from off camera, "Go."
Without responding to his question, the voice said, "We need another twenty-four hours."
Abe took a deep breath, paused for a moment, and then sighed. "You know why that's not the best day."
"We're willing to let go of some high value targets in order to get the most valuable one. We also have one condition for our participation."
"What is it?"
"One of our Soldiers accompanies you at all times, and one of your people stays with us for the duration of the operation."
"You want a hostage?"
"If you're on the level, that shouldn't be a problem. We will exchange people at our previous rendezvous site before and, if you've been honest with us, afterwards. This is our condition. Take it or find someone in Idaho to help you."
Abe scoffed, and then very casually looked around the room. She followed her father's gaze, and every time he passed over someone, that person would vehemently shake his or her head. Abe sighed and said, "We'll make the exchange."
The line went dead.
After a very heated debate about why Abe would agree to place one of the team in the care of the psychopaths, people retired to their respective rooms with the previous night's leftovers for dinner.
Amy was to the point. "So, how did you all come to hate each other even more than when you left?"
"I don't want to talk about it." She glared at him, and after a moment he gushed, "It's like he just actually can't be bothered to care, you know? I don't know if he's a psychopath or a robot! I mean, just a second ago he blithely agreed to hand one of us over to those nutcases. God forbid we should have a couple of thoughts on the matter, he's sitting on cloud nine!"
Amy closed up the first aid kit and said, "He's probably upstairs saying the same thing about you, Norm."
His eyebrows shot up. "Excuse me?"
"You heard what I said."
"Yeah," he said with an apprehensive laugh. "But I'd like an explanation."
"Have you bothered to ask him about how he feels in all of this?"
Norm was floored by the suggestion. He was sitting in front of her with a broken nose, in his rival's palatial home, wondering how he was going to make a living after the end of their mission, and she was trying to make Abe out to be the victim. "Why would I do that?"
"He missed his daughter growing up, his marriage was clearly on the rocks even before he left, and he's waging a desperate fight against everything he's known before now in order to regain some kind of normalcy," she calmly explained. "Do you think he really feels like he's on top of the world?"
Norm raised an eyebrow. "How do you know his marriage was on the rocks?"
"Call it woman's intuition," she replied. "Their marriage survived high-stress jobs and a terminally ill child, and now Abe's wife is almost never in the same room as he is. Hell, Abe was lucky enough to not come home to find a new Mister Scheller."
He let himself think that there might be other factors at work, but he was not particularly interested in dwelling on the state of Abe's marriage. He took a moment to process the rest of her statement, and then he closed his eyes and shook his head again. "Look, he had a choice," Norm replied with a scoff. "If he wanted to be with his family so much, he should have turned down the assignment."
"And if you wanted so much sympathy for coming home to next-to-nothing, you could have done the same."
"That hurts," he said flatly.
"But it's not wrong."
He let out an exasperated sigh and stood up from the bed. "Look, I can only feel so sorry for the man," he said. "He knew the kinds of people he was defending, he knew what was going on up there, and he knew the kind of life he was giving up to go make things right – or right in his mind, anyway."
"And he failed. Is there anything about Abe which strikes you as someone who's accustomed to failing?"
Norm was quiet for a moment, waiting for her to expand on the thought. When Amy did not, he said simply, "I don't see where you're going with this."
"Abe gave up his comfortable life to go do something consequential," she said, "and he failed. There are basically two kinds of people – those who can accept failure and move on, and those who can't. Abe, I'm pretty sure, can't."
He shrugged. "Again, I'm not too sympathetic."
"On top of that," she continued, brushing off his comment, "he came home to find that everything he was counting on to be familiar had not only changed, but for the worse."
"So have I!" he shouted. "But I shouldn't expect sympathy for it?"
"I'm not taking sides, Norm," she replied. "All I'm saying is that if you're going to judge him, you should at least make the attempt to see things from his perspective – which I think is easier for you to do than you want to believe."
He wanted to respond with the first thing that came to his mind, and which certainly would not go over well with Amy. However, he took a moment to think about what she said, and soon found that his anger gave way to confusion. Norm's confusion gave way to a deep uneasiness that turned his stomach.
"All right," he said after taking a deep breath. "Let's say I can empathize with Abe. That doesn't mean I have to agree with him."
"Absolutely not," she said, raising her hands in an agreeing gesture. "You don't even have to like him."
"So then what's the point of empathizing with him?"
"Because unless you want to take your chances flying solo, you're going to have to work with him for at least another two days," she said. "And it will make working with him easier if you can recognize that you two have at least that much in common."
Norm sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed his eyes. "I still don't like him," he said.
"That's fine," she said with a slight laugh, placing a hand on his shoulder. "Two more days, and you'll never have to see him again."
It was the most comforting thing she said all evening.
The first thing he did when he returned to his hammock was discard the pack he had been forced to wear through most of the day; and he furiously scratched at the places around his face where the mask had irritated his skin.
Too much of today escaped his understanding. Tseyo felt like a confused and frustrated spectator – a child watching a ritual with nobody bothering to help him understand its purpose.
He was sure his teacher would be able to explain it to him, but he doubted much that any explanation would make him comfortable. He had had enough time to form his own opinions during the travel home. He would be just as happy to be kept in the dark and return to far simpler pursuits.
Once Tseyo was satisfied that the traces of the most physical reminder that he was on an alien world were gone from him, he looked for the tools of his craft – and was worried when he could not find them right away. It was not like him to misplace things; and in this case, there were not many places where he could have carelessly discarded his tools. His hammock was clear, as was the floor around it. The line Tseyo had strung above his hammock to store the various items he had brought with him was also as he remembered it from this morning.
His suspicions about the cause of his missing items were confirmed when Natalie said, "Sorry, I had to move your stuff into my space. Vertex was getting nosey."
Tseyo turned just as Natalie stepped off the last stair and headed for her room. She nodded for him to follow in behind her.
Crouching to pass through the doorway, he took a moment to survey the contents of her space. Though its overall shape – an uninspired block – was alien to him, he immediately recognized the bed and its purpose. He reached out to rub the red fabric which covered the bed between his thumb and forefinger, and was surprised by how soft it felt. Whatever threads were used in its creation, the advanced weaving meant Tseyo was unable to discern individual strands.
Further indulging his curiosity, Tseyo firmly put his hand down onto the bed, and was further surprised when it readily sank into the material. He had expected it to be hard, fitting to its rigid form. He tried his hand again, less aggressively, to be sure his eyes had not tricked him, and this time he welcomed the result.
Across from the bed, Tseyo noted an assortment of tall and short metallic figurines, above which were hung various ribbons and medallions. He reached out and picked up one of the smaller, golden figurines, which was fastened to a block of white stone that he did not recognize. However, Tseyo did recognize the figurine's pose: a person in mid-swim.
He saw that, in addition to the medallions and ribbons, there was an assortment of pictures of Natalie as she was swimming. Tseyo was not surprised when Natalie came to his side, clearly aware that he had become less concerned with his own belongings as much as hers, and explained for him, "These are from before I became sick again."
"Your people must respect you very much," he replied, "to go through the trouble to make all of this for you."
Natalie let out a short laugh and said, "Maybe they did, but not anymore – not since I stopped competing."
"Competing for what?"
"For these," she replied, indicating the statuettes and ribbons. Her tone was almost mystified, as though she were surprised that he did not pick up on her meaning. "Do your people not use games to compete for honors?"
He started to shake his head, but then he balked. "The games aren't there to bestow honors," he said. "But sometimes if you play well or hunt well, then someone might make you a trinket or give you an extra cut of meat out of respect. But, no, we don't play games with honors in mind."
Natalie nodded slowly. "Well, my people do," she said. "Every so often, the best players from all the tribes on Earth will gather to compete for honors and respect. When I was young, and still very sick, I had two ambitions. One of them was to be the best swimmer of all the tribes. But after I became sick again, no matter how much I practiced, I knew I wouldn't be strong enough to go that far."
Tseyo returned the figurine to its original display, and then sat down before her. He took her hands in his and said, "You can't measure strength with trinkets, Natalie. They're just things."
"I know," she replied. "But even so, sometimes it just feels good to be recognized. There are so many people—," her voice trailed off. She shook her head and continued, "There are so many people, it's too easy to feel like if you're not being recognized, then you're as meaningful as a shadow." Natalie looked him in the eyes and asked, "Does that make sense?"
Like with all Na'vi, being honest was as instinctual as hunting. However, in this case, he felt particularly compelled to be honest. He shook his head and said, "No, Natalie it doesn't. Life is about how you connect with people. If you're concerned about how they regard you, you should make the effort to connect with them."
Natalie looked down. "You think I'm shallow?"
"No," he replied, bringing one hand under her chin to tilt her head up again. "I see you as a person with great compassion." He smiled and said, "And somehow I think that compassion is where you based your second ambition."
"Yes," she said with a nod, becoming flush for a brief moment. Then her voice became more sober as she said, "I really wanted to travel to your world."
"But not anymore?"
Natalie took a deep breath. "I don't think I'd be welcome, now that I know what's happened to you."
He frowned, but replied, "Like I said to you the night we first spoke, if your people sent many eights who were like you, and not the gun warriors, we would welcome you with open arms."
"I wish we had."
They were quiet for a few moments, and then he said, "Natalie, I have to know what I did last night to upset you. Even through all the strangeness of today," he was making an effort to understate the fact, "it weighed on my mind."
"You didn't do anything wrong," she replied quickly, confidently, but she seemed hesitant to go further than that statement.
"Then what was it?"
Natalie looked away for a moment, and then said, "I let myself forget it was just a dream world." Tseyo furrowed his brow as he tried to discern the heart of her message. When it became apparent that he did not understand, she continued,
"When you and I danced close together, after everything else that night—." Natalie became flush again and rubbed the back of her neck. "Please don't make me say it, Tseyo."
He had a moment of clarity, and she did not need to go into further details. "You were courting me?"
"No!" she said so emphatically that he was taken aback. "I wanted you to see that my people weren't so heartless," she continued, "that we appreciate art and music and happiness. But then, for a moment, I let myself believe that you were someone you aren't – and then I panicked when I thought about what you must have been thinking."
"I was happy to be in your company," he replied. "But, Natalie, courtship would be—," he took a deep breath, unsure of how to finish his thought politely.
"It would be wrong," she said, stating bluntly what he had wanted to dance around. "I know that." Natalie repeated, "I know that. I've been telling myself that all day, but it's been a stubborn thought."
Tseyo put his hands on her cheeks, and she was quick to put her hands over his. He smiled, but he maintained a serious tone as he spoke. "Natalie, if you were Na'vi, I'd consider myself very lucky to be your suitor. But you are not Na'vi, and I'm going home after I do this thing for my people. You must get over your thoughts."
"I know," she replied quietly, making half-hearted attempts to avoid eye contact with him.
He took another breath, leaned forward, and rested his forehead on hers, a customary send-off for a potential mate who, through Eywa's intervention or a more instinctual failure to connect, one might discover was not a good match with his or her heart. To be polite, he lingered for a few moments longer than might have been appropriate or customary; but as Natalie's hand moved from his hands to his forearms, he could tell she was not quite ready to let him go.
Tseyo was pulling away from her, hoping to be able to talk her into walking away, when she tilted her head up towards him. Whether by accident or her design, their lips brushed. Against his better judgment, or out of a passing moment of curiosity, he allowed it.
Their bodies did not quite match – he found her nose in particular to be distracting, and it seemed to him that his lips might be too rough against her soft skin – but the experience was not as unpleasant as he might have imagined it. If Natalie were harboring any reservations, she was hiding them well.
He should be revolted. He knew as much, and in the pit of his stomach, he felt it. However, he also relented. If this is what it was going to take to dispel her of pursuing false dreams, to keep her from falling out of balance, he was willing to oblige.
However, when he made the decision to let his guard down, his mind was quick to recall the last night he shared with Naw'ngié.
Though their devotion to tsahik's command had prevented them from violating any deeply held customs of the people, they were not entirely innocent. Their proximity combined with the still warm embers of their abandoned courtship and led them to do a bit more than the simple enjoyment of a friend's presence.
As such, Tseyo did not take particular notice when Natalie's hands wandered over his chest, or mind much that his own had fallen to her hips. It was only when he felt the outside of her foot brush against the inside of his thigh, her toes tugging at his loincloth, that his mind regained its focus. He hastily broke their embrace, perhaps to her shock as much as his.
Since he was not innocent in letting his kind intentions become a much deeper expression of mutual attraction, he could not be angry at her for the transgression. However, he took a deep breath and said firmly, "We must stop this."
Natalie slowly withdrew her hands from him and nodded her head. "Yeah," she replied. "That's probably a good idea."
Tseyo looked past her and spotted his belongings carefully laid out on a level beam near the doorway. He stood, gathered them, and stepped back into the main room to go to his hammock. As he settled in for the night, Natalie looked out from her room and said, "Tseyo?"
"Yes?"
She took a breath. "Thank you." He was not entirely sure what she was thanking him for, but he politely nodded all the same. She offered him a weak smile in response, and then slowly closed the door.
Tseyo distracted his thoughts by resuming his craft from the morning, crushing the dried leaves to be used as pigments, but the tedious task did less to calm him than to bore him to sleep. Either that or it was the world's air catching up with him that made him lightheaded. Out of concern for the latter, he reluctantly reequipped himself with the pack and mask before curling up in his hammock to sleep.
Not long after his eyes closed, Tseyo was at the mercy of fitful dreams.
Krysta was awake before he was. Abe rubbed his eyes and looked towards the bathroom door, from which he could hear the shower running. They almost always took their showers together – as he would put it, to help California achieve its water conservation targets.
He turned over and checked the clock on the end table to see if he had overslept, but that was not the case. It was barely past six. He placed his hand over the sheets where Krysta had slept, and found that the residual heat from her body had already dissipated.
Abe sighed and sank back into the pillows. He had hoped that a decent sleep might help him overcome his growing anxieties, but his mind wasted no time cycling through the many to-dos of the coming day, playing out scenarios and projecting problems. His headache had also seemed to have become permanent, a symptom of his mind overclocking, though the worst of it only came in waves.
He realized, with a groan, that a restorative sleep had been too much to hope for.
The shower cut off, and Abe sat up once Krysta emerged from the bathroom, towel wrapped about her. "Good morning," he said, barely earnest.
"Good morning," she curtly responded as she opened her dresser's drawers, not at all pausing her routine for his sake.
"Do you have something going on today?"
She kept her towel on as she slid into her undergarments. "I have client meetings in the city all day," she replied. "Two this morning, and one in the afternoon."
He let out a short laugh and said, "That seems to minimize the 'at home' part of the 'at home business' model."
"Well, you can't always do a security assessment from a tablet on the dining room table," she replied flatly, dropping the towel and turning her back to him as she donned her bra.
Abe frowned. "Since we've got another day, I was wondering if, maybe, you'd be up for calling off your meetings."
"And do what?" she asked pointedly. "Grab brunch at a park-side bistro, take in a movie, walk through the shopping district in the evening, then come home and fuck before you head off on your suicide mission?"
"We could always have sex before going to the bistro," he said less cordially, "if that'd be better for your schedule."
Krysta shook her head and sat on the end of the bed while she put on her suit. "One of us has to keep up some semblance of normalcy, Abe. Since you're so hell-bent on shattering it, I guess that means it's on me."
Abe pulled off his covers and sat next to her. "I'm not hell-bent on anything except making all of this right again."
"I don't think you're in a position to argue what's right and what isn't."
She stood from the bed, and he followed, becoming agitated by her many brush-offs. "So then tell me what I'm doing wrong. What am I doing any differently now than what I've done before?"
"For starters, you're being reckless."
"I admit that I'm taking some risks," he said flatly. "But given the circumstances…"
Krysta interrupted him by slamming her hand down on the dresser. She turned to him and said, "You're being reckless! You've gone forward on some half-baked plans before, but when are you going to admit that nothing about this plan of yours has worked so far?" She rattled off on her fingers, "Your people are unprepared, you don't have the right intelligence, your so-called allies unreliable nutjobs, and you have no endgame."
"So that just means we have to adapt."
"You're not adapting, Abe! You're compromising. You're—," she let out an exasperated sigh. "You're jumping from one idea to the next, trying to grab on to everything that comes at you without letting anything go."
Abe responded with his own exasperation. "If you have any genius solutions, Babe, I'd love to hear them right about now."
"I already told you!" she shouted. "Call this stupidity off."
"I'm just supposed to ignore what Savage did to you? Is that what you want?"
Krysta shook her head. "That's the other thing, Abe. When the fuck did you become so petty?"
He raised his eyebrows. "'Petty?'"
"Yes, 'petty,'" she enunciated. "Natalie and I survived Savage's onslaught, thank you very much, so quit feeding me your bullshit about how you feel the need to get back at him on our behalf. This is about how he tried to set you up, and you know it."
Abe felt like a breeze could knock him over. "I expected to come back here to find you and Natalie completely under his heel, and you're telling me I shouldn't have even bothered to care?"
"I'm telling you that if you want to 'adapt,' then start by realizing that we're fine."
"Fine," he said, throwing up his hands. "You're fine. So what am I supposed to do? Give Tseyo over to Tom's labrats as a peace offering to RDA, send everyone home, and just hope this all blows over?"
"Do you have a problem with that?" Abe's eyes widened in disbelief, which only seemed to make her more agitated. "Abe, there are only two people in this house you're supposed to care about right now: me and your daughter. The rest of these people – the alien – who are they?"
"We went through a lot on Pandora, and I…"
"No!" she shouted. "Don't you dare try and speak down to me like that! Not unless you've truly diluted yourself. You hired them for a job, and now you're using them to settle your own score with Savage. You know full well that you're going to drop them like deadweight when this is over, so why not go ahead and drop them now?"
"Why are you so insistent that this is only about me and Savage?" he barked. "So what that you and Natalie 'survived?' You know, I think you're the one who's changed in all of this."
She scoffed and crossed her arms. "Real amateur, Abe. But okay, go ahead and project onto me. How have I changed?"
"Before I left, you would have been gung-ho for this," he said. "You would never have just 'survived' something like this. But now you want to bury your head in the sand and hope everything will work out. That may work for you, but it's not how I do things."
"How you've behaved since you got back isn't even close to normal for you, Abe. I would gladly let you go and kick Savage's ass if I had any confidence that you'd actually pull it off – more importantly, if I thought I'd see you again afterwards."
"You know what isn't helping me right now? Having everyone call me crazy and suicidal."
"What isn't helping is that you aren't listening to them," she fired back. "But hey, you've got something to prove, right? Why bother with what they think, or what I think, or what Natalie thinks? It's all about you."
"Maybe because I'm the only person in the room who knows what he's doing."
"You're right, Abe. Nobody else has a clue what the fuck is going on in your head," she said, storming past him for the door.
"How about a headache for starters?" he shouted after her, but she slammed the door before he could finish the retort.
Abe had no desire to let the conversation end like that. He hastily threw on his shirt and pants from the day before and followed after her, quickly descending the stairs and heading for the garage. He readied himself to have to sprint after her as she began to drive away. When he opened the door, however, he did not see a car moments away from pulling out. Krysta had not even started the engine.
When he approached the driver-side door, he saw Krysta sitting slumped over the steering wheel with her face in her hands. Despite whatever luxury sound-suppression technology had been built into the minivan, he could hear her sobbing from the other side of the glass.
Abe took a deep breath and cautiously opened the door. He put a hand on her shoulder and knelt down beside her. "Hey," he said. "Look at me."
"I can't," she said between sobs.
"Please."
"I've spent eleven years, Abe – eleven years – wishing I had stopped you from going to that godforsaken rock," she explained. "I even started praying again, just wanting you to come home. Now you're here, with one of them, and all you can do is focus on saving that damned planet!"
"Krysta—," he began with a sigh. "If someone told me that letting the Na'vi be driven to extinction would mean I could have my life back with you, back like it was, I'd gladly sit back and let it happen. Hell, I'd buy a telescope to watch it. All I want at the end of this is to live out my life with you and Natalie."
"So just do it," she pleaded, finally pulling her head out from her hands. "Just let it go, Abe. Come back to us."
"I can't." Before she could start up her line of attack again, he put a hand on her knee and said, "Okay, you were right. I'm not really all that angry about what Savage did to you and Natalie. I am, but not completely. I'm angry that he suckered me away from you two in the first place."
"Nobody's suckering you this time," she said. "This isn't your job. Doing this won't make you a better husband or father."
"Maybe you and Natalie have come out of Savage's wrath in one piece, but I haven't – not yet. And I don't consider it living if I'm always looking over my shoulder." He lowered his head and took a breath. "It is about me, all right? I admit it."
"I don't care about that," she said. "I care that if you screw up, you'll do more than just hurt yourself. Don't you see that?"
"I do!" he insisted. "I do, but I can't ignore this. I don't know how to turn my back on something like this." When it did not appear as though she were going to respond, he took her hands and said, "Tell me what to do, Krysta."
"Abe..."
"Tell me what to do, and I'll do it. If you want me to call this off..."
"Abe, stop it!" she commanded, shaking off his hands. "Don't beg to me. You have to decide for yourself. Do you want us, or do you want this?"
He wanted to insist on a resolution, but he could tell that he was not going to get anything more from her. Eleven years may have grayed her hair, but it did not dim the fire in her eyes; and she projected it to its fullest effect. He looked away from her, slowly stood, and casually closed the door for her. Abe walked back into the house as she started the car, and was at the stairs by the time she pulled away.
The weight of a thousand thoughts caught up with him, however, and he did not make it halfway up the flight before he felt weakness in his knees. For all his scheming, it had never occurred to him that he would lose the ally whose support mattered most to him. There was little else which seemed to matter after that.
Abe leaned his head against the railing, put a hand on his forehead in an attempt to calm its throbbing, and hoped that it was still early enough in the morning that the rest of the house would not hear him cry into his hands.
Norm grabbed Tseyo's shoulder to wake him up. "I've got breakfast for you," he said as Tseyo began to stir. He sat up in his hammock and, with a slight, still-sleepy nod, took the food packet from Norm.
"We're almost out of the fruit you brought with you," Norm said. "I hate to say it, but soon you're going to have to return to the food rations from your training."
"Why can't I have any of the cooking you prepare in the evenings?" Tseyo asked as he manipulated the straw in his mask.
Norm shrugged. "It's about the same," he replied. "You're not missing out on anything too great."
Tseyo frowned and consumed the processed fruit Norm had prepared.
As he did so, Norm took a breath and said, "Listen, with all the craziness of last night, I didn't get a chance to tell you thanks for looking out for me yesterday."
Tseyo shook his head and paused from his meal to say, "You needed the help, and I was happy to provide it."
"Yeah, but I realized late last night that I haven't exactly been the best teacher to you since we got here – or a friend. I'm sorry about that."
Again, Tseyo shook his head. "You've had a lot to do since coming here," he said. "I haven't minded. But, if I may ask a question—?"
"Sure."
He leaned forward, as if his question were somehow dangerous if spoken too loudly. "Why do you still follow T'ngyute?"
The question was not illicit, but it did give Norm pause. "I don't – I'm not following him," he said. "It's just that he's better prepared to get all the things we need for this fight than I am."
"It doesn't seem like he's gotten anything," Tseyo replied. "All he's done is delay the battle and taken us to see crazy people."
"Tseyo, this isn't the kind of fight where two warring clans choose a ground and do battle. There are a lot of small things that need to happen first." He paused and said, "Think of this more as hunting than fighting. First you have to track the animal, then stalk it, and then attack quickly."
He nodded along, but he did not seem too comforted by the analogy. "What is the battle going to look like, then?"
Norm was reluctant to describe it for Tseyo if only because he was not too sure of it himself. He offered, "We're going to go to the enemy's home, find their leader, and make him surrender his army – the army that's heading for your home."
Tseyo asked the question Norm knew was coming, but had hoped would not. "What if he doesn't surrender?"
"Then we will probably have to fight many more people," Norm replied. "And I don't think we're ready to do that."
"No, we aren't."
At that moment, Natalie emerged from her room wearing a Berkeley t-shirt and gym shorts, and she looked surprised to see him. "Oh! Good morning, Doctor Spellman."
He grinned and said, "Really, you can call me Norm."
"Sorry," she said with a short laugh. "It kind of becomes a habit when you have too many professors."
"I understand," he replied. "It'll get worse after you go through a couple of dissertations." He raised an eyebrow and asked, "We didn't wake you, did we?"
She shook her head. "I need to put Vertex out. Besides, I didn't sleep well."
Norm nodded. "It was a rough night."
Natalie's laugh was short and nervous, and she just nodded her head. Natalie gave Tseyo a quick look and smile, and then she headed upstairs. Norm watched her go, his gaze lingering on the stairs perhaps a moment longer than he ought to have, and then Tseyo asked, "Is she attractive to you?"
His heart skipped a beat and then returned with a quickened pulse. Norm quickly turned to look at Tseyo, and he asked, "I'm sorry, what?"
"Among your people," he said, either oblivious to the shock he had induced or skillfully covering his amusement. "Would she be a good mate?"
"Yeah, I guess," he responded after taking a breath. "She's pretty, smart, athletic – or was. I'm sure she's gotten plenty of guys' attention."
Tseyo nodded slowly. "Those are the qualities you look for?"
Norm's heart had begun to slow back to a normal pulse, but he was still nervous. He chuckled and said, "Tseyo, I'm not interested in her. For one, I'm too old…"
"I don't mean 'you,'" Tseyo interrupted. "I mean your people."
Norm could see Tseyo's tail moving to-and-fro like a nervous cat's would, and his inflection was higher than usual. Then there was his diction. Norm crossed his arms and said, "But you said, 'nga' instead of 'aynga.'"
"I misspoke," Tseyo replied meekly.
"I know I will never be able to speak the language as well as you," he said, "but I can hear it well, and you're not one to misspeak."
Norm saw what looked like a pulse of light run the length of the freckles along Tseyo's arms. "Okay," Norm offered, not wanting to upset him. However, he was not willing to drop the subject entirely, and so he shifted his tactics. "You and she are getting along though, right?"
"Yes," Tseyo replied quickly. "She's been showing me your people's arts. It's been eye-opening." Norm allowed silence to linger between them, hoping Tseyo might volunteer more information. He did. "I just thought – because she has a very strong heart – she would have chosen a mate by now. I was curious why she might not have."
"What makes you curious about it?"
He shrugged and shook his head slightly. "It was just a thought."
Norm went in for the kill. "Do you want her as your mate?"
"No!" he said – and emphatically enough that Norm believed it. "No, I don't. But—," he let out a heavy sigh. "But I think she wants me for a mate."
His pulse started to increase again. "What makes you think that?"
Tseyo looked down, frowned, and sighed again. "Because we kissed last night."
He almost fell over. "What?!"
Despite his earlier assertion that he had a good ear for Na'vi, Tseyo's response was so quick, so rambling, that Norm almost missed it. "She said she had deep feelings for me, and I told her to get rid of them. But I didn't want to be rude, because she has been very nice, so I gave her a parting brush – just as we do – but it went for too long. I think I may have confused her instead."
Norm had a terrifying vision of Abe walking in on his beloved daughter locking lips with the alien he had come to loathe. The vision ended with a lot of blood.
Natalie returned to the basement, and she might have casually returned to her room if not for his and Tseyo's obvious body language. She paused just outside her door and said, "He told you, didn't he?"
"Yeah," Norm replied, letting his hand fall back to his side. "Yeah, he did." He turned to her and asked, "What were you thinking?"
She winced under his gaze, and looked between him and Tseyo. "I – I don't think I was thinking."
"Is he right? Do you – Are you—?!" it was a question that ought to be so preposterous that he had trouble phrasing, much less finishing it.
He did not have to. "Kind of," she quietly confessed. Then she very quickly added, "But I know – I guess I thought that maybe if I could get it out of my head, I wouldn't."
"And I'm going to guess that it didn't work." She shook her head.
Norm looked over at Tseyo, who just shrugged. He took a breath and said, "I need to talk with her privately." Tseyo nodded, and Norm walked with Natalie into her room.
In case Tseyo was able to overhear them, even with the door closed, he dropped the Na'vi for their common language. "This isn't a joke you two are trying to play on me, is it?"
"No!"
"Natalie—," he found himself hopelessly unprepared for this conversation. "Natalie, I know Na'vi are very human-like, okay? Believe me, I know it. But I'm telling you this as an anthropologist, an avatar driver, an observer to a human-Na'vi relationship, and someone who just spent ten years living with them: they are not human, and this will not end well for either of you."
"I know that, I just…"
"I think you know it," he said, "but I don't think you get it. Tseyo's mind is not wired to have flings. He's looking for a lifelong mate, not an attractive, young woman to pass a few days with."
She narrowed her eyes and tilted her head. "Excuse me?"
Norm continued through her reaction. "Whatever feelings you have for him, you've got to kill them – or keep them to yourself. Absolutely to yourself."
"Doctor Spellman – Norm – I know this isn't right. I'm not a fetishist. I just—," she looked at the door and took a long breath. "I don't know. He was so sad the first night he was here, and then after that, we just got along really well. The more I was around him, the more comfortable I felt..."
"Natalie, you've spent a day with him."
"I know!" She wiped her eyes and said, "I don't want to hurt him."
Norm took a breath, followed by a long sigh. "Okay, you want to know what I think is going on here? Professional opinion?"
"What?"
"I don't think you're in love with him," he said calmly. She looked about ready to object, but he held up a hand to stop her. "I think you've spent so much time idolizing the Na'vi," he continued, "you figured your friendship was automatic. When you saw Tseyo that first night – confused, sad, looking for some companionship – your instincts to reach out to him weren't wrong, but you went overboard. It's not genuine love, Natalie, it's basically Nightingale Syndrome."
Natalie was quiet, mulling over what he said, and then she asked, "You don't think he could love me?"
"No," Norm replied flatly. "And even if he could, he's going home after this is all over. He already gave up one mate to come here. It would be too traumatic for him to give up a second."
"He has a mate?"
"He was starting a courtship," he clarified. "Regardless, as far as Na'vi customs go, he's had a rocky love life. The sheer inter-species wrongness aside, adding you into the mix would be too much for him."
She looked genuinely hurt, so he put his hands on her shoulders and said, "Listen, I do think he looks at you as a friend. Frankly, given all he's been through with humans – his dad and sister's murders – it's an accomplishment that you were able to win his trust so quickly. If you were one of our avatar drivers, we'd all be impressed. But he is never going to be more than a friend to you."
Natalie shook her head and walked away to sit on the edge of her bed. She rubbed her knees and said, "I feel so stupid." Her next breath was more of a sniffle. "I did the same thing with my last boyfriend, and then as soon as I got sick—," the sentence faded as she buried her face in her hands.
Norm sat beside her and put an arm around her shoulders, drawing her close. "I'm sorry, Natalie."
She turned to weep on his shoulder. He felt helpless to do much other than rub her back and allow her to let her emotions out. She cried for most of a minute before she was able to say, "Between the therapies, Mom working all the time so she could keep the house for Daddy, and my starting school, I never got a chance to get past him. Then I couldn't get someone to look at me without asking about my cane or my hair – I mean, it's not like cancer is contagious! But Tseyo looked beyond all of that and just treated me as a person." Natalie paused and added, "I liked it."
"Na'vi are expert judges of character," Norm replied. He grinned and said, "Maybe when this is all over, before Tseyo goes home, you could take him to that jerk's house."
She managed a laugh as she sat up to wipe her eyes. "That'd be fun." Natalie looked at him and asked, "So what should I do? Should I apologize?"
He shook his head. "Just do your best to keep your distance. You have class today, right?" She nodded. "All right, well, maybe take your classes upstairs, and we'll all convene down here to do whatever your dad has in mind."
"You're not going to tell Daddy, are you?"
Norm laughed. "No, Natalie. I'm not going to tell anybody, least of all Abe." He snorted and added, "Not unless you really want to see paternal instincts going overboard."
Natalie took a breath, looked down, and briefly bit her lower lip. "I know you don't like him," she said, "but he's a good man. When he was here, he was a good father to me. I can't say anything about what he did on Pandora, but I don't believe he meant to be evil."
He needed a few moments to put together his response, but he was finding it difficult to be both honest and sensitive. "I don't think your dad's 'evil,'" he began. "We just really, really disagree about what it means to be right."
"But you're both doing the right thing now," she replied. "So why should anything else matter?"
Once again, he paused to walk the fine line between candor and compassion. "It was a very long year with your dad."
Natalie frowned, but slowly nodded her head. She wiped her eyes once again and said, "I think I should get cleaned up." She smiled at him and said, "Thank you."
He patted her on the shoulder, stood, and walked towards the door. Before he opened it, she asked, "With all the time you spent around them, did you ever find a Na'vi woman attractive?"
Norm hesitated to answer, but after a passing moment of introspection, he said, "They're not human, Natalie." She frowned but nodded, quietly accepting his answer.
He stepped out of her room, and not a half second after Norm closed the door behind him, Tseyo asked, "Were you kind to her?"
He nodded. "I did my best."
"But she understands?"
"Yeah," he said. "At least I hope so."