Jake might be an idiot, but for all he knows, Selfridge and Quartritch don't deserve anything but idiocy from him. So what he does, is play along.
He plays the eager legless jarhead he introduced himself to the monkeys as. Because no one will expect to be stabbed in the back by a guy with everything to gain if he does as commanded. Where'd he run to here, after all? (They can take away his access to the avatar body. They can just roll him outside in his chair and call it an accident.) Why would he run, if he can get his legs back?
And it's fucking tempting. It is, Jake's not gonna lie. But what would he be doing with functioning legs back on Earth? Fuck around until he gets killed for the money in his wallet like Tommy did? What's he got left there except for things he decided to leave behind for a chance to stand on feet, legs again? What's that worth, then, if he's already given it up?
If there's anything this planet has taught him in this one field trip, it's that running out here versus running on Earth is just so much more. The air he can suck into his monkey-lungs here is so much cleaner, the ground his feet pound into is so much more alive and, most of all, he's not the only predator around. Because fuck fighting against his own kind, the primal instinct of being a hunter and the hunted at the same time, and it's fucking exhilarating. Pandora.
Kind of ironic how Earth is named after fertile soil and it's got almost none left.
Augustine, out of all of them there, is the only one who looks at him with something more than just the desire to exploit the position he's found himself in. In her eyes, there is envy.
She can't leave the base except for science projects which she needs a chopper for. She can't explore like he can. She can't learn like he's supposed to.
Jake can use that. He knows in this, she's more likely to be on his side than Selfridge's. She can be his Quartermaster. She'll be a good one, too. Now he just has to tell her what he's got in mind.
After hearing that awful, cocksure recount of Quartritch's scar-story, Jake needs someone with a bit of compassion beneath that hard shell. Back in Venezuela, those stories were what you told the green ones, the idiots and the cowards. Your friends, though, them you told the gritty truth that scrapes open your wounds like nothing else can. Or you say nothing and just repress… ('which more often than not ends in PTSD, J, so promise me…' Jake dutifully ignores the lecture, but he takes it to heart anyway. Tommy always gave good advice.)
Anyway, Augustine isn't hard to find and so, after retreating to her office and thinking about how funny her confusion that she's hiding is on her, when most of her life she's probably never been anything but certain of her own knowledge.
"I'm sure you know all about what I've just agreed to do," he says and watches her thinned lips go white. Then her wicked sharp intellect seems to catch on.
"I think," she says then, slowly, face pinched like she just ate something sour, "That I might've pegged you for an idiot too early."
Jake gives her his best boyscout smile and shoves more lemons down her throat, "Oh no, my village will call often enough to ask for their idiot back."
She even laughs. But then she goes back to being serious. "So what is it that you need me for?"
"I'm being forced to learn how to live like a monkey," he grins at her disapproval of the term, "But I'm not about to do that only to later find out it was all for nothing because there won't be any trees left for me to climb."
And so, her pragmatic side ventures forth. "What's your plan?"
"I'm playing along, for now. But I need to know in which areas I can bullshit them and they won't smell the pile."
Augustine has many, many ideas about that. Jake thinks she's got lots of steaming pies in the corners of Selfridge's office.
Compared to that, learning how to use this new body for all the crazy shit his teacher throws him into, is a challenge. But then again, if he can walk, he can run.
And once he does, he can outrun her. Fuck being beaten into the correct form, it's not like he doesn't know how to fire a gun. Who needs a bow? So he sneakily manages to learn more about that poison they tip their arrows with. It is, of course, meant to keep the hunted animals still, so that they can be relieved of their misery faster and delivered to Eywa, but coating a bullet with it works fine, too. And, it also turns out that just touching it, a human will be unable to move within a minute. Slap it on Quartritch's door handle and Jake won't ever have to listen to him talk ever again.
He also learns that any knives they have are carved from bones or the teeth of huge predators. They would shatter against the metal of a machine gun brought up for a block. So he goes about publicly melting a few buttons from his jacket that he's not allowed to wear anymore and making a few more somethings out of it, using the flat surface of a stone and another one.
The children have begun playing with fire. Jake's not very popular with the parents.
He finds out that all foodstuffs are carried up into the Home Tree by hand. What's the point of having only one giant staircase without proper handholds if you can't use it to pull shit up from downstairs?
It's been a while, but he can figure out pulleys and weights well enough. The real challenge is relating to someone with the needed finesse at woodworking what it is he needs. Jake would really like some pen and paper, here. But, with Neytiri's reluctant help, he manages to explain how the required effort can be halved through more pulleys and so on and so forth. The result is intrigued looks from Feather Shaman and Dragon Lady, odd ones from Neytiri as they see demonstrated on a low-hanging branch what he thinks they should be doing with the entire tree.
A week later he sees an army of young monkeys and some old ones carving pulleys out of wood and fashioning sturdy ropes from vines and that's that. He's done his part.
When one day he sees young monkey-boys training in hand to hand combat and he winces at their basic mistakes he doesn't notice Neytiri's sharp look. She doesn't ask there and instead drags him back to practise with his bow.
Later, during a light lunch, when he eats a couple fruit with his knife instead of biting into them like she does, she asks why. Jake tells her that most of the time, sky-people don't eat with their hands. Then he amends that some do, but he finds it unhygienic when he hasn't been able to wash off the dirt. Then he realises that none of the blue monkeys must have ever had a hot shower before. That's something for Augustine to figure out how to show them, then.
"Earlier," she says in her strange accent, "The boys who were… fighting. You looked… like you were in pain," she decides to say, but Jake knows the word she was looking for was 'pitying'.
He shrugs, cleans the knife on the cloth he keeps tucked into the side of his underwear-thingy when they're near the Home Tree, and slides it into the holster he strapped to his forearm. "Combat training," he answers slowly and catches her look of confusion, "Fighting for practise was never done like that where I learnt it. We… were taught which areas on the body are the most vulnerable, how to best redirect attacks and how to predict the opponent's movements."
Jake sees that she is unconvinced, as always. "For example here," he points to his throat, "If it is crushed, I will suffocate- be unable to breathe and die. If I am struck here," he indicates the area of the solar plexus that the monkeys, oddly enough, also have, "All breath will leave my lungs and I will be unable to breathe deeply for a while. And, if I am hit hard enough in certain areas on the head, I will fall unconscious."
He looks at her wide eyes and decides that perhaps she needs to know just how brutal he could be. She thinks of him as a child, but all he can see when he looks at her is innocence. What is coming will rip it away. Perhaps, to make it hurt less, to make it less of a shock, he can chip away at it, only a little. He reaches back to his braid and takes his knife back out, places it on the silky strands of hair, as if to cut through and she cries out, "Stop! No!"
He looks her in the panicked eyes, "If this is cut, I will become brain-dead."
He sees tears shimmer in her eyes and puts the knife away. "It is horrible! Why- why would you do this?"
He shrugs again and looks to the place on his upper arm where there should be a scar from a bullet graze.
"There are times when it is necessary to end a fight as quickly as it is possible. If you know the consequences of you loosing are that much more severe, you do what you have to," then he has an idea. "It is not so different when you hunt. You end the kill's life as quickly as you can, and to do that, you know where its heart is," he places his hand over his own. Then he looks back into her pained and shocked eyes. "Ask your healers, Neytiri," he even takes care to pronounce her name properly, "They could just as easily kill as heal."
She recoils violently, fletching her teeth. The idea is so surreal to her that he wonders just what kind of life she thinks she's leading. Her fellow monkeys kill every day, to provide food. Only because they are hungry. Surely, if they put enough effort into it, they could gather enough fruit and vegetables to eat for them to all be vegetarians. But, well, Jake's not about to suggest it, he likes the way they cook some of the meat.
Jake just smiles wryly. He wonders what her mother would say. The Dragon Lady must be aware of the nature of people. No matter how grateful they are for what the planet provides, Jake doesn't believe for a second that there aren't those among the monkeys who have thought about killing a fellow monkey if it meant they could get the girl or whatever else it is they wanted. After all, power struggles are evident everywhere in this tree. Not in the sense of intrigue, but the values the monkeys have and embody are vital to the social hierarchy. A warrior stands at the top, and a monkey who isn't a warrior who can hunt and defend the tree from other predators is looked down upon. They must then sit with the old who hardly accept them, and the young who understand through their example that they are not good people to take after.
He wonders if, had he simply been taken back to base that first night, he would have been able to elevate the monkeys to the most innocent victims the humans could have picked. To see them without faults.
But then again, he'd have shot himself that first day, had there been no faults with these monkeys.
Maybe he can sit with one such man at dinner, if only to provide companionship.
That evening it isn't hard to pick out the non-warriors among the men and women. Instead of following Neytiri, he gets his food, and asks to sit next to one such man. There is surprise on his face as he nods his acquiescence.
Jake introduces himself. The man returns the favour. They eat in silence and Jake allows the man to study him as he likes. Which he does, with growing confusion, as he catches Neytiri's furious gaze. Finally, the man speaks, "Why do you sit with me?"
Jake looks into his eyes. He's older than Jake, definitely. Softer, kinder. A man with not much taste for violence. He smiles for a second, then shrugs. "When I was a child," he says haltingly, miffed at his need to watch every word as it leaves his mouth, "I had a friend who would sit and play by himself, no matter how often I invited him to join our games. It took me some time to understand that he did not want to play because of the other children's way of treating him. It took me even longer to understand why."
The man blinks at him slowly, carefully.
Jake continues. "No matter how you may find my people barbaric, I find that, in many aspects yours are like children disguising themselves as adults."
The man looks affronted for a second, then he laughs. It is a low, deep laugh and Jake thinks he'd like to hear more of that. "Then what are you?"
Now it is Jake's turn to laugh. "Nothing but a Jarhead."
The confused glance he gets in return makes him smile. "Back on Earth, the planet we come from, warriors are both revered and reviled. We do not serve the betterment of society, we only serve to defend and pave the way for it. Progress and new discoveries are all that matters. It is why the sky-people have come," then he looks back at the man, "That, and this planet has something they want."
"And what is that?" his eyes are a little harder now, more inquisitive and less mirthful.
Jake raises his eyebrows, "More things to consume."
The man nods slowly and understanding dawns in his eyes. Jake claps his shoulder in a friendly gesture and gets to his feet. He can make them understand one by one.
Jake has lived and almost died with friends too often not to.
Augustine, he tells about that encounter, that conversation and watches her helpless smile with fascination.
"I'm no psychiatrist, Sully," she says finally and he gives her a shrewd look. She certainly has the brain cells to understand what is wrong and what needs to be done.
"We start with hot showers, Augustine," he smiles at her incredulous look. "Then we move to the concept of cultivating foods closer to the Home Tree and asking uncomfortable questions."
She laughs, long and hard.
Jake is surprised to find that he likes the sound, hasn't made anyone laugh like that in a long, long time. Yeah, they'll get along just fine.
Then, she pulls open her draw and puts a bottle of single malt between them, along with two glasses. He could kiss this woman.
(And maybe, he can stop calling the Na'vi monkeys. They are not. They're more than monkeys. But what will Jake do when he views them as equals? Leave them to their way of life, to their own devices? They'll die if he doesn't show them what he knows. Maybe they'll die either way. He's pretty sure he will. It's easier to die for an ideal than just die. But he can't put people on any pedestals any more. He just can't. so, monkeys. He knows it's xenophobic. He knows it's wrong to call them children.
But he's never been a good person. 'You are, J,' Tommy whispers. 'You could be-')