Chapter 5: Mistaken on Purpose?

Disclaimer: You know the drill.

A/N: Sorry it's been such a long time...so basically I (True) have forgotten most of the nuances of argument that were in the original bunny, but I will attempt to recreate them for your extreme bored – that is to say, amusement.

Oh yeah, and I had Grace using what you guys have called 'English swearing' again in this chapter...advice on words she could say instead?

Boy, have I let myself in for some awkward conversations!

Grace opened her Avatar eyes, attempted to roll off her bed, forgot the length of her legs, remembered it again, tried to disentangle herself and ended up walking forward with one foot hooked behind the other, like some sort of ballet reject.

'Stupid bloody Jarhead Jake!' she cursed, catching herself against the door frame and coming away with a palmful of splinters. 'Stupid Norm! Whose side is he on, anyway?'

She slammed the door violently behind her and took off at a sprint, heading straight into the jungle. That was stupid, but who cared? She felt like being reckless, and she needed to run. Besides, the whole operation was most likely about to go pear-shaped anyway. She'd rather not be around to see it, if anything.

Out here on the high ground it was still bright daylight between the trees, but there was a sharp angling of the sunbeams, an orange tint to the light, that set her instincts on edge. The sun was lying far to the west. It would soon be nightfall, and Grace's skin prickled at the thought. Without slowing her pace she began to get a hold on herself once more, setting a time limit after which she would have to turn back. Angry or not, being out in the forest after dark wouldn't do.

She wondered what Jake and Norm were doing back at the base, already a good quarter-mile behind her. Were they worrying? Setting off in pursuit? Radioing Trudy Chacon to fly over in search of her. Most likely they were sitting round the table, reviewing their "notes" and absentmindedly eating her dinner. Grace ground her teeth, her stomach rumbling. The primal instincts tended to get through from one body to another, and if anything it had been even longer since her avatar had had a meal. But she didn't turn back. Out of sheer stubbornness she ran faster.

The incident with the trap? the voice of reason reminded her. Yes? No? Supposing you bump into –

She crashed through a tangle of vines, ran headlong into Tsu'tey and sat down hard.

Is this the end? she wondered. Twenty minutes ago he had been setting traps outside her base, but now he didn't look to be in an altogether bad mood. In fact, having recovered from being crashed into, he was beginning to look amused.

'I see you, dreamwalker,' he said, looking down at her and shaking his head. 'Always I see you falling over. Fall off logs, fall out of trees...'

Grace made a growling noise and glared at him.

'Would you get up, please?'

'Huh?'

Tsu'tey raised the bag he was carrying. 'I am trying to gather fruit from these plants, and you are sitting on them.'

'Oh. Right. Sorry,' Grace huffed, scrambling to her feet. She backed up and he bent to pluck a handful of fruit from where she'd been.

'So,' she said sarcastically, when the silence grew awkward, 'are we observing our usual truce? Or are you still intending to harm me?'

Tsu'tey didn't answer at first. He continued to search among the leaves of the berry bushes, his stance relaxed. But as he picked he took a casual step, placing himself between her and her route back to the base.

Grace stiffened.

'I set the trap mostly for warriors,' he said, straightening up. 'Not for doctors. But it could have caught anyone.' He eyed her almost musingly. 'I try to catch a sky person there, and then I don't kill one here? If that is the rule, it is strange.' He gave a predatory chuckle, showing his teeth.

He took a step towards her. Grace swallowed surreptitiously, slowly flexing her fingers.

'Out of all the sky people, you are not my enemy. But maybe all sky people are enemies now. Can't kill one and leave another.'

Was he saying that all friendly relations between humans and Na'vi were at an end? Maybe Jake's brain is bottomless, Grace thought randomly. Maybe that's why he's turned Norm into a complete idiot without becoming any more intelligent himself: his mind is just a black hole that swallows any sense you pour into it. And now he's started on Tsu'tey as well, and eventually we'll all be jarheads wandering around shooting one another with gay abandon and falling in love with the enemy...

She fought the urge to slap herself, recalling that she had larger and more imminent problems right in front of her. Tsu'tey seemed to have reached a decision.

'If dreamwalker comes into the forest and is harmed during the day, the sky people will be angry,' he said. 'But I can't be held responsible for what happens to you at night.'

Grace bolted.

She had run obstacle courses four days out of seven every week since arriving on Pandora, practising sprinting through a jungle environment. She vaulted through the fork in the limbs of a tree, ducked between two vines and sprang over thorn bushes, throwing as many obstacles as she could between herself and her pursuer. She knew it was all futile, tricks out of a textbook, but there was no way she was going down without a fight.

She could hear him ghosting along behind her, making less than half her noise. She put on a spurt of speed and dashed past a tree, while he turned to the other side to avoid it. A screen of greenery separated them for an instant. She crashed into an open space, and then somehow he was ahead of her, doubling back to cut her off.

The whole chase had lasted perhaps ten seconds.

Her own momentum added to the force of his strike. He hit her squarely in the chest, flinging her of her feet, and before she had landed he was on her, bearing her backwards under his weight. She hit the ground and saw something flash in his hand: a stone knife. He swung it upwards, and as he did so the leaves shivered above their heads. Tsu'tey's head snapped round as an ear-splitting roar filled the clearing.

Its presence was all-consuming, but the first Grace saw of the thanator was when its paw knocked Tsu'tey away from her. It looked like a gentle bat, but the power of the blow sent him spinning head-over-heels across the clearing. He landed on his feet, teeth bared in a feral snarl. She saw blood begin to well from two gashes on his shoulder. Despite the attack, he hadn't lost the knife.

The thanator roared again, and Grace screamed. For a moment logic and knowledge vanished, and she was an animal, cowering to the ground with a predator on either side. The thanator gathered itself to attack, and then Tsu'tey sprang – not at her but over her, landing in front of it with his arms flung wide. The creature roared and he roared right back, brandishing his only weapon in its face.

The thanator charged.

Grace reeled backwards, bringing an arm in front of her face as Tsu'tey ducked between the teeth and claws, his face contorted with effort. He gave a shout, and then there was a terrible squealing cry. Grace stared between her fingers, unable to breath. He had succeeded in stabbing his knife into the roof of the creature's mouth.

The thanator wrenched itself off the blade and staggered backwards, whipping its head from side to side. Blood spattered from between its jaws, but it wasn't killed, far from it. It hesitated, but before it could move Tsu'tey rushed it again, waving his arms, yelling wordlessly. It backed up again, swiped once with its paws, then turned tail and disappeared into the trees.

Tsu'tey watched it out of sight, breathing heavily, his hands resting on his knees. Then he turned to look at Grace.

When his gaze fell on her she tried to get up, and found that she couldn't. All her muscles were tensed until they shook, and to her horror, she found herself biting back a sob. Her nerve was just about gone. She felt as though she might collapse, or black out, or throw up, or all three. Her body just wanted to shut down and recover.

But she knew that the danger wasn't over yet. The most lethal predator in the whole jungle was still standing right in front of her.

He approached her in an odd series of stops and starts, knelt down and took her hand. He could have been about to help her to her feet, or to jerk her forward at a good angle to bury his knife in her throat. Grace wondered if either of them knew which.

But something drew his attention. She twisted, following his eyes, and saw a flock of atokarina moving with the breeze. There were more than she had ever seen before, travelling with that odd, jellyfish-like pulse of theirs, and she thought that she could hear a faint chiming noise accompanying their movement. Though that was probably just the after-shock of the attack ringing in her ears.

Tsu'tey muttered something in Na'vi along the lines of 'well, I suppose that clinches it,' and hauled her upright.

She wished he hadn't. Her legs felt like jelly.

He left her to stagger against a tree for support and strode across to the other side of the clearing. Sitting down, he unstrapped a leather water flask and a small bundle containing squares of white cloth from his leg and began to tend his shoulder, slugging a generous stream of water across the wounds and then beginning to dab them clean.

By the time he'd finished washing them out and was pressing to stop the flow of blood, Grace had recovered herself enough to speak.

'Are you alright?'

'Yes,' he replied. 'They are not deep.'

'So...so Ey'wa just told you to spare me, right?'

'Maybe.' He grinned. Grace realised suddenly how much she loved those wry, savage grins of his. They might be only the barest sign of friendliness, but so far as they went, they were real. They were sincere. 'Maybe I misinterpret the signs,' he continued enigmatically. 'Maybe do it on purpose.' His smile faded, and he got to his feet and approached her, slowly this time. 'I see you, DoctorGrace,' he said in Na'vi. 'I see that you are not our enemy. You cannot study a burned forest. But as I said, how do I choose which sky person is the enemy, and which is not? If I kill you, there is no problem, you see?' He reached out, touching her cheek very lightly with the tips of his fingers. 'But I think I like you better alive.'

'I see,' Grace said, then added: 'I see you.'

'I see you,' Tsu'tey repeated. Then he lowered his hand and asked in English: 'are you hungry?'

Suddenly Grace recalled her skipped dinner, and a completely different lightheadedness from the kind she had been feeling swept over her. 'Yes,' she said emphatically. 'Yes, I most definitely am.'

Tsu'tey grinned again, more widely this time, and reached for his bag. She sat down cross-legged in front of him as he rummaged in it, choosing a fruit for each of them. Digging right to the bottom he produced a few strips of dried meat, wrapped in oil-cloth.

'Eat as much fruit as you like,' he said unceremoniously, handing some to her.

Grace shook her head experimentally as she accepted the food. Her ears hadn't stopped ringing from Tsu'tey's attack yet, let alone the thanator's, and now here they were, breaking bread together, figuratively speaking. It seemed surreal to her, but that was what war was like, she supposed. She remembered history lessons, accounts of opposing sides coming together on Christmas day to swap gifts and play football, and Jake's own stories of hanging out with enemy soldiers in the pub in Venezuela, playing snooker and trying to drink each other under the table while the high-ups engaged in the most fraught of negotiations...she raised the fruit to her lips, ravenous, but then Tsu'tey put a restraining hand on hers.

'Wait. We must give thanks to the All Mother.'

Grace lowered her hands again without protest and bowed her head quietly while he murmured a prayer in Na'vi. She wasn't in her best translating mode, but the words had a pleasing poetry to them. The growling of her stomach formed a soft accompaniment in the background.

She joined him in the final words, for Eywa, and thoughtfully began to eat.

For a few minutes Tsu'tey was silent as well, munching fruit with an unselfconscious air that her human acquaintances never managed, but then, the edge taken off his hunger, he spoke.

'Did you pray just then, dreamwalker?'

For a moment the racial void between them was gone, and the eyes that watched her were the eyes of an equal, looking at her and understanding. So she did not lie, though she knew that her next words would rip the chasm back open again.

'No.'

'Then I have a question, this time,' he said, with a faint smile. She grinned in response at the old joke, and made an expansive gesture with one hand. 'Go ahead.'

'If you do not believe the All-Mother is real, why do you bow your head? I love Eywa, and if someone doubted her I would fight for her. What do you believe? And why do you sit so calmly and let me speak different things.'

'Well.' Grace stretched her feet out in front of her and stared straight between them, contemplating how to answer. 'First of all, because we are used to tolerating one another's beliefs where I come from. There are many religions, and as I see it you just have to accept that. And as for why I bow my head? Well, out of respect to you.'

'To me?'

'To you and the People. I do not share your beliefs, but I won't scorn them either. You see, I think they make you who you are. Your love of the forest, your fellowship with one another, they all come from your belief in Eywa, and that makes Eywa a good thing. Do you see?'

'I think I begin to, a little,' Tsu'tey nodded, his brow furrowing. 'You're people are so strange... and what of you?'

'Huh? Me?'

'You said that on Earth there are many gods. What god do you follow?'

'Oh, I'm an atheist,' Grace said with a show of offhandedness. 'That's someone who doesn't believe in any god,' she added for his benefit. 'Science is my religion.' She looked up, and realised that Tsu'tey was staring at her with something raw and bright and shocking in his eyes.

She leaned forward to decipher the emotions. Pity and horror.

'How can you live that way?' he asked hoarsely.

'What?'

'No god? No mother? Just your body and the daylight world? No spirit?' She shook her head. 'How do you live like that?' he asked in Na'vi. 'How do you bear it?'

'With difficulty,' Grace admitted.

'But why do you think that?' Tsu'tey demanded. 'I thought you understood these things. I thought you understood them, the beautiful things...'

'I do,' Grace said, 'I do but oh, how to explain it...'

She clasped her hands behind her head and gazed up through the sifting leaves, a thousand different shapes and shades, the lower ones beginning to glow with bioluminescence, the upper layers still backlit with green from the sun.

'On Earth, there's a group called the Christians. They say that their god created the world in seven days. On the first day he separated life from dark, on the second he created the land and the sea, and he made all the plants and the animals, and the people.' She swallowed, as though trying to find the words in her own mouth. 'When you're small, you think that your father and...and your mother can do everything. No matter what happens, in the end they can protect you. But eventually you have to grow up, and then you see...that it's not that simple...' She found that she was blinking back tears as she spoke. Her head was full of the mining corporation's machines, cutting scars into the untouched forest, tearing at the innocence of these people and turning it into bitter experience. She was thinking of her own planet, festering in its polluted atmosphere. 'Is there really someone up there who loves all of us like children, who's guiding and protecting us? Some all-powerful person who's going to make everything turn out OK? Does this whole universe of ours only exist because some creature is standing over it, spinning the planets round their orbits? The truth is much sadder and much more beautiful than that. I've seen my people do terrible things, and I've studied the plants on this planet, and looked at the way they respond to the light, and the heat, and the water. There's nothing guiding them; they don't need it. The planets spin themselves. Sometimes they spin into a whole lot of shit, but they'll always spin out again eventually, and that's the beautiful thing. All this.' She raised a hand, gesturing round at the forest. 'You, me, these trees, this world, can grow and exist, without any help from anyone. I've studied the plants on this planet, and here's what I've learned. Heaven and hell both exist, and they're both. Right. Here.'

She opened her eyes, to gauge his reaction to the explanation that she'd just succeeded in putting fully into words for herself. He was watching her, not angrily but very steadily, as though deeply considering the words she had spoken. All the same, she knew she had shaken him. She had attacked everything he considered truth, and he was only making himself consider it calmly.

'Your connection to the forest, though,' she said. 'The way you understand things, tsahaylu...does it really matter whether Ey'wa makes them or not? They're real, either way.'

Abruptly, Tsu'tey stood.

'Come, DoctorGrace,' he said, holding out a hand. 'Come.'

She took his hand and scrambled to her feet, her body protesting at the sudden change of pace. Twilight was truly drawing in now, and the darkness seemed to ooze out from between the thickest trees as he made of them.

'I show you something,' he said, in an oddly soft and rasping voice. 'Come quick. Hurry. I show you.'

A/N: Yup, I just *had* to bring theology into it somewhere. Guess my own beliefs! I hope the second half of that chapter didn't bore you all too much, and that the first half wasn't too jerky, and that the overall mood wasn't too schizoid and annoying. Drop me a line, tell me what you think.

A quick heads-up: We are now approaching what I envisaged as the end of the story, but several of your reviews seem to be anticipating that I will follow the cannon further. So I could do a oneshot after the end to show what happens next, or even continue it properly, if you all clamour. But see where I propose to end it first. I just didn't want it to come as a 'WHAT? It's OVER?' blow to you all, 'cause I hate it when that happens. Not that many of the fics I've read have ever finished.

True

Lily: Yeah, I decided to make Tsu'tey and Neytiri brother and sister, just for this fic.

Natzamin: Glad we have you convinced, and that the arguing seemed cute rather than just sloppy.

remylover1234: Thanks a lot! Remy as in Remus Lupin...?

MeAndMySelf2000: Waaaaay, long review. You're welcome on the shout front. Apparently Grace is meant to be, like, 50, but her avatar is more like 35...and Tsu'tey gets more years for his extra experience of Pandora...glad you don't find it perverted, anyway.

Aww, I'm so touched that you were checking for updates! You should get an account, then your alerts would do that for you. Thanks also for your encouragement on the serious/humorous front, that's the kind of feedback I like...positive and detailed...

QAvatar: Many thanks, here's the next one. Does your name have something to do with Quaritch?

Na'viBlue : Let's shout again!

Trisha: Yay for cute bickering and constructive feedback!

Jumpingjellyfish: Yeah, I like Jake in that chapter too. Glad you didn't find him OOC.

Jinxed: I know, she takes aging gracefully (no pun intended) to a whole new level! Haha, aging Gracefully, I should use that sometime! Cheers!