Jake was still sitting on the mech suit—a shattered, bloodsoaked coffin—when a hand fell on his shoulder.
He didn't need to look up to know it was Tsu'tey, to know he was staring at the hole in the side of his head.
"Better than the spine, right?"
For a moment, he worried Tsu'tey would chastise him, or, worse—pity him—for the damage he'd sustained.
He didn't think he could stand it, not then, if Tsu'tey had leaned down and wrapped him in his arms. He couldn't handle soft, not then, not when the world had just shattered and come back wrong.
He couldn't handle kindness. He didn't deserve it.
"You did well, my Jake."
His grip on the mask tightened, threatening to crack. His heart was hammering in his chest, but it felt miles away, like he'd laid it down and forgotten it somewhere in the blood soaked grass.
Tsu'tey's hand on his shoulder was grounding, keeping him from drifting further away from himself.
"Come on," Tsu'tey said, his fingers flexing against Jake's collarbone, "there is nothing more that can be done today."
If he helped Jake to his feet, he didn't notice.
The blood loss was making him dizzy, but no matter how blurred the edges of his vision became, no matter how much his limbs stung—numb with pinprick pain—he could not tear his eyes away from the bodies scattered around him like autumn leaves.
The corpses of humans lay beaten and bloody or sealed inside the metal bodies they thought would protect them, pale and bloated with suffocation. To Jake, they were already rotting.
The bodies of Na'vis were fewer, but that was still too many.
Tsu'tey wanted him to keep moving—towards the Turok, waiting atop a dead bulldozer, his belly pockmarked with the bullets that had only just managed to breach the surface of his thick hide. He wanted Jake to let him guide him to the creature's back, where he could be carried away, where his skin could be patched up and healed.
Selfishly, he wanted this, but he did not protest when Jake shrugged away his arm to limp towards the body of a Na'vi, crushed beneath a pa'li.
Jake stared, and stared, and stared, and the eyes of Nha'su stared, unseeing, back at him.
He hadn't seen him since Tsu'tey tackled him to the ground so many, uncountable nights ago. Jake hadn't seen him since his lips had pulled back in a sneer and spit poison at their feet.
If the world was fair and good, perhaps he might have lived, if just a little longer, so Jake could cradle his head in his lap and shush away apologies from his bloody mouth.
In a good, fair world, Nha'su could have said he was sorry and Jake would have said he was sorry too, as he held a man dying on a battlefield they should have never had to know.
Tsu'tey didn't say anything as Jake reached out and pushed at the heavy, bleeding body of the pa'li. Jake didn't say anything when Tsu'tey crouched beside him, their knees framing Nha'su's twisted shoulders, and, together, they heaved the beast up and off of the crumpled body beneath it.
In silence, Jake dug his shaking hands beneath the man he had never loved, never liked, never known, never reconciled with, and lifted him into his arms. He rose on shaking legs, the weight of Nha'su pulling against him like it was trying to drag them both back down into the dirt, and stepped towards the still waiting Toruk.
The ground shook as the great beast stepped down from its metal roost—head ducked, eyes wide—as it untucked one massive wing and allowed Jake to set the broken body in his arms up onto its shoulder.
By the time Jake turned back to the field of so many more dead and dying, Tsu'tey was behind him—another limp, blue body held tightly in his arms.
And so they went, gathering the bodies of people they knew and people they didn't—men and women they had hunted and eaten and celebrated alongside, who had been alive and breathing and whole such a short time ago. Others joined them, loading bodies onto the backs of pa'li and ikrans with careful, shaking hands, until the only evidence they had lost anyone was their blood soaked into the dirt.
Trudy already had blood on her hands when she sat down in front of Jake.
He watched her pour water over her fingers and scrub at them with a cloth, already stained, sending pink tinged droplets to splash silently against the ground.
"You've lost a lot of blood," she said, staring at the parts of his body so covered in red it seemed nearly black.
"It's probably not all mine," he said, like she might be comforted by that.
She wasn't.
He could tell in the tightness of her jaw. But she didn't say anything, choosing instead to painstakingly remove the shards of glass embedded in the soles of his feet.
There was glass in his hands, too, pressed into his palms like splinters.
She found metal in his knees where he'd dug them into the edges of bulldozers to propel himself up their sides.
"If your head had been turned even just a little bit…" she'd said, as she did her best to wipe away the blood caked around what used to be his ear.
"It's just an ear," he'd said, thinking about the bullet hole just beneath Nha'su's eye, gifted by a world that was not good or fair. And maybe if his head had been turned just a little bit, too…
"Right," she'd said, wrapping the bandage too tight, too rough, around his temple, "just an ear."
Once he was patched up, Jake limped carefully out of the alcove.
His hand rested briefly on the shoulder of the Na'vi who ducked in after him and his fingers came back bloody.
Neytiri, who had been standing off to the side, didn't say anything as she wrapped Jake in her arms. They stayed like that for a long time—feeling their hearts beat against their ribs, relishing in the way their chests swelled with each breath—promising that life still pulsed beneath their skin.
When they did pull away, it was only inches, just enough to reach up and frame their faces in their hands.
Jake's thumb pressed softly against the cut just beneath her eye, already starting to scab. Her lip was split, and he touched that too—mapping out each piece of broken skin like he needed to assure himself they weren't more than what they seemed.
"Well," she said, her voice thick and hoarse, like she'd spent her whole life screaming, "I was pretty sure your ears were just for decoration, anyway. You never used them to listen."
Jake laughed, even though it made his ribs ache, even though the world had fallen away and come back wrong.
Neytiri laughed too and Jake could see blood on her teeth.
Thirty new plots filled the graveyard. Jake counted each one as Tsu'tey and a handful of other warriors dug them into the soft ground.
While the sun crawled to the highest point in the sky, he watched and sat above where his body was buried too. When the last hole was dug and the fallen were laid deep beneath the ground, Jake stared up into the clear white blue and listened to the sound of dirt hitting bodies that would never again draw breath.
There would be time, after torn skin was stitched shut and bones were set beneath shredded muscle, to sit among those who felt those losses more than others, to mourn with them, to share that burden.
There was a part of Jake that wished he could trade it all, that he could bury himself beneath the ground, right beside where he already lay rotting, and go in their place. But Jake wasn't worth a dozen fresh bodies.
If life is a balance, he knew he wasn't nearly important enough, not nearly good enough, for the world to consider him so special as to be worth more than anyone, much less so many daughters and sons, so many brothers and sisters, so many friends.
Jake couldn't take their place.
So, instead, he sat atop his grave and said apologies they couldn't hear.
"If you feel as though you failed," Tsu'tey said, once the sun had set, after Eytukan—his leg shattered, crushed beneath his fallen pa'li, but alive—had spoken the names of the dead out into heavy, open air, after they'd all eaten in silence, after they'd sat together beneath the Tree of Souls and mourned those whose lives had been given to protect it, "know that you did not. Even if it feels that way."
"It was my plan," Jake said, his fingers brushing over the glowing tendrils of the tree, "maybe if we'd done something different…"
"Then maybe some lives would have been saved," Tsu'tey nodded, "or maybe more would have been lost."
"This is why you don't get to make speeches," Jake hummed, ignoring the burning weight in his chest.
"You cannot save everyone, my love," he said, brushing his fingers against the small of Jake's back. "No matter how much we may want to."
They looked out then, across the reaching roots of the tree where mourners still sat, cuddled together in comfort.
"You do them a disservice," Tsu'tey said, so quiet, Jake wasn't sure which one of them he was reassuring, "blaming yourself. They did not die for me and you. They did not die because we led them blindly into battle. We're all fighting for our home and the people in it. That is what they died for and we cannot deprive them of that by fearing they died for us. The only thing we can do is ensure their sacrifice was not in vain."
For a moment, Jake sat there, nearly completely still, before he turned, just enough to look up at Tsu'tey out of the corner of his eye.
"Sorry," he said, his eyes soft and voice softer, "you'll have to repeat that," he tapped at the bandages wrapped around his head, "bad ear."
These chapters are mostly just feelings. I hope ya'll don't mind. Everyone has a lot of feelings.