Author's Note: Sorry for the long wait! I hope that you enjoy!

The third night, the atokirina was there at the window again. Bobbing and dancing away, disappearing toward that space of darkness between two floodlights and coming back again. Jake has no idea why it's doing that. Had it always done that, and he just never noticed? Not sure how, he spent most of his nights awake, staring at the ceiling or the walls. But then again, the light was on most nights as it made him twitchy to just sit there alone in the dark night after night, allowing his waking mind to wander to dark and scary places, so there's that.

That following morning, Quaritch was normal-ish. He still tried to talk to Jake, asking him about what he was interested in, comic-wise but Jake didn't know.

"DC or Marvel? Or are you into something more indie?" He had asked.

Jake stared at him for a long time, trying to make sense of what was said. He opened his mouth, closed it again, then opened it one final time to say, "I don't know."

That made Quaritch smile, and he said, "Don't worry. We'll find out."

And thankfully that was that.

Jake had gone to lunch and when he came back Lyle was sitting in the chair on the other side of Quaritch's desk. He had been leaned forward with his hands steepled between his knees, looking at the floor while shaking his head slowly. The door had been opened, so Jake hadn't thought to knock as no one else did whenever they came in. But he tensed up when both of them stared at him with unreadable expressions on their faces, as if they had quickly schooled them when they realized he was there.

Jake's anxiety spiked, but he just swallowed down the fear.

Lyle Wainfleet is Quaritch's second. And when the man turned around in his chair at the sound of Jake's stammered apology and Quaritch's subsequent insistence that it wasn't needed, Jake's eyes find Wainfleet's and something occurred to him; this man knew. Jake has no idea what it is that he knew, but that he did. Something in his eyes. Something about the way that his eyes appraise him, as if understanding.

Jake has no idea what it is, and he certainly doesn't want to know.

Wainfleet nodded at him and stood from his chair. He gave a nod to Quaritch before excusing himself. Jake moved to his desk to get out of the other man's way, lowering into his chair and getting right to work. Thankfully, Quaritch didn't want to talk about whatever it was he was speaking to Wainfleet about, and Jake wasn't interested in asking. Jake was good like that. He never asked. He might wonder, but he never asked.

The fourth night was different. Jake fell asleep with Tommy's head on his shoulder, finally finding sleep just a touch easier than he has since waking up on Pandora. And when his eyes drifted closed after hours of staring at the ceiling, he felt the feeling of falling. Not the same feeling that would usually result in him jerking awake, though he felt that he should. Because he wasn't going down, he was going up. He was falling up more and more and more up into a familiar twinkling starlight. A siren's call at the edges of his hearing. It beckons him. More and more and more.

Come, it - she - whispered, come.

It was an odd sensation that left every inch of his skin tingling. Stole the vision from his eyes as he had to close them to stave off the growing burning just behind his eyelids. It takes a second for his brain to remember how to interpret sensation. And it felt like too much.

A very familiar too much.

He heard murmuring. Low voices talking. There was two, maybe three separate voices. And despite it having been now two weeks since the incident, his mind immediately latched on to the 'too much'. Two weeks of being unable to feel anything at all aside from heavy pressure to this? This is too much. It hurts. It's unbearable. Like the tingling is lava boiling just beneath the top layer of skin.

Even their soft voices catapult up to screaming in his ears, yet there is a softness to the edges of the words. They aren't screaming, his mind supplies, his hearing is just too sensitive. Too clear.

He feels a whimper rip from him, but it's quiet, hoarse. Had it not rattled in his chest, he might not have thought he even made a noise to begin with. And it hurt. It was like chewed up glass in his mouth and throat. On top of his skin feeling like it's crawling. Everything hurts. And it's strange. Well, this whole thing is strange. But it's weird that he was growing used to not being able to feel anything at all that now that he can again, he's not sure if it feels this way because he's not used to it anymore or if because it's cranked up to twenty.

But Tommy will be happy to know that he's okay again, somehow. A medical anomaly. Or a miracle. Or, whatever.

If he can feel again, then he's not sure he cares how it happened. The doctors had mused that it could come back - mostly because no one has any idea why it went away to begin with - but no one knew if it ever really would. Jake wasn't sure if he was willing to believe one way or the other. He didn't know how he lost his sense of touch, but he's not sure if he ever really came to terms with losing it. There isn't really anyone here that has any psychiatric training, at least, as far as Jake knows. But he wouldn't want to go speak with them anyway.

Jake didn't want to talk to regular people on a daily basis, so he sure as shit would never want to talk to someone who would try to psychoanalyze everything that he said. Would try to dig deep into his past for something - Jake has no idea what - and try to make sense of him. He's not complicated, he knows. He just doesn't want anyone to make a big deal out of nothing.

The past is the past.

But back to the present, Jake is in agony. It feels like this tremendous weight is pressing down on him, scraping against every inch of his tingling skin. He feels horrible. This sensation of his skin splitting over and over and over again.

He chokes on a sob, or a whine, he's not sure. His hand groping around next to him, trying to find Tommy. He doesn't want to see a therapist, but he's willing to agree to go to a real one so that they could put to rest the mystery of what had happened to him.

Tommy isn't there. He must have gone to the bathroom, but Jake can't open his eyes to see if the light is on under the door. Just the thought of peeling his eyelids open is exhausting to him. He should just sleep. Hopefully when he wakes up again, his body has settled down once more. Maybe go to his safe place. Just wait out the pain like he usually does. Then when it's done, it's done.

His sensitive ears blot out sound for a moment and then it clears up, a painful ringing rattling his eardrums until the softness of the voices return. One far closer now. Her voice is raspy and low and the skin of his neck and shoulders burn as someone helps to elevate his head a bit. His lower jaw is pulled down and some harsh tasting goop is dropped onto his tongue. Boney fingers work his throat until he swallows and suddenly, Jake is numb.

Not in the sense that he can no longer feel - no, that is still super charged - but in the realization that he is trapped. It's not that he is moving too slowly, too minutely. But that he's not moving at all. He can't open his eyes. He can't hold his breath or try to breathe out of sync with the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest. His hand lays limp at his side and no amount of strength in the world can make so much as a finger twitch.

Trapped. He is literally trapped in his body. It wasn't enough that he should lose feeling, but now he was losing motor function as well? What... what is happening to him? Why is this happening?

More goop onto his tongue and forced down his throat. The gentle touch to push away whatever landed on the corner of his lips is searing. He cries out, but it's an echo in his head. No sound escapes him. They don't know. Whoever it is that's here with him, taking care of him - a nurse, or a doctor, a woman of some sort - they have no idea that he's there. That he's trapped.

They can't help him. He is completely and utterly alone.

As the true depth of that builds in his chest, tearing him apart at the seams, there is a shift in his body. Not strange or painful, but somehow soothing, and calming. Something that feels like a gentle embrace atop the pain and discomfort. Something warm. Something kind. It lands on the center of his chest spreading outward over his entire body, filling him. Like reattaching wires. Fixing broken things, slowly but surely.

And in his mind's eye, he hears her. Her sorrow. As if his pain was her own.

Then, two small gasps from somewhere slightly further away. And a hand. Long and boney, resting on his shoulder. And it's an agony that he can't voice. She leans closer, listening for something, hesitating.

Then, softly, the woman says, "JakeSuli?"

And at the edge of hearing, the buildup of a low thrumming. A great and powerful drum being pounded away at from so far away Jake has to strain his ears to hear it.

Thump...

...

Thump...

...

Thump...

And then he's falling again. This time, awakening with a jerk, body surging upward, gasping for air and looking around the darkened room.

"What? Jake? What's wrong?" Tommy asks, sitting up next to him, rubbing harshly at his eyes. "Are you okay? What happened?"

Jake swallows, looking down at his trembling hands. He can't feel them shake but he can see them in the light provided through the blinds. He takes a few gasping breaths, trying to focus his short-circuiting mind. He thought that he was... for a second...

Was that a dream?

That's insane. Of course, it was a dream. What else could it have possibly been?

"Yes," Jake rasps, swallowing again as he lays back down, heart pounding again the inside of his chest. "It was just a dream..."

Tommy stares down at him, blue eyes like flints of ice in the faint light. "Are you sure? Do you want to talk about it?"

"No," Jake admits, not even sure he knows how to put it into words.

Tommy stares at him hard for a few moments, as if waiting for, or willing, Jake to change his mind, but when he doesn't, Tommy sighs. He rubs at the back of his head and lowers back down next to him, pressing his shoulder against Jake's. And Jake only knew because he felt his body shift without his consent while he stared at the ceiling, a gentle pulsating at the back of his head slowly building.

"Let me know if you do want to talk about it," Tommy says softly. "I'll listen. Promise."

"Okay," Jake says, then nothing more.

After a few minutes of both brothers staring at the ceiling in silence, Jake begins to hear Tommy's light snoring once more. Jake glances over at his slumbering twin's face, seeing it smoothed out and relaxed. A complex mixture of emotions washes over Jake for a long moment before he turns back toward the ceiling, reading his alarm clock in his peripheral vision as 3:47 and staring invisible patterns on the ceiling until the sun started to rise, unable to sleep a wink more.

Jake is a zombie again.

Quaritch watches him from his desk as Jake goes about his work, stopping twenty times an hour to rub at his forehead, which is useless seeing as he can't feel it. But the throbbing headache that has spread all over has persisted since he woke up from that... dream. Quaritch asked a few times if he was okay, and Jake just said that he was and kept working.

When lunch came around, Jake went right to his room, set his alarm and tried to get a bit of sleep. Anything to ease the headache. He dozed a bit, but ultimately felt no better before heading back to Quaritch's office. As he was lumbering down the hallway, he spotted Fike heading the other way with a pep to his step. But Jake didn't have the energy, or desire, to see what that was about.

He just about made it to the door when Quaritch steps out.

"Oh, Jake," he says easily, smiling just a touch of cheshire. "I'm going to a meeting. Go ahead and finish up what's on the desk. I'll be back in a bit. Feel free to change the music if you don't like it." He pats Jake's shoulder before heading out.

"Yes, sir..." Jake says slowly, turning to watch as he makes his way down the hall. Quartich doesn't turn to look back at him or slow down. Jake turns and heads back into Quaritch's office to hear a soft country song playing through a speaker that was sitting on the bookcase between Jake's desk and Quaritch's. The Colonel always has something country or rock playing, which Jake doesn't really mind one way or the other. He doesn't really listen to music, so whatever was playing was fine.

Jake turns toward his desk and tilts his head a bit. There was the work that he had left behind, and a stack of books. No, not books. Comics.

Jake blinks, eyes wide before stepping closer and reaching out to take one right off the top, glancing down at the cover. It's a man flying through the air in a blue body suit with a long red cape. A big 'S' on his chest. Jake carefully lays it back down onto the stack and sits back down to get back to work. Suspiciously, the stack of work that he had before his lunch break was noticeably smaller than when he left, so he was done within the next half hour.

Without anything else to do, Jake carefully grabbed the first comic off the top and opened it to read.

"You like them?"

Jake jumps, twisting around to see Quaritch leaning over his shoulder to see where he's at. He smiles and nods toward the separate pile of finished comics. Jake is about halfway through the stack. And he is so utterly confused.

"I don't know," he mumbles, closing the comic and slowly turning towards the older man. "I don't understand how it all connects."

Quaritch blinks, glancing at the pile, and then lets out a laugh, shaking his head and leaning against the desk and grabbing out one of the comics. "They aren't all connected, Jacob. They are all different characters from different universes." He flips through the comic, eyes glazing over as he scans the pages. "I just got a few comics crossing a wide variety of things to see if anything catches your attention."

He grins at Jake, who flushes in embarrassment, sinking into his seat a bit. He brings his hands up to his face and rubs at it, fighting a groan at the back of his throat. He had spent over an hour reading comic after comic trying to figure out when and how all these different stories were supposed to intercept with one another and just couldn't imagine how they were going to.

Well, that's because they weren't.

"You thought that they were all going to connect together? That the Spiderman was going to meet the Teenage Turtles?" Quaritch asks as he laughs, shaking his head at Jake's obvious embarrassment.

"I don't know," Jake admits.

"Unfortunately, they are one of the few big names not owned by DC or Marvel, son. So, no such luck there."

"They are both in New York," Jake admits, grumbling, looking down at his lap, wishing that the ground would open up and swallow him whole. "How was I supposed to know?"

Quaritch doesn't answer that. He just laughs, shaking his head as he drops the comic back onto the desk and pushes up to his feet and makes his way back over to his desk, still amused at Jake's expanse. Despite the amusement the man is getting from this, a dark little part of Jake wonders if this was something that someone would normally know. Quaritch had said they weren't really his thing and yet he seemed to know a lot about it - or obviously more than Jake did - but now he's left feeling inadequate. What else should he knows but doesn't because, well, the past is the past and it can't be changed, wished away, or imagined better?

Jake didn't know about this, did Tommy? Tommy was more the reader, although not necessarily comics. But he's so smart. Did he know? Does everyone know except for Jake because that man took everything away from him? Made him smaller? Made him less?

"Do you like them?" Quaritch asks, placing papers Jake hadn't noticed he was carrying down next to his computer, turning wintery eyes to the younger man. "The comics? Especially since you now know it isn't just one just mashed up, convoluted story?"

Jake shrugs, straightening up slightly. He tries to think about what else he felt while reading. It was... different. He didn't know anything about heroes and mutants and the science and sci-fi behind it all. He didn't really understand and everything he read was all mashed together into one connecting story, so he is definitely very confused. He didn't... not enjoy it. Maybe he has to try it again now that he knows that they are all different. But it was okay.

Well, it didn't make his raging headache any better, but that was something that he could just ignore.

Realizing that Quaritch was waiting for an answer, Jake admits, softly, "I don't know. Not yet."

"Jake, are you still having problems sleeping?"

Quaritch, who was standing at his side, and the doctor sitting on the rolling chair in front of Jake, both stare at the youngest in the room. It has been two days since the comic book incident, so now they are at day sixteen since the incident, and thankfully Jake hasn't has any more of those strange dreams, but that's probably because he's fully blown back to not sleeping. He might doze for an hour or two, and then spend the rest of the night either tossing and turning or staring blankly up at his ceiling waiting for sunrise.

And that is both because Jake is not expending nearly enough energy throughout the day anymore and Tommy, finally, went back to his own room. Jake was acclimating and honestly, Tommy seemed to like his space. He felt guilty about what happened and wanted to help look after Jake but even that came to an end. Tommy still wasn't going back to the school, Grace, Norm and the rest of the science team was very tight lipped about Jake and his whereabouts and even about how he was doing and well, things had to return to normal to some capacity.

And Jake expected this. Jake always knew that he was going to need Tommy for the rest of his life, but he also always knew that Tommy wouldn't need him. It was sweet, and so very Tommy-like that he stuck around for as long as he did, but Jake knew that Tommy needed space to thrive. Tommy thought that he was being considerate, no doubt, that he was giving Jake space and no longer suffocating him, but Jake didn't mind. He never minded Tommy. But it was time. Tommy wanted space and Jake would honor that.

"A bit," Jake admits, knowing that he's a shit liar.

The doctor makes a note on his tablet. "Okay, are you still taking the prescribed pills?"

"No."

The doctor sends him a displeased look. "Jake, why did you stop taking the medicine?"

Jake shrugs, looking down at the tiled floors, just wanting to get this over with. He's exhausted and worn down. He wonders if there was a way to know that his body was aching without feeling the ache. It's like a pulling but no feeling. It's so strange.

"Jake," the doctor says solemn, staring at him with level green eyes, "why did you stop taking the medicine?"

"It makes me feel sick," Jake mumbles.

"It takes time for it to start to affect you. You have gone without adequate sleep for too long, Jake. We are talking about your health here." Jake doesn't respond, so the doctor sighs. "And how about eating?"

"I eat..." Jake lets out a sigh of his own, not meeting either man's eyes. Maybe not a whole lot these last few days with the low but persistent headache that he's had since the day of that strange dream, but when Tommy was with him, he had been eating plenty.

The doctor sighs again and Quaritch shifts from his strong stance next to Jake. "I'm going to need to check your weight and take another blood sample."

Jake shrugs again. "Okay."

The doctor, frowning, stands up from his chair and heads over to the far side of the large room to start digging around in the treys that he has set up there for multiple patients for a busier day. A nurse moves over to assist him. Right as that is happening, the door on the other side of the room opens and Grace walks in, looking exactly how Jake feels.

Tired and worn out, yet all business as she walks right over to Jake, stopping a foot away to stare at him.

"Doctor Augustine," Quaritch drawls, speaking for the first time since he accompanied Jake here for his check up. Grace and Quaritch still seemingly taking it upon themselves to oversee his medical care.

"Colonel," she responds, voice even. Her brown eyes stay focused on Jake. "How are you feeling, kid?"

It's strange. Jake hasn't directly spoken to Grace since he was first released from the medical wing. Norm and Tommy both off-handedly invited Jake to visit by Grace's invitation, whenever he wanted, but he hasn't gone to the science wing since he was escorted out the night of the incident. Or can it be considered the following morning?

Her voice is even, calm. There is no anger there, but she did look tired. Like she was weighed down by something and Jake hoped it wasn't about him.

"Norm and Tommy told me that the Na'vi aren't returning my avatar," Jake says, instead of answering her. He feels like shit, but they don't have to know that.

Grace heaves a heavy sigh, stepping out of the way so that a portable scale can be brought over by the nurse and Jake can step up onto it. She frowns at the numbers that flash across the screen but doesn't comment as Jake sits back down and the scale is moved away.

Crossing her arms, and staring through Jake with a firm, but not unkind expression, she says, "The Omatikaya are unwilling to give it over to the RDA. They believe by their encounter with you that Mo'at received a sign from Eywa."

Quaritch huffs, muttering something under his breath and Jake didn't miss how she was intentionally vague. Instead of asking what he really wanted to, he asked, "Mo'at?"

"She was the woman in red," Grace explains, shifting easily into teacher mode. "She is the spiritual leader of the Omatikaya. They refer to these leaders as Tsahik. The leader, her mated pair, is the clan chief or Olo'eyktan."

Jake nods, looking down at his shoes for a moment. He sighs again. "It's been over two weeks now, is the avatar dead?"

Grace seems surprised by this. She shakes her head. "No, the Omatikaya have their own methods of preserving people who can't take care of themselves, like we do with people in comas. It's a lot more labor intensive as they can't be left alone, but your avatar is still alive. They can keep it fed and hydrated as best they can, but the only thing that they can't do is keep the muscles from atrophy. It's hard for us too, even with medical advancements. But Na'vi musculature makes it so - " she stops, hesitating as if looking for something on Jake's face, that she only has a partial view of, before continuing simply with, "Na'vi are built to be able to stemmy a lot of muscular breakdown. So, the avatar is still okay for now."

Jake nods, and seeing as Quaritch hasn't said anything, it's probably something that he already knew. Probably spoken about in meetings that they've had since all of this went down.

Quietly, delicately, Grace asks, "Do you want to see it? Your avatar?"

The nurse steps over and quickly draws a few vials of Jake's blood before disappearing again to run whatever tests the doctor saw fit.

Jake shakes his head. "No. Not really."

Grace's shoulders slump a bit, and she crosses her arms over her chest, but her voice isn't unkind when she says, "Well, we still have some time, I suppose." But that was it. Jake didn't ask what she meant by that, nor did he comment on the flat look Quaritch shot her over the top of his head.

Grace was hiding something. Obviously. Perhaps Tsahik - the Tsahik, Mo'at - said something more to Grace. Something she isn't saying around Quaritch. Which Jake can understand. Neither side seems particularly fond of the other. Jake has known that since the beginning. His mind is whirling, though, as the doctor returns to reprimand Jake for not taking his pills and for only barely maintaining his weight, which was still lower than he would like. He was warned again that they would start to monitor him closer if he didn't take care of it himself. They scheduled his next appointment and sent him on his way so that they could run their tests and review them.

Once it was over, Jake quickly fled after a quick goodbye to Quaritch and Grace's shoes. Quaritch had said that he could have time to himself after the half day of work they did before even going to his appointment. Jake had the rest of today and the following two days off, so he decided to capitalize on it. He went to the cafeteria to get some food for a late lunch to choke down while still ignoring some of the few remaining looks sent his way, before going to his room and getting ready for bed. He has kept the blinds closed, even after Tommy left so he just took his pills, changed into his pajamas, and curled up in bed facing the wall, counting to himself until he finally slipped into slumber after over an hour of waiting.

Jake awakened to darkness and feeling like absolute garbage. His numb body felt heavy, and his throat was tight. He went to the bathroom to get some water from the sink but ended up face planting onto the floor. He scoots into the light peaking in through the blinds to stare at his toes to ensure they weren't broken. They didn't appear to be, and they wiggled just fine, but his knees were red and when he managed to make it to the bathroom, his lip was bleeding.

Jake licks his lip a bit before splashing some water onto his face and drinking a bit from his cupped hands. His short sleeve t-shirt revealed his pale arms, showing a littering of bruises from bumping into things. Most of which he doesn't remember doing. He knows that his legs are no better. Thankfully when he's in the halls he has only ran into a few things, but Quaritch's office and even his own room, Jake has hit just about every piece of furniture to some capacity about a dozen times. With his hands, arms, his legs. He has turned his hip into Quaritch's desk hard enough a few times for even Quaritch to wince at.

Quaritch has since stopped asking him if he's okay. Because yeah, Jake's fine. Jake didn't feel a thing.

Jake pulls up his shirt and down the band of his sleep pants to look at the bruise forming on his hip, ugly, but healing. A sickening yellow and purple color and when he touches it, nothing. When he pushes on the jutting bone, he can feel the slight sensation of pressure, but that's it.

Still nothing. Approaching day seventeen without feeling and they are no closer to figuring out what was wrong with him than they were day one.

Sighing, Jake turns back to his room and stops. There, behind the blinds, a movement. A dance to a song that only it can hear.

Without turning off the light, Jake makes his way over to the window, leaning over the desk and opening up the blinds to see the atokirina spin around in joy at him finally acknowledging it. Jake watches for a moment as it dips and bobs, spinning and dancing before it flutters away on invisible wind toward the space between the two floodlights as it has done every night that Jake has seen it.

Finally, finally, Jake understands. That deep sleep was enough to finally make it click in his brain. Jake slides on his shoes, grabs his regulation flashlight and security card and heads for the door. He walks through the maze of hallways, mostly empty as it is almost two in the morning. Occasionally, Jake will see people sneaking into each other's rooms giggling and grinning or stumbling to their little slice of paradise while reeking of alcohol. But otherwise, it's mostly empty. Most rooms are silent because they are empty or the people inside are already sleeping.

Jake makes to one the exits, puts on the breathing mask and triple checking that it's snug but not enough to squeeze his skull too hard, before swiping his card and moving into the dividing room that leads outside. Once the air shifts and the red light turns green over both doors, signifying that the seal to the facility is holding, Jake opens the door and steps outside.

And there, as if knowing that he finally figured it out, awaits the atokirina, bouncing and spinning happily. A twirl and dip and then it swims away, toward the flood gates. Jake takes the path to follow it, watching its white glow leading the way. And at the very edge of his hearing, a gentle thumping. Something mighty and powerful, and growing oh so slightly, louder and louder.

Come, it - she - whispered, come.