Author's Note: Well, two chapters in and this was the hardest yet, I think. There is a lot of people talking. A lot of differing opinions and histories to try to work with. This was definitely a hard one. I'm sorry about the long wait, I know it took way too long and probably no one is coming back for this one, lol, but it's here anyway! Let me know what you think =!

They think he was going to be okay.

Walker and Ja walked into the Recom barracks and just announced it. He wasn't concussed, thankfully, by Lyle's elbow when they collided with each other out in the field. But the blender that the boy's brain just went through didn't do anything great for him. He hadn't regained consciousness after the hour and a half that Ja and Walker had remained to watch over him. He just laid in one of the avatar beds looking impossibly small. His dark blue skin was near white as a sheet, and they struggled to get his nose to stop bleeding. Walker was furious, pacing back and forth while Ja just stood there, arms crossed legs shoulder width apart.

Thankfully, Walker was able to keep her rage in check despite the dangerous lashing of her tail that nearly took the head off one of the nurses walking around in there. But no one spoke up against them or asked them to leave, too weary of the obviously upset, massive blue recombinants. Someone had to fetch a breathing mask for her after the third puff of Ja's air, which seemed to ease some of her tension, enough that the deadly weapon attached to her spine stopped swinging around.

The doctors wanted to keep him overnight for observation and Walker didn't exactly have anything to say against them keeping an eye on the boy - seeing as she's certain that if he wasn't in bad shape before, he must be now - so she just agreed.

Walker and Ja sit with the others in the commons area of their barracks, given their own special treatment for being spec ops, apparently. Lucky them. They just had to literally die to get it.

"What are we doing?" Brown asks suddenly, after a few minutes of everyone just silently sitting around, lost to their thoughts after Ja recounted what little happened while they were away.

"Licking our wounds," Lopez says bitterly. "We cornered Sully completely unaware, and he still managed to escape. Colonel is right, the element of surprise was wasted on that half-cocked plan." Of Ardmore's, went unsaid.

"Yes," Brown says slowly, "but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the kid."

"What about the kid?" Fike asks, leaning back into his chair, putting his mask off to the side seeing as the air quality within the barracks is to their preference. All designed to be habitable for their new Recombinant bodies and they didn't need the same oxygen levels that humans did. Pandora was suited to them in that manner. Why waste resources when they are living on a planet that they were designed for?

"What are we doing with him?" Brown asks, looking around the room. Everyone looks at Quaritch, who was standing over by the window overlooking the airfield for quick deployment, hands on his hips. After a full minute of no response, whether Quaritch was too lost in his thoughts to have heard him or was actively ignoring him, none of them knew, they all turned back to each other.

Lyle is the only one that could have some guess as to what was on Quaritch's mind, but like hell was he going to put it into words and face the Colonel's wrath. Maybe they'll talk in private later, but they sure won't right now. He was trusted with Quaritch's secret as his friend, he wasn't going to go spilling anything that the Colonel wasn't ready to talk about, even if it was in front of the team. It wasn't Lyle's place.

"He's Sully's kid," Warren says, looking down at his boots. "What are we supposed to do? Kill him?"

"That's unfortunate," Zhang bites back, making Warren flinch at the usually quiet man. "Sorry kid, your dad left you for dead, you think you got rescued only to be tortured by an evil alien woman just so that you could think you were rescued again only to actually be killed by your twice times rescuers."

"War is bloody," Lopez says slowly, "we all know this, but God that's messed up."

"If we really had no use for him, we should have just left him out there," Fike says bitterly. "Sully would have eventually found him. I mean, he has to know by now his kid is missing."

"Realistically, we needed to gather intel because apparently no one else has any idea what's going on," Ja says from next to Walker. He leans back into the couch, taking his hat off his head and resting it on his lap. "Realistically, we should have taken the kid to get information or to use him to lure in Sully, but god damn. This whole thing is a shit show."

No on disagreed with that. They were all brought back from the dead, armed to the teeth and send blindly into the forest to look for Jake Sully. Just about every bit of intel, which was sparce enough on its own, was wrong in some manner. Yes, Jake Sully was out in the forest - just not where they thought and he certainly wasn't alone, and it wasn't just his son, either, but other hunters that fought back with the Recoms long enough for Jake to flee. Nothing went according to plan and now they are stuck in an emotional quagmire.

Well, not just emotional, but mostly so. Stuck between duty and conscious.

"We should just bring the kid back to the forest where we found him and let him go," Z-dog says, staring down at the carpet under her feet. "If we don't plan to interrogate him, or kill him, we should just let him go back home."

"Are we, what? Going to follow him home?" Prager asks, looking at the tall female.

Z just stares at the floor, frowning. "Don't know. It's better than leaving him here. Making him suffer."

"I didn't sign up for that," Fike admits. "Sully, I get. We need to get him for what he did, but like, this kid didn't do shit and Ardmore just straight up tortured him for nothing. There was honestly nothing that he could have told us. He's probably at the age right now that he probably doesn't know how to get back home. He was just tortured for absolutely nothing. I can't believe that. Sorry, but that's some psychotic shit right there."

No one outright disagreed with that, but no one also wants to make a decision on the elephant in the room. They have to do something. They have to do something about this kid. Whether it be that they bring the boy back to the forest and either kill him, set him free, or use him to set a trap for Jake Sully, or they could just leave him here, let the doctors tend to him. Let him be a pawn to whatever sick plans that Ardmore would be able to come up with in that sick, twisted mind of hers.

"What do we do?" Walker says quietly. "Ardmore will just do something horrible to him. If that baby is lucky, she'll kill him and leave his body somewhere for his parents to find. And if he's not, she's going to torture him for lord knows how long and for what? I'm sorry, but we can't leave him here with her. I've seen all I have to when it comes to how she intends to treat the natives. I won't accept anything other than letting him go or us just taking care of him. He can't be left to her here. He can't."

"You want us to take care of him?" Lopez asks, surprised.

Walker nods, grimly. "I would rather it be us then her."

Lopez looks over at Warren, who appears equally as surprised. The later says, carefully, "Did you ever have kids, Walker?"

The medic blinks, surprised by the question. "Me? No. Why?"

"Younger siblings that you looked after?"

Walker stares back at them, looking between Lopez and Warren's awaiting faces, perplexed. She leans forward, elbows resting on her knees as she stares at the other two recombinant with a critical eye, as if trying to discern what Warren's getting at. Carefully, she says, "No. Why are you asking me this? I raised cousins as babies, I guess, but I don't see how the hell that matters right now."

Warren waves his hands around a bit, equally as perplexed. "Then what makes you think that we can take care of him?"

Walker and Warren stare at each other for a long moment. Walker blinks slowly before saying, evenly, "I don't know what the hell you are talking about, Garrett."

"Wait," Lopez says, scratching at the back of his head while Brown rolls his eyes.

"Jesus Christ," Brown mumbles.

"Walker is talking about taking the boy out back and putting him down Old Yeller style," Quaritch says, turning around from his spot at the window. All the recoms look over at him as he continues, "And Warren is over here thinking she's talking about child rearing. Lopez too, by the looks of it."

"Not Old Yeller," Prager flinches. "That book was sad as shit."

"Movie wasn't any better," Zhang grumbles.

Walker glares at Warren. "Why would I ever think there was a maternal or paternal bone in any of our bodies, idiot?"

Warren holds up his hands. "Shit, sorry. I just couldn't believe what I was hearing. I thought that you said you didn't like kids, so I was blown away at it being your idea for us to take care of him."

"I sure as shit wasn't going to bring Old Yeller into this," Walker says flatly, glaring still. "But even if I have a low tolerance for screaming, crying, babies, it doesn't mean that I want kids to suffer. And Jesus, this kid got knocked around by Lyle's elbow, and he barely whined about it despite me knowing that had to hurt. He's a good kid. And even if it was some other kid, I wouldn't want to watch fall down in a playground, let alone be released into this fucking lion's den with the devil herself."

Warren opens his mouth, either to try and make his point again, or let it drop, but Fike jumps in with a flat, "Stop. Listen, what are doing? Colonel told the General that we were going to handle this, and she didn't dispute it. I'm pretty sure she's not going to be happy about us just letting him go, so if that's the route we plan on taking, we are going to have to lie to her. And if we aren't, we need to have a good reason for killing the kid, okay? So, either way, unless we plan to keep him and make up a reason, we are going to have to lie, so we got to decide what the fuck we are going to do. Got it?"

The room is silent as Quaritch leans against the window, crossing his arms and ankles. No one disputes that.

After a few beats of silence, Warren finally looks back over at Walker and says, "Sorry, Maria."

She offers him a little smile. "Forgiven."

They all settle into silence for a few moments, everyone lost in their thoughts before carefully, quietly, Zhang says, "If no one wants to argue the point, then I say we vote. Unless the colonel wants to make the decision."

Everyone looks over at Quaritch, who was staring back at them with guarded golden eyes. After a beat, he says, "What options are we voting on here?"

"Let the kid go in the forest," Zhang says.

"Leave him to Ardmore?" Lopez says slowly, frowning at his own words.

"Veto," Brown says right away, Ja seconding him a moment later.

"Thank god," Lopez says, leaning back in his seat.

"Kill him," Mansk says, voice flat.

Carefully, Prager says, "We keep him?"

"We just talked about this," Warren groans, rubbing his face. "None us know how to take care of a kid."

"Listen," Prager says slowly, leaning forward, "he's Jake Sully's son. What the fuck's his name? Uh, Ja, said something earlier about luring Sully in. We could do that."

Ja flips him off. "Ass."

Prager ignores him. "I don't like the idea either, but we were brought in to get Sully. He has to know his kid is gone. He's got to be looking for him. I know it's fucked up, but the alternative is either; us killing the kid ourselves, leaving him in the forest to hopefully be found by Sully and his people, or, what? We take him in. We take a crack at raising a kid that none of us have met until a few hours ago? What are we talking about here?"

"If we leave him with Ardmore, he'll be lucky to be dead," Lyle finally speaks up. "If we bring him to the forest and leave him, he'll probably end up dead. That place is fucking huge, who knows where the Na'vi will be searching for him. But..." He trails off, hesitating with his thoughts before shaking his head, crossing his arms over his chest. "Never mind."

"No, what?" Walker asks.

Lyle presses his lips together, shaking his head. "No, never mind. It's too risky."

"Go on now, Lyle," Quaritch drawls, turning sharp golden eyes to his second-in-command. "Speak your mind."

With everyone's full attention on Lyle, he sighs, reluctantly. "If we keep the kid with us, and I mean us, not the RDA, then plan out how to use him to get to Sully, then it doesn't matter where they are in the forest looking, at some point, we'll come across them, and we'll have him as bait."

"That..." Lopez says slowly, "sounds... like a stable enough plan. Kind of."

"Sure," Lyle says, turning golden eyes to the recombinant. "But there are two big problems with the plan."

"Go on," Quaritch says.

Lyle sighs, rubbing at his forehead. "One, who knows how long it'll take. Sure, Sully will be looking for his kid, but for how long? We could be talking days. We could be talking weeks. Shit, we could be talking years before we have the chance to use the kid to lure his father into a trap. Sully is going to be on guard. He'll be looking for his kid, but he's also going to be keeping an eye out for us. He's not going to fall for something so easily."

No one has an argument for that. This could be a very time-consuming plan. Not that anyone has much of anything else to be doing, but still.

Lyle gives everyone a few moments to mull over what he said, before continuing, "And two, think about the kid. If we're lucky he's going to be a demonic pain in the ass that we have to suffer through day and night until he's going." At the perplexed looks from Walker, Ja, Fike and Brown sent his way, Lyle elaborates with a simple, "What if he's not like that? What if he's as good of a kid now, as he was on the ride here?"

Z asks, plainly, "What if we end up liking the kid? What if we spend weeks, or months, or years on this plan and he ends up becoming one of us? He might be mostly Na'vi between an avatar father and a Na'vi mother, but that means he's also partly human. Part of him is us."

"Us, and Sully," Mansk says. "We are the only people on this planet in the same boat. Human souls in avatar bodies. This kid, and all of Sully's other kids, are all the closest that anyone else can get."

"Unless the other avatars are built the same," Prager points out. "But, yeah."

"Not entirely true," Walker says, leaning back into her seat again. "We aren't souls reincarnated or anything like that. We are literally constructed bodies with the memories of the people we were planted into our minds. We aren't those people; we just hold their memories."

"Walker, that's fucked up," Brown says, casting her a long glance.

"Why?" She asks, eyebrows raised. "I have her memories, but I'm never going to be Maria Walker. She was a human woman who was killed in battle fighting the Na'vi. When this is all over, I'm never going to go back to Earth. I can't live there. The family in my memories will never love me as I am. I'm not their daughter. Their cousin. Their niece. I am a Na'vi spliced with her DNA and given her memories. Maria Walker didn't like kids, but I don't have a problem with Sully's kid. In fact, I feel really bad for this kid. No matter what choice we make, he's going to be the one that gets hurt in every scenario. His life as he knows it is over. I would like to think that Maria Walker would care enough to worry about this to, but the reality was, she fought and died against the Na'vi thinking it was her duty as a human to protect human interest. New flash, I'm not human anymore. Does that mean that I don't give a damn about Earth dying along with everyone on it? Of course not."

Her shoulders heave with her heavy sigh. She slouches a bit in her seat beside Ja, quietly admitting, "All that I'm trying to say is that my loyalties are to my people. And you guys are my people. I will follow whatever it is that we agree to do. If we have to walk through hell and back, I'll go happily. If the colonel demands we jump, I won't wait to ask how high. I'm in it for you guys. Not Ardmore. Not the RDA. I'm here for you."

"At the end of the day, it is only us," Lyle agrees. "We are all we've got. Ardmore won't hesitate to send us into the meat grinder without a second thought. We've got to look out for each other because no one else on this planet will."

"On any planet," Z-dog says, voice low and even.

Ja runs his hands roughly over his face, groaning. "God, this is all such a pain in the ass. What are we going to do?"

No one responds. No one knows what to do now.

"Everyone, go get some R and R," Quaritch says, pushing off from the window. "Give it some thought. We'll talk more in the morning."

No one argues as they climb to their feet and shuffle off towards the rooms marked with their names, needing time alone to decompress after being woken up from pseudo-death and immediately sent on a shit show of a mission. They all need time to get their thoughts in order and figure out what they are going to do next. Walker's words weighing unexpectedly heavy on most of them.

Quaritch stops just outside the dividing room where the Spec Ops barracks meets the rest of the facility. The room acts like an airlock, so that poisonous air from the Recom's living space doesn't breach the rest of the facility. Hanging from the walls are breathing packs for all of the Recombinants, marked by their names. Someone, at some point, must have come to refill them. But that's not what stopped Quaritch in his tracks. It's Lyle, leaning up against the wall by the door on the other side of the room, his arms crossed.

"I thought I sent you to bed," Quaritch says with a touch of mirth.

Lyle looks over at him, smirking a bit. "That was hours ago, sir. I'm all rested up. Besides, it's time for my daily walk. Need to keep this new body fit and ready to go."

"At three in the morning?"

"Sure," Lyle shrugs. "Enemies don't wait till the dawn of the new day to start planning. And besides, I figured you would want company."

"To?"

Lyle peers at him through blackened out shades, golden eyes practically glowing behind them. "I figured you were going to see the kid. Am I wrong?"

Quaritch purses his lips, nodding slowly as he steps into the room, the door sliding and sealing shut behind him. "No, I suppose." Lyle pushes the button on the other side and the air inside shifts, making a loud hissing sound. "But who said I wanted your company?"

Lyle pushes away from the wall, grabbing his mask and tossing the colonel his own. They strap the packs to their sides and rest the masks around their necks as the light above the door by Lyle pings and opens up.

"No one," Lyle finally says, walking beside Quaritch on the way to the medical wing. "But you haven't sent me away yet."

Quaritch hums but doesn't disagree and together they walk down the barren halls towards the medical wing. Neither of them says a word to one another, comfortable in their silence. The Avatar portion of the medical wing is separate because of all of the special needs that their bodies require and to minimize any chances of mix ups in regard to medical practices, so specialists on operate on one side or the other. The RDA is thorough when it wants to be.

Other than a nurse, checking his vitals, the boy is alone in the room. She glances over at them when they arrive. She gives them a nod in greeting before making notes on her tablet and walking off, leaving them alone with the boy. As they get closer to the ghastly, pale body, impossibly small on that large bed made for people at least twice his size, Lyle huffs, shaking his head as he moves to the far side.

Quaritch glances at him curiously as Lyle lifts the boy's tiny arm to reveal handcuffs fashioned around an even tiny wrist and tying him to the bed that he's in.

"You would think the kid was a convict let out of jail on medical leave."

Quaritch huffs back, shaking his head as he pulls a chair over and sits down next to the small boy, staring at his pale, sleeping face. There is gauze under his nose, forcing him to breathe through his mouth in tiny puff within the mask on his face. He's got nodes on his exposed chest, and wires attached to his arms, pumping him full of fluids hanging from bags next to him. His little body is pale, and just a glance at the vitals, Quaritch can tell his temperature is elevated. He might not be an expert on Na'vi physiology, but the degrees are red on the screen, which is enough for him.

Lyle clocks that too. He reaches out and presses his knuckles lightly against the boy's forehead, careful to avoid the blossoming bruise there.

Quaritch doesn't respond, he just stares at the thin, sleeping face of the boy in front of hm. Mind racing. Lyle looks at him for a long moment before stepping away to grab onto another chair and bring it over.

"They still can't get his nose to stop bleeding?" Lyle asks no one, just trying to fill the silence.

Quaritch doesn't respond for a long moment, still just staring at that little face before saying, quietly, "Miles would be around his age."

Lyle doesn't look at him. "Yeah," he says softly.

"You think they sent him back to Earth to die?" Quaritch looks at his friend, golden eyes studying his face.

Lyle presses his lips together for a few beats, considering his words carefully. He looks at Quaritch and says, "As much as we want to rag on Sully, I don't think he would kill a kid."

They stare at each other for a long time before Quaritch asks, "Do you think he's alive?"

"Yeah," Lyle says, voice even. "I just couldn't tell you where."

Quaritch nods, leaning back in his chair, staring down at the small body in front of him. They sit in silence for a long time, both men lost to their thoughts before Quaritch, as if unable to help himself, says, "Miles and I... we aren't even the same species anymore."

Lyle nods slowly, licking his lips a bit, as if unsure. "Do you..." he hesitates. "Do you want me to talk you into something, or out of it?"

Quaritch huffs, cracking a smile. "You know me too well, Wainfleet." Lyle shrugs, noncommittal as Quaritch continues, "I don't know what I want. At least, not in regard to this." He gestures to the boy in front of him. "I should use him against Sully. I should do what I swore to do and get my revenge for what he did. This boy is just another tool for me to use against Sully. I should use him."

A moment of silence, then, "But..?" Lyle prompts.

Quaritch sighs, rubbing at his forehead and slouching in his seat. "I can't stop thinking about him. I can't stop thinking about Miles. If I was in the opposite position and someone had my kid. Had the chance to choose whether he lived or died." Lyle doesn't respond, just offers his ear. "In no time at all, I will have spent more time with Sully's kid than I will have with my own," Quaritch says, bitterly. "He may be five or six years old, but that's five or six more years than what I had with my kid. It's not fair that he should get to be happy. Not after everything he did."

Lyle doesn't dispute that. He just nods slowly.

"Maria was right," Quaritch says lowly, staring down at Sully's son with angry golden eyes, a frown on his lips. Lyle isn't so sure that his anger is directed toward the kid. "We know who to trust around here, that's for sure."

Lyle nods. "Yeah." A pause, then, "We will do whatever it is that you decide, boss. You just give us the word."

Quaritch nods slowly, staring down at the sleeping face of the boy in front of him, mind whirling. After another long silence, Quaritch, quietly asks, "Why do you think he called me that? Sempul?"

Lyle shakes his head, shrugging his shoulders a bit. "No idea. Maybe he was trying to remind you of what he thought was a promise to bring him back to his father. Or maybe in his delirium you reminded him of Sully. I mean, Walker made a good point, there is only a handful of people on this planet that are like us. That look like us and can pass off as one of us. And one of those people happens to be Sully. I don't know why he did it. There could be any host of reasons."

"You think that fucking machine scrambled his brains?" Quaritch asks, a tinge of bitter tone sneaking in. "Made him useless to us in any form?"

"I don't know," Lyle admits, looking down at the hands he steepled together between his knees. "I guess we'll find out when he wakes up just how much of him is still intact."