Part IIb -The Trojan Horse
[Master Post]
Part IIa
Quick A/N: this is the bit with het in it. For those readers who don't like het mixed in with their slash, you can conveniently ignore the last section in this part.
Things don't exactly go well after that. It feels like Jensen accidentally stepped on a hornet's nest, and no matter where he turns or what he does, he keeps getting stung. Everything he tries gets him a rebuke from Jared, delivered in snapping tones or with an impatient roll of the eyes, like he's too stupid to even tie his own damned shoes. Not that the Na'vi wear shoes, but whatever.
"Look, I'm trying here, okay?" he snaps after Jared calls him an idiot for what feels like the thousandth time that day. It's practically the first word that Jensen managed to learn because Jared uses it so damned much. Skawng, or moron. Retarded. Slow. You name it, the word covers it.
"Try again," Jared says, pointing at the huge log on which he's been trying to get Jensen to balance.
Jensen blows out a breath. "Right. Because I totally haven't been trying up until now."
It's not the balancing that's the problem, not really. This is pretty much like everything else from basic training. It's just that this log is, oh, several hundred feet in the air and Jared has him doing some pretty complicated shit while he's up there involving his spear. It's like martial arts katas, Jensen tells himself, nothing more than that, except that he can't quite shake the conviction that he's about to plummet to the forest floor and break his damned neck and then where will they be?
It doesn't help that things haven't exactly been going all that well back on the human side of things, either. Norm hasn't made a secret of his newfound feelings of hostility toward him, for reasons Jensen can only begin to guess at. It's not like he planned to get attacked by a goddamned giant panther and get chased right into the waiting arms of the local natives, but they way Norm's been acting it's like it was all this big secret conspiracy to get Jensen in with the Na'vi instead of him. Right now, Jensen would trade places with him in a heartbeat if it didn't involve this terrifying balancing act several hundred feet over the ground.
"You are thinking too much," Jared calls out from his very safe spot on a ledge formed by a huge gnarled knot in a tree trunk. "You must feel your body, let your feet do what they already know to do."
"God, I can't believe this," he mutters under his breath. He forces himself to keep his eyes closed the way Jared instructed, heart hammering against his ribs, the blood pulsing and roaring in his ears from pure, unadulterated fear. "If I fall and die, it'll be on your head!" he yells back.
"You will not fall," Jared's voice is suddenly right there in his ear, so quiet that it sends a thrill rushing through Jensen. He never even heard him approach, but his breath is hot on the back of Jensen's neck. "Keep your eyes closed, and bring the spear forward. Like this," he grasps Jensen's left shoulder, guides his right arm in the movement. "Your body is born with this. Feel the movement only."
"I don't suppose I can bond with the spear instead?"
Jared snorts. "Try again."
The movement flows a bit more easily the next time he tries, and eventually he finds a rhythm. Doubtless Norm is going to give him a hard time about this when he gets back, like dancing with spears is something he would already know about if he'd spent three years training for this, or whatever. Grace has mostly managed to keep the two of them apart for the past few days, but she's been increasingly busy preparing for their move up into the mountains, and inevitably it fell to Norm to help Jensen with some of the cultural stuff he's been trying to learn, mostly when it comes to language.
"I don't care what sort of pissing contest you boys have got going on," Grace spat at them just yesterday, "but have yourselves a mud wrestling match or whatever it is you need to do to get the testosterone out of your systems and work it out! I am not running a kindergarten here. You have a job to do, so act like adults and get it done. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have an administrator with his head so far up his ass I'm expecting to see burns on his face from his own gastric acid to deal with," she'd snarled before turning on her heel and heading up to Selfridge's office.
Jensen can't really blame her for being in a foul mood. Selfridge and Quaritch have both been going out of their way to get in the way of their moving their base of operations for the precise reason that Grace wanted to get them out of there in the first place. It's harder to supervise a group of scientists when they're several thousand feet above sea level after all. They're going to get out, though, and when it became obvious that there was nothing to be done about it, Quaritch took Jensen aside.
"Look, son, I know you like the good doctor and all that, but I need you to stay focused on your mission while you're up there. Augustine, she's got her head in a different game than ours, and it'll be easy for you to get caught up when all you've got is her and that dork Spellman to talk to. So you send word back regularly. You'll have working coms, so I expect regular reports. If you can't send them direct, then you give 'em to Trudy Chacon so she can give 'em back to me, you understand?"
"Yes, sir. I don't think it'll be a problem. Grace wants us to record everything anyway, so I can just send you back a copy of whatever it is I get on video."
Quaritch had clapped him on the shoulder at that. "Good man. If everything goes our way, we can rotate you back home in under a year, get you all set up again the way you want."
"Jensen!" Jared's voice jolts him back to the present. His eyes snap open and he flails for balance, feet sliding on the damp moss of the tree trunk. For a heart-stopping moment he's convinced he's falling, the spear drops from his hands to go spiralling toward the ground.
A hand closes over his wrist, pulls him upward, and Jared scowls at him. "You will have to fetch your spear," he says curtly, while Jensen tries desperately to catch his breath, feeling like his heart is trying to make a getaway through his throat. Jared points toward the nearest tree trunk. "You should start climbing. It is a long way down."
"Right."
By the time he emerges from the link late that evening it's too late even for dinner, and the lab is all but deserted except for the lone tech keeping an eye on his link. "You were out for a while," she says disapprovingly. "You should grab an MRE from the mess hall. Don't go to bed on an empty stomach.
He grimaces apologetically at her. "Sorry I made you miss dinner."
She shrugs. "Whatever. You'll make it up to me some other time."
"Flowers or chocolate?"
That makes her crack a smile. "No chocolate here, and I don't think the flowers would survive indoors, but I appreciate the thought. Now get out of here so I can close up. You okay?" she asks, features pulling into a frown as he gingerly pulls himself into his wheelchair.
He feels like warmed-over crap, but he nods. "Yeah, fine. Just tired. You'd be surprised how tiring it is, lying down all day."
"If you don't feel well, you should stop by the infirmary, get yourself checked out. Sometimes linking up affects you in ways you weren't expecting."
"Thanks for the advice. You have a good night now," he wheels himself carefully between the link beds and out through the door, bypasses the mess hall completely and just drags himself to bed.
Ìla'rey is surprised to find Tsu'tey waiting for him when Jensen has gone to sleep. He still finds it unnerving to watch Jensen fall asleep and just simply… stop, and so he usually leaves before Jensen's spirit leaves the body he has come to occupy during the day. Mo'at still believes it to be unnatural and against the will of Eywa, but already Jared is beginning to think there may be more to it than that. He remembers going to the school taught by dok-tor Grace, and there was never any question then of her not being truly who she was.
"We did not finish our conversation," Tsu'tey says seriously, and Ìla'rey sighs.
"No, we didn't," he agrees. "But I wonder what you could have to tell me that you haven't already shouted many times today, in front of my guest."
"He is your pupil, not your guest," Tsu'tey reminds him. "And you should remember that. I have seen how you look at him. I think you are letting your heart cloud your judgement where he is concerned. He is nice to look at, Ìla'rey, but he is not one of us."
"I know that!" Ìla'rey retorts hotly. "Every minute that passes is a reminder of this."
"I am not saying these things to spite you, despite what you seem to think. Your mother and father have put a great deal of trust in you for this. Everything rides upon your success."
"What's your point?"
Tsu'tey gives a small hiss of impatience and flicks his ears, tail twitching as though he'd like nothing more than to simply wrestle Ìla'rey to the ground like when they were children and solved all their problems by these means.
"My point is that you can't run away from this if Jensen can't be made to learn our ways. You and I have been friends since we were children. I know you better than you know yourself. I see you, Ìla'rey, and I know your heart. Already you care too much for this man, and if he will not see our ways you will not simply be allowed to run away this time, as you do from your other responsibilities. It is one thing to play at refusing the role of tsahik, but you are too old to keep doing it."
Ìla'rey snorts softly. "Not everyone can be as responsible as you," he says a little sullenly, then jumps a little when Tsu'tey leans forward and, lightning-fast, cuffs him hard behind the head. He yelps. "What was that for?"
"You are past the age for childish tantrums and sulking," his friend barks. "Your parents may humour you because they love you, but I am your friend and your equal and I will not do you such a disservice. This is an opportunity for you to prove yourself, but you must be prepared for the human to fail. And there are those among the tribe who are waiting only for that in order to throw this back in your mother's face."
Ìla'rey glances behind him almost involuntarily. He has no idea what will happen if Jensen doesn't pass the tests he is given, but he does know that the elders will not tolerate his presence if that happens. He squares his shoulders.
"I will not let him fail," he says determinedly. "I know that I am right about this, and regardless of what you think, I am not going to run away from this, either."
To his surprise, Tsu'tey claps him on the shoulder, grinning widely. "I am glad to hear it. Who knows, maybe this will finally be the task that convinces you to grow up."
Ìla'rey jabs him none too gently in the ribs, but he can't help grinning back. "I certainly hope not. Come on, there is still some light left in the day. Come swimming with me."
Tsu'tey heaves an exaggerated sigh, but he nods, and Ìla'rey doesn't miss the knowing look his friend directs at him before they take off at a run toward the river.
"God damn it, Selfridge, just admit you're trying to sabotage the operation and stop pussyfooting around like you're doing us a damned favour!"
Grace's voice is audible all the way outside the hangar as Jensen wheels himself forward on his last morning in the main compound. He has all his gear stowed in the small pack resting on his lap, everything else they're going to need already packed on Trudy's Samson and just waiting for them to take off. Jensen finds his boss facing off with his other boss just underneath the tilt-rotor. Selfridge looks entirely out of place here in his immaculately-pressed suit and slicked-back hair, and he's let himself be backed up into a not-so-metaphorical corner by Grace's wrath.
"Don't get your undies in a twist, Augustine," he says, palms up in a placating gesture. "I just want to make sure that everything is in order, and you haven't exactly followed protocol on this, may I remind you."
"Take your protocol and stick it up your ass, you little twit," Grace snarls, and Jensen can't help but admire her a little bit for it. "We've jumped through every single flaming hoop you put in front of us, and now you're going to stop us because our flight isn't authorized? You know who authorizes flights, Selfridge? You do. So when you said five days ago we could leave, it was up to you to put your flimsy, useless little signature down on the flight plan or tick 'yes' in the little box, or whatever you have to do to make sure this mission isn't put into jeopardy!"
"And that's exactly what I'm doing!" he snaps. "You have a fully-equipped laboratory right here on the compound. Why the hell do you need to haul up into the mountains where there's no one else and the lab isn't as well-designed, except if you're trying to keep things from us?"
"You know as well as I do that I am not the one who has problems with words like 'transparency' and 'accountability,' you little rat."
"Language, Augustine, language. You keep on calling people names, eventually someone's going to take it the wrong way and not want to play nice with you anymore, no matter what your credentials are."
Grace glares at him so hard that Jensen halfway expects to see the man wither right there on the spot, and is kind of impressed when he doesn't. "You're going to be getting regular reports. Now, get out of my way."
To Jensen's surprise, Selfridge backs off, but not before giving a none-too-subtle wink in his direction. "Bon voyage!" he calls out before sauntering back out the way Jensen came.
"Okay," Trudy calls out from where she's climbing into the cockpit. "Let's get this show on the road! Everyone get your re-breather masks on, locate the emergency spares in case something goes spectacularly wrong, and strap in! We've got a really long, really bumpy ride ahead of us, so I suggest you get comfortable!"
Jensen swings himself aboard, letting the crew fold up his chair and stow it on board. It didn't occur to him to ask about just how accessible the remote station would be, but it's too late to wonder about that now. If nothing else, it'll end up being Grace or Norm's problem, not that he's exactly enamoured of the idea of being hauled around like an inconvenient sack of potatoes. He straps himself into his seat, breath fogging up the plastic of his re-breather mask in the cool morning air. Grace and Norm's avatars are in the back of the tilt-rotor, looking peaceful, almost like they're asleep rather than completely inanimate. He wonders what his own body looks like when he's out in his avatar, if he looks like he's asleep, or like he's dead, like Tommy did moments before the incinerator claimed him.
He shakes his head, banishing the morbid thoughts, and stares outside instead at the scenery going by in a blur. As the tilt-rotor climbs the trees become a little more defined, stop rushing by quite as fast, and he's able to get a decent look at the surrounding countryside. The colours are different, somehow, though he can't tell if it's because his human eyes aren't adjusting to the light or because the mask is distorting them. He'll never be able to tell, he realizes, not unless his lungs magically adapt to the toxic atmosphere out here. The thought makes him oddly sad, like it's a reminder that he's never really going to know what it's truly like out here.
Eventually the tilt-rotor flies out far past the small patch of geography with which Jensen has become familiar, and heads out further over the treetops, droning determinedly forward into a swirling cloud of mist.
"See the magnetic formations?" Grace points to a huge rock formation whose arches are barely visible through the fog. "We're very close."
"Yeah, we are," Trudy agrees. She has Norm up in the cockpit with her, giving him a crash-course in piloting the Samson, just in case something happens and they need to get back in a hurry without her. "Look at the instruments," she tells him now. "See how they're fritzing out? We're in the flux vortex now. VFR from now on."
"What's VFR?" Norm asks.
"It means you gotta see where you're going," Trudy flicks a couple of switches and cracks her gum.
"But you can't see anything!" Norm protests.
"Exactly," she smirks. "Ain't that a bitch? Okay, boys and girls, this is it. Take a look for yourselves, because this never, ever gets old."
Jensen twists in his jump seat, cranes his neck in time to see a huge moss-covered boulder whiz by the open door of the chopper, half-obscured by the fog. It seems to come out of nowhere, a huge shadow that only takes form when it's mere yards away from them. His eyes widen in shock, even though he's seen pictures of the famous floating mountains of Pandora as well as vid footage, but seeing them up close like this is a whole different ballgame. The tilt-rotor bursts up through the mist, leaving it behind like it's shedding a blanket, and the blue sky appears above them, bright and dazzling. The mountains are enormous, far bigger than he could have imagined in his wildest dreams-enormous islands of rock that simply hang in the air like something out of a surrealistic painting, connected by straggly beards of vine. Water cascades over the rocks in a giant waterfall and disappears into a cloud of droplets hundreds of yards below, the ground completely invisible to the naked eye. Jensen shudders a little, forces his gaze back upward and away from the seemingly bottomless abyss below. It feels like the entire world has simply disappeared, that there’s nowhere left to go but up.
"Thank you for flying Air Pandora," Trudy deadpans as they come to hover over the makeshift landing strip on a promontory right near the mountains. It's little more than a field of high grass that sways and ripples under the tilt-rotors whirring blades. "The current temperature at our destination is a balmy eighty-two degrees and sunny. Please make sure your seats and trays are in the full upright and locked positions as we prepare for landing, and make no attempt to leave your seats until the captain has turned off the fasten seatbelt sign."
"Smartass," Grace smiles as Trudy brings them down in a landing so smooth Jensen barely feels so much as a jolt as they touch ground.
Trudy jumps from the cockpit before the engine even has time to start cooling off, pulls Jensen's wheelchair from the back and unfolds it, waiting for him to unstrap himself from his jump seat. He has to slide along the floor of the chopper before pulling each leg to dangle over the side, and she catches him by the armpits as he tries to slip to the ground. There's no dignified way to do this, and she grunts a little under the strain.
"Damn, you sure ate your Wheaties when you were a kid," she jokes, pivoting so that she can drop him into the chair. "You good?"
Jensen's landed a little awkwardly, but he manages to get himself straightened out without too much trouble. "Yeah, I'm good. Thanks," he tries not to sound too grudging about it. He screws up his face as he views the uneven terrain that leads to the two airlift modules -little more than bus-shaped shacks- that are going to serve as his home away from home for the next few months. "Oh, this is going to suck."
"I realize it's not the Ritz, but it'll serve," Grace says dryly. "As far as mobile outposts go, it's state-of-the-art, so you should count your blessings."
He gives her a flat look. "I wasn't talking about the accommodations. Hell, I've lived in way worse than that. I am, however," he motions toward the uneven ground, which is littered with rocks, "going to need some help getting there. No way I can get this chair over all of that without getting stuck or tipping over."
"Oh, right."
"Yeah, I get it. Not something you need to think about."
She swats him lightly behind the head in a clear message to watch his tone, but Trudy obligingly gets behind the chair and helps to push him toward the modules. It's bumpy going, but Trudy is apparently a little more wiry than she looks because they make pretty decent time, and are even the first to make it inside. Grace pushes past them a moment later.
"All right, I'm going to go power up the generator. Norm, I'm going to need you to go help Trudy and the others unpack the chopper. Jensen, since unpacking obviously isn't going to be your thing, you're going to help me set up the place so that it's inhabitable by humans again by tonight. Otherwise we're all going to have a pretty uncomfortable time of it."
"Aye aye," Jensen mutters, giving his chair a shove in order to get past the lip of the doorsill.
Inside it's a narrow fit for his chair, but he finds that if he manoeuvres carefully, he can make his way around pretty much the whole complex. Not that it's all that big, but it's still big enough that it would pose a challenge if the passageways were any narrower than they are. There are three main sections: the link room, which is set up pretty much the same as the one back at the main compound except with fewer beds, the main living area with closed-off bunks and a tiny kitchen and multiple refrigerators (only one of which, he notes with some amusement, has a note stuck to it that reads 'Only food in this fridge, please,' making him wonder just what else they've been in the habit of storing in the fridges here), and way in the back a tiny lab and another room that looks like it serves as a makeshift infirmary in case of need.
Grace has disappeared around the back, and a moment later he hears the generator whirr into life. She makes him wait before taking off his re-breather mask until she's sure that not only is the ventilation system working properly, but that the place hasn't sprung any leaks in her absence.
"I haven't been out here in at least seven months," she comments as she makes the rounds of the equipment, quietly giving him instructions on everything from switching on the computers to making sure that nothing was left behind in the refrigerators that might have gone bad. The fridges are empty, but he can respect the fact that she wants to be certain. There's nothing like having spoiled food sitting around for months to make a place like this really uninhabitable.
"What were you using it for then?"
"It gives us easier access to some parts of the moon. The mobile links are a real asset when we're collecting samples from far enough away that the flight alone would take us out past dark."
"And Quaritch doesn't let Trudy and the other pilots fly night missions," Jensen nods as understanding dawns.
"You got it. He has a point, too. The skies aren't safe even during the day, but at night there are all sorts of nocturnal predators which are much bigger and badder than a Samson. It only takes one to knock us out of the sky, after all. Okay, you can take your mask off now."
It's a relief to be rid of the confining plastic. Jensen pulls in a breath, tasting stale, recycled air, and finds himself wishing he could be back outside again. "When do you think I'll be able to go back out?"
"Eager, aren't you?" Grace smiles a little indulgently. She's been playing nice with him the more time he spends with the Na'vi, and he figures it's because she wants back in with the tribe. Not that he can blame her. It's her life's work, after all, and if their positions were reversed he isn't sure he wouldn't be doing the same thing. Maybe. He can't really imagine devoting his life to this sort of thing, and yet here he is. "I don't see why you can' t go back out tomorrow morning. You've been here for almost two days, and it's not like the Na'vi have any of the necessary technology to take care of your avatar when you're not in it."
"Yeah, about that...We're going to have to tell them, or I don't know, get them to let me come out of there at some point. I mean, if I'm gone for more than a couple of days that body's going to starve, right?"
"Nothing quite so terrible, but yeah, I wouldn't mind giving it a once-over, just to make sure everything's still working the way it should."
Norm comes into the lab at that point, sweating and out of breath. "Okay, we're all unloaded. Jensen, since you don't have all that far to go now, how about coming and helping us unpack the crates while Grace finishes setting up?" he says a little acidly, and Jensen can tell that the barb was intentional. He rolls his eyes.
"Certainly. It'll be my pleasure to assist you in whatever way you need," he doesn't bother masking the sarcasm in his tone. "Just point me in the direction of the heavy shit."
"Too late. I just thought you'd want to make yourself useful, for once."
"Funny, coming from you."
"All right, that's enough!" Grace snaps. "Honestly, we haven't been here five minutes and you two are already at it. Save it for later."
"He started it," Jensen mutters under his breath, already wheeling himself back toward the main entrance where Trudy and Norm have unloaded all the boxes from their trip.
"What?"
"Nothing!" he yells over his shoulder, then grabs the nearest box, marked "log books," and starts back toward the lab. The faster he goes, he tells himself, the faster they'll be done, and he can get out of the way of Norm and his vast repertoire of dirty looks.
It's a relief to get back in the saddle, both literally and figuratively. After two days of being in his own body, he awakens in his avatar to find himself absolutely starving. Also, to his dismay, he's completely alone. He's not sure why he was expecting Jared to be there, except maybe because he was around all the other times. It's still relatively early in the morning, even by the tribe's standards, but he doubts that Jared or any of the others are still asleep. He gets to his feet, pushes his way past the cloth door that keeps his quarters separate from the rest of the village, and goes in search of Jared and food, not necessarily in that order. Instead of either of those things, he finds Tsu'tey, sitting cross-legged by the entrance to what Jensen guesses is his own home, intent on the task of restringing his bow. He gives Jensen a slightly unfriendly look, but it's not nearly as hostile as before.
"Kaltxì," Jensen makes an effort to get the intonation right, and Tsu'tey inclines his head in acknowledgement.
"Good morning."
"You do speak English."
"It is more important that you learn our language," Tsu'tey says, looking back at his bow.
"I bet you're a real charmer with the ladies," Jensen mutters. "Look, I'm doing my best, but I'm kind of new at all of this, so how about cutting me some slack, here?"
Tsu'tey gives his bowstring an experimental tug. "I don't understand your words."
"I mean, be patient. I'm trying, here."
"Try harder."
Jensen blows out a breath. "Come on! What do you want from me?"
Tsu'tey gazes levelly at him. "You Sky People are all the same. You think only of yourselves, never of others. You don't think beyond self," he raps his fist against his chest. "Do you think of Ìla'rey? Do you think what you do?"
"You mean Jared?"
Tsu'tey nods. "He is my friend, from long time."
Jensen isn't sure where this is going, but he gets a sudden suspicion that this is important. "He mentioned that you two grew up together, right?" He approaches carefully, and when he isn't rebuffed he sits down, cross-legged, mimicking Tsu'tey's stance unconsciously. "So what am I missing here? Maybe you all think I'm an idiot -a skxawng, but I'm trying to learn. You don't expect your children to learn everything overnight, right? So help me out, here."
The warrior gives him a considering look, visibly weighing his options in his mind. "Ìla'rey is important man in Omaticaya tribe. I think you do not know he is important."
"He's supposed to be the new tsahik, right? Like Mo'at."
"The tsahik is most important person. More important than eytkan, even, which I will be when Eytukan is no more. Tsahik is always woman," he says, emphasising the word as though it's of vital importance.
"Jared isn't a woman."
"Yes."
Jensen throws up his hands. "Okay, no, I don't get it. If the tsahik is always a woman and Jared's a guy, then how come he's going to be the tsahik?"
"Tsahik is gift, not person. Mo'at believes Ila'rey has gift, but not all Omaticaya think this. There are many who think that Ila'rey should not be tsahik, that gift is not passed down there. You understand now?"
Jensen's head hurts, and he wishes he was having this conversation on a full stomach, but he thinks he gets it. "It's politics," he says. "There's a faction that doesn't want Jared to take his mother's place. I bet they've got themselves a girl they want in his place, a girl who's more favourable to them. Am I right?"
Tsu'tey inclines his head again, but says nothing to show he agrees or disagrees with Jensen's assessment. "You are test for Ìla'rey. He is to interpret the will of Eywa. He says there is sign, so now he must prove that he is right when he interprets sign."
"You mean when all those seed-things swarmed me? The atokirina, I mean?" Jensen's mind is whirling. "That was supposed to be a sign, right? Jesus," he breathes as things slowly start to become clear in his head. "Okay, so he sees all the seed things, and he thinks it's a sign that I'm supposed to stick around. His mother backs him up, but he's basically put everyone on the spot with that declaration," he's thinking aloud, putting two and two together as he goes. "So she has to do something to save face, and she gives me to him as a kind of, what, a task? A way to prove what he is?"
"Maybe you are not so stupid as we think," Tsu'tey is carefully not looking at him. "This is test. If you fail, Jensen, you will be sent back to your people, but Ìla'rey must stay here."
"And then everybody thinks that he doesn't have the gift, that he's basically a fraud and that his mother's judgement is clouded where he's concerned because he's her son and she loves him."
"I trust in Mo'at. She is a very wise tsahik, has always given good counsel to the tribe. You are trouble for her, for Ila'rey, even if you don't mean to cause it. They are family, Ila'rey is friend, bonded to me."
"Bonded?"
Tsu'tey scoffs quietly. "Ìla'rey tells me you do not have bond, where you come from, and so you don't understand. But it's important. You don't see."
"So you all keep telling me. I'm trying to see, I really am."
Tsu'tey brings his newly-strung bow around and jabs Jensen none too gently in the chest. "You see what you expect to see, because you do not pay attention. All children learn when they are small: you do not speak before you hear, you do not act before you see. Look, learn to see. Do not think before you look, think only afterward. Kame, it is not the same word in your language. You do not see as the Na'vi do."
Jensen gets up again. "Actually, I think I might be starting to get it." He bows his head in acknowledgement. "Thank you."
Tsu'tey rises as well. "Ìla'rey is with his parents. They will have food for you, if you are hungry."
When he finds Jared, it's in the middle of what looks like a heated, if quiet, conversation with his mother. The moment he catches sight of Jensen, though, he turns toward him, the discussion clearly brought to a standstill.
"You are awake! I thought perhaps they would not let you Dreamwalk again."
He shakes his head. "We're having a bit of a problem back home, but it's nothing Grace can't handle. We just needed a couple of days to sort it all out. Politics, you know how it goes. One side doesn't agree with how the other side is handling things."
Jared gives him a shrewd look. "I understand this, yes. There is food, if you are hungry."
Mo'at beckons him forward. "You may join us, Jensen. There is food for you at our hearth. Come and be welcome."
He bows. "Irayo. "
She smiles a little grimly. "You are learning, I see. This is good."
Breakfast is something of an awkward affair. Jensen is too worried about paying attention to his table manners to be able to do more than pay cursory attention to the conversation, and only manages to pick up a word here and there. Mo'at talks quietly with her husband for the most part, and Jared doesn't bother to translate. Jensen figures it's probably got to do with village affairs, and even though he's curious he figures that eventually he'll be able to understand this sort of thing, if he practices enough.
"So are we going to try riding again today?" he asks. They haven't gone back since the first day he tried and ended up on his ass more times than he could count, but he'll be damned if that direhorse is going to get the best of him. Jared looks a little surprised.
"You want to try again?"
Jensen grins. "Heck yeah. I mean, what's the point of learning if you don't make mistakes at first, right? Eventually I'll get the hang of it."
Jared tilts his head in that odd way the Na'vi have of agreeing with something even when they're not quite sure they've fully understood it. "We will go after you are done eating."
"Awesome. So did I miss anything while I was away? Nothing earth-shattering, I hope."
"Earth-" Jared gives him a questioning look.
"It's an expression. It means something really important."
Jared shrugs. "Nothing you would find important."
The implication is clear, that even though it's something Jared finds important, he doesn't think much of Jensen's judgement. Not yet, anyway. Jensen bristles a little bit.
"You'd be surprised at what I find important. Why don't you try me? I'm willing to bet that you've been catching a lot of grief because you have to babysit me instead of doing what it is you normally do around these parts. Am I wrong?"
The room has gone silent, and he can feel Mo'at and Eytukan's attention on him as well, but he's not going to back down now, knowing what he knows. Jared meets his gaze evenly.
"You are not wrong, no," he concedes. "But you don't understand what it means."
Jensen takes a calculated risk, concentrates on his words. "Oel ngati kmeie."
Jared's eyebrows raise a fraction. "Oel ngati kmeie," he says back, gently correcting Jensen's pronunciation. "I don't think you see," he says after a moment, "but I think you try, and that is a start."
"It still feels weird to just be talking into this camera sometimes. Like, is there a person on the other end? I don't even know. I keep assuming there will be someone at some point, but it's not always going to be the same person, either, and that just makes it even weirder, you know? Like, I wouldn't talk to my parents the same way I'd talk to Grace or to Quaritch. Hell, even this log, which is supposed to be a private diary or whatever, I don't know. Maybe someone's paying attention when I think they're not looking.
"I think I'm getting a little paranoid. Grace and Norm are contagious that way. I guess when you're a scientist in the middle of a military-run complex, it can start to feel like you're constantly surrounded by guns, I guess. I don't know, I like guns, so it's sort of hard to sympathize. I miss being back at the main base. Out here, it's just me and them and Trudy and Sasha, the tech, and she barely ever says a word to me. She seems to like Norm well enough, though, so I guess that's good. It's important to have someone to talk to out here, especially since she's the only one who can't really go anywhere. Trudy's got her Samson, and Norm and Grace and me can always leave here mentally even if we can't really leave physically. I think Norm likes her too, but it's not like he and I are having all that many heart-to-hearts about stuff lately. I know he and Trudy have hooked up a couple of times, but I don't really know how serious that whole thing is.
"The days are all kind of starting to blur together. I'm out there with Jared every day, but the Na'vi don't tell the time the same way we do. They watch the sun rise and set, and they have a specific way of looking at the passing seasons because it's important for the hunt and for what food and plants they have to go out and get, but the days of the week don't matter to them. It's not like they keep appointments or anything like that. They eat when it's time, judging more or less by the position of the sun and the stars and the shadow of the big planet that sometimes falls on the moon's surface. That's something else I've found hard to get used to: the idea that we're on a moon over a planet, rather than on a planet looking up at a moon. It's strange, the things I wasn't expecting, and that's one of them.
"We've been up here for nearly a week now, and there's no sign that we're going to be heading back anytime soon. Trudy is supposed to go in every two weeks to resupply, but Grace is keeping me on a short leash, which I get. She's a smart woman, she knows I answer to Quaritch and Selfridge as much as I do to her, and probably more to them than her, so she wants me where she can see me, for the most part. I can't really blame her for that. I like her, actually, which kind of surprised me. At first I just figured she was a bitch with control issues, and that's part of it, yeah, but there's more to her than that. I think she kind of likes me too, even though she acts like I'm a retarded nuisance. She does care, in her own way, even though sometimes her caring about my physical well-being is more about her personal convenience than about my welfare.
"Okay, that wasn't exactly fair. It's just frustrating, being the guy in the wheelchair around here. God, I really hope no one but me is actually listening to this. I'm not trying to throw a pity-party or anything, honest. It's just that a lot of the time they forget that just getting from one side of this damn place to the other is like running a freaking obstacle course, and they leave their shit lying around so that if I have to go to the can in the night it's a major hassle.
"Right. I'm not allowed to delete anything I say, Grace's rules, but I think that last part's gonna go. Posterity doesn't want to hear me whining about how difficult my life is or about the fact that my back hurts or the fact that the link beds here aren't exactly as comfortable as the ones back on base. So, forgive me, but it's gonna go."
Grace is leaning against the counter in the lab when Jensen switches off his video log and wheels himself back out. "Talking about me again?" she smirks, and he finds himself flushing, much to his embarrassment.
"You been listening in?"
"No," she fiddles with an unlit cigarette, rolling it gently between her fingers. "But you get this really guilty look every time you make a personal log and end up talking about me. I have two theories. The first is that you're saying nasty things about how I'm a controlling bitch, and the second is that you're secretly having really filthy fantasies about me. Personally," she interrupts his indignant squawk of denial, "I think my first theory is the more probable."
"I don't think you're a controlling bitch," he manages a little lamely.
She arches an eyebrow. "You don't? Then you're blind. But that's okay, you weren't hired for your observational skills, that much is for sure. So if you weren't talking about me, then you were talking about Jared, right?"
"Not this time," he grins. "Just stuff about what's been happening here. It's all kind of going by so fast, you know? It feels like we just got here yesterday, but it's already been a week."
"And it's going to keep going by just as fast. I feel like I just got here myself, but it's been over ten years. Nearly sixteen if you count the years I spent in cryo. I don't get news of home much anymore," Grace lights her cigarette, but the casual gesture can't hide the wistfulness in her tone. "You start to forget that there's anything else out there. It's easy to get lost in the rush here."
"Did you leave your family back home?" Jensen's suddenly curious.
She drops easily into a nearby chair. "My parents died a long time ago. I'm an only child, no cousins near my age. I left friends behind, sure, but no one else. My friends are all past retirement age now, and I think some of them have died. Probably more of them than I know of, since no one bothers to send messages anymore. Then again, I don't send messages home, either, and that sort of thing is a two-way street. How about you, Marine? You got people back on Earth?"
He nods. "My parents. I haven't heard from them yet, but it's only been a couple of weeks. I don't know, I thought for sure they'd have sent a message ahead, but I guess they didn't. Maybe they couldn't, or they didn't know how. They're not really good with the newer communication stuff. I set up an account for them to use, so maybe when I get back, there'll be something."
He doesn't mention the small, nagging fear that's been at the back of his mind ever since he first checked for messages and found none, that something's happened to his parents in the years he was gone. He can check that his money transfers have gone through, but that doesn't mean there's anyone left to collect them, leaving them to sit, unused, in some bank account on Earth.
Grace takes a drag off her cigarette, blows the smoke away from him in a gesture that's as useless as it is considerate. It's not like the smoke isn't going to sit there and stagnate until the ventilation system sucks it away and purifies it again. He wonders about that, sometimes, the obvious disregard for other people's well-being combined with an odd streak of caring. He can't wrap his mind around her.
"So what made you want to do this?" he asks, motioning at the lab in an all-encompassing gesture.
She grins. "Are you kidding? To get to be at the cutting edge of my field, light years ahead of all my colleagues? I would have given a kidney for that. Maybe more, I don't know. I got to pioneer this program, to be the first to drive an avatar, even before it was proven to be safe. I put this whole expedition together, the scientific part of it, anyway. This is my life's work, kid, right here in front of you. It's been thirty-five years in the making. I've been working on this since I was about your age, and nothing else has ever mattered to me as much as this."
He feels his eyes widen at that, but she's not really paying attention to him, lost in her own world, like she's just thinking aloud at him. When she does look at him, though, her eyes are almost frightening in their intensity, pupils blown wide. "You know, you're right at the age where you think you ought to be making a difference in the world, where every gesture matters, but how many people actually get to do that?" she says, leaning forward, cigarette forgotten. "Think about it, Jensen. What were your plans, except maybe to keep on following the orders of people you were never going to see, never going to meet? When I was your age, I got to be in on the ground floor of planning an expedition into the far reaches of space so we could save the whole damned human race, whether we deserve it or not. Who else can say that? Not many people, that's for damned sure!"
He's never seen Grace like this. Sure, he's seen her in a temper before, but now it's like she's come alive right before his eyes, her cheeks flushed, eyes bright with a passion he knew was there but never actually saw before now.
"I guess you must really love this place, huh?" he says after a moment's hesitation.
Their knees are already brushing together, an inevitability in this place where space is at a premium, and for a moment he wonders if she can feel it or if she was too caught up in what she was saying to notice just how close into his personal space she got with her impassioned little speech. She laughs, looks right into his eyes.
"Is that all you've got?" she asks softly. She puts one hand on his knee, and his gaze flicks down and back up. "Tell me, Jensen, what you really felt the first time you were out there. I saw you, don't forget."
Her excitement is infectious, and if he hadn't already been blushing before he'd definitely be doing so now. "I don't know... I mean, you've been there too, right?" he finds himself stammering just a little. "It's surreal, like everything is a little brighter, a little more intense, you know? I don't...I mean, I feel alive when I'm out there, and when I come back here it feels like none of this is really real anymore, like what's out there is so much bigger and more important than anything else. I'm not explaining this right."
"No, you're explaining it exactly right," she says, her tone still soft in spite of the heat in her words, and he thinks she might be moving her hand, but he's too busy staring at her mouth and he can't feel anything she's doing. "But that's one of the pitfalls of being an avatar driver. Everything out there is so much more intense than whatever it is we feel in here, that we forget that we're attached to these bodies too."
Jensen shifts in his chair, suddenly all too aware of her breath against his face. There's a hint of sweetness under the cigarette smoke, and the effect isn't unpleasant, just not what he was expecting. He starts a little as her hand travels to where he can definitely feel it. Her lips curl into a smile.
"I was wondering if that spinal injury had affected you like that."
He clears his throat, a little annoyed at being treated like a horny teenager out on his first date in the back of his father's car, but more than a little aroused too. "Yeah, no. No, everything's in perfect working order, thank you for asking."
Her smile widens at that. "Aren't you bashful all of a sudden? What, are you expecting me to believe that you've never been propositioned by a woman before? Or," she silences him when he starts to protest, "is it that you haven't been with anyone since you were wounded?" He stays silent at that, and she nods. "I see."
"Do you?"
"I think I get it."
"It's not like..." he fumbles for his words, flushed now with irritation as much as with arousal and embarrassment, and damn if the whole combination isn't making him even harder than he was, which isn't exactly helping. "I was in too much pain for the first few months, and then there was rehab and I was exhausted all the time, and then Tommy died..."
"And then you were literally frozen for six years and came directly here. So, if I calculate this right, you haven't been laid in over seven years?"
He bursts out laughing at that. "Jesus, that's way too long!" he says, and before either of them can change their minds he leans forward and hauls her into his lap, knees resting uncomfortably to either side of his thighs. She lets out a startled yelp but laughs as well, trying to keep her balance, grabbing onto his shoulders so as not to fall backward onto the floor.
"Don't take much convincing, do you?"
He's already wheeling himself backward toward the living quarters. God only knows where Norm is, but Jensen figures that he must be far enough away that this isn't going to attract his attention, at least not right away. The wheels of his chair hit the bunk backward, and Grace slithers off his lap, taking his t-shirt with her in one lithe motion.
"Hey!" he grins at her, pulls himself off the chair with both arms, and her eyes rake appreciatively over the tattoos he has on them. He beckons to her. "You want help with those clothes, you're going to have to come to me," he points out.
In a second she's in his lap again, one hand behind his head, the other cupping his chin just below the ear, licking her way over his lips, tongue pushing, demanding entrance. He's only happy enough to comply, bringing up one hand to press against her back between her shoulder blades, holding her close, using his other hand to brace himself so he won't just fall over. She breaks off the kiss a moment later, mouths her way down his neck, pausing to bite and suck at his collarbone. She shoves at him a little, hands moving down over his back and around to his stomach, thumbs smoothing themselves over his pectorals, toying with him, until he gets the message and lets her put him on his back on the bed. She grins, licks her lips as he busies himself unzipping the cotton sweater she likes to wear under her lab coat.
"You're lucky I like to top, Marine," she purrs.
"Lucky, yeah, that's what this is," he jokes, feeling her hips buck a little as his hands travel below the waistband of her pants, tugging them down along her thighs.
He pauses to admire the smooth expanse of skin there as she slides out of her top and leans over him again for another searing kiss, and he finds that not even seven years is enough time to get entirely out of practice at unfastening bra clasps.
"You're obviously an old hand at this," she teases, moving against him just enough that the fabric of his own pants causes a light friction that's just this side of intolerable, good and yet miles away from enough, and he can't quite get the leverage he needs in order to get more. "I hope you're not going to disappoint after this."
He lets out a frustrated grunt. "Try me and see..."
"Oh, a challenge. I like that."
"Christ," he groans, but he obligingly lifts himself up to catch her nipple gently between his teeth, letting the tip of his tongue play with it gently, enjoying the sharp intake of breath the gesture provokes. He can't quite get enough leverage to move her -nothing about this works exactly the way he remembers, which is frustrating enough- but she seems happy to take the lead and strip them both of what's left of their clothes, pulling away from him a little reluctantly in order to do so.
Before he knows it she's kneeling between his legs, nudging them apart with her knees, watching him a little bit the way he imagines she might watch a particularly fascinating specimen of animal in the forest, waiting to see what he's going to do, how he's going to react. Judging by her expression, though, so far it seems she likes what she sees.
"So has it really been seven years since you've been with a woman?" She slides one hand down over his dick, thumb moving lightly over the head as it twitches in her grasp, then moves her hand even lower down to play lightly with his balls, moving them between her fingers.
He squirms a little, wants nothing more than to move against her hand, and lets out a small, frustrated sound before he can help himself. "With a woman? Longer than that-Jesus!" he throws his head back with a strangled moan as she bends over him and swallows him down like his dick is the most appetizing thing she's seen in months, and for all he knows it might well be. For what feels like forever but is realistically only a few minutes all he's aware of is hot, wet heat enveloping him, the feel of her tongue sliding and swirling, probing and sucking, until all that's coming out of his mouth is a string of words each filthier than the last.
She comes up for air with a filthy-sounding pop, her lips cherry-red and glistening. "More than that with a woman?" she asks, and for a second he has no idea what she's even talking about, can't figure out how she's still capable of rational thought. "But only seven years since you got laid. Well, aren't you full of surprises, Marine."
He rolls his eyes, sits up just enough to get a bit of leverage to pull her close, so that she's straddling his hips. When he slides a hand between her legs, though, he finds her more than ready, slick and hot, and she arches into his touch willingly.
"You talk way too much," he tells her as a small moan spills from her lips. "I can't believe you're still thinking."
She thrusts against his hand as he works his fingers deeper, thumb tangling in the damp hair curling there, her own fingers digging into his shoulders for purchase. "You going to find a way to shut me up, then, Marine?"
"I just might, at that," he uses his free hand to cup her neck, pulls her in for a kiss, can taste a hint of bitter pre-come on her tongue.
He crooks his fingers, uses every trick he knows to make her come undone, to coax sounds from her throat that tell him he hasn't lost his touch at this. It doesn't take long before her face flushes bright red and she jerks and shudders against him, moaning and gasping and writhing on his fingers, her nails leaving marks in the skin above his tattoos.
"I take it back," she pants, still moving against him even once the aftershocks are over. "You're definitely not a disappointment."
"You're still talking," he points out, "so that means we're not done."
The follow-up is more awkward than he's used to. There was a time when he simply would have flipped her onto her back, but there's no way he can do that now. Instead she inches backward, lets herself slide down, impaling herself on his cock until he's enveloped in tight, slick heat. For a second she lets her head fall back, eyes closed, getting used to the feeling, and a drop of sweat trickles between her breasts, still heaving with each panting breath. He reaches up with one hand, wipes it away with the pad of his thumb, and she takes that as her signal to start moving, the lean muscles in her thighs clenching with every move. There's nothing now but the sound of their breathing, the quiet sound of skin against skin, the ever-increasing beat of his heart, pulse thrumming in his ears until it's all he can hear. His eyes close in spite of himself, head thrown back against his pillows, hands wrapped around Grace's hips to keep her steady as she fucks herself readily and hard on his cock. He hears her cry out, feels her clench convulsively around him, riding him through her second orgasm, does his best to keep moving for her until he feels her relax again, slumping a little as she tries to catch her breath. She slides off him and he doesn't quite whimper at the loss of contact, but it's a near thing until he feels her hand again, grasping his shaft, thoroughly slicked now from her riding him. It doesn't take much, barely a few quick jerks before he's gasping and coming with a quiet groan, spilling over her hand and himself in a heated rush.
When he opens his eyes again Grace is already reaching for her pants, smoothing the sweaty hair back from her face, although she looks pretty pleased with herself.
He takes a breath. "So that's it? Wham, bam, thank you ma'am?" he jokes lamely, feeling more than a little exposed like this, splayed out on his bed like she wants him on display, like some animal she's hunted down.
She grins. "The day is young, kid. There's still work to do. Don't tell me you expect flowers and cuddling?"
He snorts, groping for his pants which have landed in a puddle on the floor next to the bed. It's awkward, but he manages to hook a finger in the elastic band and pull them to him. "Romantic. No, I'm good, but usually I find women want more than just that."
She's already zipping up her cardigan. "Well, when we get back to base I might demand chocolate, except that there is none in this place. Until then, around here there's not much to be had in terms of privacy, and I don't know about you, but I don't especially feel like hanging around and having to explain this to Spellman, do you?"
Jensen rolls his eyes, yanks his pants up roughly around his hips, already feeling better with an extra layer between him and the outside world. "Don't think so. You make a habit of sleeping with the avatar drivers, just give 'em a test drive to see, or should I be flattered?"
She winks at him. "What do you think, Marine?"
And with that, she's gone.
Part IIc
Part IIa
Quick A/N: this is the bit with het in it. For those readers who don't like het mixed in with their slash, you can conveniently ignore the last section in this part.
Things don't exactly go well after that. It feels like Jensen accidentally stepped on a hornet's nest, and no matter where he turns or what he does, he keeps getting stung. Everything he tries gets him a rebuke from Jared, delivered in snapping tones or with an impatient roll of the eyes, like he's too stupid to even tie his own damned shoes. Not that the Na'vi wear shoes, but whatever.
"Look, I'm trying here, okay?" he snaps after Jared calls him an idiot for what feels like the thousandth time that day. It's practically the first word that Jensen managed to learn because Jared uses it so damned much. Skawng, or moron. Retarded. Slow. You name it, the word covers it.
"Try again," Jared says, pointing at the huge log on which he's been trying to get Jensen to balance.
Jensen blows out a breath. "Right. Because I totally haven't been trying up until now."
It's not the balancing that's the problem, not really. This is pretty much like everything else from basic training. It's just that this log is, oh, several hundred feet in the air and Jared has him doing some pretty complicated shit while he's up there involving his spear. It's like martial arts katas, Jensen tells himself, nothing more than that, except that he can't quite shake the conviction that he's about to plummet to the forest floor and break his damned neck and then where will they be?
It doesn't help that things haven't exactly been going all that well back on the human side of things, either. Norm hasn't made a secret of his newfound feelings of hostility toward him, for reasons Jensen can only begin to guess at. It's not like he planned to get attacked by a goddamned giant panther and get chased right into the waiting arms of the local natives, but they way Norm's been acting it's like it was all this big secret conspiracy to get Jensen in with the Na'vi instead of him. Right now, Jensen would trade places with him in a heartbeat if it didn't involve this terrifying balancing act several hundred feet over the ground.
"You are thinking too much," Jared calls out from his very safe spot on a ledge formed by a huge gnarled knot in a tree trunk. "You must feel your body, let your feet do what they already know to do."
"God, I can't believe this," he mutters under his breath. He forces himself to keep his eyes closed the way Jared instructed, heart hammering against his ribs, the blood pulsing and roaring in his ears from pure, unadulterated fear. "If I fall and die, it'll be on your head!" he yells back.
"You will not fall," Jared's voice is suddenly right there in his ear, so quiet that it sends a thrill rushing through Jensen. He never even heard him approach, but his breath is hot on the back of Jensen's neck. "Keep your eyes closed, and bring the spear forward. Like this," he grasps Jensen's left shoulder, guides his right arm in the movement. "Your body is born with this. Feel the movement only."
"I don't suppose I can bond with the spear instead?"
Jared snorts. "Try again."
The movement flows a bit more easily the next time he tries, and eventually he finds a rhythm. Doubtless Norm is going to give him a hard time about this when he gets back, like dancing with spears is something he would already know about if he'd spent three years training for this, or whatever. Grace has mostly managed to keep the two of them apart for the past few days, but she's been increasingly busy preparing for their move up into the mountains, and inevitably it fell to Norm to help Jensen with some of the cultural stuff he's been trying to learn, mostly when it comes to language.
"I don't care what sort of pissing contest you boys have got going on," Grace spat at them just yesterday, "but have yourselves a mud wrestling match or whatever it is you need to do to get the testosterone out of your systems and work it out! I am not running a kindergarten here. You have a job to do, so act like adults and get it done. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have an administrator with his head so far up his ass I'm expecting to see burns on his face from his own gastric acid to deal with," she'd snarled before turning on her heel and heading up to Selfridge's office.
Jensen can't really blame her for being in a foul mood. Selfridge and Quaritch have both been going out of their way to get in the way of their moving their base of operations for the precise reason that Grace wanted to get them out of there in the first place. It's harder to supervise a group of scientists when they're several thousand feet above sea level after all. They're going to get out, though, and when it became obvious that there was nothing to be done about it, Quaritch took Jensen aside.
"Look, son, I know you like the good doctor and all that, but I need you to stay focused on your mission while you're up there. Augustine, she's got her head in a different game than ours, and it'll be easy for you to get caught up when all you've got is her and that dork Spellman to talk to. So you send word back regularly. You'll have working coms, so I expect regular reports. If you can't send them direct, then you give 'em to Trudy Chacon so she can give 'em back to me, you understand?"
"Yes, sir. I don't think it'll be a problem. Grace wants us to record everything anyway, so I can just send you back a copy of whatever it is I get on video."
Quaritch had clapped him on the shoulder at that. "Good man. If everything goes our way, we can rotate you back home in under a year, get you all set up again the way you want."
"Jensen!" Jared's voice jolts him back to the present. His eyes snap open and he flails for balance, feet sliding on the damp moss of the tree trunk. For a heart-stopping moment he's convinced he's falling, the spear drops from his hands to go spiralling toward the ground.
A hand closes over his wrist, pulls him upward, and Jared scowls at him. "You will have to fetch your spear," he says curtly, while Jensen tries desperately to catch his breath, feeling like his heart is trying to make a getaway through his throat. Jared points toward the nearest tree trunk. "You should start climbing. It is a long way down."
"Right."
By the time he emerges from the link late that evening it's too late even for dinner, and the lab is all but deserted except for the lone tech keeping an eye on his link. "You were out for a while," she says disapprovingly. "You should grab an MRE from the mess hall. Don't go to bed on an empty stomach.
He grimaces apologetically at her. "Sorry I made you miss dinner."
She shrugs. "Whatever. You'll make it up to me some other time."
"Flowers or chocolate?"
That makes her crack a smile. "No chocolate here, and I don't think the flowers would survive indoors, but I appreciate the thought. Now get out of here so I can close up. You okay?" she asks, features pulling into a frown as he gingerly pulls himself into his wheelchair.
He feels like warmed-over crap, but he nods. "Yeah, fine. Just tired. You'd be surprised how tiring it is, lying down all day."
"If you don't feel well, you should stop by the infirmary, get yourself checked out. Sometimes linking up affects you in ways you weren't expecting."
"Thanks for the advice. You have a good night now," he wheels himself carefully between the link beds and out through the door, bypasses the mess hall completely and just drags himself to bed.
Ìla'rey is surprised to find Tsu'tey waiting for him when Jensen has gone to sleep. He still finds it unnerving to watch Jensen fall asleep and just simply… stop, and so he usually leaves before Jensen's spirit leaves the body he has come to occupy during the day. Mo'at still believes it to be unnatural and against the will of Eywa, but already Jared is beginning to think there may be more to it than that. He remembers going to the school taught by dok-tor Grace, and there was never any question then of her not being truly who she was.
"We did not finish our conversation," Tsu'tey says seriously, and Ìla'rey sighs.
"No, we didn't," he agrees. "But I wonder what you could have to tell me that you haven't already shouted many times today, in front of my guest."
"He is your pupil, not your guest," Tsu'tey reminds him. "And you should remember that. I have seen how you look at him. I think you are letting your heart cloud your judgement where he is concerned. He is nice to look at, Ìla'rey, but he is not one of us."
"I know that!" Ìla'rey retorts hotly. "Every minute that passes is a reminder of this."
"I am not saying these things to spite you, despite what you seem to think. Your mother and father have put a great deal of trust in you for this. Everything rides upon your success."
"What's your point?"
Tsu'tey gives a small hiss of impatience and flicks his ears, tail twitching as though he'd like nothing more than to simply wrestle Ìla'rey to the ground like when they were children and solved all their problems by these means.
"My point is that you can't run away from this if Jensen can't be made to learn our ways. You and I have been friends since we were children. I know you better than you know yourself. I see you, Ìla'rey, and I know your heart. Already you care too much for this man, and if he will not see our ways you will not simply be allowed to run away this time, as you do from your other responsibilities. It is one thing to play at refusing the role of tsahik, but you are too old to keep doing it."
Ìla'rey snorts softly. "Not everyone can be as responsible as you," he says a little sullenly, then jumps a little when Tsu'tey leans forward and, lightning-fast, cuffs him hard behind the head. He yelps. "What was that for?"
"You are past the age for childish tantrums and sulking," his friend barks. "Your parents may humour you because they love you, but I am your friend and your equal and I will not do you such a disservice. This is an opportunity for you to prove yourself, but you must be prepared for the human to fail. And there are those among the tribe who are waiting only for that in order to throw this back in your mother's face."
Ìla'rey glances behind him almost involuntarily. He has no idea what will happen if Jensen doesn't pass the tests he is given, but he does know that the elders will not tolerate his presence if that happens. He squares his shoulders.
"I will not let him fail," he says determinedly. "I know that I am right about this, and regardless of what you think, I am not going to run away from this, either."
To his surprise, Tsu'tey claps him on the shoulder, grinning widely. "I am glad to hear it. Who knows, maybe this will finally be the task that convinces you to grow up."
Ìla'rey jabs him none too gently in the ribs, but he can't help grinning back. "I certainly hope not. Come on, there is still some light left in the day. Come swimming with me."
Tsu'tey heaves an exaggerated sigh, but he nods, and Ìla'rey doesn't miss the knowing look his friend directs at him before they take off at a run toward the river.
"God damn it, Selfridge, just admit you're trying to sabotage the operation and stop pussyfooting around like you're doing us a damned favour!"
Grace's voice is audible all the way outside the hangar as Jensen wheels himself forward on his last morning in the main compound. He has all his gear stowed in the small pack resting on his lap, everything else they're going to need already packed on Trudy's Samson and just waiting for them to take off. Jensen finds his boss facing off with his other boss just underneath the tilt-rotor. Selfridge looks entirely out of place here in his immaculately-pressed suit and slicked-back hair, and he's let himself be backed up into a not-so-metaphorical corner by Grace's wrath.
"Don't get your undies in a twist, Augustine," he says, palms up in a placating gesture. "I just want to make sure that everything is in order, and you haven't exactly followed protocol on this, may I remind you."
"Take your protocol and stick it up your ass, you little twit," Grace snarls, and Jensen can't help but admire her a little bit for it. "We've jumped through every single flaming hoop you put in front of us, and now you're going to stop us because our flight isn't authorized? You know who authorizes flights, Selfridge? You do. So when you said five days ago we could leave, it was up to you to put your flimsy, useless little signature down on the flight plan or tick 'yes' in the little box, or whatever you have to do to make sure this mission isn't put into jeopardy!"
"And that's exactly what I'm doing!" he snaps. "You have a fully-equipped laboratory right here on the compound. Why the hell do you need to haul up into the mountains where there's no one else and the lab isn't as well-designed, except if you're trying to keep things from us?"
"You know as well as I do that I am not the one who has problems with words like 'transparency' and 'accountability,' you little rat."
"Language, Augustine, language. You keep on calling people names, eventually someone's going to take it the wrong way and not want to play nice with you anymore, no matter what your credentials are."
Grace glares at him so hard that Jensen halfway expects to see the man wither right there on the spot, and is kind of impressed when he doesn't. "You're going to be getting regular reports. Now, get out of my way."
To Jensen's surprise, Selfridge backs off, but not before giving a none-too-subtle wink in his direction. "Bon voyage!" he calls out before sauntering back out the way Jensen came.
"Okay," Trudy calls out from where she's climbing into the cockpit. "Let's get this show on the road! Everyone get your re-breather masks on, locate the emergency spares in case something goes spectacularly wrong, and strap in! We've got a really long, really bumpy ride ahead of us, so I suggest you get comfortable!"
Jensen swings himself aboard, letting the crew fold up his chair and stow it on board. It didn't occur to him to ask about just how accessible the remote station would be, but it's too late to wonder about that now. If nothing else, it'll end up being Grace or Norm's problem, not that he's exactly enamoured of the idea of being hauled around like an inconvenient sack of potatoes. He straps himself into his seat, breath fogging up the plastic of his re-breather mask in the cool morning air. Grace and Norm's avatars are in the back of the tilt-rotor, looking peaceful, almost like they're asleep rather than completely inanimate. He wonders what his own body looks like when he's out in his avatar, if he looks like he's asleep, or like he's dead, like Tommy did moments before the incinerator claimed him.
He shakes his head, banishing the morbid thoughts, and stares outside instead at the scenery going by in a blur. As the tilt-rotor climbs the trees become a little more defined, stop rushing by quite as fast, and he's able to get a decent look at the surrounding countryside. The colours are different, somehow, though he can't tell if it's because his human eyes aren't adjusting to the light or because the mask is distorting them. He'll never be able to tell, he realizes, not unless his lungs magically adapt to the toxic atmosphere out here. The thought makes him oddly sad, like it's a reminder that he's never really going to know what it's truly like out here.
Eventually the tilt-rotor flies out far past the small patch of geography with which Jensen has become familiar, and heads out further over the treetops, droning determinedly forward into a swirling cloud of mist.
"See the magnetic formations?" Grace points to a huge rock formation whose arches are barely visible through the fog. "We're very close."
"Yeah, we are," Trudy agrees. She has Norm up in the cockpit with her, giving him a crash-course in piloting the Samson, just in case something happens and they need to get back in a hurry without her. "Look at the instruments," she tells him now. "See how they're fritzing out? We're in the flux vortex now. VFR from now on."
"What's VFR?" Norm asks.
"It means you gotta see where you're going," Trudy flicks a couple of switches and cracks her gum.
"But you can't see anything!" Norm protests.
"Exactly," she smirks. "Ain't that a bitch? Okay, boys and girls, this is it. Take a look for yourselves, because this never, ever gets old."
Jensen twists in his jump seat, cranes his neck in time to see a huge moss-covered boulder whiz by the open door of the chopper, half-obscured by the fog. It seems to come out of nowhere, a huge shadow that only takes form when it's mere yards away from them. His eyes widen in shock, even though he's seen pictures of the famous floating mountains of Pandora as well as vid footage, but seeing them up close like this is a whole different ballgame. The tilt-rotor bursts up through the mist, leaving it behind like it's shedding a blanket, and the blue sky appears above them, bright and dazzling. The mountains are enormous, far bigger than he could have imagined in his wildest dreams-enormous islands of rock that simply hang in the air like something out of a surrealistic painting, connected by straggly beards of vine. Water cascades over the rocks in a giant waterfall and disappears into a cloud of droplets hundreds of yards below, the ground completely invisible to the naked eye. Jensen shudders a little, forces his gaze back upward and away from the seemingly bottomless abyss below. It feels like the entire world has simply disappeared, that there’s nowhere left to go but up.
"Thank you for flying Air Pandora," Trudy deadpans as they come to hover over the makeshift landing strip on a promontory right near the mountains. It's little more than a field of high grass that sways and ripples under the tilt-rotors whirring blades. "The current temperature at our destination is a balmy eighty-two degrees and sunny. Please make sure your seats and trays are in the full upright and locked positions as we prepare for landing, and make no attempt to leave your seats until the captain has turned off the fasten seatbelt sign."
"Smartass," Grace smiles as Trudy brings them down in a landing so smooth Jensen barely feels so much as a jolt as they touch ground.
Trudy jumps from the cockpit before the engine even has time to start cooling off, pulls Jensen's wheelchair from the back and unfolds it, waiting for him to unstrap himself from his jump seat. He has to slide along the floor of the chopper before pulling each leg to dangle over the side, and she catches him by the armpits as he tries to slip to the ground. There's no dignified way to do this, and she grunts a little under the strain.
"Damn, you sure ate your Wheaties when you were a kid," she jokes, pivoting so that she can drop him into the chair. "You good?"
Jensen's landed a little awkwardly, but he manages to get himself straightened out without too much trouble. "Yeah, I'm good. Thanks," he tries not to sound too grudging about it. He screws up his face as he views the uneven terrain that leads to the two airlift modules -little more than bus-shaped shacks- that are going to serve as his home away from home for the next few months. "Oh, this is going to suck."
"I realize it's not the Ritz, but it'll serve," Grace says dryly. "As far as mobile outposts go, it's state-of-the-art, so you should count your blessings."
He gives her a flat look. "I wasn't talking about the accommodations. Hell, I've lived in way worse than that. I am, however," he motions toward the uneven ground, which is littered with rocks, "going to need some help getting there. No way I can get this chair over all of that without getting stuck or tipping over."
"Oh, right."
"Yeah, I get it. Not something you need to think about."
She swats him lightly behind the head in a clear message to watch his tone, but Trudy obligingly gets behind the chair and helps to push him toward the modules. It's bumpy going, but Trudy is apparently a little more wiry than she looks because they make pretty decent time, and are even the first to make it inside. Grace pushes past them a moment later.
"All right, I'm going to go power up the generator. Norm, I'm going to need you to go help Trudy and the others unpack the chopper. Jensen, since unpacking obviously isn't going to be your thing, you're going to help me set up the place so that it's inhabitable by humans again by tonight. Otherwise we're all going to have a pretty uncomfortable time of it."
"Aye aye," Jensen mutters, giving his chair a shove in order to get past the lip of the doorsill.
Inside it's a narrow fit for his chair, but he finds that if he manoeuvres carefully, he can make his way around pretty much the whole complex. Not that it's all that big, but it's still big enough that it would pose a challenge if the passageways were any narrower than they are. There are three main sections: the link room, which is set up pretty much the same as the one back at the main compound except with fewer beds, the main living area with closed-off bunks and a tiny kitchen and multiple refrigerators (only one of which, he notes with some amusement, has a note stuck to it that reads 'Only food in this fridge, please,' making him wonder just what else they've been in the habit of storing in the fridges here), and way in the back a tiny lab and another room that looks like it serves as a makeshift infirmary in case of need.
Grace has disappeared around the back, and a moment later he hears the generator whirr into life. She makes him wait before taking off his re-breather mask until she's sure that not only is the ventilation system working properly, but that the place hasn't sprung any leaks in her absence.
"I haven't been out here in at least seven months," she comments as she makes the rounds of the equipment, quietly giving him instructions on everything from switching on the computers to making sure that nothing was left behind in the refrigerators that might have gone bad. The fridges are empty, but he can respect the fact that she wants to be certain. There's nothing like having spoiled food sitting around for months to make a place like this really uninhabitable.
"What were you using it for then?"
"It gives us easier access to some parts of the moon. The mobile links are a real asset when we're collecting samples from far enough away that the flight alone would take us out past dark."
"And Quaritch doesn't let Trudy and the other pilots fly night missions," Jensen nods as understanding dawns.
"You got it. He has a point, too. The skies aren't safe even during the day, but at night there are all sorts of nocturnal predators which are much bigger and badder than a Samson. It only takes one to knock us out of the sky, after all. Okay, you can take your mask off now."
It's a relief to be rid of the confining plastic. Jensen pulls in a breath, tasting stale, recycled air, and finds himself wishing he could be back outside again. "When do you think I'll be able to go back out?"
"Eager, aren't you?" Grace smiles a little indulgently. She's been playing nice with him the more time he spends with the Na'vi, and he figures it's because she wants back in with the tribe. Not that he can blame her. It's her life's work, after all, and if their positions were reversed he isn't sure he wouldn't be doing the same thing. Maybe. He can't really imagine devoting his life to this sort of thing, and yet here he is. "I don't see why you can' t go back out tomorrow morning. You've been here for almost two days, and it's not like the Na'vi have any of the necessary technology to take care of your avatar when you're not in it."
"Yeah, about that...We're going to have to tell them, or I don't know, get them to let me come out of there at some point. I mean, if I'm gone for more than a couple of days that body's going to starve, right?"
"Nothing quite so terrible, but yeah, I wouldn't mind giving it a once-over, just to make sure everything's still working the way it should."
Norm comes into the lab at that point, sweating and out of breath. "Okay, we're all unloaded. Jensen, since you don't have all that far to go now, how about coming and helping us unpack the crates while Grace finishes setting up?" he says a little acidly, and Jensen can tell that the barb was intentional. He rolls his eyes.
"Certainly. It'll be my pleasure to assist you in whatever way you need," he doesn't bother masking the sarcasm in his tone. "Just point me in the direction of the heavy shit."
"Too late. I just thought you'd want to make yourself useful, for once."
"Funny, coming from you."
"All right, that's enough!" Grace snaps. "Honestly, we haven't been here five minutes and you two are already at it. Save it for later."
"He started it," Jensen mutters under his breath, already wheeling himself back toward the main entrance where Trudy and Norm have unloaded all the boxes from their trip.
"What?"
"Nothing!" he yells over his shoulder, then grabs the nearest box, marked "log books," and starts back toward the lab. The faster he goes, he tells himself, the faster they'll be done, and he can get out of the way of Norm and his vast repertoire of dirty looks.
It's a relief to get back in the saddle, both literally and figuratively. After two days of being in his own body, he awakens in his avatar to find himself absolutely starving. Also, to his dismay, he's completely alone. He's not sure why he was expecting Jared to be there, except maybe because he was around all the other times. It's still relatively early in the morning, even by the tribe's standards, but he doubts that Jared or any of the others are still asleep. He gets to his feet, pushes his way past the cloth door that keeps his quarters separate from the rest of the village, and goes in search of Jared and food, not necessarily in that order. Instead of either of those things, he finds Tsu'tey, sitting cross-legged by the entrance to what Jensen guesses is his own home, intent on the task of restringing his bow. He gives Jensen a slightly unfriendly look, but it's not nearly as hostile as before.
"Kaltxì," Jensen makes an effort to get the intonation right, and Tsu'tey inclines his head in acknowledgement.
"Good morning."
"You do speak English."
"It is more important that you learn our language," Tsu'tey says, looking back at his bow.
"I bet you're a real charmer with the ladies," Jensen mutters. "Look, I'm doing my best, but I'm kind of new at all of this, so how about cutting me some slack, here?"
Tsu'tey gives his bowstring an experimental tug. "I don't understand your words."
"I mean, be patient. I'm trying, here."
"Try harder."
Jensen blows out a breath. "Come on! What do you want from me?"
Tsu'tey gazes levelly at him. "You Sky People are all the same. You think only of yourselves, never of others. You don't think beyond self," he raps his fist against his chest. "Do you think of Ìla'rey? Do you think what you do?"
"You mean Jared?"
Tsu'tey nods. "He is my friend, from long time."
Jensen isn't sure where this is going, but he gets a sudden suspicion that this is important. "He mentioned that you two grew up together, right?" He approaches carefully, and when he isn't rebuffed he sits down, cross-legged, mimicking Tsu'tey's stance unconsciously. "So what am I missing here? Maybe you all think I'm an idiot -a skxawng, but I'm trying to learn. You don't expect your children to learn everything overnight, right? So help me out, here."
The warrior gives him a considering look, visibly weighing his options in his mind. "Ìla'rey is important man in Omaticaya tribe. I think you do not know he is important."
"He's supposed to be the new tsahik, right? Like Mo'at."
"The tsahik is most important person. More important than eytkan, even, which I will be when Eytukan is no more. Tsahik is always woman," he says, emphasising the word as though it's of vital importance.
"Jared isn't a woman."
"Yes."
Jensen throws up his hands. "Okay, no, I don't get it. If the tsahik is always a woman and Jared's a guy, then how come he's going to be the tsahik?"
"Tsahik is gift, not person. Mo'at believes Ila'rey has gift, but not all Omaticaya think this. There are many who think that Ila'rey should not be tsahik, that gift is not passed down there. You understand now?"
Jensen's head hurts, and he wishes he was having this conversation on a full stomach, but he thinks he gets it. "It's politics," he says. "There's a faction that doesn't want Jared to take his mother's place. I bet they've got themselves a girl they want in his place, a girl who's more favourable to them. Am I right?"
Tsu'tey inclines his head again, but says nothing to show he agrees or disagrees with Jensen's assessment. "You are test for Ìla'rey. He is to interpret the will of Eywa. He says there is sign, so now he must prove that he is right when he interprets sign."
"You mean when all those seed-things swarmed me? The atokirina, I mean?" Jensen's mind is whirling. "That was supposed to be a sign, right? Jesus," he breathes as things slowly start to become clear in his head. "Okay, so he sees all the seed things, and he thinks it's a sign that I'm supposed to stick around. His mother backs him up, but he's basically put everyone on the spot with that declaration," he's thinking aloud, putting two and two together as he goes. "So she has to do something to save face, and she gives me to him as a kind of, what, a task? A way to prove what he is?"
"Maybe you are not so stupid as we think," Tsu'tey is carefully not looking at him. "This is test. If you fail, Jensen, you will be sent back to your people, but Ìla'rey must stay here."
"And then everybody thinks that he doesn't have the gift, that he's basically a fraud and that his mother's judgement is clouded where he's concerned because he's her son and she loves him."
"I trust in Mo'at. She is a very wise tsahik, has always given good counsel to the tribe. You are trouble for her, for Ila'rey, even if you don't mean to cause it. They are family, Ila'rey is friend, bonded to me."
"Bonded?"
Tsu'tey scoffs quietly. "Ìla'rey tells me you do not have bond, where you come from, and so you don't understand. But it's important. You don't see."
"So you all keep telling me. I'm trying to see, I really am."
Tsu'tey brings his newly-strung bow around and jabs Jensen none too gently in the chest. "You see what you expect to see, because you do not pay attention. All children learn when they are small: you do not speak before you hear, you do not act before you see. Look, learn to see. Do not think before you look, think only afterward. Kame, it is not the same word in your language. You do not see as the Na'vi do."
Jensen gets up again. "Actually, I think I might be starting to get it." He bows his head in acknowledgement. "Thank you."
Tsu'tey rises as well. "Ìla'rey is with his parents. They will have food for you, if you are hungry."
When he finds Jared, it's in the middle of what looks like a heated, if quiet, conversation with his mother. The moment he catches sight of Jensen, though, he turns toward him, the discussion clearly brought to a standstill.
"You are awake! I thought perhaps they would not let you Dreamwalk again."
He shakes his head. "We're having a bit of a problem back home, but it's nothing Grace can't handle. We just needed a couple of days to sort it all out. Politics, you know how it goes. One side doesn't agree with how the other side is handling things."
Jared gives him a shrewd look. "I understand this, yes. There is food, if you are hungry."
Mo'at beckons him forward. "You may join us, Jensen. There is food for you at our hearth. Come and be welcome."
He bows. "Irayo. "
She smiles a little grimly. "You are learning, I see. This is good."
Breakfast is something of an awkward affair. Jensen is too worried about paying attention to his table manners to be able to do more than pay cursory attention to the conversation, and only manages to pick up a word here and there. Mo'at talks quietly with her husband for the most part, and Jared doesn't bother to translate. Jensen figures it's probably got to do with village affairs, and even though he's curious he figures that eventually he'll be able to understand this sort of thing, if he practices enough.
"So are we going to try riding again today?" he asks. They haven't gone back since the first day he tried and ended up on his ass more times than he could count, but he'll be damned if that direhorse is going to get the best of him. Jared looks a little surprised.
"You want to try again?"
Jensen grins. "Heck yeah. I mean, what's the point of learning if you don't make mistakes at first, right? Eventually I'll get the hang of it."
Jared tilts his head in that odd way the Na'vi have of agreeing with something even when they're not quite sure they've fully understood it. "We will go after you are done eating."
"Awesome. So did I miss anything while I was away? Nothing earth-shattering, I hope."
"Earth-" Jared gives him a questioning look.
"It's an expression. It means something really important."
Jared shrugs. "Nothing you would find important."
The implication is clear, that even though it's something Jared finds important, he doesn't think much of Jensen's judgement. Not yet, anyway. Jensen bristles a little bit.
"You'd be surprised at what I find important. Why don't you try me? I'm willing to bet that you've been catching a lot of grief because you have to babysit me instead of doing what it is you normally do around these parts. Am I wrong?"
The room has gone silent, and he can feel Mo'at and Eytukan's attention on him as well, but he's not going to back down now, knowing what he knows. Jared meets his gaze evenly.
"You are not wrong, no," he concedes. "But you don't understand what it means."
Jensen takes a calculated risk, concentrates on his words. "Oel ngati kmeie."
Jared's eyebrows raise a fraction. "Oel ngati kmeie," he says back, gently correcting Jensen's pronunciation. "I don't think you see," he says after a moment, "but I think you try, and that is a start."
"It still feels weird to just be talking into this camera sometimes. Like, is there a person on the other end? I don't even know. I keep assuming there will be someone at some point, but it's not always going to be the same person, either, and that just makes it even weirder, you know? Like, I wouldn't talk to my parents the same way I'd talk to Grace or to Quaritch. Hell, even this log, which is supposed to be a private diary or whatever, I don't know. Maybe someone's paying attention when I think they're not looking.
"I think I'm getting a little paranoid. Grace and Norm are contagious that way. I guess when you're a scientist in the middle of a military-run complex, it can start to feel like you're constantly surrounded by guns, I guess. I don't know, I like guns, so it's sort of hard to sympathize. I miss being back at the main base. Out here, it's just me and them and Trudy and Sasha, the tech, and she barely ever says a word to me. She seems to like Norm well enough, though, so I guess that's good. It's important to have someone to talk to out here, especially since she's the only one who can't really go anywhere. Trudy's got her Samson, and Norm and Grace and me can always leave here mentally even if we can't really leave physically. I think Norm likes her too, but it's not like he and I are having all that many heart-to-hearts about stuff lately. I know he and Trudy have hooked up a couple of times, but I don't really know how serious that whole thing is.
"The days are all kind of starting to blur together. I'm out there with Jared every day, but the Na'vi don't tell the time the same way we do. They watch the sun rise and set, and they have a specific way of looking at the passing seasons because it's important for the hunt and for what food and plants they have to go out and get, but the days of the week don't matter to them. It's not like they keep appointments or anything like that. They eat when it's time, judging more or less by the position of the sun and the stars and the shadow of the big planet that sometimes falls on the moon's surface. That's something else I've found hard to get used to: the idea that we're on a moon over a planet, rather than on a planet looking up at a moon. It's strange, the things I wasn't expecting, and that's one of them.
"We've been up here for nearly a week now, and there's no sign that we're going to be heading back anytime soon. Trudy is supposed to go in every two weeks to resupply, but Grace is keeping me on a short leash, which I get. She's a smart woman, she knows I answer to Quaritch and Selfridge as much as I do to her, and probably more to them than her, so she wants me where she can see me, for the most part. I can't really blame her for that. I like her, actually, which kind of surprised me. At first I just figured she was a bitch with control issues, and that's part of it, yeah, but there's more to her than that. I think she kind of likes me too, even though she acts like I'm a retarded nuisance. She does care, in her own way, even though sometimes her caring about my physical well-being is more about her personal convenience than about my welfare.
"Okay, that wasn't exactly fair. It's just frustrating, being the guy in the wheelchair around here. God, I really hope no one but me is actually listening to this. I'm not trying to throw a pity-party or anything, honest. It's just that a lot of the time they forget that just getting from one side of this damn place to the other is like running a freaking obstacle course, and they leave their shit lying around so that if I have to go to the can in the night it's a major hassle.
"Right. I'm not allowed to delete anything I say, Grace's rules, but I think that last part's gonna go. Posterity doesn't want to hear me whining about how difficult my life is or about the fact that my back hurts or the fact that the link beds here aren't exactly as comfortable as the ones back on base. So, forgive me, but it's gonna go."
Grace is leaning against the counter in the lab when Jensen switches off his video log and wheels himself back out. "Talking about me again?" she smirks, and he finds himself flushing, much to his embarrassment.
"You been listening in?"
"No," she fiddles with an unlit cigarette, rolling it gently between her fingers. "But you get this really guilty look every time you make a personal log and end up talking about me. I have two theories. The first is that you're saying nasty things about how I'm a controlling bitch, and the second is that you're secretly having really filthy fantasies about me. Personally," she interrupts his indignant squawk of denial, "I think my first theory is the more probable."
"I don't think you're a controlling bitch," he manages a little lamely.
She arches an eyebrow. "You don't? Then you're blind. But that's okay, you weren't hired for your observational skills, that much is for sure. So if you weren't talking about me, then you were talking about Jared, right?"
"Not this time," he grins. "Just stuff about what's been happening here. It's all kind of going by so fast, you know? It feels like we just got here yesterday, but it's already been a week."
"And it's going to keep going by just as fast. I feel like I just got here myself, but it's been over ten years. Nearly sixteen if you count the years I spent in cryo. I don't get news of home much anymore," Grace lights her cigarette, but the casual gesture can't hide the wistfulness in her tone. "You start to forget that there's anything else out there. It's easy to get lost in the rush here."
"Did you leave your family back home?" Jensen's suddenly curious.
She drops easily into a nearby chair. "My parents died a long time ago. I'm an only child, no cousins near my age. I left friends behind, sure, but no one else. My friends are all past retirement age now, and I think some of them have died. Probably more of them than I know of, since no one bothers to send messages anymore. Then again, I don't send messages home, either, and that sort of thing is a two-way street. How about you, Marine? You got people back on Earth?"
He nods. "My parents. I haven't heard from them yet, but it's only been a couple of weeks. I don't know, I thought for sure they'd have sent a message ahead, but I guess they didn't. Maybe they couldn't, or they didn't know how. They're not really good with the newer communication stuff. I set up an account for them to use, so maybe when I get back, there'll be something."
He doesn't mention the small, nagging fear that's been at the back of his mind ever since he first checked for messages and found none, that something's happened to his parents in the years he was gone. He can check that his money transfers have gone through, but that doesn't mean there's anyone left to collect them, leaving them to sit, unused, in some bank account on Earth.
Grace takes a drag off her cigarette, blows the smoke away from him in a gesture that's as useless as it is considerate. It's not like the smoke isn't going to sit there and stagnate until the ventilation system sucks it away and purifies it again. He wonders about that, sometimes, the obvious disregard for other people's well-being combined with an odd streak of caring. He can't wrap his mind around her.
"So what made you want to do this?" he asks, motioning at the lab in an all-encompassing gesture.
She grins. "Are you kidding? To get to be at the cutting edge of my field, light years ahead of all my colleagues? I would have given a kidney for that. Maybe more, I don't know. I got to pioneer this program, to be the first to drive an avatar, even before it was proven to be safe. I put this whole expedition together, the scientific part of it, anyway. This is my life's work, kid, right here in front of you. It's been thirty-five years in the making. I've been working on this since I was about your age, and nothing else has ever mattered to me as much as this."
He feels his eyes widen at that, but she's not really paying attention to him, lost in her own world, like she's just thinking aloud at him. When she does look at him, though, her eyes are almost frightening in their intensity, pupils blown wide. "You know, you're right at the age where you think you ought to be making a difference in the world, where every gesture matters, but how many people actually get to do that?" she says, leaning forward, cigarette forgotten. "Think about it, Jensen. What were your plans, except maybe to keep on following the orders of people you were never going to see, never going to meet? When I was your age, I got to be in on the ground floor of planning an expedition into the far reaches of space so we could save the whole damned human race, whether we deserve it or not. Who else can say that? Not many people, that's for damned sure!"
He's never seen Grace like this. Sure, he's seen her in a temper before, but now it's like she's come alive right before his eyes, her cheeks flushed, eyes bright with a passion he knew was there but never actually saw before now.
"I guess you must really love this place, huh?" he says after a moment's hesitation.
Their knees are already brushing together, an inevitability in this place where space is at a premium, and for a moment he wonders if she can feel it or if she was too caught up in what she was saying to notice just how close into his personal space she got with her impassioned little speech. She laughs, looks right into his eyes.
"Is that all you've got?" she asks softly. She puts one hand on his knee, and his gaze flicks down and back up. "Tell me, Jensen, what you really felt the first time you were out there. I saw you, don't forget."
Her excitement is infectious, and if he hadn't already been blushing before he'd definitely be doing so now. "I don't know... I mean, you've been there too, right?" he finds himself stammering just a little. "It's surreal, like everything is a little brighter, a little more intense, you know? I don't...I mean, I feel alive when I'm out there, and when I come back here it feels like none of this is really real anymore, like what's out there is so much bigger and more important than anything else. I'm not explaining this right."
"No, you're explaining it exactly right," she says, her tone still soft in spite of the heat in her words, and he thinks she might be moving her hand, but he's too busy staring at her mouth and he can't feel anything she's doing. "But that's one of the pitfalls of being an avatar driver. Everything out there is so much more intense than whatever it is we feel in here, that we forget that we're attached to these bodies too."
Jensen shifts in his chair, suddenly all too aware of her breath against his face. There's a hint of sweetness under the cigarette smoke, and the effect isn't unpleasant, just not what he was expecting. He starts a little as her hand travels to where he can definitely feel it. Her lips curl into a smile.
"I was wondering if that spinal injury had affected you like that."
He clears his throat, a little annoyed at being treated like a horny teenager out on his first date in the back of his father's car, but more than a little aroused too. "Yeah, no. No, everything's in perfect working order, thank you for asking."
Her smile widens at that. "Aren't you bashful all of a sudden? What, are you expecting me to believe that you've never been propositioned by a woman before? Or," she silences him when he starts to protest, "is it that you haven't been with anyone since you were wounded?" He stays silent at that, and she nods. "I see."
"Do you?"
"I think I get it."
"It's not like..." he fumbles for his words, flushed now with irritation as much as with arousal and embarrassment, and damn if the whole combination isn't making him even harder than he was, which isn't exactly helping. "I was in too much pain for the first few months, and then there was rehab and I was exhausted all the time, and then Tommy died..."
"And then you were literally frozen for six years and came directly here. So, if I calculate this right, you haven't been laid in over seven years?"
He bursts out laughing at that. "Jesus, that's way too long!" he says, and before either of them can change their minds he leans forward and hauls her into his lap, knees resting uncomfortably to either side of his thighs. She lets out a startled yelp but laughs as well, trying to keep her balance, grabbing onto his shoulders so as not to fall backward onto the floor.
"Don't take much convincing, do you?"
He's already wheeling himself backward toward the living quarters. God only knows where Norm is, but Jensen figures that he must be far enough away that this isn't going to attract his attention, at least not right away. The wheels of his chair hit the bunk backward, and Grace slithers off his lap, taking his t-shirt with her in one lithe motion.
"Hey!" he grins at her, pulls himself off the chair with both arms, and her eyes rake appreciatively over the tattoos he has on them. He beckons to her. "You want help with those clothes, you're going to have to come to me," he points out.
In a second she's in his lap again, one hand behind his head, the other cupping his chin just below the ear, licking her way over his lips, tongue pushing, demanding entrance. He's only happy enough to comply, bringing up one hand to press against her back between her shoulder blades, holding her close, using his other hand to brace himself so he won't just fall over. She breaks off the kiss a moment later, mouths her way down his neck, pausing to bite and suck at his collarbone. She shoves at him a little, hands moving down over his back and around to his stomach, thumbs smoothing themselves over his pectorals, toying with him, until he gets the message and lets her put him on his back on the bed. She grins, licks her lips as he busies himself unzipping the cotton sweater she likes to wear under her lab coat.
"You're lucky I like to top, Marine," she purrs.
"Lucky, yeah, that's what this is," he jokes, feeling her hips buck a little as his hands travel below the waistband of her pants, tugging them down along her thighs.
He pauses to admire the smooth expanse of skin there as she slides out of her top and leans over him again for another searing kiss, and he finds that not even seven years is enough time to get entirely out of practice at unfastening bra clasps.
"You're obviously an old hand at this," she teases, moving against him just enough that the fabric of his own pants causes a light friction that's just this side of intolerable, good and yet miles away from enough, and he can't quite get the leverage he needs in order to get more. "I hope you're not going to disappoint after this."
He lets out a frustrated grunt. "Try me and see..."
"Oh, a challenge. I like that."
"Christ," he groans, but he obligingly lifts himself up to catch her nipple gently between his teeth, letting the tip of his tongue play with it gently, enjoying the sharp intake of breath the gesture provokes. He can't quite get enough leverage to move her -nothing about this works exactly the way he remembers, which is frustrating enough- but she seems happy to take the lead and strip them both of what's left of their clothes, pulling away from him a little reluctantly in order to do so.
Before he knows it she's kneeling between his legs, nudging them apart with her knees, watching him a little bit the way he imagines she might watch a particularly fascinating specimen of animal in the forest, waiting to see what he's going to do, how he's going to react. Judging by her expression, though, so far it seems she likes what she sees.
"So has it really been seven years since you've been with a woman?" She slides one hand down over his dick, thumb moving lightly over the head as it twitches in her grasp, then moves her hand even lower down to play lightly with his balls, moving them between her fingers.
He squirms a little, wants nothing more than to move against her hand, and lets out a small, frustrated sound before he can help himself. "With a woman? Longer than that-Jesus!" he throws his head back with a strangled moan as she bends over him and swallows him down like his dick is the most appetizing thing she's seen in months, and for all he knows it might well be. For what feels like forever but is realistically only a few minutes all he's aware of is hot, wet heat enveloping him, the feel of her tongue sliding and swirling, probing and sucking, until all that's coming out of his mouth is a string of words each filthier than the last.
She comes up for air with a filthy-sounding pop, her lips cherry-red and glistening. "More than that with a woman?" she asks, and for a second he has no idea what she's even talking about, can't figure out how she's still capable of rational thought. "But only seven years since you got laid. Well, aren't you full of surprises, Marine."
He rolls his eyes, sits up just enough to get a bit of leverage to pull her close, so that she's straddling his hips. When he slides a hand between her legs, though, he finds her more than ready, slick and hot, and she arches into his touch willingly.
"You talk way too much," he tells her as a small moan spills from her lips. "I can't believe you're still thinking."
She thrusts against his hand as he works his fingers deeper, thumb tangling in the damp hair curling there, her own fingers digging into his shoulders for purchase. "You going to find a way to shut me up, then, Marine?"
"I just might, at that," he uses his free hand to cup her neck, pulls her in for a kiss, can taste a hint of bitter pre-come on her tongue.
He crooks his fingers, uses every trick he knows to make her come undone, to coax sounds from her throat that tell him he hasn't lost his touch at this. It doesn't take long before her face flushes bright red and she jerks and shudders against him, moaning and gasping and writhing on his fingers, her nails leaving marks in the skin above his tattoos.
"I take it back," she pants, still moving against him even once the aftershocks are over. "You're definitely not a disappointment."
"You're still talking," he points out, "so that means we're not done."
The follow-up is more awkward than he's used to. There was a time when he simply would have flipped her onto her back, but there's no way he can do that now. Instead she inches backward, lets herself slide down, impaling herself on his cock until he's enveloped in tight, slick heat. For a second she lets her head fall back, eyes closed, getting used to the feeling, and a drop of sweat trickles between her breasts, still heaving with each panting breath. He reaches up with one hand, wipes it away with the pad of his thumb, and she takes that as her signal to start moving, the lean muscles in her thighs clenching with every move. There's nothing now but the sound of their breathing, the quiet sound of skin against skin, the ever-increasing beat of his heart, pulse thrumming in his ears until it's all he can hear. His eyes close in spite of himself, head thrown back against his pillows, hands wrapped around Grace's hips to keep her steady as she fucks herself readily and hard on his cock. He hears her cry out, feels her clench convulsively around him, riding him through her second orgasm, does his best to keep moving for her until he feels her relax again, slumping a little as she tries to catch her breath. She slides off him and he doesn't quite whimper at the loss of contact, but it's a near thing until he feels her hand again, grasping his shaft, thoroughly slicked now from her riding him. It doesn't take much, barely a few quick jerks before he's gasping and coming with a quiet groan, spilling over her hand and himself in a heated rush.
When he opens his eyes again Grace is already reaching for her pants, smoothing the sweaty hair back from her face, although she looks pretty pleased with herself.
He takes a breath. "So that's it? Wham, bam, thank you ma'am?" he jokes lamely, feeling more than a little exposed like this, splayed out on his bed like she wants him on display, like some animal she's hunted down.
She grins. "The day is young, kid. There's still work to do. Don't tell me you expect flowers and cuddling?"
He snorts, groping for his pants which have landed in a puddle on the floor next to the bed. It's awkward, but he manages to hook a finger in the elastic band and pull them to him. "Romantic. No, I'm good, but usually I find women want more than just that."
She's already zipping up her cardigan. "Well, when we get back to base I might demand chocolate, except that there is none in this place. Until then, around here there's not much to be had in terms of privacy, and I don't know about you, but I don't especially feel like hanging around and having to explain this to Spellman, do you?"
Jensen rolls his eyes, yanks his pants up roughly around his hips, already feeling better with an extra layer between him and the outside world. "Don't think so. You make a habit of sleeping with the avatar drivers, just give 'em a test drive to see, or should I be flattered?"
She winks at him. "What do you think, Marine?"
And with that, she's gone.
Part IIc