Authors Note: So I've found that this particular story can only be written by hand and then transferred over to text once I'm done writing it. I'm not the quickest writer by hand but it means that it comes out the way I want it to, not a slap-dash thing of craziness I dislike. This update is around 3,800 words but… it took a while.

I hope you guys enjoy it. Comments help me write faster! Honest! So please comment? /baw.

Chapter Seven: Let You Down

He did not make his report later. Jake did, in fact fall asleep sideways on his cot, silent, mouth open, and drool on the rough sheets. He woke up the proper way and figured someone had enough fucks to give in order to move him.

Augustine sat at her station once Jake managed to open u gummy eyes, inner alarm clock made of an odd mesh of his Basic Training drill instructor and Tsu'tey's voice going 'lazy! Lazy! Wake up!' Too goddamn early.

"You're awake," she said without looking up from her microscope. Her pen scratched at a piece of paper, presumably making coherent words, but at least she had stopped frowning. "On time. Early, even."

"Princess Snarly gets irate when I wake up past dawn." That motherfucker.

"Oh no," Grace's mouth twitched in what he labeled as 'bitch amusement', her eyes crinkled some at the corners. "He's making you use that very expensive and technologically advanced body we generously gave you." She paused, mouth twisting from the almost-smile into something lie distaste. "Something given to you by accident but—"

Jake rolled his eyes and his chair, hitting up the disgusting fridge with Grace's scrawling all over it. "Yeah, I know." He muffled his voice with the plexi-glass door, peering inside. "This shit is disgusting."

Augustine made a vague noise of agreement, her attention once more on whatever it is she sent hours staring at under the damn microscope. Jake, having disappeared from her scope of interest once again, sighed and stared at the pile of disgusting ass food people liked to pass off as nutritional somewhere in there. He wanted to roll out and stab something six legged and delicious in the nothingness of the forest to rip apart with his bare, human teeth.

Even then, he missed the sharp canines of being the big blue dude.

Fuck.

He was going to be late.

Jake wolfed down the length of squishy disgusting mess of disgustingness, wiping his hand over his mouth. "I'm going in to Bueller."

Another noise and that's when Augustine managed to look up at him with something outside of disgust and personal distaste for his ability to suck in air and walk at the same time. Jake ignored the small personal victory as a fluke of nature, like the platypus of Earth legend.

(He'd seen pictures of them, fucked up creatures, but never in life. They'd died way before he'd even been thought of.)

"Don't get attached, Marine." Grace said, ruining his dramatic exit completely. Jake paused, looked back at her with an expression he knew to be unreadable. They didn't just teach you to take orders and murder people in the military - a guy had to hide his thoughts or emotions, otherwise shit just went to... well, shit. She stared right back, her face hard and jaw tensed, the only thing belying the actual feeling she had behind those words. Her fingers tapped irritably at the table, chewed on nails managing to still make noise on the pretend wood of the table. (He assumed it to be fake; somehow harvesting Na'vi trees didn't sit right in his stomach, like most of this bullshit.)

"I'm not going to lose these legs." He said, voice flat.

"They'll let you down." Augustine said. "Humans, Omaticaya. People in general. I'll let you down."

Jake's fingers tightened on his wheels. "And me?"

A ghost of a smile flickered across her thin lips. "Please. Like anyone would put their trust and hopes in a moron Jarhead." Augustine waved her hand, turning back to her microscope and whatever-the-fuck was under it. "Just make sure to not start thinking stupid things. Quaritch and Selfridge don't give any shits and the Omaticaya are curious about you."

Bitter bitch. Jake nodded. "Right." and he headed off to Bueller.

"So," said Jake. He crouched by Tsu'tey, knife in hand to skin a recently killed... whatever it was they'd downed. "I'm a savage."

Tsu'tey grunted; while a very manly, irritated noise, it did little to deter the line of the questions he'd heard Norm wanting answered. The little fucker still gave off 'pissed as hell' vibes whenever Jake went into his human body but still hung on every work as he recorded. Jake figured, may as well try to endear himself to the science puke (as Quaritch put it), like one would make the doctor at a field hospital like them.

"As a savage, I wanted to know if you had war." The other man looked up from the kill, his face hard. Jake returned the look with his typical flat expression. "You know, raiding other clans, stealing, killing."

"Do you all think like this?" Tsu'tey stabbed a loose piece of hide, contempt dripping from his every word. "Of nothing but death towards ones people? You sky people disgust me."

He spat to the side, away from Jake. Disgust, like hissing meant anger or frustration. Jake held up his hands, knife balanced on his thigh, tail still.

"You have bows and war paint. You wanted to kill me-"

"Past tense is not right."

"Awesome, Augustine taught you grammar. I'm just saying, that if you didn't kill each other, why all the violent things?"

Tsu'tey pulled his knife free and went back to work, teeth bared. His tail twitched every so often. When he spoke, Jake had the distinct impression that Mo'at or someone had ordered all questions answered. There was that whole 'empty cup' thing she'd been talking about since they all first met in the jungle with a knife to his fucking throat.

"There was fighting between clans. Too many of us, not enough food. When they parted ways – Ikran people, Forest people, Horse people, they killed for food and rights to power," Tsu'tey shrugged, a gesture taught by Augustine – or maybe Jake himself, though he couldn't remember the last time he'd been allowed to shrug in the face of a superior. Which Tsu'tey was, kind of. "Eywa became displeased. She sent each clan a tsahik, the first three. Too much blood, too many dead small ones. One tsahik, a woman, La'lei. She was a very fierce warrior from the Ikran people"

"Not one of the jungle people? Disappointing."

"Stop talking. Listen." Jake shut his mouth. "La'lei claimed Toruk, the first rider of Last Shadow. She painted her face to be his teeth, tattooed her body to appear as he did.

"Ladle spoke to each clan, loud, stubborn. She said, Eywa does not like this fighting and has sent these tsahik. Listen. Find your peace. She will give plenty. They listened, she had the largest, strongest creature at her call. How could Eywa ignore her?"

He threw the hide at Jake. It landed on his lap with a wet plop. Jake made a face, peeling it off as Tsu'tey gutted the animal and continued his tale.

"Five times of such things, five riders of Toruk."

Jake scraped his knife on the hide to start the cleaning process. He didn't look up. "Is there one now?"

"This is no such time."

The 'yet' hung between them, neither willing to say it. Their delicate truce of not to kill each other would shatter under that single word. Both men busied themselves with their tasks, silence reigning.

"Did you know about the five wars?" Jake scrubbed at his eyes, tired and seeing a few faint red spots and refusing to complain about it. Pain, weakness, leaving the body, all that. Plus, it meant Augustine couldn't call him a pussy.

Augustine's head show up from where she'd been dozing (or as she called it, studying).

"War?" She scowled, her default 'why don't I know this?' face. "No one has mentioned wars. As far as I'm concerned, there have never been any on this planet."

"Mm," said Jake, hiding his pleasure at being right for once. He settled in front of his report camera, eyes hooded. It felt… He felt uncomfortable reporting this to Quaritch, the information on wars and that they could bond to the giant monstrosities that were the Toruk. It sat heavy and sick in his stomach and instead of punching in the 'record' button, he stared at it, words distant even to himself. "Five of them. All ended when someone grabbed the big red dinosaur."

"Toruk." Norm corrected him from the other fucking room, voice ringing through the metal housing. He sounded disgusted, the pompous fuck, and looked into the room with a haughty expression. "How do you not know this? He is the largest flying creature on the planet. He could eat two mature Ikran for lunch."

Jake stared at him instead of the camera. Norm frowned. After an uncomfortable moment, he went back inside, muttering something Jake assumed to be insulting. Grace snorted, though she had her head down at the samples and, he suspected, actually listening more than studying. He frowned and flicked on the recorder.

His picture stared back at him, not amused, unimpressed, well aware that they were handing over very interesting information to Quaritch later that night.

Guilt tasted the same every time: a salty sour tang in the back of his throat, almost bilious, and it hurt the back of his teeth.

"Princess-"

"Her name is Neytiri, Marine."

"Tsu'tey. He said the first tsahik were made at the first war." The scrape of Augustine's pen paused. Jake grinned in triumph. "She rode the huge, man eating banshee to stop it. Warrior women and all that."

"A tsahik warrior?" said Augustine, sounding as disbelieving as Jake himself had been.

He grinned, not looking away from the camera. "They didn't tell you?" he asked, tone as serious and mild as he could make it. Augustine's lips tightened, her small eyes narrowed even further. "That's why the Ikran leader tattoos herself."

Grace refused to be placated. Her head turned very slowly to stare at Jake the same way a bird would a very small, stupid animal. He saw it from the corner of his eyes and cleared his throat, rubbing a hand through his still-short hair.

"We killed things today," he told the camera, and himself, and Quaritch, swallowing that bitter taste of guilt to start his report.

For a long, hard moment, Augustine stared at him. Jake refused to look back.

Funny thing about irony was that not a lot of people got the definition correct; most people thought that it was about things happening that was just talked about, maybe in jokes. Jake used it once, incorrectly, and had to listen to a ten minute lecture from Tom about what it totally really meant.

"No! Jake," he'd said, his twelve year old voice high with panic over his brother getting a vocabulary word wrong, small hands in the air, flailing. "Jake, it means something not that! I mean, it could depend on the situation, but things like - like situational irony - like a guy saying 'I'm an awesome swimmer' and then he drowns the next day, you know?" Jake did not know, spurring the conversation in a direction he never wanted it to go.

He'd never quite understood the nuances of the term 'irony'. The memory only cropped up the day that Tsu'tey came back from a hunt, bruised and cut from a nasty ass fall from his fucking Ikran after being chased by the big red lizard they'd talked about just a few days before. Whether Tom would've approved of the usage or not, he thought the situation to be fucking ironic and Tsu'tey, dazed and saying strings of horribly raunchy, insulting things about the beast when he came walking back from the forest insinuated he thought so as well.

And Jake had juststarted the day too, stomach empty and blurry-eyed from tree sleeping. He'd scrambled down the tree with way more grace than he'd been able to do two weeks prior. (Jesus, it'd only been that long?) Children ran and played, giggled, Mo'at taking the time to inform Jake that his babysitter had gone hunting at the rising of the sun and should return shortly, hopefully with dinner. He'd taken the time to chill out with some of the women making those hunting corsets all the hunting men wore. They spoke broken Common and he had barely any idea of what it was he said to them in their native language but it ended with four women giggling in a way that didn't feel malicious and Jake almost smiling.

The beading they tried to teach him ended up horrible but, hey, he got along with them so why not. Mo'at stared at them the entire time and the two mated women's men wandered by with suspicious looks; none of the women or Jake gave them any reason to be irritated, him at a healthy distance away and suitably frustrated with failing.

Before Tsu'tey and his dramatic entrance with six warriors flanking him, he'd only heard isolated swearing attempts from the Na'vi. They got nowhere near the "shut your cocksocket" his Marine buddies grew especially fond of but once translated, they were suitably dirty. He enjoyed learning them, much to Norm's disgust.

But Tsu'tey.

Oh, Tsu'tey. Glorious Tsu'tey. He walked into the little encampment with half of his face scraped raw and bloody, a mass of flesh, ear torn, the rest of what his body showed almost cut up. His corset thing had been ripped almost off of him, tail hanging limp and pupils' way too dilated to be healthy. And he said things such as "May he be fucked by the ugliest Ikran and water beast under the sea" and "His mother smelled of horse dung" and other things Tsu'tey probably never even thought of until he hit a gigantic tree side-first escaping from massive claws of the Toruk.

The other warriors rushed him to Mo'at, the tsahik instantly on her feet and grabbing a small bag he'd seen her carry before. Jake heard the distant keen of the Ikran, sharp piercing noises, ignoring it for climbing to his feet and starting towards the wounded man.

One warrior, a tall woman with a scar down one arm and calloused hands, spoke to the tsahik in rapid Na'vi, her hands on Tsu'tey's shoulders to get him sitting down. The large hunter stumbled and Jake jerked forward, grabbing his uninjured elbow to keep him from teetering down onto his hurt side and causing even more shock. He caught snippets of what she said, picking out the few words he understood like 'Toruk', 'smash', 'tree', 'nowhere', and 'sleep' in the context he assumed to mean 'black out'.

Tsu'tey squinted up at him, eyes nearly black with the dilation of his pupils. His mouth twisted to a sneer even as he leaned into the firm hold Jake had on him. With Tsu'tey stabled at least on his ass, Mo'at pulled open the pack, dragging out items. She snapped orders like 'water' and 'needle' (a word he'd just learned, thank you very much, Shinai).

"You are ugly," said Tsu'tey, words thick with shock.

"You look like a Batman villain," Jake said back, eyes rolling. "What happened?"

"Toruk," said Captain Obvious, his gaze unfocused. It lasted only a moment, narrowing in once more on Jake with more intensity then really required for the situation. "I - flew, and ducked. Hit a tree, came down on me. Too fast."

"... You hit a tree."

"Moron," Tsu'tey leaned in closer, thickly muscled shoulder resting hard on Jake's chest even as his head rolled back to the Avatar's shoulder. "Toruk hit the tree. It came down on me."

"Well, shit."

"Yes," Tsu'tey said very seriously. He didn't move his head from the nearly sprawled position when Mo'at came over, though his lips peeled back in a fierce hiss when she dabbed something thick and green to his face and chest, long fingers gentle on the cloth. The warrior let out another round of muffled swearing, teeth bared and free hand gripping tight on Jake's leg. He'd seen men weep over less and here this asshole was, just clinging and leaning, swearing, and nothing else.

Goddamnit, he hated it when his respect for fuckers like Tsu'tey went up for good reasons.

A young Omaticaya - girl, boy, he couldn't tell until they got older - ran up to help Mo'at, pulling out blue bandages to hand off to the tsahik. "At least he was not eaten. That is a good thing."

Jake snickered, an actual grin tugging at his lips. He squeezed Tsu'tey's elbow and got a glare for his efforts.

"You do not have to stay, Jakesully." Mo'at looked up at him through ridiculously long lashes. She managed to make it look intimidating still. Somehow. "You were working before he arrived."

"I was failing horribly at it too," Jake looked down at Tsu'tey's pale face, too wide eyes closed, lips pressed into a hard, tight line. It made his cheeks stand out even more, drew out the fact his facial structure was crazy. No wonder they thought he looked ugly, if guys like Eytukan and Tsu'tey were considered attractive. "I'm good at this."

"You will not learn if you do not push yourself."

Jake's lips twitched in stifled mirth. "We kind of hate each other. Can we call this pushing myself?"

Mo'at's eyebrows went up and he could've sworn he saw her smile too. Fantastic! "I suppose so."

That's when she took out a small needle with a thick black string attached. The moment it hit a particularly deep gash on Tsu'tey's chest, the warrior passed flat out on Jake's chest.

January Ramona Quaritch did not raise a fool son. She raised a lot of things, from black market poultry to a daughter that later died from lung poisoning, but she never brought herself up a weak-willed, idiot son. January refused to raise a boy as if he had to be protected from the outside world, more than happy to make sure he knew just what to expect from the world.

As soon as Miles had enough brains in him to hold his head upright, January took pains to ingrain good Southern manners into his little skull: always use 'sir' and 'ma'am', even if the person wasn't as good as you; hitting a woman was alright as long as it was to protect your life or that of another person; guns were for killing, not for playing; never burp at the table, respect your mama, and don't complain if asked to help out, just do it.

He joined the Marines as soon as he graduated high school – fifth in his class of too many, thank you very much, said January – and got himself into some mean situations. Her baby came back different even if he still said sir and ma'am, didn't burp at the table, and didn't pull his gun out all willy-nilly. She said there was hardness to his eyes and he walked differently.

The point of it all was that after January got old and sick, she sold all of the poultry, bid her son goodbye, told him that she loved him, and died, she left a son behind that lacked the ability to be stupid. Miles knew what he had to do and in what order things had to be done, recognized that orders were to be followed even if detours had to be made along the way, knew that Earth was dead and done for.

Pandora was perfect. He didn't have January's ashes with him (no one had any ashes with them, the government took everything) but he had a photo and what little Good Ol' Southern Manners managed to survive his run in the military.

First day, fucking huge black piece of shit tore his face up.

"The ladies love a man with a scar," the doctor on duty had said. Miles had enough military training to not reach out and punch him in the nose. The other man ended up going back early, driven insane by the constant threat of gigantic blue things with sharp spears and loud war cries.

Pussy.

So when Sully appeared on his screen for the first time in three days, his face flat and blank like any respectable man, Miles wasn't stupid enough to think that he happened to be alone in the room. He heard the shift and movement of a certain Science Bitch behind him, the shadow of her desk light casting a shadow of her hair. Sully looked to the side every so often as he talked.

… About wars and the fact the natives had experienced them.

Fantastic.

Glorious.

Miles tapped his thick calloused, scarred fingers on the top of his desk, jaw set tight despite his cynical amusement with the whole situation. Toruk, huh? They – the boys, his boys – called the fucking things Black Hawk for the shits and giggles. They were Dragon, after all, and the red beast couldn't be as well.

"Well." Said Colonial Miles Quaritch, leaning back in his chair. "Well, well, well. Looks like we have something to talk to Selfridge about, don't we."

Getting that boy his legs back would be the cheapest victory ever.