In Your Hands

A life can change in an instant.

Trudy doesn't know when her instant was, but she knows that she sure as hell changed. Maybe it was the first time Norm had looked at her like she was the most precious thing in his world, because she knew he had never looked at anything but science like that before. Maybe it was the time he put aside a sample of new plant material so that he could cuddle with her in one of the few, sparse moments that they were alone, because he told her that her company outweighed the prospects of him gathering new information. Maybe it was the moment she realised her period was more than two weeks late.

Whatever the reason, Trudy Chacon was a changed woman.

Old Trudy, the Trudy-before-Pandora, never liked to apologise. Even as a child, she would refuse to say "I'm sorry," until an adult forced her to. She never apologised for her words, which were often mean or sarcastic. She never apologised for her actions, because she wasn't sorry that she made the decisions that she did. Old Trudy would never have let her dying words be, "Sorry, Jake."

But that was old Trudy. New Trudy felt nothing but guilt when she saw the missile heading for her already damaged Sampson. Her defeated, "Sorry, Jake," were the last words she ever expected to say, even as she desperately grabbed for the re-breather attached to the side-panel of her dash. Maybe it was instinct; her lungs were already burning from the unfiltered Pandora'n atmosphere filling the cabin.

She never had time to do more than that. The missile hit, and then everything was ablaze with light; the engine exploded, and the unexpected momentum propelled her limp body through the front window of her Sampson. Shattered glass tore through the skin of her back and legs, but she only felt the pain of it for a second before a plume of fire and hot ash from the coughing engine cauterised the wounds.

And then, there was just air.

She was flying. The wind was on her face, the sky at her fingertips; with no vehicle to slow her down, no gilder or jetpack, no Sampson keeping her grounded, there was just glorious air. Not that she could breathe it, savour the moment in which all her dreams came true. As she plummeted hundreds of feet through the alien sky with the thick foliage fast approaching, it really hit her: this was it. She would be dead in just moments, her spark forever snuffed out.

At least, she mused, I die flying. Because nothing would have been worse than for her to die grounded, her feet planted firmly on the floor. Trudy had been born to fly, born to reach higher than reality would allow her to touch. She closed her eyes and enjoyed the sensation of the wind on her face, not allowing herself to gauge how much time she had left. Mere moments that she didn't want to spend calculating, worrying about what was next.

When she had joked to Jake about martyrdom, she hadn't seriously considered it an option. But now, with everything free and open to her, she understood. If this was the price to pay for the Na'vi to live in peace, then she would pay it gladly. Trudy had always stood up for what she believed in. Her death would be just another example of that.

The impact was just as painful as she expected it to be. Her rapid descent was slowed somewhat by the giant leaves of a Pandora'n tree, but each leave only managed to slow her so much. Her battered body shot pain to her brain with every hit, and she began begging for unconsciousness when her foot caught a vine and was jerked away from her body with an ominous crack.

She was finally granted her wish for unconsciousness when she saw the ground; her body went limp as she fainted, but she kept a protective arm around her stomach even as she passed out. It has been said that a mother will do anything to protect her child, and it may just be true. Because even though she hadn't confirmed it with a test and she wasn't even sure, and even though Trudy had never imagined herself having children, and even though she had made peace with being a martyr in the grand scheme of this war, she survived.

Broken, burned, bruised, and gasping for oxygen in an alien environment, Trudy Chacon lay unconscious on the forest floor of Pandora, her heart still beating. It was a miracle, and would be described as such by everyone who heard the story; the tiny life inside her womb shifted in her warm cocoon, unaware of the dangerous around her.

A life can change in an instant.